You do a lot as a fundraiser or marketer at your nonprofit, but you can’t do everything. Often, volunteers and advocates become the face of your nonprofit, and some donors will come in from their interactions with them. That’s why it’s essential you adopt a fundraising technique that helps them stay inspired.
In fact, there are studies that show inspired volunteers actually secure many more donations.
It turns out there is a very specific fundraising technique you can do for your team—and yourself—that will help you see much greater success in your fundraising efforts.
The research
A recent study tested a very specific and actionable tactic on donation-seekers and found that a small change in their preparation significantly affected the number of pledges they secured.
In 2008, Adam Grant, a management professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, conducted a study on the call center employees of a major U.S. University. Much like nonprofit fundraisers, these individuals reach out to alumni to ask for donations.
Here are the details:
- Callers were separated into 3 groups and spent 5 minutes before work reading stories.
- Group 1 (personal benefit) read stories from previous call center employees, explaining the benefits they derived from the job.
- Group 2 (purpose) read stories from alumni who had been able to attend the university thanks to the money raised by the call center in the past.
- The third group (control) read stories unrelated to either personal benefit or the purpose of the fundraising.
- All the groups were told not to share the stories read with the people they called on the phone.
I’ll spare you all the calculations and just share the findings: the “purpose” group secured more than double the number of donations as they had before the exercise, far outperforming either of the other two groups.
Just in case you didn’t get that, they DOUBLED the number of donations they secured!
That’s a huge change for only five minutes of reading.
Make it personal and purposeful
How can you use this tactic in your own fundraising efforts? There are two elements: focusing on personal and purposeful.
The stories came from real people talking about how the university had personally affected their lives. Whether it was the call center employees or the alumni, both were sharing stories about personal impact.
The second element that made the big difference in the second group was that the stories specifically highlighted the purpose of the calls: providing scholarships for new students. This is what allowed the callers to focus on the good that would be accomplished, rather than the benefit to the university specifically or to the alum they were calling.
Put it into practice
Here are some suggestions for putting together your own inspiring, purpose-driven stories for your volunteers:
- Collect stories: Ask people in your community who have benefitted from your nonprofit to share their stories. Ask them to focus on the personally significant changes that have occurred as a result.
- Share the stories: Have your fundraisers read the stories regularly to remind themselves of the purpose of their work. Five minutes is all it takes.
- Publicize: The stories in the study were not shared because the point was the see if they affected the callers, but you can feel free to share the stories with your donors if appropriate.
This simple tip—spending 5 minutes before fundraising reading personal, purposeful, stories—can have a huge impact on the success of your fundraising efforts. Try it out.
