Okay, fundraisers. Get your cold brew on ice and a notebook in hand because we’re coming in hot with a breakdown of best-in-the-business tips for nonprofit fundraisers to scale impact.

In August, our Director of Growth and Marketing, David Schwab, taught us how to be the architect of a robust, surround sound marketing strategy.

Like all of your favorite films (Shrek 2 anyone?), we’re following up with a sequel to David’s marketing strategy to deliver you a brief roundup of the most important factors to consider to scale impact with a surround sound fundraising program.

What's surround sound fundraising again?

We're glad you asked! When we think of surround sound, we often picture a speaker and stereo amplification system that creates a consistency in the frequency of sound to make for a better listening experience. AKA, I will use surround sound to listen to Taylor Swift’s new album at full volume.

Surround sound fundraising is a communications strategy that relies on the same principles—donors and prospective donors should have a consistent user experience across media platforms. With a surround sound strategy, you will weave the ethos of your nonprofit through all digital channels to generate a consistent through-line that will scale impact and drive donations.

3 Ways to Use Surround Sound Fundraising to Scale Impact

Okay, it sounds like you're ready to implement a surround sound strategy! But how? If you remember from the previous article, David shared three surround sound secrets to scale impact—while giving him back some sanity during the busy year-end push.

We got him to expand on those secrets just for you, so read on!

Donors are humans, too.

Like you, every donor has unique challenges and experiences that impact when and where they're able to donate. Donors give on their own timeline and when they’re ready to contribute, so as a marketer, your job is to ensure that your nonprofit is the first place folks go when they’re ready to donate. That means that leveraging community engagement, rapid response, and social media to remain top of mind.

How does this strategy work IRL? If your nonprofit only appears online once a year to solicit donations, you’re less likely to be top of mind when a donor is actually ready to contribute. If your nonprofit has an active social presence, donors are more likely to make a donation to your cause when they're able to contribute.

But visibility and frequency aren't the only ways you appeal to donor humanity. Communicating with gratitude and authenticity drives a donor experience that feels personal. Personal connections scale impact through higher rates of donations—and ensure that prospective donors actually feel good about making a contribution!

But how do you use technology to scale impact?

Make your fundraising technology do the heavy lifting.

You can use technology to scale your human interactions through segmentation, automation, and customization. Remember, you should work smarter, not harder! Consider Funraise your smarter-not-harder partner, the weight-lifting champion of all things related to donor experience. We’ve built technology specifically catered to the nonprofit sector to facilitate your surround sound marketing strategy and generate greater revenue... which, consequently, will scale your impact.

When considering investing in technology, you have several options. Remember the “Buy, Build, Band-Aid” framework that David introduced us to? We’re bringing it back because it’s a big deal.

Build

The most cost-heavy way to leverage fundraising technology is to build individual integrations that meet your most critical needs. This requires significant time and will have limited features.  

Buy

Investing in a fundraising platform (like Funraise, hi!) will give you a robust toolkit of integrations that meet all your heart’s desires–but often requires an investment in both time and resources for research, purchasing, and onboarding.

Band-Aid

If you don’t have the time or resources to build or buy fundraising tools, you can use a band-aid to temporarily address a challenge—but this isn’t a lasting solution.

Are you ready to take action to meet your fundraising goals?

Action should always be your default.

Nonprofit visibility and content frequency are more valuable contributors to overall fundraising success than perfection. Surround sound fundraising relies on consistency to generate donors—so produce consistent content often to remain top of mind.

Think of it this way: you know you have to make the ask. When hope becomes a strategy, you're well-positioned to will impact into being... but until then, your mission relies on you scaling impact through action.

And lest you feel the chill of writer's block, let's abandon the illusion of perfection. Producing imperfect content delivered at the right time will convert more donors than producing perfect content delivered too late. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good!

A note on the illusion of perfection: Developing a nonprofit marketing strategy that generates increased revenue and donor growth is no easy task. Please, don’t hold yourself to an unrealistic or unhealthy performance standard. We all make mistakes and hit roadblocks. Appealing to the humanity of donors requires that you recognize the humanity in yourself!

Implementing small marketing changes and tech integrations sounds like small potatoes, but we challenge you to take these steps, commit to them and then look back in a year. We bet you'll see drastically scaled impact. So, nonprofiteers, let’s champion humanity, leverage technology, default to action, and (in doing so) change the world.