Mobile Donors: 4 Strategies for a Stronger Relationship

Donor retention is the cornerstone metric of a nonprofit’s fundraising success. Attracting new donors that are just as engaged in your mission is much harder, time-consuming, and expensive than maintaining strong relationships with the donors who have already proven how much they care about your nonprofit’s mission.

Increasingly, fundraising professionals are focusing more on donor stewardship as a model for donor retention. More thank-you notes are being sent, more mid- to small-size donors are seeing their names on donor walls, and more communications are being tailored to each specific donor, facilitated by the newest marketing and communications software.

It’s time to take the stewardship approach to retaining your mobile donors.

As a fundraising professional, it’s your job to encourage mobile donors to see you as a partner in philanthropy, beyond a phone number to text or a social media donate button to click.

How? Follow these four strategies:

1. Highlight your commitment to security.
2. Streamline the giving process.
3. Get smart with social media.
4. Incorporate mobile strategies into your events

Mobile-focused fundraising can feel more impersonal or remote than other methods, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a connection waiting to be encouraged. In fact, as more donors gravitate toward their phones because of the ease of mobile giving, your chances of making an essential connection is greatly increased.

Ready to find your next most engaged donor? Let’s get started!

1. Highlight your commitment to security.

Not even your most ardent supporter will complete a mobile donation if they don’t trust that their information is safe.

Your primary concern when building trust with your donors, current and prospective, should be the security of their personal information.

Security is an additional concern with your mobile donors. Though it’s entirely possible to have donations and information stolen through direct mail or in-person fundraising techniques, donors are at their most wary when it comes to transmitting contact and payment data through a mobile form, social media donate button, or text message.

There are a few steps you can take to secure your mobile donation methods, all of which you should consider:

• Implement a variety of website authentication methods, such as two-factor authentication or passwordless alternatives.
• Screen passwords against lists of commonly used credentials.
• Apply for an SSL certificate to secure your donors’ connection to your website.

Though information security is essential no matter what your other goals may be, donor relations specialists should pay particular attention to security and the way they convey their efforts to donors.

Always include information on your online donation form and any sign-up forms for mobile giving that explains how the information passed through those channels is secured.

To be more proactive, when a major password breach makes the news, send educational information to your donors reminding them of security best practices.

The main point: By taking steps to protect your mobile donors’ information and emphasizing those practices on your donation materials, you show mobile donors that you care about them.

2. Streamline the giving process.

One of the easiest ways to deter a potential donor is to make it difficult to submit an online donation. If it’s too much work, users will simply abandon the donation form.

Abandonment is a prevailing issue especially on mobile devices, which display distracting notifications and often don’t render donation forms the same way as a desktop.

To ensure that your mobile users don’t give up on their donations, try these strategies to make your donation process simpler:

• Length: The longer your form takes to fill out, the more chances a donor has to get distracted, bored, or irritated.

• Text-to-give: Opt for the most mobile-friendly form of donations, text-to-give, instead of a donation form that might or might not display properly on a small screen.

• Account creation: Don’t require your users to create an account to donate.

• Recurring donations: Allow donors to opt-in to recurring donations the first time they contribute to a campaign

• Payment: Some payment processors are better suited than other for mobile donations. Do your research with @Pay’s guide to PayPal alternatives for nonprofits.

Nonprofits typically don’t intend to make their donation process difficult. But without careful attention, more fields get added by different departments that want different types of data about your donors. Before long, if no one checks up on the form regularly, it can become cumbersome.

To that end, designate a member of your team to regularly pull up the donation form on a variety of devices to check how it looks. Schedule these checking on a recurring basis so you don’t forget.

If you think your donation form could use an overhaul, check out these donation form templates from Fundly. Sometimes, going back to the essentials is the best way to break bad habits.

The main point: Make your donation process as easy as possible to encourage donors to complete their donation and come back again later.

3. Get smart with social media.

Social media, as all donor relations professionals know by now, is a blessing as well as a curse.

The opportunity to engage with so many current and potential donors at once introduces a world of possibilities that’s never existed before. The downside? You’re not the only one who’s using social media to communicate with a broad constituent base. Users are swamped with messages every day, and it’s your job to make yours stand out.

The trick is to always keep your stewardship efforts at the forefront. If you treat your social media profiles like a continuous advertisement for your organization, no one is going to want to follow you. Instead, mix up the types of content you share and interactions you have:

• Replies, likes, shares, etc. If your supporters are willing to go out of their way to tag you in a post to say they donated, share a photo of themselves volunteering at your event, or recommend you publicly to others in their community, they deserve some attention from your social media team. Interact with these posts to show you’re listening.

• Events pages and photos. Whenever you host a fundraising event, group volunteer opportunity, or day of giving, create an event page and a hashtag. Your donors can RSVP to the page and share it with their own social circles, and you can post updates and photos before, during, and after the event to one centralized location.

• Educational content. You have a pretty good idea of what your supporters are interested in, from philanthropy in general to the community you serve or mission you advocate for. Share value-added news, images, and advice about any of these topics to give your donors a reason to follow and interact with your accounts.

The end goal of a solid social media strategy isn’t to gain followers, otherwise it would be easy to share outlandish content and gain a huge following. With that goal in mind, there’s no way of knowing whether your followers actually care enough about your nonprofit’s cause to support it in any meaningful way.

Instead, good nonprofit social media strategy aims to truly engage with your followers in ways that other communication platforms just simply can't support, keeping your messages as personalized as you can.

The main point: Use your social media profiles more like a conversation than an advertisement, keeping the focus on providing value and positive reinforcement to your donors.

4. Incorporate mobile strategies into your events.

A fundraising event might seem antithetical to mobile giving — in person instead of remote, requiring an incredible amount of effort and planning instead of a single text from the couch.

But the two worlds overlap more than they might seem to. In fact, incorporating mobile strategies into your events can increase attendance, engage your donors in new ways, and pay off for your future relationships and planning. 

Let’s break it down by the mobile strategies you can use before, during, and after your next fundraising event:

Before your event

Fundraising event planning is often harder than the execution. You have to get your supporters interested enough in participating that they leave their house.

To ensure that you drum up enough interest for a well-attended event, bring your message to where your donors are the most: their mobile devices.

You can spread the word about your event individually to your donors via text message or collectively through social media. Setting up an event page and a hashtag gives your donors a place to check for last-minute updates about parking or special guests, as well as fun promotional content like videos.

Most importantly, don’t forget to set up a mobile-optimized registration process. If you’re advertising your event on mobile platforms, your donors need to be able to register right when they see the news! 

Try a text-to-register keyword, a mobile-friendly registration form with few fields and big buttons, or just an RSVP to the event page on Facebook or other event-planning sites.

During your event

No matter what kind of fundraising event you’re hosting, incorporate mobile giving into your event. Include a QR code linking to your mobile donation form or text-to-give phone number on your tickets, on your event page, and on any brochures or flyers handed out at your event. Plus, encourage guests to use their mobile devices to post pictures and updates from the event on social media!

One of the most engaging elements of a fundraising event is a live appeal — which is even more engaging when donors can actually see their donations come in on the big screen in front of them.

By combining a live fundraising thermometer with mobile giving technology, you encourage your donors to contribute more at your event. They want to see the effect their donations have in real time.

But who says your donors have to actually attend to participate? With mobile giving opportunities and mobile bidding for auction events, donors who can’t make it to the event can still participate. You can embed your fundraising thermometer on your website to ensure that everyone can keep up with the event’s success.

After your event

Once you’ve vacuumed up the last of the confetti, all you want to do is lie low for a while. But the most important relationship-building elements of your event take place immediately afterward.

A post-event survey sent a day or two after your event is your secret weapon. On one level, by asking what worked and didn’t work this year, you can make your future events better. But even more important than that is showing your donors that you care about their feedback, which will bring them back next time. 

Remember the event page you created for your donors to RSVP to, and the hashtag you told them to follow for updates? Put those to use to share photos and final donation totals from the event, always including a big “thank you” in all your messages. 

The main point: Incorporating mobile-friendly strategies into your fundraising events is a great way to develop in-person relationships with your mobile donors and get them active in your nonprofit’s community.

John Killoran
CEO, @Pay

John Killoran is CEO of @Pay, an exciting new fundraising technology that makes it easy for people to donate in two clicks from text, email, web and social media sites. John pioneered SMTP payments and has been a major innovator in the mobile payments space for the past 5 years. When he is not running a company, he is cooking food for his family and telling his dogs to stop barking.