Author: era92 Creative

There’s no typical nonprofit marketing budget. And before you say, “my nonprofit doesn’t need one”, let me highlight a simple fact that nonprofits of every size and shape require some sort of marketing, communications, and fundraising support to advance their missions. 

We’ve already discussed some of the ways nonprofits can market well on a small budget. Creating superb email content that converts, telling compelling beneficiary stories to the little things like how you talk to a prospect donor  and welcome them. 

It’s a no brainer that a percentage should be allocated to marketing but the issue most nonprofits & social enterprises face is how much should be spent & whether it will be worth it. 

As we answer the big question, in this article, we’ll look at 3 aspects that help answer it:

1. Defining your marketing goals 
2. Setting a marketing budget 
3. How to spend your budget wisely 

Defining your marketing goals 

Anything worth doing is done consistently and deliberately. Before you approach era92 to do your digital marketing, have an internal meeting to nail down your why. Why do we want to communicate more? What do we hope to achieve out of it? Is it to get more donors, donations, more international partners?

Here are some examples of goals that might apply to your organization. To startup nonprofits, goals may read like this;

• Raise brand awareness 
• Establish trust & credibility 
• Generate support for key projects
• Attract donors and encourage their support
• Attract volunteers and community support

While to bigger organisations, their goals may read like;

• Retain donors and encourage monthly support
• Generate support for all-year round campaigns 
• Encourage repetitive donations 
• Run massive global campaigns all year round
• Grow revenues for their e-charity store 

It’s important to know what you want as this makes it easier for the agency you’re working with to design you the best service packages.  Instead of asking for one off services, first consult your agency on how best you can grow wholesomely. 

With each of the goals you have set, the agency will match it with the right marketing tools. Then when you can’t raise the budget, you atleast pick 2 goals out of the 5 and focus on those. It will be worth more than random one-off services. 

Setting a marketing budget 

If you’re looking to be an effective nonprofit, you’ll have a dedicated marketing budget rather than allocating it sporadically. 

A dedicated budget sets things straight. You won’t even have cases where you overspent or intruded on other projects’ budgets. 

The different types of marketing budgets

Allocating a percentage

Assigning a percentage of your total revenue/donations to marketing has proven most effective. Knowing that 10% of the $10,000 we receive in donations  is specifically for marketing helps you plan better and allows you to track and measure the impact of your marketing investment easily. 

Incremental budgeting

This method is most common with startups who have not yet started earning regular donations. So, it’s hard to determine how much you’ll be getting even in the next 3 months so this method could be for you. 

If the idea of allocating a 10% of operating budget is nerve-wracking, you can always start with a comfortable percentage then layer on the incremental method, where you regularly (often quarterly or bi-annually) track and assess performance, then increase or decrease accordingly.

How to spend your marketing budget wisely 

Ignoring marketing stifles nonprofit expansion, which actually reduces your ability to help more people.

Marketing is only worth it if you spend those dollars wisely. So how do you do it?

Look at value over the amount of services you’re getting. 

Yes, you could be getting 10 web redesigns, 15 social media posters but of what value are they? How valuable is the content you’re putting up on the website or in those social media posts? Can it engage users? Of course the more valuable something is, the higher it’s priced because it takes more effort and tools to put it together. 

You’d rather spend on a package that gives you less in quantity but more in value so, don’t be afraid to spend what it takes if it will give you the value you want.

Knowing how much to spend is first and foremost entirely up to the goals you set. They determine how much you can invest and when you find yourself stuck, you prioritize and hit one goal at a time. Still can’t gauge just how much your nonprofit should spend on a marketing agency? Connect with our digital projects lead to discuss your organization goals & get a personalized quote. 

How to get on Google’s first page organically is a tedious job that often feels like you have to pay to appear there which is not really the case. 

75% of users do not scroll past the first results page which is why you can’t afford to be on the 2nd or 3rd or 10th page.

This depends on so many factors like, the quality of content you produce on your website, how good you are at SEO and how much content there is. In this article, I share with you some easy tips on how to get to google’s first page with illustrations.

Conduct long tail keyword research

Web visitors are constantly changing the words they use to search for a company or product they want information on. In order to narrow the search, they use more words to find exactly what they are looking for. These are called long tail keywords.

For example, instead of typing in, “nonprofits that support children in Uganda” , they instead will most likely type, “small nonprofits that support children in Kololo, Uganda.” 

What to do:

1. Use tools like SEMRush to help you do keyword research, track keyword positions and monitor what words your competitors are using.

2. Optimize your SEO by adding exact locations and web pages to use more keywords in your headlines and sub headlines because these are the words that Google crawls when bringing search results. 

Produce top quality content 

Many modern websites these days run a blog too but oftentimes, organisations do not update the blog page regularly. When they do, the content is not well written and Google automatically disqualifies such pages. Once the words are not readable, it won’t crawl the page. 

What to do:

1. Hire a good writer to write compelling and grammatically correct stories for your blog page. 
2. Get to the backend of your wordpress blog and login. Go to posts > all posts and hover over the article title you want to edit, then click edit. Scroll to the very end and check the readability status of your blog. Restructure your sentences until they are unhighlighted.

Write meta descriptions for your pages and blogs

Make sure your pages and blogs have meta descriptions. A meta description is an HTML element that describes and summarizes the contents of your page for the benefit of users and search engines. 

It draws readers to a website from the SERP (Search Engine Results Page), and attracts them to click on your article or page. That’s why you must invest time in creating these tags because they are an important part of search marketing. 

A compelling meta description has the power to raise the click-through rate of your organic search results. That means more of the people who see your page in the search results will actually click through and land on your site. That means more traffic for you, even if your ranking stays the same.

What to do

1. Make sure your website was built with SEO. If not, contact your web design agency to purchase an SEO plugin for you. There are also free plugins although they provide limited options. 
2. On your blog posts, click article by article to edit and improve SEO. If you’re using word press, scroll to the very end of the article and choose a focus key phrase first. This key phrase is what a web user might type in. 
3. Don’t use too many words and try to repeatedly use the focus keyword that you have chosen. If it lights in green, it means it’s good to go. 

Add alt text to images when possible 

Alt text is the written copy that appears in place of an image on a webpage if the image fails to load on a user’s screen. This text helps screen-reading tools describe images to visually impaired readers and allows search engines to better crawl and rank your website.

What to do

1. Add an alt text

In most content management systems (CMSs), clicking on an image in the body of a blog post produces an image optimization, where you can create and change the image’s alt text.

In WordPress, when you upload a featured image for example, you’re given an option to add an alt text. Ultimately, image alt text needs to be specific but also representative of the topic of the webpage it is supporting. 

2. Use effective image alt text with SEO 

• Describe the image, and be specific. Use both the image’s subject and context to guide you.
• Keep your alt text fewer than 125 characters. 
• Don’t start alt text with “picture of…” or “Image of…” Jump right into the image’s description. Google will identify it as an image from the article’s HTML source code.
• Use your keywords where possible, but sparingly. Only include your article’s target keyword if it’s easily included in your alt text. For example, if your article’s focus keyword is “Unique Christmas campaign,” and you have a photo of a Save the Children Christmas poster, you might use “Save the Children Christmas campaign poster” in your alt text too. 
• Don’t cram your keyword into every single image’s alt text. Identify the image you think is most representative of your topic, and assign it your keyword. Stick to more authentic descriptions for the photo. 

Go ahead and apply those tips and watch to see how your organic traffic changes among the pages or blog posts that you optimize. It might be frustrating at first but the more you practice, the better your SEO gets, click-through-rate and rankings.

For most nonprofits, Valentine’s Day is a small fundraising opportunity, but if you plan it right, you could raise some funds and grow deeper connections with your audience.

Here are a few simple and impactful ideas you can use to design your Valentine’s campaign. These ideas are more powerful if they are done with the mindset of peer-to-peer fundraising and consistently done every year to claim the day.  The same way Salvation Army is associated with Christmas or UNICEF with Halloween. 

1. Partner with a local florist

Make sure the florist is the best in the city. Nobody wants to buy wilted flowers for their lover on Valentine’s day. Partner with them on a special bouquet or gift basket and negotiate a portion of the sales to go to your cause. 

2. For the love of fresh air 

This is for companies or nonprofits whose core goal is to promote environmental rights. On Valentine’s day, you could plant trees or flowers to express your love to the rest of the world, to show you care that the environment they live in is clean & crispy. 

3. Email campaign 

This is the commonest and most effective method of campaigning but is not a stand-alone as it has to be incorporated with other channels for maximum impact.     If you don’t have the budget for a story-teller campaign video, you can use a series of designed posters that highlight your cause. 

Remember to plan your message arc

One-and-done messaging isn’t a campaign. A proper email marketing campaign   will have a minimum of 4 emails:

1.  A launch message
2. AT LEAST one inspirational second appeal
3. A last-chance email
4. A thank you/ update messages

4. Custom Valentine’s Day Greetings

Have a local celebrity or staff member record personal messages of love for people that donate to the cause you’re trying to fundraise for. It creates a ripple effect because the donor will share it on their social media platforms and inspire others to give so they too can get such a message. 

5. Love spell bake sale

For nonprofits who skill girls/women in baking confectionery goods can put up a sale at a local bakery store or partner with a supermarket with a percentage of the profits benefiting your nonprofit. Go ahead and offer pre-orders for larger orders to bring in more funds! 

6. Host a wine tasting evening

Wine is one product that moves fastest during Valentine’s day. Partner with a restaurant to host a wine tasting evening on that day or the weekend leading to it and have a percentage go towards your cause. 

7. Small Acts, Big Changes 

You can go fun on this one and suggest it to single people. You could design a poster that says;

“Have no Valentine’s date? 

Baby Grace is asking if you’re still available this 14th.” 

As an act of kindness, ask them to volunteer to babysit on Valentine’s day. I bet they’d love it.

Find a way to incorporate what your nonprofit does and create a fun and engaging campaign that people will actually want to participate in. Protip: Valentine’s day is actually on a Monday, so you’ll probably want to do this on the weekend. 

Remember, fundraising isn’t the only option for engaging supporters. 

8. Premium e-Cards

Create branded thankyou ecards to send out to your donors. They too want to feel loved and appreciated on a day like this. The fastest and easiest way to do this would be through your newsletter. 

9. Recite a poem 

You know the “roses are red, diamonds are blue” poem? Most common poem used on Valentine’s? I know many charities and social enterprises that educate children. An idea would be to write them a love-themed poem they can recite and the video sent to your donors. Poems are another item besides flowers and chocolate that are warmly received on Valentine’s day.

10. Storytelling films

Many have played around with the themes, “Will you be mine?” “Say it with 5 dollars” to nudge donors and supporters to contribute to the cause. Others have gone the extra mile to redefine what love really is by showing, not telling.

Check out this powerful Valentine’s 2018 campaign by Join One Love.

So, those are my simple ideas. I hope they inspire you to do even better and have your audience grow closer to you this February. Get to planning right away and if you need an upper hand in producing the best campaign, reach out to us today.

Email storytelling matters a lot if you want to inspire donors to give. Is your storytelling emotive? Does it move people to give or share with colleagues and friends?

It’s stories that shape organisations. It’s stories that motivate people to give but it’s really the art of good story-telling that keep your donors coming back. That’s why it is important to master it and incorporate it every chance you get to communicate to your audience. 

In order to increase your online donations, you want to tell a compelling story that can keep your readers engaged. So what are these best practices? Let’s check them out: 

Let’s use a hypothetical case study: Abandoned 10 year old discovered on the streets selling compelling hand-drawn art pieces of people and abstract things. 

1. Make it memorable 

• Use a captivating subject line. 

Your subject line is the first thing readers will see when your email hits their inbox. Keep it relatively short, urgent, and hard to ignore. Take an example of our case study. Here’s an example of a good and bad subject line. 

Bad: Kasozi Henry is abandoned but talented. He needs your help!

That subject line feels like a reach in trying to make an urgent call for help. It also gives away all the details about Henry without a background story. 

Good: Meet Henry: the street’s favorite orphan.

It’s short, catchy, and gives just enough detail to make someone want to learn more. One could ask themselves, “the street’s favorite orphan”? What does that even mean and feel compelled to open the email. 

• Tell a compelling story

Human beings naturally respond to stories, so it’s important to tell a good one. Explain how you met Henry for example, why his parents abandoned him, how he started drawing, where he gets drawing material from and why he’s still sleeping on the streets. 

This is how I would tell Henry’s story.

Henry has had to succumb to harsh means of survival since his aunt threw him out when he was 12. People in the village say Henry’s mother could have been suffering from a mental health disease. She was a farmer. From time to time, she would dress up like she was headed for the disco and go do the gardening. Other times, she would get angry and storm off, leaving little Henry alone in the house. 

One Friday evening, she told the neighbors to look out for Henry so she can go sell her produce. That was the last they saw her. She never came back. The neighbors called Henry’s aunt who took him in. Irritated by the new addition to the family, she’d give him one meal a day while the rest of her children enjoyed 3 good meals. She made him do all the house chores and sleep on the floor without beddings all the 2 years he stayed with him until she eventually threw him out. 

Now Henry moves out. With no plan in mind, he moves from place to place, sleeping on the streets, stealing whatever he could find so he could eat a cheap meal. He discovered his love for art through a friendly shopkeeper with whom he used to hang around. He would steal pencils from his stock and draw on his walls. Frustrated, the shopkeeper gave him paper one day and that made his first drawing- a beautiful wildflower in a flower pot. 

He takes to the streets and tries to sell but nobody buys. Nobody can buy from a dirty looking kid no matter how cheap. Sandra, our community coordinator has a big heart for children. She was compelled to stop and ask his story one time as she moved through the streets of Kampala…

***

This story is relatable on some level and doesn’t feel far-fetched. 

• Show the impact of donor contributions, as well. If they were to give $30, what exactly would it help Henry with? 
• Appeal to their emotions without guilt-tripping them. Guilt-tripping is a tired and honestly ugly tactic to use to get donors to give. It is saying “if you don’t give Henry money to get off the streets, he will be beaten to death before he turns 16.” 

By making your email content memorable, you’ll ensure that your readers actually act because they find value in the copy. 

2. Let People Tell Their Own Stories

An even better alternative is to let the beneficiary tell their own story. People tend to believe stories more when it’s coming straight out of the horse’s mouth. 

Take a look at this impact storytelling video by 92hands. 

One of our partners, Fields of Life also used this approach of storytelling to call for support in building the Vocational Institute in Northern Uganda. The video shows locals telling their stories of the war that displaced them and discontinued them from going to school. 

3. Use Visuals 

Visuals go a long way and are a great method of breaking up text in an email. The following are examples of visual elements you can use in your emails:

• Use striking photos. For our case study, we can use a positive photo of Henry and some of his artworks. 
• Colors. When designing your newsletter, use brand colours and make a clean-looking design, and be sure to choose 2 colors at most so that people aren’t distracted from reading the content.
• Fonts. Use an easy-on the-eyes font that is supported on all devices and simpler in appearance. 

Remember that your emails are a direct representation of your website and your website is an employee. Make it count!

4. Stay away from statistics 

Sometimes, we feel we must let our audience know what impact we are making as a way of convincing them to give them to donate more but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Statistics are good to show on the website or after a campaign to show the number of donations and the number of people impacted. More like an impact report.

When you’re writing a story-telling email, figures are a distraction from the beneficiaries you’re trying to help. Focus on who needs help at the moment, not who already benefited. 

5. Close with a strong CTA

One of the biggest parts of telling your email story is how you close it. You should include a powerful call-to-action that inspires your donors to click through and arrive at your donation page.

Henry is a one of one. His talents are so rare and need to be nurtured so that one day, he can use his art to tell other children’s stories and help make a change. 

• $30 supports Henry with healthy meals and clothes for 3 months.
• $50 can educate Henry for a 3 month school term. 

Be sure to make your ask in the most direct way possible and you’ll be on your way to securing funds for your cause! 

Crafting the perfect fundraising email can be hectic but be sure to make your content memorable and relatable, use visuals and strong CTAs, and reach the right audience. If you do all of these things consistently, you’ll set your fundraising strategy up for success. 

Try out these strategies for yourself and tell your story!

Online donations are the in-thing but let’s be honest. It’s rare for nonprofits to receive major donations through an online giving form on the website. They are usually smaller amounts. Generally, larger donations are hand-delivered or wired to an account directly after many conversations and one-on-one meetings. 

But in this digital era, it is possible to wire large online donations to your account. If you invested in all these digital marketing platforms like your website, social media, newsletters name it, it’s important to make sure you’re getting the most out of the invested time and money.

In this article, I’ll share some of the most effective tips on how to:

• Move your online visitors through the funnel. 
• Get a donor to give more than once. 
• Turn them into a recurring donor. 

Maximizing your digital platforms

If a prospective donor heard about your cause from a friend, chances are that the first thing they’ll do is visit your website or visit your social media pages. This stage in the psychological buying process is called information search. Let’s talk about the website first. 

Professional website designers are aware of factoring in the art of taking a web visitor through a captivating journey from the home page to the donation button. So, how do they do it?  

For people to give, they must care about your cause. It’s therefore your role to establish that trust right from the home page. Take a look at this website by the International Justice Mission. I’m immediately drawn in because unlike many other organisations, they start off with a powerful impact story. 

There’s not so many steps one takes to understand what the organisation does. It doesn’t take much convincing. And that’s how it should be. 

If you run through the rest of their website, you’ll see that on every page, they maximize it by communicating clearly and precisely and asking people to either Give or Join the Fight. 

The other option is if you don’t start off with an impact story and go with a tagline and caption first, then the next section should address the problem and the solution you’re providing. When they click to read more, they should find your solutions convincing enough to compel them to stick around and explore the website. 

Make your donation appeal urgent

There are so many distractions when someone goes online. Therefore, you do not have time for lukewarm calls to action. Your online donation experience should underscore a sense of urgency. Explain why it’s important for your donors to give *now*

Introduce a sense of urgency to spur your donors into action, and then allow them to quickly complete the task with an online donation. Some good examples of these are the COVID19 Urgent Appeals. 

Leveraging Social Media 

After the website visit, they might want to check you out on social media  just to further convince them that you’re actively pursuing your mission. 

It is your role to make sure they find something of value. They are expecting to see campaigns or impact stories or your beneficiaries. This is why you must ensure that your social media pages are well managed and consistently updated regularly with striking images and good story-telling videos to keep another way to get them hooked and care about your cause even more. 

Alternatively, if you’d like to attract people who haven’t heard of your organisation yet, you can apply the following marketing techniques.

• PPC: Pay-per-click or Facebook Conversion ads is a paid marketing strategy that uses targeted ads on social media platforms to bring people to your website. As the name suggests, you pay each time someone gets to your website via these ads.
• Viral Marketing for exciting and compelling campaigns. Letting people actively participate in your campaign helps it reach a much bigger audience and attracts new supporters and advocates. 

Now that the information search phase is done, assuming the information about your nonprofit was convincing enough and they have evaluated that you’re the best choice, they now move into action to donate. 

What to consider at this stage:

• Make sure your donation page and form are easy to fill out, especially on mobile devices since 80% of users rely on their phones a lot. You want it to be easy for them to donate even on the move instead of having to fix time when they’re eventually settled. 

• Ensure that the payment processor you chose is convenient and easy to use. Alternatively, you can provide more than one option to allow a variety of donors to give to your cause.  
• Make them feel secure that you have indeed received the donation by sending them a warm welcome email, thanking them for supporting your cause. 
• It should not end there. Match the name to the face and engage them in a face to face conversation. Today, due to COVID19, there is increased active use of digital meeting apps like ZOOM and Google Meet. Arrange a quick 15 meet and greet. Trust me, it’s so much better than weekly emails. 

Getting the donor to give more than once

If you’ve engaged with them as explained above, you’re probably getting a second donation (the golden donation) which increases the chances of a donor giving more in the future. Donor retention is key to effective fundraising because it’s easier to increase their donation amount over time as you build deeper relationships with them. 

Here are some of the topics you can cover with the first time donor. 

• Tell them about your organisation
• Ask them if they have a program in particular they are interested in
• Tell them on different ways they can get engaged right away and impact they’ll be creating

The Newsletter

Add them to your newsletter subscriber audience and keep them updated in the activities they are interested in. Make sure each email you send has the purpose of them visiting the website and contribute to your nonprofit. 

Don’t forget to:

• Say your Thank Yous. 
• Send them update reports on how the money was used. Here, you can use impact videos as opposed to the traditional reports. 

Each donor is different and has varying interests in how they want to support. That’s why segmenting them into groups is important because it allows for  personalized messaging and go-to email templates. 

Turning them into recurring donors

Just like anything else in life, good things take time. Relationships with donors too take time to grow into intimate and easy-going ones. 

It’s advisable to first study their donation patterns before bombarding them with a recurring donation program. If you notice they keep coming back, then you can interest them in joining your monthly givers community. 

Take-away points:

• Good things take time
• Repeatedly post consistent and clear messages across all your platforms 
• Do not be discouraged when the online donations take long to pick up. With these tips, they’ll inevitably increase in due time. 

Designing Christmas campaigns that people care about can get tricky. 2020 has definitely come with more lows than highs. A number of nonprofit donors cut back on budgets due to COVID19, stalling big community projects but Christmas time never fails to bring warm, happy and cheerful memories. 

With the marketing world suddenly turning red, green, gold and blue and your email inbox filled with Christmas campaigns, maybe you are wondering where to start and if yours too will stand out from the crowd. 

Here are some tips you can use to build a solid campaign that can effortlessly get people involved and go viral on social media.

1. Draw up your Christmas campaign strategy

What’s the plan of action? Drawing up a strategy helps guide you on what you exactly want to achieve (your objectives). Remember that every objective must be SMART stands for: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. 

An example of a SMART objective is: To raise $ 20,000 for children’s Christmas gifts within 30 days of launch.

2. Crafting Impactful Content

Now that you know what your goal is, develop key messages that can work for your donors. Think about one of your causes and develop a Christmas message around it, something like what Save the Children does every year to help give kids in need food, be healthy and enjoy their Christmas too. 

Save the Children’s Jumper Day in the UK has consistently been successful because it is fun and affordable. It calls on people to sign up on the Save the Children Jumper Day website, make a donation of 2 pounds, and promise to wear a silly looking sweater on a specific day in December.   

At the same time, the holiday season is the season of gift-giving and showing appreciation. You can jump on this holiday train by saying thanks to all your loyal customers through exclusive gifts or deals so that it does not feel like it’s a take-take situation all the time. It should instead be a give & take situation. 

This obviously applies to you if you run a gift catalogue and even if you don’t, you can run a matching donation campaign.

3. Story-telling

This is the commonest strategy organisations use to create emotive christmas campaign videos. Christmas is about giving out of love. You need an idea good enough to motivate a large number of people to believe in your campaign and give to it. 

Check out this Christmas campaign by The Childhood Trust. Their campaign challenges the audience to remember children living in poverty during Christmas time. The theme was “For many of them, Santa doesn’t exist” 

After watching this, wouldn’t you want to give any amount you have to the cause?

4. Choosing channels

Decide which channels you’re going to use as well as the frequency of your posts. For example, is your campaign one day or a week, month or even longer? The timeframe really all depends on the spending behaviour of your donors. 

Know which platforms work best to push your kind of campaign and maximize them to create as much awareness as possible. I’d advise to always build a cohesive social media plan that pushes your campaign on more than just two platforms.

Email is a must because you can personalize messages to different donor segments but at the same time, the campaign has to be pushed on other social media platforms for purposes of transparency.

5. Sense of urgency

The holidays are a finite time. December is the busiest time for many families as parents are rushing to jump on the crazy discounts on grocery and gifts shopping. There’s a lot of spending being done and this is when you get tactical. 

For example, you too could do a sales promotion on your gift catalogue and encourage people to buy within one week. Discounts are hard to resist and people will be more inclined to act quickly if they know it will be gone soon. 

6. The #Hashtag

If you expect to run a digital campaign which I assume you must do, create an easy and memorable hashtag that people can easily remember and follow updates. You need as many eyes and ears because the more attention you get, the more donations you can get. 

Here’s an example of a brilliant campaign with a simple yet captivating hashtag that got millions of people’s attention in London. 

#NotWhoTheyAre by West London Mission is a Christmas campaign the organisation ran last year in November to raise awareness of homelessness and to raise funds to help support people who are living on the streets with the key message – Homeless is what they are, not who they are. 

And we are LIVE! 🔊
Look out for our #NotWhoTheyAre campaign posters at Marylebone underground station and let us know what you think.
Please go to https://t.co/vDcxXvmbRb to donate and help us support more homeless people this year.#GivingTuesday #homelessness #charity #donate pic.twitter.com/Wpqa5bT0Kc

— Strides (@Strides_HA) December 3, 2019

7. Measure your success

If you want to know if your campaign has been successful, you’ll need to measure it. Some of the metrics you can measure are: reach, engagement and donations. As you drive your campaign, metrics act as a guide to evaluate whether your strategies are being successful or need to be revised.

Otherwise, if you wait to measure them after the campaign is done, you’d have cheated yourself. Monitoring and Evaluation should be done at the start, throughout and at the end of the campaign. 

Here are some of my personal favorite campaigns that inspired me to act! 

• Santa Fe Animal Shelter ran this campaign in 2016 themed “Light the way home” They use storytelling to show the importance of saving dog’s lives and the joy they bring to families.

• #FlowHoHo by Bloody Good Period 

Bloody Good Period asked people to send a #FlowHoHo parcel to girls and women who need them. Last year they raised over £17k, which sorted 2,000 periods. 

Thanks for reading till the end. We hope these tips have inspired you to create a Christmas campaign yourself! 

We love helping brands stand out in the digital space. Get in touch for brilliant marketing campaign ideas and get people into the giving mood early!

Online charity stores are the new way for nonprofits to maintain sustainability and keep afloat. This is the age where technology drives everything. COVID19 has proven that even further and with donations shrinking due to the global economic setbacks, many nonprofits have turned to run online charity stores as a long term sustainability strategy without having to depend on outside sources to keep afloat.

If you’re looking to maximize revenue for your nonprofit, e-commerce can do wonders for your popularity and reach. Some advantages of selling products and services online include; 

1. Convenience: people do not have to be physically present to support your cause and buy products at a trade fair or exhibition like it usually is. It saves both you and your supporters time and resources. 
2. It helps you strengthen relationships and build a sense of community around your cause. 
3. Affordable: Fundraising events are an intimate way to connect with your supporters but they can be costly. E-Commerce is a cheaper, less time-consuming alternative for nonprofits. 

Many charities have taken advantage of seasonal selling trends by selling charity Easter/ Christmas cards, Fair Trade products among others.

So, before we proceed into how to go from beginner to pro, what should you look for in an eCommerce platform?

Choosing a tool for your e-commerce platform depends on what organizational outcomes you are hoping to achieve. 

For instance, if you’re a small organisation who just wants a web store to sell branded merchandise or your beneficiaries’ products, then you can opt for a platform that focuses on ease of use for web design, has more all-round features and comes with great support. On the other hand, if you have a giant catalog and want to deliver highly personalized communications that tie into your platform of choice, you might need something more complex.

Below are some of the best platforms used by nonprofits around the world to integrate with their websites. 

1. Shopify Lite 

Shopify Lite spares you from a mess of features and integrates with either an existing website or social media platform. 

It lets you sell through the Facebook Messenger and embeds Buy Buttons on an existing website. Furthermore, it comes with a card reader for accepting credit card payments. 

2. Snipcart 

Snipcart comes with plenty of features for a member-driven organization, including recurring subscriptions, inventory management, invoicing, digital goods, tax management, and many more features. 

It is not just limited to WordPress. Snipcart can be implemented on Drupal, Umbraco, Joomla, and any other platform to make your site fully transactional.

All this should not worry you if you outsource an expert team of web designers and developers. They’ll advise you best on what to go with. Besides those two, there are more complete e-commerce platforms you can explore.  

Now that we have some knowledge of how e-commerce sites work, let’s share with you some expert tips to help take your nonprofit e-commerce store to the next level. 

Story-telling 

In many of our previous articles, you’ll realize we’ve recommended story-telling many times for standing out on social media, marketing to donors, creating compelling story-telling videos, etc. 

In any business venture, you must add value in order to succeed. Yes, you’re selling art pieces that the children you’re helping made but why should people buy? 

Motivate them to buy through a couple of compelling success stories. Take us through a child’s journey- where you found them, how they overcame their challenges, the skills they have acquired since you took them in and the kind of products they make. Video is most ideal for this one because it evokes the right emotions that encourage people to want to support your cause with ease. In fact, have a web page specifically for these kinds of stories with calls to action that lead web visitors to the e-commerce site. 

Stay on Brand 

Heifer International is a great example of an organisation whose e-commerce catalog is still very much aligned with its overall vision and goals which is to train farmers and grow their incomes. Their catalog ranges from sustainable baskets to selling livestock, trees, biogas stoves for people living in poverty. 

Choose profitable products to promote your cause

Finding profitable products to sell within the nonprofit sphere can be tricky, as many organizations sell homogeneous products– crochet mats, t-shirts, dresses, etc. These products typically have very low profit margins. 

Consider products that people need in their everyday lives, that’s of importance for example furniture pieces, farm products, kitchen utensils, house decorations and alike. To add value to your products, consider investing in a good designer for unique customisations or featured messages. It will increase your opportunity to turn web visitors into real-time buyers. 

Take a look at these products by World WildLife. As an environment enthusiast brand, they strive to make reusable products that are eco-friendly but at the same time, useful to people in their everyday lives.

Offer charity bundles and discounts

Ever heard of bundling? It’s basically grouping your ecommerce items together under one package with a special discount so as to boost sales. 

If, for example, you run a charity that trains young mothers in small-scale farming and you want to help them sell their potted plants, you can offer something like a buy-one-get-one-free deal. It can bring in more sales as people feel they’re helping make a much bigger impact. 

Optimize touchpoints 

It’s not enough to build your website e-commerce platform and sit back. Take advantage of other platforms like Facebook and Instagram to set up shops there too. 

For example, set up a Facebook ecommerce site using Facebook’s Marketplace Platform. 

When setting up shop on Facebook and Instagram, make sure you link everything to your main site so that you avoid creating confusion. With internet traffic coming from many different sources, you can raise revenue enough to help your charity keep afloat all year.  

Use Google Analytics to measure impact

Use tools such as Google Analytics to analyze visitor behavior and see if you’re drawing the right engagement for your cause. Aside from tracking sales from your e-commerce store, you will also want to ensure that this extra traffic is drawing in the right kind of engagement with your cause. 

Nonprofits are embracing more tools in the digital world. Especially now that people are socially distanced and large public events are banned for now due to COVID19, make use of social media to advertise your e-commerce web page to help raise funds for your organisation. If you haven’t actively thought about it yet, now is the time! 

Find inspiration to explore some of the websites we’ve built and discover step by step, how we build results-driven websites. Contact Us today to start your web design project. 

Many nonprofits are challenged during this pandemic on how to grow their reach and impact, where to find their donors, what grants to apply for to say the least, which is why we’ve compiled this list of resources to share with anyone struggling to find information. 

What the list entails

• Funding sources
• Learning resources
• Inspiring campaign ideas 

1. Funding Sources

Connect Funders & Investors, get help with free stuff, talent search & exposure and grow your startup in a global community with F6S.  It’s a good place to start. You’ll find so many resources and connect with  people in your field. 

Funding Opportunities  is  another common platform that provides access to small grants, fellowships, proposal applications, partnerships, scholarships and awards for nonprofits all over the world. Scroll through their website- I bet you’ll find it very useful. 

For potential grants, here are some global funding opportunities NGOs around the world can apply for.

2. Learning Resources

Gear up for a fundraising season the right way with these 50 free nonprofit webinars for September 2020. Keep in the know of what’s changed in light of the pandemic and learn from experts on topics like campaign fundraising, year-end appeals, direct mail, volunteer management, marketing, leadership and much more.

I know many organisations have reached out to communities in which they exist and serve to provide food and supplies to the vulnerable but there are better and more sustainable ways you could serve. Read up on some of the best practices on food banks fundraising during COVID19. 

3. Inspiring Campaign Ideas

Soap Box Engage created a list of20 creative ways to virtually fundraise for campaigns now that around the world, public gatherings are still banned due to COVID19. For example, take a look at this brilliant virtual campaign by Cancer Research UK called ‘A Very 2020 Race for Life’. 

Participants can take part by themselves or in small socially distanced groups in their local parks and neighbourhoods, but with the collective feeling that thousands of other people are taking part around the UK. 

Discover more innovative and successful campaigns for COVID19 Fundraising Challenges. 

Final tip: As you might already know, LinkedIn is a good social platform to discover and connect with real people who can help put you up on volunteer platforms, partnerships and even attract first time donors. 

Make sure your organisation has an account that keeps your audience updated on the activities and impact stories. 

If you wish to connect with a donor prospect or partner who doesn’t know you, make sure to introduce yourself in a professional manner and mention why you’d love to connect with them. 

We love building the brands we partner with besides the projects we collaborate on. We hope you find the list useful. Let us know in the comments below how it all pans out!