Kris Kewitsch | Executive Director, Charities Review Council | December 2024
Approaching Your Donors as Informed Givers
As you engage individual donors in your year-end campaign and as you begin to frame up next year’s fundraising and communications plans, it’s important to consider how donors make their giving decisions.
It’s partly practical. Donors are busy, and your communications are competing for their time and attention. Offering clear, concise information and convenient ways to give will encourage giving.
It’s partly relational. Donors can be loyal, to an extent, but cannot be taken for granted. Investing some time and resources in understanding who they are and why they give – is it your storytelling, your measured impact, your values alignment, your community of focus? – will help retain individual donors and deepen relationships.
It’s increasingly informed and intentional. Many donors today research how organizations utilize contributions, seeking transparency and meaningful engagement with the causes they care about. To facilitate smart giving for your donors:
- Share tangible outcomes and stories that demonstrate near-term and long-term impact.
- Address your organization’s overhead openly, explaining how operational costs support program effectiveness and long-term sustainability.
- Ask for sustained support through recurring donations, showing how ongoing contributions make a bigger, cumulative difference.
- Reframe donors as partners who want to know more and have important perspectives to contribute. Inviting conversations and questions, online and in-person, will help build trust and provide the zoomed-in experience that many of today’s donors seek.
As you wrap up fundraising in 2024 and look ahead to 2025, these considerations can inform strategies that will effectively center donors and their informed approach to giving, helping your organization transform individual supporters into long-term advocates and contributors.
