5 Steps to Turn Volunteers into Fundraisers

Article by Amy Eisenstein, Tri Point Fundraising

Do you want to raise more money? Of course you do! A great strategy to do just that involves using volunteers for fundraising. But before we discuss how to use volunteers to fundraise, it’s important to understand why we use them. Why We Use Volunteers for Fundraising 1. Volunteers bring sincerity and passion. Volunteers already love you and your organization. It’s one thing to ask for money when you’re a staff member, but volunteers come at fundraising from an entirely different place. They are not being paid; rather they are there because they genuinely want to be. There is no better advocate for your cause than a dedicated volunteer. 2. Volunteers bring networks and relationships. Of course, you’ve heard the concept, “six degrees of separation.” Adding volunteers to your fundraising toolkit only broadens your network and your reach. If you’ve been fundraising for more than a week, you know fundraising is about building relationships. Potential donors are much more likely to trust and support their friends (your volunteers) than they are to trust you. Friends give to friends. 3. Volunteers have time and skills. Short on time and resources? Volunteers could be the answer, provided they are well trained and supported. Volunteers may also bring skills to the table that you, as a staff member, don’t have. Business, sales, and marketing skills are all extremely valuable and transferable to fundraising. How to Use Volunteers as Fundraisers 1. Identify important skills and characteristics. What skills and characteristics do you want in a volunteer fundraiser? Willingness to ask. Good listener. Passionate about the cause and your organization. Familiarity with your organization. 2. Solicit current volunteers (board and non-board members). Using the list of criteria above, identify current and potential volunteers. Include board members as well as non-board volunteers. Are there volunteers who work in the office, directly with the clients, or in other parts of your organization who might be willing to help with fundraising? 3. Create a list of ways to help. Provide a list of current fundraising opportunities—large and small. Your volunteers may not be aware of many of the opportunities to get involved, especially if they are not board members, or working near the administrative offices. Communicate with all volunteers, but specifically target those you have identified as willing to help in this area. Examples of ways volunteers can help with fundraising include: Bringing friends on tours of your organization. Selling tickets and sponsorships. Signing appeal letters to their network of friends and family. Making thank you calls to donors. Promoting your organization through social media sites. 4. Train your volunteers. If you expect volunteers to do things in certain ways and be successful, they must be trained. Period. 5. Provide specific instructions and doable tasks. Don’t assume your volunteers know what to do. Fundraising isn’t “natural” to most people. The more specific you can be, the more successful they will be. And remember, volunteers are busy people too. If you ask them to make three calls this month (as opposed to thirty or three hundred), they are likely to be successful and come back for more.

Movember

A month late on this one, but I wanted to make sure I got in a post about Movember, a new and exciting fundraising effort for prostate cancer... led by men (not something you see everyday - gotta love it)!

Founded in 2004, Movember was started by Australian men who were inspired by women’s efforts to combat breast cancer. Movember has since exploded in popularity. With mustache-growing contests and fundraisers for charities, causes, and research relating to men’s health, the movement has currently raised over $174 million globally, and has spawned an ever-growing army of mustache-wielding “Mo Bros”. Movember acknowledges that men’s health issues, such as prostate cancer,  are rarely discussed by men. Their mission, which is to spread awareness and education, and promote survivorship and fund research,  is successfully uniting men from around the world like never before and paving the way for a more informed, healthy male population.

If you or anyone you know would like to join the ranks of this elite group of hairy philanthropists, visit www.movember.com to sign up.

The rules are simple: The contest begins Movember 1st clean shaven and for the next 30 days, grow, preen, trim, wax, and twist to your heart’s content.

Men, or Mo Bros, and women, or Mo Sistas, are encouraged to gain sponsors for their Movember quests. This could take the form of a mustache growing contest fundraiser, or a simple, friendly bet with a group of friends on who can grow the best mo, with the prize money going to one of the many men’s health organizations Movember is associated with, such as the Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong Foundation. This calling is for true warriors only, so next Movember rub your upper lip regularly, and give the razor a rest.

Mustache Movement by Daryn Sung-Lee
Read more here

Leveraging Analytics for Mobile Marketing and Search Advertising

Curious about how you can use analytics to maximize ROI of your mobile outreach? Avinash Kaushik (@Avinash), Digital Marketing Evangelist for Google, led a great webinar earlier this week, discussing how you can engage with mobile audiences and take a mobile-specific approach to tracking your results.

Here’s a few key takeaways nonprofits can use, along with a link he provided that will create a custom mobile report within your own Google Analytics setup.

Mobile Outreach Strategies: Online and Off
QR codes (image) allow you to build deep relationships with consumers in contexts where you previously had much more limited opportunity for engagement.


Individuals shopping for strawberries in the supermarket can also become fans of your facebook page or engage in other Calls to Action (CTA) with a QR code.

Nonprofit Takeaway: Be creative about opportunities for leveraging mobile. When canvassing a neighborhood or street corner, people are likely to throw out the paper you hand them. If you can get them to download your app, your organization just got a whole lot stickier in their mind. When someone is bored and waiting at a bus stop and sees your billboard with a QR code, chances are significant they’ll click on the link. Where else can you reach mobile users? The possibilities are limited only by your imagination.

When people do a search for snow conditions on their phone, Skull Candy has a paid ad that points directly to their iPhone app. By taking advantage of the analytics SDKs, you can track whether people follow through to actually download your app, allowing for calculations of advertising conversion rates (and ROI). Once they download your app you’ve gained critical real estate on their mobile screen, enhancing opportunities for building brand loyalty and other CTAs.

Nonprofit Takeaway: Brainstorm about what potential donors and advocates might be searching for, and design apps that provide a benefit to your constituents while simultaneously supporting your mission.
As people peruse TVs in their local electronics store, LG includes a QR code where you can learn more information about the product. In addition to providing a sense of validation by displaying customer reviews, prospective customers can also save the link on their phone and deliberate further on purchasing your goods later if they decide they need to do more research before purchasing.

Nonprofit Takeaway: Next time you organize a big event, be sure to incorporate prominent QR codes that link to your donation landing page in your collateral. If you’ve set up a text to give campaign, QR codes can prepopulate people’s phones with the text number and message that will send a donation to your organization.


Mobile Targetted Search Ads
Search ads can be targeted to mobile consumers and include CTAs that take advantage of mobile devices. When searching for a locksmith, one company uses their phone number as the primary CTA, rather than their website. When people are locked out of their house and need a locksmith, they don’t want a website: they want the phone number of someone who can get them back in their home. Mobile users clicking on the link have that phone number automatically loaded into their phone dialing app, allowing for one click ease for a sale.


Nonprofit Takeaway: If your nonprofit provides services to the public, include your phone number. Even better, you’ll be able to track the length of the phone call (a frequently useful metric for ROI). Adwords (and other ad providers) can direct people to a temporary phone number and then forward them to your phone number, allowing for tracking call length for each ad variation. You can then compare ads to determine which leads to the longest phone calls (if using that metric for calculating ROI).

Other ads are more easily adapted to take advantage of another mobile-enhanced experience: maps. When people are in the market for a road bike, a search can lead them to geographically targeted ad for a bike shop near them. Even better, the ad can contain the address on a map, allowing for the phone to take advantage of GPS and immediately plot out directions to the bike shop.


Nonprofit Takeaway: If you provide services from a physical location, make it easy for people who need your assistance to find you.

Tracking How Your Website Performs for Mobile Users

Once visitors click on the ad, how well is your website designed to change mobile users from prospects to completed sales? Too often companies send visitors to their non-mobile optimized homepage. Do it right — create customized landing pages for your campaign!

Make your site easily usable by mobile visitors and, just as with desktop design, show a clear CTA, and you’ll find bounce rates drop dramatically while conversion rate hits the roof.

Nonprofit Takeaway: Create mobile optimized donation forms, and follow mobile usability best practices.


Determining ROI for Mobile Users
If your ad contains multiple CTAs, adwords tracks each CTA (and conversion rate) independently. As you test multiple versions of ads, compare CTAs and weight each ad based on the value of each action.

Tracking mobile users against all site visitors can be useful. Google Analytics includes a built in advanced segment for mobile users. If you find that certain devices are showing higher ROI, you can create additional segmentation based on user device, OS or resolution (i.e. tablet vs. phone). Custom reports can be developed to show performance between browsers across three critical areas: acquisition, behavior, and outcome.


Avinash provided a link to automatically add the mobile performance report into your existing Google Analytics account. By looking among the tabs you can quickly review mobile user performance at a glance.
Nonprofit Takeaway: The nonprofits we support have seen a dramatic increase in mobile visitors, and they’ve responded by working with us to develop great mobile sites. In the next couple of years the number of mobile website visits will surpass desktop usage, and it’s important to be ahead of the curve. Your supporters are increasingly looking to engage with you using their mobile devices – are you prepared for them?

Leveraging Analytics for Mobile Marketing and Search Advertising
By: Rob Pierson, Beaconfire Wire
Full Article here.  

New Fundraising Event Idea: Zombie Walks

As Halloween Approaches, Nonprofits Turn to ‘Undead’ Donors

By Derek Lieu

Friends for Life, an animal shelter in Houston, raised $8,100 through an event that invited participants to stage a zombie walk. Photo by Kim Domerofski/Friends for Life

Zombies often get a bad rap for their ghoulish ways. But it turns out that they also have a penchant for giving.

A growing number of nonprofits are taking advantage of the recent popular fascination with zombies by playing host to “Zombie Walks”—events in which horror fans dress up in their undead best and gather for fund-raising walks that raise money for their favorite causes.

In some cases, they are raising significant money. For example, Friends for Life, a nonprofit animal shelter in Houston, raised $8,100 earlier this month from a horde of ghouls ambling through a suburb in West Houston.

“The way that we tied it in to our mission and what we do, is that we’re a no-kill shelter,” says Kim Domerofski, communications manager at Friends For Life. “Zombies are undead, so for us, we’re trying to keep as many undead animals, undead.”

The Houston event began when Amy Lewis, an information-technology specialist who volunteers at the group, heard about a similar undead walk in Australia. She had hosted other fund-raising events before but had trouble attracting interest. That changed when Ms. Lewis decided to give zombies a try.

“It really picked up,” she says. “Every year we get more zombies, more photographers, more vendors.”

She estimates that 1,200 zombies attended the most recent walk, now in its fourth year. The suggested donation was $15, but people were also asked just to give what they could afford. In previous years, Ms. Lewis used the walk to raise money for a local food bank and an organization that supports U.S. soldiers.

Other groups have had success raising food donations through zombie crawls. The Food Bank of Northwest Louisiana, in Shreveport, for example, collected 1,460 pounds of food and $330 in donations at its recent zombie walk. Last year, a similar event produced 851 pounds of food for the organization.

“That’s been kind of the whole tongue-in-cheek thing about it—zombies are always hungry,” says Michelle McCary, a b-movie lover who has organized the Shreveport walk for four years. She estimates that 500 people, including many families with children, came out to walk this year.

The crawl, which in years past took place in a local mall, moved to downtown Shreveport this year. Ms. McCary said the organization received a lot of free publicity from the city’s tourism office, which advertised it on digital billboards, and from a local radio station.

“Even people who don’t normally like that kind of stuff come out of the woodwork,” she says. “It’s become a monster of its own.”

And if the trend continues, charities may soon face an interesting question: Do undead donors prefer an e-mail or handwritten thank-you notes?