Technology continues to impact every aspect of our world, including fundraising campaigns. While traditional offline outreach to prospective donors is still effective, the success of online tools in generating contributions to K-12 schools shouldn’t be ignored. Online tools offer an opportunity to enhance the fundraising efforts that help the school meet its goals for the future.
Keys to a Successful Fundraising Campaign
Once the fundraising objective and how it fits with the school’s mission have been established, it’s essential to understand the donors that the campaign relies on for support. That’s why prospect screening and management should be an ongoing part of your school’s annual fundraising plan.
Keeping communication lines open is a significant factor in increasing donor engagement, and that engagement is a key indicator of the ultimate success of the fundraising effort. In fact, subject matter experts suggest that nurturing relationships with donors is the foundation of a successful, robust fundraising program.
Online Trends in Donor Behavior
Online giving is a growing trend for K-12 education organizations and donors don’t seem to be reticent about the amount they send using online platforms. While gifts in the $1,000 range are most typical, gifts of $5,000 and more are also donated online to the nonprofit sector.
Online donations from a mobile device have also been steadily increasing, with nonprofit recipients observing that a notable percentage of online donations are mobile transactions. Donor behavior evidently mirrors consumer behavior, suggesting that your campaign strategy should include mobile-friendly emails, websites and donation forms.
Donor Engagement
Combining online and offline campaigns also improve donor engagement, along with the prospect that donors will donate more than once. Research shows that organizations tend to retain almost twice the number of multichannel first-time donors, compared to offline-only donors and online-only donors.
Millennials are also coming on stream as their incomes increase and they have children. Their interest in the social good of the community is ready to be harnessed through the technology they embrace.
My Backpack Alumni Community
With the My Backpack Alumni Community web portal, your K-12 school has an online tool that invites donor engagement and facilitates its prospect screening and data management. My Backpack lets alumni update their profiles, add and review class notes, make gifts, pledges, and payments online, and track their giving history. It also allows staff to broadcast emails to targeted groups of alumni.
The My BackPack Alumni Community integrates fully with Alumni/Development and General Ledger, providing a complete data set for the school’s fundraising campaigns, as well as the capacity to process gifts and payments.
