Charitable giving and donor behavior has changed significantly over the past one to two years,
with some pretty big implications for non-profit fundraising. So if you are starting a non-profit,
or leading a non-profit, or fundraising for a non-profit, it's really important for you to be
on top of these charitable giving trends so that you can adjust your non-profit fundraising
strategy as needed in order to succeed. So in this video, I'm going to talk through five of those
charitable giving trends from recent reports to help you think through your nonprofit fundraising
strategy for the next couple of years. Welcome! If we haven't met yet, my name is Amber Melanie
Smith and I am a non-profit founder and executive director. I've been doing fundraising for many
years and growing my organization from zero so I have really tried to stay on top of these trends
and pay attention to things that might impact my fundraising efforts and the fundraising efforts of
other nonprofits that I care about. I hope that you find this video helpful - don't forget to
give it a like and subscribe to my channel for more content all about starting a non-profit,
fundraising, creating a social impact through social entrepreneurship and other types of
projects and just making a difference in the world! And as always if you're looking for more
support or want to learn more about me check out my website, FounderToFullTime.com. So charitable
giving and how when and why donors might choose to give their money to a particular cause
naturally evolves over time but just like the COVID-19 pandemic has affected everything else,
the pandemic has accelerated some of the charitable giving trends and caused some
interesting changes in other donor behavior. So we're going to talk about that. So these five
trends I'm going to talk about have really emerged and accelerated just over the past one or two
years during the COVID-19 pandemic and I'm going to talk for each of them about what that trend is,
and also its implications and its impacts on your fundraising. All right let's jump in.
Trend number one probably won't surprise you that much but it is that a non-profit's online presence
is even more important than it was before. I mean it's 2021, so having the basics like a website a
social media presence etc. are must-haves for all organizations at this point in order to get
discovered and for donors and supporters to engage with you. It's just you just have to have it at
this point but because in 2020 and 2021 people started doing things more virtually and remotely
including looking up non-profit information this online presence for a non-profit just increased
in value according to Fidelity Charitable's 2021 Future of Philanthropy report 57 of people made
their donations through the organization's website in the past couple of years so i found myself not
actually too surprised by that that number that 57 of people donating through a nonprofit's
website but what the part that actually surprised me was the stat that came after that
which was that 18 of the donors that were surveyed as part of this report so that that was
more often than they ever had before the pandemic so people's behavior is increasingly moving
online and through non-profits website is where those donations are being made
couple of other notable statistics from this research 33 percent of donors used online
resources to research a non-profit before deciding to make a donation and 19 of those surveyed also
shared a non-profit's posts on social media so here are the implications for your non-profit
fundraising efforts number one hopefully pretty obviously you need to make sure that your website
is not just attractively designed but also really easy to navigate especially the pages
that facilitate donations you can frustrate a donor to the point where they will just not
make a donation even if they had already landed on your donation page if your donation page is
too complicated to understand or use or does not function properly the second thing you want to do
to make sure that you are staying ahead of this trend is there are websites out there
that review non-profits like charity navigator or guide star that provide information about
non-profit organizations to the public you want to make sure that your nonprofit's profiles
on those websites are up to date and accurate and have the latest compelling inspiring and wonderful
information about your cause possible because people are looking up your organization on those
sites so you want to make sure it represents who you are and what you do to the in the best way
possible and the third part is also probably pretty obvious but you want to make sure that
you're keeping your social media pages up to date and posting to at least some degree of frequency
make sure that your posts are engaging and interesting with decent quality photos and
things that are personal tell a lot of stories and share your impacts and offer opportunities
for people to comment and engage with your posts all right so trend number two is that the issues
that donors care most about supporting are evolving according to this same report fidelity's
report on the future philanthropy the specific issue areas and global issues and community issues
that donors are prioritizing to give their money to has shifted over the past couple of years one
interesting point that this report makes is that one of the issues that has consistently remained
high in priorities for donors is this issue area of basic needs that is housing food hunger
shelter clothing etc so your basic needs as a human being this has always been ranked highly
and is pretty consistently so and the report makes the point that many of the issues that donors
face or are asked to support are very very complicated basic needs is pretty simple pretty
cut and dry so what we can possibly glean from that is that the easier to understand
that your issue is is the more likely your issue might get support what's really interesting and
i'll show you the the graph the chart that they had in the report here in a second
was that they tracked the trends on how donors priorities shifted over like five or six different
key areas over the past couple of years so the issues that donors said were less of a priority
since the pandemic started and those that became more of a priority to them so let's take a look at
that according to their findings between 2020 and 2021 donors dramatically shifted their interest
in five major areas that's they prioritized hunger economic development and racial
discrimination these became higher priorities for donors and treatment of cures and diseases and
clean water and sanitation actually decreased in prioritization by donors all right so what does
this information mean for non-profit fundraisers okay so if your nonprofit is already working
on one of the issues i mentioned that donors are increasingly prioritizing then keep at it keep
sharing your stories showcasing the impacts of your organization and also see if there
are opportunities to invest in your organization's capacity and infrastructure so that you can grow
and also become stronger as an organization if in the future donors de-prioritize
these issues if your non-profit is working on one of the issues that donors prioritization
has remained steady in or has even decreased don't get discouraged the issues that are more
prevalent and frequently discussed in the media tend to be the ones that people gravitate towards
supporting in a given year so here's my advice to you if you're in this situation whenever possible
engage your public and talk to the media about how the issue that you are tackling as a non-profit
actually impacts one or more of those other issues that is getting more attention right now we know
that no social issue exists in asylum things are highly highly interconnected for example
if your non-profit is tackling that issue of clean water and sanitation one of the ones that
donors deprioritized for support over the past couple of years then talk about how that issue
is also intertwined with and affected by and affects the issues that they prioritize such as
economic development and food insecurity these things are all connected to each other
and another piece of advice that you'll probably hear me repeating several times because it's just
so true and helpful and that is to become really good storytellers of showcasing your impacts and
the stories of the peoples whose lives you're transforming as an organization in the work
that you're doing trend number three surprised me a little bit and that is that despite the
digital age that we live in word of mouth is still a really really important marketing tool
while obviously a strong online presence and social media is really important word of mouth
or hearing about a cause from someone you know or a friend is still one of the biggest ways people
find out about your organization and might choose to support it according to classes
why america gives 2021 report 67 percent of donors are likely to find new causes to support based on
the recommendations of friends and family and this has always made some amount of sense to me
people trust other people with whom they have relationships so even when you're thinking of
you know what plumber to use or um what item to buy you might trust the recommendation of
a friend more than you might even trust your own research online so social capital you know people
talking to each other and those relationships have a strong impact on who gets some support
from um from donors and so you really want to kind of be aware of that and see what you can do
about it to encourage people to spread the word to their friends so here is what you do here is
the implication for nonprofit fundraising you have to make sure that interactions
with your organization and experiences that people have with your organization
are positive you're giving them a so to speak good customer service experience people will remember
how an interchange with your organization made them feel and if it made them feel good they're
going to tell their friends about it so what that means is and i hope that you would do this anyway
but you know um you want to just show extreme kindness to everyone you interact with make
sure that they feel welcomed included safe have a great experience have fun if if that's possible
and also you want to make sure that the messaging that you share with them is easy to remember it's
not too complicated because even if someone really loves your organization and had a great experience
with you if they can't remember how to explain it to others that's going to be a barrier that
might prevent them from telling someone about you all right trend number four donors are interested
in tracking results especially millennials so according to fidelity's report donors are
increasingly interested in seeing the specific measurable results and impacts of the causes
that they support and this is especially true of millennials 66 of the people who identified as
millennials infidelities survey said that tracking results going back and looking at the results and
the shared and published stories and impacts of a non-profit that they supported is something that
these donors did and we know that this is increasing because 40 percent of gen x and
32 of baby boomers said that they did this so it seems to be something that the younger generations
are interested in will be interested to see you know what gen z is all about and if they
you know follow the same pattern one comment the report made that i found really interesting and
i know rang true for me personally was that donors especially younger donors today are
viewing donations as investments in solving a problem that they see in the world and
i've always felt this way personally and i i feel like that's how donations should be viewed i mean
non-profits are charged with addressing a need and tackling a problem and donations should help the
organization be able to do that effectively and so yeah i view donations as something that's like an
investment and you the organization should be held accountable for its impacts so what does this mean
for non-profit fundraising efforts well hopefully as an organization you're already tracking your
results throughout the year you've put systems and processes in place to understand how you are
helping others and how many people or animals you are helping so assuming you have all that in order
your next step is to make sure that people know about it make sure that you are showcasing those
results up front on your website you're talking about that them on social media you are making um
you know you're you're creating stories and content all about those impact so make those
pieces of information easy to find and bonus points if you can display that information in
a visually appealing way like an infographic or a cool video or some really high quality photography
the fifth trend is that donations are more often made through mobile devices classy says that of
those donors who made online donations over half 58 of them did so through their mobile device
this is pretty big and has some pretty practical implications for non-profits and fundraising
it means that you have to make sure that your nonprofits website but especially the donation
page is mobile friendly it's responsive and looks good on a smartphone and if you're not sure if it
is all you have to do is pick up your phone and go to your organization's website and take a look
at it is it attractive is it easy to use and navigate is it responsive on the donation page
are the fields where you would enter in the amount you want to donate and your name and your credit
card information all that are those easy to use fields are they popping up in the correct
spaces all of that good stuff so if it is not you know that you have some work to do on that area
another thing you can do is lean into this trend and think of some creative ways that you
could further engage donors through their mobile device for example maybe you want to experiment
with requesting donations via text so there are lots of great platforms out there that can help
facilitate this sometimes low cost or even free so i'd love to hear what you think have you seen
these trends in action have they been affecting your non-profit and your fundraising efforts
leave your thoughts in the comments below especially if you have more ideas on how folks
doing non-profit fundraising could capitalize on these trends to have greater success we'd love
to hear your ideas too share them in the comments for the benefit of everyone watching a couple of
resources i've got for you i mentioned my website FounderToFullTime.com before be sure to check that
if you are looking for some training or some help i also have a newsletter for non-profit leaders
and change makers of all kinds that i send out around monthly the link to subscribe to that is
in the comments uh comments and the description in the video so check that out you can opt in and
then opt out if you ever would like to do that um finally i have a Facebook group, change the world
or bust. We have over 2,000 people in there now from all over the world literally who are working
on their own social impact project many of them starting a non-profit and we're just chatting
in there and sharing tips and encouragement and all that so come check that out it's change the
world or bust that's all i have for today. i hope to see you next time and have a great week, bye!