Turning Event Attendees into Long-Term Donors: Pre-Event Strategies

Long-term donors are invaluable assets for any organization, providing consistent support and creating a sustainable future. Cultivating these lasting relationships is crucial for long-term success. Finding long-term donors requires connecting with your community. Fundraising events play a crucial role in that.

Turning event attendees into long-term donors starts well before the fundraising event itself. The pre-event phase is crucial for identifying and engaging potential long-term donors. By leveraging past event data, you can create a solid foundation for donor engagement.

Identifying and Engaging Long-Term Donor Channels

The success of your donor engagement efforts depend on your ability to identify, connect with and analyze your most valuable donors. By understanding who your top donors are and how they discovered your organization, you can tailor your outreach to maximize long-term donor potential.

Identify Your Top 20%

A cornerstone of successful donor engagement is understanding who your top supporters are. Typically, 20% of your donors will account for 80% of your revenue. To identify this crucial group, start by ranking your donors based on their contributions, from highest to lowest. When you take the top 20% of your list it usually accounts for about 80% of the revenue.

Don’t just look at the amounts though, consider other factors such as:

• Those who made a purchase above a certain threshold.
• Those who made multiple purchases throughout your fundraiser.
• Those who bid over a certain threshold in your auction.
• Those who purchased a table at your gala.
• Those who participated in upsells.

This comprehensive view will help you understand who your most dedicated and invested donors are.

Discover Where They’re Coming From

Once you’ve identified your top 20%, dive into how they got connected with your organization. Did they respond to an email newsletter, or were they personally invited by your team? Maybe they were referred by another donor or attended a previous event.

Understanding these connection points will help you to pinpoint the most effective channels for attracting long-term donors. This knowledge is invaluable for tailoring your future outreach and marketing efforts.

Double Down on Top Donor Channels

With this information in hand, you can refine your approach for your current event. Focus on the marketing and promotion channels that have previously brought in your top donors. By doubling down on these proven methods, you can maximize your marketing ROI and ensure that your outreach efforts are both efficient and effective.

Implementing Effective Data Collection

Now, you may be thinking, “I don’t have that kind of information in my CRM,” and if that’s the case, now is the time to put systems in place so that come your next event you’re set for success!

Effective donor engagement relies on robust data collection. If you find that your CRM lacks the detailed donor information you need, you should seek to implement systems to capture this data.

Affiliate Links

Affiliate links allow you to create custom URLs for each promotional channel. This way, you can track where your attendees are coming from. By analyzing this data, you can identify the most effective channels for attracting donors and focus your efforts accordingly.

Custom Fields

Using custom fields when guests purchase tickets is another excellent way to gather information. Adding a question about how they heard about your event can provide valuable insights into your most effective outreach methods. This data collection strategy will pay off in future events, enabling you to tailor your marketing and outreach efforts more precisely.

Manual Data Collection

You may also need to collect some of this data manually. Engage with your top donors directly, invite them to lunch, or take a moment during the event to ask how they found your organization. These personal interactions can yield valuable insights that automated systems might miss.

Enhancing Engagement with Strategic Outreach

Understanding your top 20% of donors and their origins is a great first step. The next step is to use this knowledge to enhance your engagement strategies. This involves refining your marketing efforts based on the effective channels you found and ensuring you have systems in place for continuous data collection.

By recognizing potential long-term donors, you can tailor your outreach to meet their preferences and expectations. And finding out how they discovered your organization, whether through direct mail, email, or events, allows you to double down on these successful channels and hopefully bring in more similar donors.

For example, if you find that a significant portion of your top donors discovered your organization through social media, you can invest more in targeted social media campaigns. Create personalized content that speaks directly to their interests and past contributions and consider using platforms they frequent the most. Alternatively, if direct mail has proven effective, you might design a special mailer that highlights upcoming events and exclusive opportunities for top donors, creating a sense of exclusivity and appreciation.

Your Next Steps

These strategies are just the beginning. Once it’s event day and your guests have arrived, the task of maximizing long-term donors is far from over.

If you’re curious about strategies during and after the event for maximizing long-term donors, you can download our guide How to Turn Event Attendees into Long-Term Donors for the full walkthrough.