A Personal Recommendation Engine
Raising money is hard, and it requires lots of time, energy and money. After all, about 68-75% of all giving comes from individuals, and with personal bequests, that number goes up to nearly 80%. That’s a whole lot of emails, postcards, letters, galas, events and pitches.
My friend Lauren suggested that there might be an additional, and likely easier, way to acquire those donors and raise that money — and I think she’s right.
As most professional fundraisers know, a personal recommendation to a friend is one of the most powerful fundraising tools there is. That’s why many high-dollar pitches include a “friend” at the table (or on the call), to make the pitch feel more comfortable, and to give the feeling like you’re “joining a family”.
That’s all well and good, but what about the small to medium-sized donations?
If it’s a “given” that having a friend at the table encouraged large donations, then why wouldn’t that apply to everyone?
It’s funny that until Lauren mentioned it to me, I didn’t even realize that I had rarely been asked as a volunteer, donor, or event-goer to tell a friend about my involvement. (The only time I’ve done so has been when I was on the committee for a high-dollar event, where we’re asked to write a message on the envelope of a gala invitation to “join me!”.)
In fact, many, if not most, volunteers and donors keep their involvement to themselves.
This is a missed opportunity.
It’s great to add to your social media profiles that you volunteer or donate to a particular nonprofit, but that’s a very passive way to talk about your involvement. It’s certainly unlikely that anyone will get involved with that nonprofit just by virtue of your adding the organization’s name to your online “resume”.
What if nonprofits activated every single donor to tell their friends about the organization — all the time? What if every single volunteer was reminded to “tell a friend” that they spent the day volunteering for an organization, and why?
Is this not done because it’s actually too obvious? Or is it not done because people are embarrassed to talk about their private life or their donations? Or could it be that people want their “social” friends to be different than their “nonprofit” friends?
Regardless of the reason, we know that most people aren’t in the habit of talking about where they donate. Think about your own friends — do you know what charities they contribute to or volunteer for? You might know one, or maybe two, but I’m pretty certain that you couldn’t tell me accurately which organizations they donated to last year.
Which is not to say that nobody shares their excitement about the groups they donate to. Of those who do talk about their nonprofit involvement, there are some who are awesome and authentic and just want to share the good work that they’re privileged to be part of. There are also a small number of folks who talk about it incessantly — in a very self-serving way, which might make others not want to tell about where they participate.
But the bottom line is that most donors and volunteers don’t ask their friends to get involved and contribute to their favorite organization. There lies the opportunity.
If you’re not familiar with “relational organizing” or “vote tripling”, read this. The old-but-new idea of friend-to-friend mobilizing for a cause has been used recently in political campaigns, and also for social action, with great success. Shouldn’t this approach be used in nonprofit fundraising?
Fundraising, as I wrote above, is hard. Let’s try to incorporate the friend-to-friend concept — which is authentic and more persuasive than just about anything else you can do — into all of our resource development efforts. It’s likely that you’ll be glad you did.
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- Lisa