Ep 58: From Cold Outreach to Champion Influencers: Unlocking Donor Motivation
EPISODE 58
Harnessing Human Connections for Nonprofit Fundraising
“We give because people give to people. People support people.”
Are you ready to tap into the power of human connections and cold outreach to fuel your fundraising efforts? You've landed in the right place. In this enlightening conversation, we unravel the psychology behind why people give to charities, fundraisers, and causes. We share how harnessing the concept of reciprocity can significantly boost your fundraising efforts and how to build a 'Social Street Team' to amplify your social impact.
Not only do we guide you through setting up a scalable and effective street team, but we also reveal how to engage influencers and thought leaders to champion your cause. This episode is loaded with practical tips on boosting your online revenue as well.
We reference insights from our course, Amplify Social Impact, to guide you further. So, whether you're looking to raise funds or simply curious about the motivations behind giving, this episode offers a wealth of knowledge.
Think you’ve reached out to “everyone” in your network? Out of ideas to get noticed and get funded? Generate leads for your nonprofit or social impact business: https://www.splendidcourses.com/prospect
Steal my Prospect List! Lead Gen just got a lot easier!
Resources mentioned:
Easy Emails for Impact: My email marketing course for nonprofits, consultants, and social impact businesses. Learn more here: www.splendidcourses.com/easyemails
Amplify Social Impact: My signature digital marketing and online fundraising course. If you’re ready to start a profitable digital ambassador program or influencer marketing program, this course is for you! Sign up for my free masterclass and get $200 off the course here.
Private coaching: This is the fastest way to kickstart your growth and have support, strategy, and momentum to grow sustainably without burning out. Start by scheduling a discovery call here.
Links may be affiliate links which means I may earn a commission at no cost to you.
TRANSCRIPT:
00:02
Welcome to the Purpose and Profit Club podcast for nonprofit leaders, mission-driven creatives and social entrepreneurs. Get ready to stop dreaming and start doing. Here ideas become action. We prioritize purpose and profit. You ready, let's go? Today we're going to talk about motivation, donor motivation, support, our client, customer motivation and answering the question why do people give, why do people take action? This is like one of those big questions, right, I remember last Christmas, like last holiday season, I got this big white manila envelope in the mail from a nonprofit that I'd never heard of, I'd never supported before, and it was full of like a letter, postcard, little mailery thing, and then a pair of socks and something else, oh, a pair of gloves, a pair of socks and a pair of gloves.
01:05
It was such a bizarre experience because it felt very arbitrary. It felt like literally sometimes, as marketers say, throwing spaghetti at the wall. This was a marketing kit or a fundraising appeal. Really that was throwing spaghetti at the wall, trying to get me to donate. One of the things that they were trying to enact with this because I was a cold prospect to them was reciprocity. They were saying we gave you this, you give us something back If you've ever gotten those return labels sent to you unprompted from a nonprofit. I can think of a couple that use that regularly where they give you their return address labels with a little flower, a little design or something like that. Then in that piece is a donate to support our cause. That's that same rule of reciprocity that they're trying to enact with that process. For me, I was just very, very confused on the socks, really with the labels. That's the same thing.
02:09
When we see people donate because of those reasons, we're enacting them to feel bad in that moment of we sent you all this stuff, what are you going to give us back? That is not the way that I want your organization to build your client and supporter list. I don't want you to prospect cold in that way. We can absolutely do cold outreach and cold prospecting, but let's do it in a much more thoughtful way, by answering first why do people give? Why do donors give? One of the best ways and one of the more long term sustaining ways that people give, or reasons why people give, rather, is because they were personally asked or felt a personal connection to the person who asked or championed or advocated for that cause. So what do I mean is think about it. Think about the time, the last five donations you personally gave to a non-profit, a go fund, me, any sort of fundraiser. Think about why you gave and then think about which ones were you like one and done with which ones weren't you one and done? With which ones did you give to?
03:30
Again, if you actually drill down to your own habits, you'll find a lot of similarity to just generally how and why we give. We give because people give to people. People support people. We don't support big, ominous, looming giant organizations or brands, right. So, for example, one of the more recent fundraisers that I gave to was because a friend of mine posted about it on his LinkedIn page and he tied in his connection to that cause and talked very, very briefly about the particular cause and why he was advocating for and had like a specific fundraising goal around it. And I say that because I say briefly in that he wasn't like a skilled fundraiser, but he did a great job just talking about his why and talking about the organization's why, that alignment and having a quick call to action to donate.
04:28
People donate to people, right? People are motivated and want to get that connection and want to support their friends, want to support their families, want to support the people around them. Okay, it's the same reason why, if you've ever given to a GoFundMe which I do often I will give to a GoFundMe. Maybe that is for somebody I know, or like one removed, a friend of a friend, a family, something like that. Right Same thing. People give to people, whether it's one specific nonprofit's cause, or maybe it's a family or an individual going through a healthcare issue and needs some support, some financial support along the way. That is very different than throwing spaghetti at the wall and saying a generic call to action to a bunch of people who are not already in your network. Okay, if you think about the GoFundMe model, that works really well because typically we have one individual who sets up the fundraiser and then that person shares it. And who else shares it? The friends of the friends of the friends of the friends.
05:40
I am not advocating that you go create a GoFundMe fundraiser. I'm advocating and trying to show you the motivation around why people give. And it is not because of the big zoomed out version, the 10-year version, of a particular cause or mission. It is because of what can I do today and my connection to the person asking how does that translate to your organization? It is what I teach in my course Amplify Social Impact. In that course, we teach an entire new way to think about your social media and marketing plan. We flip social media content on its head. So you stop creating social content and just creating five posts a week, seven posts a week, and blasting them all off on your social networks, and instead you create what I call a social street team.
06:34
That street team is very similar to what I've been talking about, where people are motivated by other people they know like in trust, or thought leaders that they know like in trust, who they've been following online. These could be influencers. These could be other people in the community that they consider to be thought leaders, saying, hey, will you support this cause? Hey, I'm supporting this cause, will you too? It is the same way that if I were to text a friend right now and say, hey, would you mind, could you donate $50 to this organization? Here's what they've got cooking and here's why, here's why I'm fundraising for them, if I text 10 friends today, I would say I would have a high ROI on those friends saying yes, because they are my friends, right? So we're taking that concept Instead of reaching out individually to people via text, by email, by phone instead or in person. This street team is a scalable process where we meet people where they are on their preferred platform of choice and we give them the tools, through a digital toolkit, to become vocal champions of vocal ambassadors for your cause.
07:50
So the way that I like to see an online fundraiser, an online campaign of any sort or a giving Tuesday any of the above is I like you to have a street team in place that helps to leverage and advocate for you, that uses their own platforms for good. One of the trends that we've been seeing in the last five years and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger Is that particularly influencers. So those are the people who, maybe on Instagram or Tiktok or YouTube, have a large engaged audiences. These are people who monetize their following right. They are getting add dollars from brands to post about products and services there. They're there. We are seeing again and again a trend that they want to use their networks for good. How can they do that? They can do that by partnering to become an ambassador for your organization.
08:42
This process only works if you find the right ambassador and create the right pitch. So you have that mutual alignment. This is something again that I teach an amplify social, where we build out your street team and it compounds a year over year. So, instead of somebody doing it once for you, or maybe they fundraise once for you, something like that we actually retain and build upon your street team year over year of year. Okay, your street team grows and has that ripple effect that we see larger organizations have. There's not that many in the sector doing it, but we do see some have these wildly profitable ambassador programs who are doing this really well. There's that mutual alignment. They have exactly what they need. It doesn't feel like committee work. It doesn't feel like board work. I teach the entire process. I'm going to link to it here in the notes today so you can learn more about it.
09:36
If I had one way, if you were saying to me, christina, between now and your net, your end me to kickstart like we have a seriously ramp up our revenue online. How do we do it? I would absolutely play with the, with the, with the thresholds or what is the word I can't think of Of dialing way, way down the amount of time you're spending on creating content and dialing way way up on developing profitable partnerships, because people choose to click donate, to click share, to advocate for your organization, because they want to help your organization, because they connecting with other people who are doing that right. So, before you invest in something like ads, which are awesome, before you invest on things like Facebook ads, I want to make sure you have a fully rock and rolling street team going when you have digital ambassadors doing this for you, because they have warm audiences. They have audiences they're their friends, their family, their coworkers that align with yours.
10:44
Sometimes I tell my clients that if they have one donor who is really just an amazing, aligned donor, who does, who just gets it right, and who is like one of their best champions or maybe it's not a donor, it's a supporter, client or customer in that way, say to them they have, they likely have a mutual like. There likely is other people in that person's world that also would feel that way about your organization. Because, think about it, like you hang around people like you. Okay, you hang around people like you. So it would make a lot of sense that that person would be an amazing ambassador, that person who just gets it, that person who wants to be there to help, to volunteer, to support, to share, would probably have other people in their world who feel that way too. So if there's one thing that you do, we want to flip that on its head. Between now and your end, we want to build out an ambassador program, one of the things that I've told my Amplify Social students.
11:44
Recently, we've been talking about this 30 day quick start, which is a module that I've added in the course, which is zero to success in 30 days. So really, really honing in on all right between now and 30 days, what actions do I need to take to get this minimum, viable product, this MVP version, out into the world? It does start with ditching perfectionism, and the other piece that it really starts with is making sure that the version that you have now, like your very first social street team, is not the version that you're expecting or imagining in five or 10 years. Okay, in order to put your work put, put anything new, any new creative, any new campaign, any new partnership out into the world, now you've got to be willing for it to be the MVP version and not the five or 10 year perfect, perfectly executed, buttoned up version and then no, like we can do a little messy, do a little scrappy. We get it out into the world and we go.
12:46
So I want to invite you to join Amplify Social Impact. Learn about the course, click the link and don't wait. Do not wait to start a social street team. Do not wait to start to leverage those connections with people who already have an audience. You know I didn't even mention linked in. They can have their audience wherever they want. This has worked for organizations from a solo founder to a large scaled nonprofit that has multiple departments and a large staff.
13:16
This is something that I like to see at the 100k mark, the half a million dollar mark and the hundred or the million dollar mark for organizations at the 100k mark. I want you to start your initial social street team at the 500k mark. Boom, we add to it the million dollar mark. If you haven't already, what are you waiting for? Now is the time to engage and mobilize those support online. This is not an in-person endeavor, so it doesn't cost you anything but the time to put it together. If you have questions about it, come find me at Splendid Consulting on Instagram. We'll talk it out and I'm cheering you on. I'll see you next time. Like what you're hearing and want to take this to the next level, I want to invite you to go to purposeandprofitclub to watch my free class. In there, I will tell you the number one thing that's keeping your nonprofit or social impact business stuck, and what to do instead. Go to purposeandprofitclub.