At MarketSmart, we believe you need to give to your supporters before asking them for money. It’s the law of reciprocity.
Engage your supporters by offering something of value. Interact with them. Give and take. It all sounds great because we know no one wants to be pestered for money every time they hear from nonprofits.
But what does it mean? How do you deliver value? What does a nonprofit have that they can give donors – that the donors will want and appreciate?
This is one of the core foundations of MarketSmart’s entire approach to major donor pre-qualification and automated cultivation. Our system is built upon this very idea – that by continually offering value to supporters, you will build trust and eventually be in a position to start a personal, trusting, and rewarding relationship with them – that both of you benefit from.
The best offers are value-oriented, highly relevant, and personalized to what the supporter has said they want. You’re meeting actual needs – for your donors.
We have found over many years of doing this that generous fundraisers inspire generosity from their major donors.
We have identified eight distinct value-driven offers that mean a lot to donors and supporters.
8 Value-Driven Offers for Donors and Supporters
Again – some of these offers will be more valuable to some supporters than others. Few of them will be desired by everyone. By personalizing your communications with each supporter – which you can do without any human involvement through our automated software – you can deliver offers that carry high value to each individual supporter.
Here are the eight offers we have found to be most effective in cultivating trusting relationships with donors.
Supporter surveys
Supporters want to participate. They care about your mission. Surveys are one of the best – if not the best – tools to initiate a deeper relationship with a supporter. They keep the communication on the donor’s terms because they can choose to participate or not. It gives them the chance to contribute to your mission in valuable ways.
Surveys work incredibly well – but only if you use them correctly.
The worst thing to do is send out a survey but then offer no follow-up based on how people respond. This has been shown to actually suppress future response and giving rates. So make sure to follow up.
On one hand, the survey enables the donor to share information that is valuable to you as you continue to personalize and deepen your communication with them.
On another hand, the survey also empowers you to know which other offers you can send to each donor that will be most valuable and appreciated.
Surveys help you learn about each supporter, and you can follow up with valuable ongoing content and offers. Here are some of the other offers.
Tell your story
‘New’ is good. Novelty has been shown by University College in London to increase memory regarding what was experienced. It also releases dopamine, creating a stronger bond between that supporter and the new thing they were given.
A great way to give a donor a new experience is to offer them the chance to tell their own story about giving and supporting your mission.
Let them share how their story intersects with yours. This will generate nostalgia, a powerful social emotion that will increase their openness and interest in giving to your charity.
Digital newsletter
Online newsletters cost very little to produce, but they achieve most of the same objectives of a printed one.
Supporters feel like they belong to something. They’re part of something important, and they’re on the inside of it. It also lets them participate in ways other than giving such as volunteering, donating items, engaging on social media, staying updated on your organization’s work, and hearing stories of impact.
Best of all, it keeps the communication flowing and sustains long-term engagement.
Door opener
We’ve developed, tested, and perfected a high-level automated workflow that includes email invitations to meet with someone from your organization.
The workflow includes a small questionnaire that empowers the supporter to have a say in what the conversation will entail. It also automates the scheduling process so you don’t have to get into that annoying back-and-forth dialogue about dates and times. The scheduling app does it all.
There are many other benefits to the door opener tool. But it’s important to keep in mind that this tool works best for supporters who are far advanced in their journey with your nonprofit. These are people who know why they support your mission and are starting to think about how they can financially support you in significant ways.
In marketing funnel language, this is a mid-funnel tool. Surveys and newsletters are top-of-funnel tools.
IRA QCD
Retirement is complicated. Managing retirement funds is one of the main reasons. It’s filled with acronyms like RMD and QCD, age-related requirements, and things the government assumes everyone knows about that most people don’t actually know about.
Thus, many retirees are confused about what is expected of them, when it is expected, and how to fulfill the expectations. Tax benefits and tax penalties are in play if they mess up.
A qualified charitable distribution (QCD) refers to distributions retirees can make from their IRAs in the few years before they are required to make required minimum distributions (RMDs).
And, giving to charity from your IRA is a way to reduce or eliminate the tax bite from making withdrawals in retirement. But many retirees don’t understand the details of how all this works. And who can blame them – because the rules change regularly. And, it often feels as if they’re learning a whole new language.
MarketSmart has created an offer that promises retirees it will help them manage their QCDs and RMDs with far less friction and frustration. This is educational as well as practical, and retirees love it.
You’re making it easier for retired supporters to give major and legacy gifts as well as ongoing QCD gifts. Plus, you’re opening the door to larger gifts and bequests down the road.
Online will tools
Many nonprofits offer online will-writing tools but miss out on their full potential due to limited marketing. MarketSmart’s Online Will Add-On changes that. We drive traffic to your existing will platform with strategic, turnkey marketing that uncovers legacy gift intentions and boosts engagement — without adding work for your team.
Supporters appreciate this service because it meets a real, often unspoken need. It empowers them to take care of something important while making it easy to include a gift that reflects their values.
Legacy challenge
Legacy giving is a tough sell for several reasons. One of the biggest is that donors don’t see the reward of their gift. Another is that people don’t like to think about their own deaths.
Offering a legacy challenge overcomes both these and several other barriers to planned giving.
What is a legacy challenge?
It’s very much like a matching gift, except instead of people just donating to match a gift, they are setting up legacy giving documentation to trigger the gift. In both instances, all you need is a major donor who agrees to put up the matching or legacy challenge gift.
For example, suppose a major donor pledges $50,000 for the legacy challenge. Then, for each donor who sets up the documentation for a legacy gift, the major donor could give $5000. In this example, the goal would be to win ten new legacy donors. You could raise or lower all these amounts to achieve different goals.
With this approach, each legacy donor sees an immediate impact from their decision through the major donor’s gift. And, they experience positive feelings instead of negative ones even though they’re doing something related to the end of their life.
Plus, if the major donor is okay with it, you can promote their gift and the legacy challenge in future campaigns, and normalize the idea of giving a planned gift.
Notice that the legacy donors aren’t donating any money right now. Only the major donor is. So this is a way to engage supporters without asking for any donations – but in a way that results in huge financial generosity down the road.
Stewardship series
When a supporter does commit to making a planned gift, have you won it yet?
No. In fact, the majority of planned gifts never actually get given, because people can and do change their estate plans. A lot. According to research from Dr. Russell James, only 45% of charitable planned gifts pledged over ten years prior to death end up actually happening.
This happens because it’s hard to sustain passion, interest, involvement, and emotional connection with an organization over many decades. People might gladly pledge a planned gift during a time of intense engagement in their 50s. But if they’re still alive 30 years later, will they still feel the same way about that organization?
The stewardship series tool offers a way to deepen and solidify the commitment to give a planned gift. We use an 8-month email series that keeps new planned donors engaged and committed to fulfilling their pledge.
It taps into their desires and reasons for giving, what matters to them, and how they would like their gift to be used after their lifetime. In other words, it forges a partnership that becomes active before the money has been given.
Use this tool, which asks for no money now, to ensure more pledged planned gifts turn into something real.
MarketSmart Turns Supporters into Major and Legacy Donors
As you can see, these eight powerful tools all address different organizational needs, while also engaging distinct groups of donors in ways that mean a lot to them at key moments in their lives.
When you use our system, you get access to all these tools and much more.
And you can offer many more non-financial offers than just these eight tools. Here’s a checklist of what makes an offer valuable to a supporter. You’ll notice that each of the eight tools we’ve discussed hits several items in this checklist:
- Is the offer fun?
- Is it fair?
- Are you being honest and transparent?
- Will it educate or inform?
- Is it shareable?
- Does it evoke emotion?
- Does it release dopamine and/or oxytocin to make them feel good?
- Does it help them feel like they are the hero in their own life story?
- Does it give them the sense that they can live forever in the minds of others?
- Does it enable them to give pack or pay it forward?
- Does it allow them to feel they are being altruistic?
- Does it provide a sense of community?
- Does it result in notoriety and/or praise?
- Does it enable them to right some wrongs they want to change in our society?
- Does it give them a feeling that they may be able to satisfy their religious or moral principles?
Great offers tick a number of items on this checklist.
With MarketSmart, you’ll have at least eight powerful, effective, and valuable offers for your high value donors and supporters.
Related Resources:
- 5 Tips to Being Persistent in Outreach to Major Donors
- The Secret to Raising More Money: Focus on Impact, Not Just Strategies
- How to Help Major Donors Give More By Knowing Their Own Motivations for Giving
- Major Donor Stewardship – Million Dollar Experiences for Million Dollar Donors