Charity Guide to targeting donors


Digital offers a more acceptable alternative to some of the charity sector’s most divisive fundraising strategies. In this digital age, connections are being made by social media and outreach campaigns. The journey of transitioning supporters into donors begins with your marketing and communications strategy. We offer some practical tips on how to target donors by taking a closer look at existing audiences.

Understand who supports your cause

A data-driven digital strategy makes the best use out of available information to achieve charity goals. The strategy can uncover who in your supporter base is likely to become a donor. The approach entails collecting data around audiences.

Examples of data include demographics, preferences, geography, income, volunteering, and other details. Constituent management relationship (CRM) systems help charities collect and make sense of the information.

The point of gathering supporter data is to be able to group audiences together. The process of grouping people together is called audience segmentation. Audience segmentation builds a picture of potential donors and what their preferences are. That kind of information is valuable when targeting donors.

Targeting different donor types

Donors come in all shapes and sizes. Getting the basics right is important. Differentiating between individual and institutional or foundation donors is a start.

Organisations and individual donors are addressed in different ways. Individual donors can be targeted through social media channels.

Charities also accept funds from institutions and foundations. In the form of grants, these funds are more restrictive in how charities spend the money.

Read full article and more information on the subject here.