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The number one rule when planning any type of presentation, email outreach, or fundraising campaign, is to understand and speak directly to your audience. It might sound like a no-brainer, but when you get heads down into planning, it can frequently get lost. It’s easy to focus more on the ask you’re making, instead of thinking about what will motivate donors to fulfill the ask.
People want to feel like you’re speaking directly to them, instead of receiving a generic pitch that could be for anyone. You have to put yourself in their shoes and think about what specifically motivates them to engage with your organization. And this applies to every type of outreach you’re doing.
Below are some of the most common donor types that you might come across and tips on how to best engage with them:
Major donors
This is most likely a well established group within your shop and is probably where you are, rightfully, spending most of your time and effort. Because this audience is so critical, it’s important to make sure you are frequently revisiting how to best engage with them. In this post, Alice Ayres, president and CEO of AHP, explores the changing interests of major donors and how it should impact your major gift strategy.
Mid-level donors
These are donors that fall in between annual donors and major donors. Mid-level donors tend to give multiple gifts to an organization that more often than not, continue to increase over time. This tends to be a forgotten group because development and fundraising teams spend more time focusing on annual and major donors, but leaving them out means you’re leaving money on the table. In this post, you’ll learn about the best way to engage and nurture mid-level donors.
Social donors
A social donor is someone who gives to an organization by attending an event or supporting someone else. They normally don't have a direct connection to the organization themselves. They are often hard to retain and engage with since they typically don’t have a personal affinity on their own.
Over the past 12-months social giving has increased, particularly in the healthcare space, so this is an important audience to understand. Learn more about the different social donor types and the best ways to reach them.
Pandemic donors
As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, many healthcare philanthropy organizations have received an unprecedented number of new donors. This distinct group doesn’t look like a grateful patient donor but instead is more similar to a good samaritan donor. Because they donated for a specific cause, it can be hard to engage with them once the crisis is over. In this post, Alice shares what makes new Covid donors tick and how to connect with them.
Grateful patient donors
Grateful patient programs are fundraising initiatives that allow hospitals and other healthcare organizations to cultivate past patients and families to become hospital donors. Grateful patients have a very specific and close tie to your organization. This is probably a well-known audience at your organization.
Erin Stitzel, a principal healthcare philanthropy consultant at Accordant, has spent significant time determining how to adapt your grateful patient strategy in light of Covid-19. Here are some of her recommendations.
Now that you’ve taken the time to understand some of your top donor types, you need to think about creating messaging for each group. A good place to start is by developing individual donor personas for each group. Learn more about what a donor persona is and why they matter.