Asking for money is not always easy, but fundraising is an essential part of any nonprofit’s work. Fundraising does not only include the ask, but encompasses donor relationship management, sharing messages of appreciation, and ensuring you’re updating your donor base on how your work is going.
We hope one of the benefits of completing your True Impact report is the ability to utilize key information to share your impact story at all stages of the donor cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship process. Below, we’ve outlined four important steps in planning your outreach efforts and communicating your impact story:
1. Determine your outreach goal
Fundraising consists of a few key components - cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship.
- Cultivation is building relationships with donors or potential donors
- Solicitation is where the fundraising ask comes in
- Stewardship is focused on retaining your existing donorbase
Your first step will be to determine what sort of outreach you are putting together - is the goal to build relationships, make the fundraising ask, or to continue to steward and maintain your donor relationships?
2. Consider your audience
Now that you’ve determined your goal, you should identify your audience and consider how you can best share your message so that it resonates with this audience. While you might want to share all the details of your work, it might be overwhelming to your audience. Keep it simple and straightforward so anyone can understand your true impact (see what we did there). Giving levels (major, small-dollar, recurring, etc.) is one of the ways you can differentiate your donor groups and provide unique messaging with the right level of detail to appeal to each respective audience.
3. Decide on your format
Based on your goals and audience, you can then tailor your outreach. This could include a newsletter, phone call, or social media post. You are also encouraged to conduct research on your donor audiences: assess your donor pool and understand what moves them the most. Perhaps you have an audience who responds well to your Facebook updates, or a handful of major donors who really appreciate quarterly updates via a phone call. Keep this all in mind when creating your outreach plans. The format(s) you choose will also help you determine the level of detail you should include.
4. Use impact data to back stories
Finally, storytelling is a really useful tool to illustrate the impact of your work. To enhance these stories, insert your impact data to share the full scope of your program or organization. Donors want to know why your work matters, not just how you are doing the work. There are millions of nonprofit organizations worldwide and highlighting your impact (how lives are improved) is the best way to gain and retain the attention of donors. Some example include:
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Good |
Better |
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We support students with graduating high school on time. |
We supported a total of 200 students in 2023 graduate high school on time! One of those students was Ben, who INSERT STORY. |
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Your donation will help us reach more children every year. |
Your donation will help us reach even more children in 2024! In 2023, we were able to reach 1,000 students with 80% improving their mental health and wellbeing. A donation of just $50 will help us improve the life of one more student, like Jill who shared, “INSERT QUOTE FROM STUDENT”. |
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Help us reach our goal of planting 5,000 trees in 2025! Any donation will help. |
Our goal of planting 5,000 trees in 2025 will have a ripple effect of impacting over 100,000 people! It costs us $100 to plant one tree, resulting in just $5 to improve one person’s life! Every dollar counts. |
To help you do this, we’ve compiled a list of editable templates and resources for messaging your impact to your networks: