Mid-level contributions sometimes slip through NGOs’ seams. Since they are more demanding in terms of their effect and retention rates, first-time and significant donors are frequently the focus of fundraising executives.
However, although making up only 5–10% of the average nonprofit’s donor base, mid-level donors might provide 40–50% of the organization’s annual revenue, thus they do need their engagement approach. But who are your mid-level donors, exactly, and how ought you to handle them?
Look at your donor management system if you wish to locate your mid-level donors. From your largest ordinary donor to your smallest major donor, they will be there in between. Based on the data listed above, arrange your donations according to size and budget as appropriate.
It’s time to involve them once you’ve recognized them. How you interact with and thank your supporters has a direct impact on how frequently and how much they give, as well as how they feel about your cause as a whole. The following article will lead you through 5 suggestions you can use to enhance your mid-donor engagement strategy, boost retention rates, and deepen these kinds of relationships:
- Make sure your goal is clear.
- The accomplishments and achievements of nonprofits
- Extend your gratitude to donors.
- Ask them for feedback and consider strategies to improve their levels of participation.
- Don’t allow middle-level donors to become the middle child syndrome’s neglected victims. Prepared to jump in? Let’s start.
1) Make your vision clear
It’s common to find yourself concentrating on other donor groups before your mid-level donors. Inadvertently ignoring your mid-level donations puts those relationships in jeopardy, and those supporters can start to doubt whether their efforts will help the cause they are so committed to.
To close this gap, you must make sure that your nonprofit’s objective is obvious and apparent to your mid-level contributors in all communication and marketing materials you produce.
Here are a few instances of how you may make sure your mid-level supporters are aware of your nonprofit’s mission:
- In social media posts that include images of the neighborhood you assisted, reiterate your objective.
- On your website and social media profiles, prominently display your purpose statement.
- In direct fundraising appeals, remind beneficiaries of the precise impact their donation will have on your cause.
- Use your nonprofit’s logo, which should include your mission statement, to brand all of your content.
This keeps your mid-level donors informed about how your campaigns and special events contribute to your overall objectives. Additionally, it serves as an additional reminder to them that your purpose can only be accomplished with their help.
2) Celebrate nonprofits milestone
Don’t limit your interactions with mid-level donors to simple requests for money or other forms of assistance. Nobody enjoys being in a relationship where one partner is continually seeking assistance without providing anything in return. For this reason, you ought to actively promote your company’s achievements.
Your accomplishments include reaching all-important fundraising targets and moving your organization closer to achieving its goals. For example, suppose your organization’s ongoing internet fundraising effort aimed to provide food for 1,000 families each month. When this benchmark is reached, you might:
- Thank everyone who donated to the campaign, send an email.
- Share a social media post praising the achievements.
- Make a video or photo collage showing the precise activities you’ve taken or the people you’ve assisted in the community.
Your mid-level donors will appreciate knowing exactly where their money went and how their donations contributed.
3) Appreciate them
As soon as a donor donates to your organization, you should express your sincere gratitude to them all. This is especially true for your mid-level donors, who if you don’t actively engage them, can easily be overlooked.
Using an automated communication solution to send out a thank-you email as soon as a donation is received is a simple way to accomplish this.
A thank you should be a frequent component of any mid-level donor engagement plan, particularly if you want to strengthen those ties even further. Knowing how to express your gratitude to donors in a heartfelt, considerate way will help you win over more supporters and advance your cause over time.
This entails sending more than a simple “Dear Friend” email. Make sure you have the donors’ real names and the number of their gifts available so you may mention them in all messages. Here, connections between your donor database and email are crucial.
However, you’ll need more than just emails if you want to increase your mid-level donations. You should incorporate thank-you events, letters, presents, and personal phone calls into your overall recognition plan.
4) Feedback
Reach out to them and get their opinions if you want to better engage your mid-level donors.
Find out who your mid-level donors are by looking at your donor management program. Here are the fundamental steps again because we just touched on them briefly at the beginning:
- Take a look at your presents over the last six to twelve months.
- Sort your gifts based on size.
- Calculate your typical gift amount.
- Find your key donors by starting with the greatest contribution and working your way down until you reach roughly 75% of your total funds.
Those that provided between your average gift amount and your lowest big donation amount are your mid-level donors.
Make an email section once you have a list of your mid-level donors. Successful donor segmentation makes it feasible to personalize your content so that it’s most likely to resonate with each group rather than trying to connect with everyone in a big, heterogeneous donor pool at once.
In this approach, you can send tailored messages to your mid-level donors only. Get a feel of the kinds of events they could be interested in by asking them about their communication preferences. It demonstrates your appreciation for their friendship and assistance.
And make sure to truly incorporate their advice into your future strategy!
5) Increase their level of engagement
One of your main goals when working with mid-level donors will be to raise their level of involvement. Since you can frequently turn mid-level donors into more dependable, recurrent, or even big supporters, the potential for mid-level donors appears to be endless.
What steps can you take to improve the engagement of your mid-level donors?
- Make a wall to recognize donors. This is an ongoing display that recognizes and thanks donors to a cause. If you’re creating one for an ongoing campaign, think about growing it or planning it so that you’ll have space to highlight and recognize your mid-level donors.
- Call someone or send physical mail. Moving past online engagements is a terrific next step if you want to elevate your relationship with a donor. The next time you want to express your gratitude or extend an invitation to them for a gathering, think about sending a handwritten message or giving them a call. Make careful to use a variety of recognition techniques and avoid relying solely on one channel. Provide some diversity to keep contributors’ interest and convey your energy and vitality.
- Send a specific fundraising request (when the time is right). Consider sending direct fundraising to ask with a contribution quantity slightly larger than their prior donations if you want to boost the gift sizes from your mid-level supporters.
- Reiterate their prior influence and then succinctly describe what a larger extra gift might provide.
- Describe impact in great detail. Being clear about the effects of prior help is vital, as was already indicated. This is the best approach to convince mid-level donors that their contributions are crucial to your cause and that greater involvement will have a significant impact.
- Although mid-level donors are crucial to your organization, there is still space to grow your relationships with them. Take your relationships with your supporters to the next level by using this advice.
Wrapping up
If you don’t have clear plans for interacting with and cultivating them, your nonprofit’s mid-level donors may seem mysterious. They don’t contribute enough to qualify as significant donors, but they do give more than the average direct-response or one-time donor. Despite this, you should still have a specialized engagement plan that is specifically targeted at your mid-level engagements. Use the tactics we’ve discussed here to start your mid-level donor engagement!
We wish you all the luck for your new campaign on an online fundraising platform. We hope that these strategies will work well with you.
