How Can You Take Donations to the Next Level?

Let’s face it, fundraising isn’t easy. Simply getting your audience to the donate can be a struggle for many nonprofit and tax exempt organizations.

So how can you optimize your approach to fundraising? Well, come up with a plan to take your donations to the next level!

You Need Online Donations

First up, you need to start accepting donations online. Even if you feel better with the old school methods, you need to consider online donations. Why? Because the whole world is mobile—and the easier it is, the more people are eager to give. And nothing is easier than using your phone or laptop to donate.

So make sure you have a website, and use social media, email, and video production to bring your donors to your website! It all works together, really.

Communication for Donations

After you have your page designed, implement your email marketing strategy to direct donors to your site. We’ve told you about email before, and stand by those marketing basics.

Mixed together with social media, you’ll be able to direct increased traffic towards and hopefully donations to your site.

But don’t abandon all of your traditional methods—a direct mail campaign that advertises your web presence is a good mix of traditional and cutting edge. It’s best to use both to reach your audience!

Advanced Tip: Landing Pages

Your website might be awesome, but if you utilize a landing page, you can customize the experience even more for your donors. So what should you do? Customize a single page with a short donation form and passionate copy with a call to action. REMEMBER—Minimalism is best, so avoid heavy graphics, web videos, or any other distractions.

Let’s face it, some things will work and some won’t. Instead of doubling down on one strategy, you should implement A/B testing to make sure that your fundraising efforts aren’t wasted!

Test your landing page by creating two pages that are near identical, but with different calls to action. Monitor which CTA produces better conversion rates, and then you know that is the right direction. Take the foundations of the more successful page, and then create another page expanding that idea. Keep testing and watch your conversion rates increase!

Once you have your donations coming in, head over to ExpressTaxExempt and create a free account. While Form 990 might not be due for a few more months, it’s never too early to work on your recordkeeping, e-file last year’s 990, or even just keep track of donors.

If you have any questions, our dedicated customer support team is here and ready to help, by phone at 704.839.2321 and by email at Support@ExpressTaxExempt.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

What are your advanced marketing tips?

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Boost Donations with Video

You’ve been running your social media campaign for a few weeks, and you’ve noticed a rise in donations. But you want to take your nonprofit to the next level. What can you do? Have you considered boosting donations with video?

By producing videos, you have a unique opportunity to give potential and current donors more insight than the average tax exempt organization. Videos let your marketing team cover local fundraising events, capture personal stories, and inspire people to donate. These days, decent video cameras are affordable (plenty of photo cameras double as video cameras, too). And since most people have smart phones, capturing video is even easier than ever! So we suggest grabbing a camera, finding your subject, and yelling ACTION!

“Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.” - Jean-Luc Godard

Does your nonprofit produce videos to gather the support of donors and keep people informed? Did you know you can boost your donations with videos?

Why Should I Make Videos?

Well, if you’re willing to run social media marketing campaigns, share photos, and status updates with your donors, the next logical step would be video. Now, we’re not expecting you to be the next Steven Spielberg, but with some effort you can at least produce enough content for a steady YouTube channel.

• Interviews - Whether you’re interviewing your organization founder or one of the people your nonprofit helped, capturing an interview gives your viewers the inside scoop on your mission. Best practices would be to let your interviewee preview and prepare answers to the questions, and then edit their responses into a video one to two minutes long. Less is more with interviews!
• Events - Spent two months planning a fundraiser and you want to immortalize it before it’s all said and done? By documenting your event turnout, you can show potential donors that people care about your cause. Also, if your event is fun and successful, you will inspire viewers to catch the next one.
• Results - Want to show how your fundraiser helped build a house, save an animal shelter, or pay for a medical treatment? Show the results with a video update! When viewers know their efforts contributed to success, they’ll be more willing to click that donate button!
• All of the Above - Of course, for the most effective strategy, your nonprofit should use a combination of these efforts to produce a constant stream of updates. Sure, you may need a video guru to make that happen, but the results would benefit you more than you know.

Donation Cards

Once your videos are ready, the easiest distribution model is to share them on YouTube. With YouTube, you can also use the donation card system to inspire action. What is a donation card? They are clickable “Donate Now” buttons that appear on your videos, and make use of Google Payments. Best of all, YouTube has a specific program to help nonprofits become YouTube creators.

What sets donation cards apart? Well, they allow viewers to contribute from the video from both desktop and mobile. When viewers donate, the nonprofit gets 100% of the donation! That’s right, Google currently covers the processing fees. If making your own videos is just out of the question, you can always team up with a current YouTube creator and have them use donation cards to support your cause!

Once the donations come rolling in, use our bulk upload feature to e-file Form 990 come tax exempt deadline day. If you have any questions, reach us by live chat, phone at 704.839.2321, or by email.

Have you captured your events with video? How’d it go?

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