Part 3: Turning a Successful Day into Long-Term Fundraising Gains
After every big fundraising day, the question arises: “What do we do now that the dust has settled?” Giving Tuesday is no different: it’s a day of tremendous excitement and momentum, but having a strategy for the days and months that follow is just as crucial. The most successful nonprofits keep their Giving Tuesday fundraising momentum going into the new year and beyond.
In this final installment of our 3-part blog series (part 1 | part 2), we present four key strategies to help sustain and build on the momentum of Giving Tuesday from December through the following year:
- Use Wealth Screening to Understand Share-of-Wallet for Donors
- Appropriately Assign High Priority Constituents
- Supercharge your Prospect Research Efforts
- Engage in Year-Round Stewardship and Cultivation
1. Use Wealth Screening to Understand Share-of-Wallet for Donors
At Windfall, we focus on a concept called Share of Wallet (SOW)—a metric that measures how much a customer’s total spending goes to a specific company or brand. In fundraising, SOW is often viewed as gift capacity, or “How much can a donor realistically give to my nonprofit?”
Understanding your donors’ net worth is critical for determining the Share of Wallet that your organization can realistically expect and strive to capture. Windfall’s Wealth Screening insights, which include precise net worth estimates and additional triggers like philanthropic giving and asset ownership, can help you maximize and grow your donors’ SOW through tailored engagement and stewardship.
2. Appropriately Assign High Priority Constituents
Effective fundraising hinges on focusing your time and resources on the right donors. After Giving Tuesday, reassess your fundraisers’ portfolios and ensure high-value donors are appropriately assigned for follow-up and cultivation. Here’s how Windfall can power your prospect assignment strategy:
- Wealth Screen Your Giving Tuesday Donors: By screening these newly acquired donors through Windfall, you can quickly identify high-net-worth individuals and assign them to portfolios for cultivation.
- Use Propensity to Give modeling to evaluate prospect assignments: Wealth is only one factor in determining a donor’s likelihood to give. Leverage propensity modeling to evaluate which donors are most likely to make a major gift to your organization and prioritize them in portfolios.
- Build portfolio reporting within your CRM: Use Windfall’s Wealth Screening insights to review your portfolios by key metrics, such as total net worth and the number of prospects above $20MM. This can help you and your team better manage and track high-priority constituents and can fuel portfolio rebalancing efforts.
3. Supercharge your Prospect Research Efforts
Giving Tuesday recruits new donors and reactivates lapsed donors, which may warrant further research. Windfall’s Wealth Screening solution provides deep insights that can help you better understand these constituents and prioritize those who require additional attention. Here are some top ways to leverage Windfall’s data for deeper prospect research:
- Look for trust and foundation associations: Use Windfall’s Trust Association and Foundation Association Triggers to identify donors who may be connected to philanthropic trusts or foundations, indicating a higher level of philanthropic capacity.
- Identify donors with high-value assets: Windfall flags boat, plane, multiple-property, and luxury car ownership, which can be strong indicators that a donor merits further research.
- Update outdated contact information: Windfall’s Primary Address Incorrect trigger identifies when better contact details are available, ensuring your direct mail outreach is targeted and up-to-date.
4. Engage in Year-Round Stewardship and Cultivation
Stewardship is a critical component of the donor lifecycle. After a successful Giving Tuesday, thoughtful, well-timed stewardship can strengthen relationships and lead to long-term giving. Windfall can help streamline your stewardship efforts to maximize impact. Here are a few strategies for ongoing donor engagement:
- Tier your stewardship outreach based on net worth and giving: Use a combination of Windfall’s net worth estimates and donor giving to create a tiered stewardship plan like in the example below. This plan ensures that high-potential donors are recognized during their stewardship process, even if their initial Giving Tuesday gifts are pretty modest:
- Tier 1: Net Worth of $20MM+ or a Giving Tuesday gift of $1K+: Donors receive a personal phone call from the president / CDO and a handwritten thank-you card from volunteers.
- Tier 2: Net Worth of $10MM - <$20MM or a Giving Tuesday gift of $500+: Donors receive a personal phone call from a major gift officer and a handwritten thank-you card from volunteers.
- Tier 3: All Giving Tuesday donors: Donors receive a handwritten thank-you card from volunteers (bandwidth permitting) and a mass thank-you email.
- Create new engagement opportunities: While the holidays might limit your end-of-year event opportunities, use Windfall’s insights and your Giving Tuesday results to identify new donors to invite to personalized events or programs in the new year.
- Leverage recency triggers for year-round cultivation: Windfall’s recency triggers—such as Recent Mover, Recent Divorce, Recent Death, and Recent Mortgage—allow you to stay in touch with donors at key moments in their lives, deepening relationships through timely outreach.
Conclusion
Whether Giving Tuesday is your largest fundraising push of the year or just a day when you send a few emails and hope for the best, applying a data-driven lens to your strategy can lead to long-term gains. We hope this series has provided valuable insights for making the most of your Giving Tuesday efforts.
If you missed the first two posts of this series, check them out here: Part 1 and Part 2.
Ready to learn how Windfall can help target the right donors and maximize your fundraising strategies? Reach out to us today—we’d love to hear from you.
