Are you preparing to ask donors to fund your latest nonprofit initiative? Let’s talk about the digital donor journey.
Relationships are the things that make people ready to support your organization and give their dollars. So, what we need to do is think about what that relationship looks like in the course of the digital experience, since it is so much of the experience today before donors potentially even get to talk with a live person at our organization.
We need to impact the touch points on the donor journey that are going to be meaningful. At those touch points, we need to find ways to engage with potential donors and to offer value. Thinking about intersections and connections can help us strategize around how to do that. Ask yourself:
- Where are we interacting with potential donors?
- What engagement or value are they looking for at each of those touch points?
- How does that align with what we know we can offer?
Look for those intersections to identify potential connections.
Consider that donors today have omnichannel expectations, which means even if they’re going to come out to an event that you’re running and make their donation with cash or check at the event itself, they are still going to have a highly digital experience before that even happens. They may register for your event online, they may fundraise with their team online, they may do all sorts of things on your website, or on your event pages before they ever get to the point where they’ve had an in-person interaction. Continue to think about how an omnichannel approach matters.
Where is that merging of the digital and non-digital experience? More than 80% of today’s donor journey is digital. 80% of the activity that they will undertake as a donor or potential donor will happen in spaces where they are not face-to-face, or phone-to-phone, or Zoom-to-Zoom with a real live person from your organization. We need to make sure that they get the value they’re searching for on all of those moments when they’re undertaking those digital activities on their own.
Your online presence is your new front door. We want people to come through our digital front doors on our websites, our social channels, through our email newsletters to engage with us. So, ask yourself a question if you’re getting ready to ask donors to fund your next annual fund ask, or an event-related ask, or to contribute to a specific campaign that’s coming up – are you ready?
If you were inviting people into your physical space, you might tidy it up a little bit. You might make sure that it’s ready for the needs of the guests you’re expecting. I want to encourage you do that same thing in your digital spaces. Do a little digital housekeeping before you ask donors to give dollars.
