The good news is they might not be gone for good. While lapsed donors happen for a whole spectrum of reasons, many of them could come back with the right re-engagement strategy. Plus, re-engaging them usually costs way less than finding brand new donors. In short, recovery beats replacement every time.

In this article, we’ll dive into why donors lapse, how to spot and prioritize who to reach out to first, what to say when you do, and how to create a multi-channel approach that won’t overwhelm your busy team.

Why Donors Lapse

It’s important to recognize that donors stop giving for all kinds of reasons; some are within your control, and some aren’t. Maybe their financial situation changed, they moved, or their priorities shifted. That’s life. But there are also reasons you can influence, like inconsistent communication, lack of acknowledgment, or a less-than-great experience with your organization.

While you can’t control everything, focusing on the things you can improve, like how you thank, follow up, and stay connected, can go a long way in keeping donors engaged and coming back.

Many nonprofits keep fewer than half their donors year to year. First timers? That number is even lower. Even though it’s inevitable that many donors will lapse, small improvements in retention or reactivation can add up to meaningful revenue.

Finding a brand new donor is up to 5x more expensive than keeping the ones you already have. So hanging on to people you’ve already built trust with really matters. When more donors stick around, they give more over their lifetime, which means steadier revenue and less scrambling to replace everyone who disappears.

That is why tracking donor behavior is step one. A CRM for nonprofits makes it simple by pulling gift history, email engagement, event attendance, and more into one place so you can spot when someone is slipping and jump in early–for their sake and yours!

Identifying Lapsed Donors

First things first: you can’t re-engage lapsed donors if you don’t know who they are. Start by deciding what “lapsed” means for your organization. A common benchmark is anyone who hasn’t given in the last 12 months. The key is to define it clearly and stick with it so everyone on your team uses the same language.

Once you’ve set your definition, it’s time to crunch some numbers. Look at the donors who gave last year and see how many haven’t given again this year. Divide that number by your original donor count to get your attrition rate. Flip it around and you’ve got your retention rate.

For example, say you have 1,000 donors that gave last fiscal year.
430 have already given again. 570 have not.
So retention is 43%, while attrition is 57%.

Now, here’s where your CRM can do the heavy lifting. For example, CauseVox’s CRM makes it simple to spot lapsed donors with saved filters and automatic tags. You can run a LYBUNT (Last Year But Unfortunately Not This) report to get a clear picture of who needs to be re-engaged. Save that list as a segment so you can easily send them an email, create a task, or just become aware of who is slipping through the cracks.

Qualifying Lapsed Donors (So You Spend Time Where It Matters)

As we’ve established, the average donor retention rate is less than 50%. You can’t (and shouldn’t!) give every lapsed donor the same amount of energy. Smart prioritization is the way to go here.

The best place to start is by using your CRM data to segment lapsed donors by things like gift size, last gift date, and campaign type. Once you’ve grouped them, you can decide which groups to prioritize first, who’s worth a personal touch, and who can go into an automated journey.

Some helpful segments for lapsed donors in your CRM include:

• Recency: How long has it been since their last gift? Start with the people who gave 14 months ago before chasing someone from five years back.
  
• Frequency: Did they give once or several times in a row? Habitual givers are easier to bring back than one-and-done donors.
  
• Amount: Were they low, mid, or major level? Even among smaller donors, you might spotlight anyone who gave more than your average first donation.
  
• Engagement Type: Were they a recurring donor, event attendee, peer-to-peer fundraiser, or volunteer? Match these to your campaigns. For example, if you’re planning a back-to-school drive, pull in people who supported education before.

Before you launch anything, clean up your data. Nothing hurts trust faster than emailing an address that’s been marked “do not contact” or pinging a deceased supporter. Use your CRM filters to weed out bounced emails and unsubscribed contacts.

Want to go one step further? Build a quick re-engagement score. No need for anything fancy, just a simple point system in your CRM or a spreadsheet. Give points for things like:

• Engagement history: Opened one of your last five emails, came to an event, or volunteered.
  
• Gift size: Above your average donation? More points.
  
• Lifetime gifts: The more often they’ve given, the better.
  
• Relationship strength: Has a personal connection to staff or board or responded to a survey.

Add up the points and tier your outreach. This could look like:

• High scores: Personal calls, handwritten notes, or tailored emails.
  
• Mid scores: A semi-personalized email series with a strong story.
  
• Low scores: An automated “We miss you” message.

When you let your data guide your time, you spend less energy guessing and more time reconnecting with people who’ve already raised their hand for your mission. CauseVox helps you see that data at a glance so you can act fast.

Download our free Complete Guide to Nonprofit CRMs:

Crafting the Right Message

Tone is everything when you’re reaching back out. Your goal isn’t to guilt anyone; it’s to reopen the door and convey, “We still need you, and you are creating meaningful change by supporting us.” Start with a heartfelt thank you. Remind them of the difference they helped make. Then invite them to be part of the next chapter.

Here are some win-back message ideas to get you started:

1. We Miss You Email Series (3 parts)

Start by thanking them for their past support and share a quick win that happened because of them. Next, show what’s happening now, maybe a short story about someone you’ve helped or a before-and-after stat that hits home. Finally, invite them back with a clear ask, like a small gift tied to a specific outcome they can feel good about.

2. Impact Update with a Soft Ask

Send an update letter or video from your program staff. At the end, gently add something like: “If you’d like to renew your support, here’s an easy way to do that.”

3. Quick Survey or “Tell Us About You”

Ask why they gave in the first place, what they care about now, and how they want to hear from you. People who respond are saying they want to stay connected so be sure to follow up quickly.

4. Event or Volunteer Invite

No pressure, no ask, just an invite to a low-key event, a virtual Q&A, or a volunteer shift. These kinds of opportunities can rekindle that emotional connection and remind them why they cared to give in the first place.

5. Small, Specific Needs

For lapsed donors who gave smaller amounts, create a mini donation form with tiny asks they can easily say yes to. For lower-level donors, offer simple, specific asks like “$15 feeds a family for a week” to make giving feel easy and meaningful. For mid- and major-level donors, tailor asks to reflect their past gifts with suggested amounts or upgrade options tied to programs they care about, showing them you remember and appreciate their support.

Multi-Channel Outreach Strategies

The more thoughtful touchpoints you have (without going overboard) the better your chances of reconnecting with your lapsed donors. 

Using your CRM to coordinate outreach makes all the difference. It helps you blend emails, phone calls, direct mail, and even social media retargeting into one smooth, well-timed plan so supporters don’t feel overwhelmed or forgotten.

Your CRM also lets you automate reminders and follow-up tasks for your development team, so no one falls through the cracks. This can help you focus on retention before a donor even lapses, or catch them before too much time has passed. Plus, by tapping into donor preferences and communication history stored in the system, you can respect how each person wants to hear from you, making every message feel thoughtful and personal.

Easily assign tasks and update donor communication preferences with CauseVox’s CRM

Tracking What Works

Track your results so you can understand what truly connects with your lapsed donors and brings them back. Some important metrics to watch include things like:

• How your win-back emails perform: Which segments are opening, clicking, replying, and actually donating?
  
• Who’s coming back: Track the percent of lapsed donors who’ve given again.
  
• Gift size changes: Are their new gifts bigger, smaller, or about the same as before?
  
• Channel boost: Do donors who get both an email and a call respond better than those who just get one touchpoint?
  
• Speed of return: How long does it take from your first outreach to their next gift?

One of the best ways to improve your outreach is to test different approaches. With A/B testing, you can try out two different subject lines or messages on small groups of your donors and see which one gets more opens or clicks. Maybe one email feels more personal, or one headline sparks more curiosity. This kind of experimenting helps you learn what your audience responds to best, so you’re not just guessing.

As you gather data, build simple reports in your CRM showing trends in re-engaged donors like who’s coming back, when, and through which channels. Over time, these insights become your playbook for future campaigns, helping you spend your time and resources on strategies that really move the needle.

Remember, tracking what works is a cycle, not a one-time thing. The more you pay attention and adjust, the better you get at nurturing your supporters and keeping them engaged for the long haul.

Preventing Future Lapses (Your Best Money Saver)

Stopping donors from slipping away in the first place is your best money saver. Sure, reactivating lapsed donors can work, but building retention systems that keep them engaged long before they drift off? That’s where the magic happens.

Start by mapping out a simple donor journey. Say thanks right away, then follow up with an impact story around 30 days later, share a short update or story at 90 days, send a quick survey at 6 months, and a gentle renewal reminder before the year’s up.

Make your thank-you emails and receipts feel warm and personal. Consider adding a quick video from your team; people love to see the faces behind the work. Whenever you can, send impact stories tied to what they gave last time.

Use your CRM to automatically flag donors who might be slipping away, like when their first gift anniversary is coming up but no new donation has arrived. And set up personalized stewardship streams: recurring donors get special updates, peer-to-peer fundraisers earn community prizes, and everyone feels like part of the family.

Download our free Donor Engagement and Retention Guide:

How CauseVox’s CRM Makes It Easier

All the topics we covered today get way easier when your data lives in one spot and your tools work together smoothly. That’s where CauseVox’s CRM really shines, it helps you bring lapsed donors back (and execute a donor retention strategy to prevent more lapses in the first place) without wearing out your team.

CauseVox’s CRM allows you to easily tag and segment your donors. For example, it can create a list of everyone who hasn’t given in over a year and keep it updated in real time. Need a quick report? You can pull a LYBUNT list and slice it by gift size or campaign, then send emails straight from the platform.

Easily tag and segment donors with CauseVox’s CRM

You can set up personalized email series that pull in details like past gift amounts or the specific program they supported, so your messages feel relevant and thoughtful. Plus, you can assign contacts and follow-up tasks to staff, and the system sends reminders so no one forgets to reach out. 

Real-time reporting gives you a clear view of what’s working (and what’s not), so you can adjust your strategy on the fly and improve results.

Best of all, CauseVox is built for small teams, so you don’t need a whole data department to run smart, effective re-engagement campaigns.

Your Next Step

Lapsed donors are telling you something. They cared once and they stopped giving for a reason. With a little structure, smart data use, and genuine appreciation, you can welcome them back and strengthen long-term support in the process.

Ready to reconnect with lapsed donors? Sign up for a free demo to see how CauseVox’s CRM helps you personalize outreach, track results, and build donor relationships that last.

In this article we will go through 7 easy steps on how to create a donation page for free, ways to optimize your page for conversions, and tips to promote your donation page to maximize contributions. 

Choosing the Right Platform

Creating a donation page from scratch on your website can be a hassle. You’d need to handle design, coding, payment processing, and security—all on your own. A free fundraising platform takes care of all that for you, so you can focus on what matters most: connecting with donors and raising funds.

When choosing a platform, it’s important to consider key features like transaction fees, customization options, and integrations with your CRM or email marketing tools. The right platform should give you flexibility while keeping as much of each donation in your hands as possible. Platforms like CauseVox are built specifically for nonprofits, with features designed to make your donation page as effective as possible. 

Clean Water For The World uses a donate button on their website to take you to their hosted donation page (shown below). 

Clean Water For The World’s optimized donation page hosted on their website with CauseVox.

From optimized layouts to mobile wallets, CauseVox helps you create a professional and seamless giving experience in just minutes—no tech skills required!

You can choose to embed your donation form directly on your website or create a hosted donation page for even more customization and storytelling. Both options make giving quick and easy, so you can find the best fit for your nonprofit’s needs. Plus, with CauseVox, it’s completely free to set up your page!

In this article, we’ll go over the basic steps to create a donation page for free; we also recommend you download our free guide below to get a more detailed overview.

Download the Complete Guide to Building Your Donation Page:

Step-by-Step Guide to Create a Donation Page for Free

1. Customize Your Donation Page With Your Brand

Your donation page should feel like an extension of your nonprofits brand, not just a generic form. In fact, we found that 75% of donors are more likely to donate to a branded donation page than a generic design. 

Marquis Studios used CauseVox to create a donation page for free that allowed them to customize and brand their campaign as desired.

Start by adding your logo and using your brand colors so supporters instantly recognize they’re in the right place. Then, consider including a short mission statement or tagline that reminds donors why their gift matters. A branded page builds trust and keeps your nonprofit top of mind, making people more likely to complete their donation. With CauseVox, customization is super easy—no coding needed, just simple tweaks to make your page feel like home!

2. Create Different Giving Intervals

Giving looks different for everyone, so it’s important to offer flexible donation options that fit your supporters’ generosity. Some people prefer a one-time gift, while others like to set up a recurring donation to make an impact every month without having to think about it. 

Alameda Point Collaborative offers donors the option of one-time or recurring donations on their donation page, hosted by CauseVox.

You can also offer a pledge option, where donors commit to giving a larger amount over time. With CauseVox, you can set up automatic payments in installments like 12 or 24 months.

Using CauseVox to create a donation page for free, Meat Fight offers a pledge option to their donors.

By giving people choices, you make it easier for them to support your cause in a way that works for them—plus, recurring and pledge gifts help create steady, reliable funding for your nonprofit!

3. Create Suggested Donation Amounts

People love to know exactly how their donation will make a difference. That’s where suggested donation amounts come in! Instead of leaving it open-ended, set up donation tiers that show the impact of each gift. 

Use descriptive donation tiers to showcase how your supporter’s gift is making an impact.

Pulling from the example above, $20 could provide transportation, $50 funds a storytelling session and $100 could support mental health and educational workshops. These clear, tangible examples help donors feel more connected to their giving—and often encourage them to give more! Plus, it takes the guesswork out of donating, making the whole process easier and more meaningful.

4. Set up Diverse Giving Options

Not everyone donates the same way, so offering a variety of ways to give makes it easier for more people to give. Some donors prefer using a credit card, while others love the convenience of mobile wallets like Apple Pay or Google Pay for a speedy donation. 

CauseVox makes it easy to offer multiple ways to give on your donation page.

If you want to encourage larger gifts, adding ACH (bank transfers) is a great option since it allows donors to give big without hefty credit card fees. CauseVox found that 81% of high-income donors prioritize a quick donation process, so the easier you make it for people to give, the more likely they are to complete their donation—and maybe even give more!

5. Customize the Information Fields

When it comes to collecting donor info, less is more! Stick to the essentials—name, payment details, email, and maybe an address—to keep the process quick and frustration-free. A long, complicated form can lead to drop-offs, and the last thing you want is for someone to abandon their donation because it felt like too much work. In fact, 75% of donors are more likely to make a donation if the giving process is easy. You can always follow up later to learn more about your donors and build a deeper relationship over time. The key is making it as easy as possible for them to say “yes” to giving!

6. Make It Even Better!

When you create a donation page it isn’t just about collecting gifts—it’s about inspiring generosity. Adding images and videos that showcase your mission in action can make a huge difference. People connect with stories, so use real moments and voices to bring your cause to life.

Rez Refuge tells a powerful story using quotes from beneficiaries on their donation page, made on CauseVox.  

You can also offer tribute donations, where people give in honor of a loved one—this adds a personal touch and can make the donation even more meaningful. The more engaging your page, the more likely people are to give (and give big!).

Montana Food Bank Network offers tribute dedications on their donation page, made with CauseVox. 

7. Test Your Page

Before you launch, take a few minutes to test your donation page on both desktop and mobile. Is it easy to navigate? Do the images load quickly? Is the donation process smooth and frustration-free? Most donors will be giving from their phones, so making sure everything works seamlessly on mobile is a must; luckily CauseVox automatically optimizes your page for mobile.A little testing now can prevent lost donations later—so give it a quick run-through and make sure your donors have the best giving experience possible.

Promoting Your Donation Page

Once you create a donation page and make it live, make sure it’s easy to find on your website—add it to your homepage or navigation menu so it’s just a click away. Then, spread the word! 

Share the link on your social media with engaging posts and updates to keep your followers excited and informed. Don’t forget to include the link in your email newsletters, too, so your existing supporters have an easy way to contribute. 

The more visible and accessible your page is, the more likely people are to donate and share it with others!

Tracking Performance And Improving Your Page

Once your donation page is up and running, it’s time to track your performance. Keep an eye on metrics like conversion rates, the average donation size, and the number of recurring donors to see what’s working. You can also try A/B testing to tweak things like headlines, images, and calls to action (CTA’s) to see what resonates best with your audience. 

Don’t forget to update your page regularly—whether it’s adding new donation tiers or showcasing the latest program updates, keeping your page fresh helps maintain donor interest and engagement.

Use CauseVox to Create A Donation Page for Free

CauseVox makes it incredibly easy to create a donation page for free. With features designed to maximize donor engagement, like flexible giving options, branded customization, and seamless mobile access, CauseVox helps you create a donation page that’s both impactful and user-friendly. Ready to get started? Create a donation page for free today and watch your fundraising efforts take off!

You’ve probably noticed that the number of emails you receive from nonprofits tend to ramp up around November. So how can you ensure that the eyes of potential donors are on your organization’s message? Start with a great subject line.

As a window into the message your recipient is about to receive, the subject line is an extremely important element of an email. In fact, 47 percent of email recipients open an email based solely on its subject line. Alternatively, 69 percent of email recipients flag an email as spam based on the subject line. So, what does this mean? Subject lines can make or break your email campaign. 

With the average person receiving more than 120 emails per day, it’s easy for your message to get buried in a cluttered inbox. To make sure your email gets read rather than ignored, marked as spam, or tossed in the trash, compelling fundraiser email subject lines are an absolute must. 

Download the free Ultimate 2025 Year-End & GivingTuesday Fundraising Toolkit:

Fundraising Email Subject Line Best Practices

Dialing in on an effective subject line that prompts your donors to want to read more takes work. An effective subject line needs to be creative, informative and intriguing, without coming on too strong. We’ve rounded up some general guidelines to keep top of mind as you spin up different subject lines:

1. Make It Short

Keeping your email subject lines short and limiting the total number of characters ensures that your subject line displays properly across all devices. With the majority of people viewing their emails on mobile devices, this decreases the odds of having the subject line truncated. 

If you’re wondering what the ideal length of a subject line is, the answer varies depending on who you ask. While MailChimp recommends no more than 60 characters (or 9 words), Hubspot recommends less than 50 characters, and Constant Contact dials it down to 40 characters (4-7 words). There’s no exact formula and what works for you will likely fall somewhere in between. 

2. Add Personalization

We can’t emphasize recognizing our donors enough! One of the easiest ways to do this and make them feel valued is by personalizing the communication you send them. For example, our brains are hardwired to involuntarily respond to seeing or hearing our own names. When you personalize your subject lines with your donor’s first name, it instantly makes your email so much more personal and boosts the chances of it being opened by 22%! 

Additionally, if you have access to other information about your donor (such as location, interests, etc.), you can incorporate this into your subject line to really get their attention. 

3. Limit Punctuation

While question marks and exclamations can convey friendliness and excitement, excessive punctuation can trigger spam filters. To ensure that your email reaches your recipient’s inbox, avoid using more than 3 punctuation marks in your subject line. 

4. Mind Your Capitalization

Another way to get caught in your recipient’s spam filter is by overusing capitalization. Rather than capitalizing the first letter of every word, try capitalizing less than half of all words, relative to the length of the subject line. 

Also, you definitely want to avoid using all caps altogether. You may think you sound excited but it comes off like you’re screaming at someone. 

5. Begin With Action-Oriented Verbs

Using action verbs at the beginning of your fundraiser email subject lines sets the expectation upfront for the recipient of what to expect from the body of your email and lets them know what action you want them to take. Some examples of powerful action verbs include:

• Help
• Save
• Change
• Beat
• Donate

6. Avoid Jargon And Cliches

If your email subject line includes industry-specific jargon and cliches (“Help us move the needle”, “Close the feedback loop today”, etc.), it won’t translate very well to your reader. Since it sounds a bit disingenuous, it’s best to remove or replace them with more accessible language.

7. Be Judicious About Emojis

Using emojis in email subject lines is a hotly debated topic. While some people argue that your donor’s eye may be drawn to a subject line with an emoji, others contest that there’s little to indicate that emojis actually increase open rates. 

Still, emojis convey a sense of friendliness – and you never know – they may resonate with your audience or appropriately emphasize a word (i.e. “Help us reach our fundraising target ”). To pull relevant emojis into your subject line, copy and paste from sites such as Get Emoji. It’s up to you to find the right balance of when and how to include emojis in your subject lines – overusing them can make your email look like spam so definitely do so in moderation. 

8. Don’t Guess – Test Your Fundraiser Email Subject Lines

Testing your fundraiser email subject lines can help you learn what gets the best response from your audience. It’ll help you increase your open and click-through rates, which in turn will increase your bottom line. 

Luckily, there’s a whole suite of online tools available to help you check the effectiveness of your email subject lines. All you have to do is paste in your subject lines to get an instant analysis! While there’s always premium and paid options available, we’ve gathered a handful of free tools to get your started:

• Email Subject Line Grade by Net Atlantic evaluates the overall clickability of your subject line based on copy, character count, word count, and word mixture and balance by providing a numerical score out of 100. This tool also offers suggestions on how to improve. 
• SubjectLine.com is similar by testing the overall effectiveness of your copy. You’ll get an overall score for your subject line along with what you did well and where you fell short (i.e. “No capitalization detected = -12 pts”, “Short subject lines stand out  = +5 pts”).
• Email Subject Line Tester by mailmeteor tests email subject lines and provides a score based on length, frequency of punctuation, presence of emojis, and spam words to make sure your email will be well-received. To knock your subject line out of the park, Mailmeteor will also provide a list of alternative subject lines based on the one you entered.
• Refine: The Free Subject Line Tester from Moosend tests your subject lines based on your selected industry and number of subscribers. This tool predicts whether your open rate is above or below your industry’s average and it provides recommendations to improve. For example, “How many lives can you save with $25?” puts your open rate at 0.28% above the charity industry’s average given 10,000 subscribers. To improve this, Moosend suggests things such as making the message more relevant through personalization (i.e. “John, how many lives can you save with $25?”) or adding a splash of color with an emoji (i.e. “ How many lives can you save with $25?”).
• TestSubject from Zurb checks to see how your sender’s name, email subject line, and preheader text looks on popular mobile devices.

9. Avoid Spam Words

To improve deliverability, avoid using promotional words (i.e. “limited time”, “free”, etc.) and phrases (i.e. “will not believe your eyes”, “For just $XXX”, etc.) as it’s a surefire way to get your email routed to spam. For a comprehensive list of spam words, we recommend bookmarking and referring to resources like Hubspot’s ultimate list of 394 email spam trigger words when you’re crafting your next subject line. Alternatively, you can validate your email subject lines for spam before you hit send by using the following free online tools:

• Spam Check by Postmark is a lightweight JSON API that processes the quality of your emails by issuing a spam score. 
• Spam Word Checker by mailmeteor allows you to copy and paste an email message or subject line to highlight and remove spam words. This tool provides an overall score by checking against a list of 750+ words that pressure recipients, are ethically or legally questionable, exaggerate, are related to money, and don’t feel natural.

10. The Sender Matters

An email subject line is accompanied by a sender’s email address. No one likes talking to a robot and emails from unfamiliar addresses can throw a red flag, so ditch the generic organization email (i.e. info@ABC.org, no-reply@ABC.org) in lieu of a specific person. If your email comes from someone your donor knows and trusts, they’re much more likely to open it.

Fundraiser Email Subject Lines to Get You Started

Not looking to reinvent the wheel? Consider this list of year-end subject line concepts when constructing your December email campaign.

Pose A Question

Give your reader something to think about before they open the message by posing a question in the subject line. Questions lead to answers. When you lead with a question, your recipient is provoked to open the message to learn more.

Make your question relevant and thought-provoking to ensure your reader is intrigued. The following subject lines will force your potential donors to consider the answer to your question, thus increasing your open rates.

• Can you help me out?
• “First name,” I have a question.
• Will you help “beneficiary’s name”?
• “First name,” can I have a moment?
• When was the last time you made someone smile?
• Don’t think you have enough to make a difference?
• How many lives can you save with $50?
• How will you change the world today?
• Have you ever wondered when X?

Emphasize Charity

Giving is the reason for the season, which makes the end of the year the most popular time for charitable donations. When sending out your last appeal of the year, consider using a subject line that reminds readers of the giving season to give them an incentive to open your message.

Make the most of the holiday spirit by emphasizing the good your organization is doing. Use your subject line to remind potential donors that their gift can make a difference, especially during the holidays.

• Did you forget someone on your holiday list?
• Last-minute gift ideas
• The best gift
• ____ reasons to give
• Make 2025 the best year yet for ____
• We have a gift for you
• Make a gift, change a life
• Think outside the box this holiday
• Be a hero like “donor name”
• Be a hero for ______
• Help “organization name” deliver hope this season
• Don’t wish you had done more this year
• One click can change lives
• Join us in the _____ challenge
• What we need next year
• ________’s story is so inspiring
• Give the gift that keeps on giving

Create A Sense Of Urgency

Making your message seem urgent is a proven method to compel readers to act. In fact, subject lines with a sense of urgency have a 22% higher open rate. No one likes missing out so when potential donors feel that a deadline is looming, they’re more likely to make a quick decision to give. 

Incorporate words that imply urgency such as “now”, “alert”, “breaking”, and “important”. If you’re counting down to a deadline, use words like “days” or “hours”. 

• Don’t let this year pass you by
• Campaign update: still ______ from our goal
• Every gift doubled – make twice the impact
• We’re so close!
• We’re counting down! X days left to help.
• Time is running out
• Hours left to give in 2025
• It’s never too late to make a difference
• It’s not too late to help
• Join us today
• We’re almost out of time
• Help us reach our goal before midnight
• End 2025 on a positive note
• Time is almost up to make your tax-deductible gift
• Re: Your tax-deductible gift
• The last day to give
• Double your impact – one day left
• Urgent: tax deadline approaching
• 1 day left; 5 reasons to give
• Make an impact with your IRA
• Less than 5 hours left to double your gift

It’s important to remember that you don’t want to overuse this method. Continuously pushing back deadlines or issuing daily urgent call-to-actions can get stale fast. 

Make It Intriguing

Intriguing subject lines work to arouse your reader’s curiosity and pique their interest. Since the ultimate goal of a subject line is to convince your potential donor to open the email, the mystery surrounding your intriguing intro should give your recipients a reason to read on.

The sense of mystery surrounding the following subject lines will provide enough intrigue to convince potential donors to open your message.

• Important news
• Let’s do it!
• Re: Your gift to “organization name”
• “First name” – review your donation
• I have a job for you
• Your donation status
• As you requested
• “First name,” I have great news
• Don’t open this email
• You won’t believe this
• Following up
• FW: thought you’d want to see this
• “First name,” this it it
• Are you ready?
• Here’s what you missed…

Inject Humor

Laughter is the best medicine and injecting humor into your fundraiser email subject lines is a great way to stand out in a crowded inbox. By making your recipient laugh or smile, you’re establishing a positive climate and increasing the chances they’ll engage with your content.  

As another option, you can always use puns. If you appreciate a good pun, other people will too. Not only is it clever and catchy, but you have the chance to get creative and make it relevant by aligning your email subject lines to your nonprofit’s cause. For example, if your organization focuses on hunger and food insecurity, you may consider “Help take a bite out of hunger”.

If you’re unsure of how your humor (or puns) will vibe with your donors, get a second opinion from your staff. 

Say Thank You

Use your end-of year email to say thank you to donors or wish them a happy new year. Thank you messages not only demonstrate gratitude to current donors, but also remind potential donors that your nonprofit is always in need of further support.

The following subject lines give your organization a chance to demonstrate your gratitude and make your donors the star of your year-end campaign.

• Holiday greetings from “organization name”
• Help us celebrate the New Year
• It’s been a great year at “organization name”
• We wanted to say thank you
• Happy New Year!
• Thinking of you this holiday season
• We’re so thankful for you this year
• We couldn’t do it without you
• We’re thankful for YOU this season
• Cheers to you!
• Watch the incredible things we’ve done this year

A/B Test Your Fundraiser Email Subject Lines

We mentioned the value of testing your subject lines earlier and included some free tools to double check your work. But here’s another way to determine which subject lines your donors find the most engaging – with a real audience! 

You could try performing an A/B test, also known as a split test. A/B testing is the process of sending two versions of an email to two similar but separate audiences. There’s many elements worth testing but since the first thing your recipients see is the subject line, it needs to be the most impactful part of your email.

A/B Testing In Action

 If you’re wondering whether a dynamic subject line personalized with your donor’s name (“Bob, can I have a moment?”) will result in better open and click-through rates compared to a general subject line (“Can I have a moment?”), you can use A/B testing to try them both out. For the sake of this example, let’s say that the personalized subject line is the original version (the control) and the general subject line is the other version (the variation). You would send the control to a subset of your donors and the variation to another subset. Once you’ve determined the winning version, use that email subject line across your entire audience.

Remember, small tweaks can make a big difference. Here’s some subject line components to experiment with using A/B testing:

• Personalization (with your donor’s name)
• Asking a question vs making a statement
• Character count & length
• Sentence case and capitalization
• Adding emojis vs using plain text

Pro Tip: These days, email service providers (such as MailChimp, Constant Contact, and ActiveCampaign) offer built-in A/B testing although their features vary. 

Study Your Competitors

Another way to improve your fundraiser email subject lines is to check out the competition! Subscribe to orgs with a similar focus to your cause. If you come across email subject lines that draw you in, save them somewhere and make a note of why you liked them. What enticed you to open it? You can always draw on these later for inspiration when you’re crafting your own.

On the flip side, you’ll also want to take note of which of your competitor’s emails ended up in spam or ended up being trashed. See if you can spot commonalities within these emails as this will be what you’re going to want to avoid. 

The Bottom Line

You should know your potential donors better than anyone else. When constructing your year-end fundraiser email subject lines, put yourself in their shoes. Consider the language and appeal that you believe will spark action among your target audience and apply those concepts to your organization’s message. For more email marketing tips, check out our free guide below.

Download The Complete Email Marketing Guide For Nonprofits:

According to HubSpot, on average people receive 121 emails per day. And this year, we expect to see an average of over 361 billion emails sent per day! But, if you’re unfamiliar with using email to get your message out there, and helping it stand out, all of that talk about automation, segmenting, and A/B testing your subject line can be overwhelming.

That is why we’ve put together this comprehensive, but easy to understand guide to help you build out your email marketing strategy so you can share your mission, engage your supporters, and ultimately get more donations! 

In this guide, you’ll find everything you need to know in order to put together successful and effective email campaigns for your nonprofit:

• A step-by-step guide to developing an email strategy that will help you raise money
• How to create a welcome series so that new subscribers remain engaged after signing up
• How to ensure your messages stand out in a crowded inbox
• How to use email marketing to rally supporters and raise money
• And much more!

Download a copy of our guide today, and you’re sure to be on the right track. Best of luck!

Why Your Campaign Page Matters

Your campaign page is the gateway to your mission. It’s the first thing potential donors see, and first impressions matter. A well-designed campaign page is like a warm welcome to your cause, while a cluttered one may deter even the most generous souls.

User experience and appearance play pivotal roles in motivating potential donors to take action. When your page is visually appealing, you’re more likely to wow your audience. But it’s not just about aesthetics; your design should have a purpose and tell a story. To help you design a fundraising campaign like a pro without starting from scratch, check out some of our tried-and-true tips below.

Select a Fundraising Platform

You want to start off on the right foot, and that begins with choosing the right fundraising platform. In a world where you can customize almost anything, you might wonder, “Why not just design a fundraising page from scratch?” Well, opting for a pre-built fundraising platform has a ton of advantages, mainly because it streamlines various critical elements:

• Built-In Features: Fundraising platforms come equipped with essential features like impact metrics, donation tiers, peer-to-peer capabilities, ticketing options, and easily accessible donate buttons. These pre-existing tools allow you to seamlessly integrate and activate them in your campaign, saving you time and effort.
• Efficiency: Leveraging a fundraising platform’s existing infrastructure can significantly expedite the setup and launch of your campaign. 
• Expertise: Most fundraising platforms have been developed and fine-tuned by experts in the field, ensuring that your campaign benefits from proven strategies and best practices.
• User-Friendly: Fundraising platforms are often designed with user-friendliness in mind, making it accessible to both experienced and novice fundraisers. This lowers the barrier to entry and allows you to focus on your campaign’s core mission rather than the technical aspects.

Understand Your Audience

Once you’ve chosen your platform, it’s time to get a better understanding of your audience. It’s like tailoring a suit to fit perfectly; you want your campaign to resonate with your supporters, so you can engage them in the most meaningful way. 

Start with creating donor personas. These are fictional representations of different segments of your audience. These personas help you relate to your supporters, understanding what makes them tick. Let’s say you’re running a campaign for an animal shelter. You might have personas like “The Animal Lover,” “The Local Hero,” and “The Empathetic Volunteer.” Each persona represents a different motivation and connection to your cause.

To do this, you’ll need data. Conduct audience research to gather insights into their preferences, motivations, and behavior. You could use surveys, interviews, or even study your past campaign performance data to identify patterns. 

By designing your campaign with these personas and insights in mind, you go beyond creating a generic page; you’re speaking directly to the motivations and preferences of your audience. It’s about making your supporters feel seen and understood.

Storytelling through Design

Now, let’s dive into the heart of your campaign – storytelling. It’s not just about the words you use; it’s about how you present them. Your design should complement your narrative. 

Images, videos, and infographics are your allies in creating a compelling story. When potential donors can visually connect with your cause, they’re more likely to be moved to action. With CauseVox, you have the tools to bring your story to life in a way that resonates deeply with your audience, ultimately driving your fundraising efforts to new heights.

User-Friendly Layout and Navigation

A cluttered, disorganized campaign page is a surefire way to drive potential donors away. 

Imagine this: You visit a campaign page, and it’s a jumbled mess. You can’t find the information you’re looking for, and it’s frustrating. You’d likely leave without making a donation, right? Well, the same holds true for your potential donors. Put yourself in their shoes as you design your page.

The importance of a clean, intuitive layout that makes navigation effortless can not be overstated. To achieve this, consider these best practices:

• Clear Headings: Use concise, descriptive headings that guide your visitors to the most important sections of your campaign (i.e. “Our Impact” or “How You Can Help”)
• Concise Paragraphs: Long, dense paragraphs can be intimidating. Break up your content into shorter chunks to encourage readers to stay engaged.
• Strategic Use of Bullet Points: Bullet points can draw attention to key information (see?). Also, consider bolding the important stuff. 

Design elements should work together to guide your visitors through your campaign’s story – all the way to your donation form. 

Putting Design Elements Into Practice

Let’s consider an example. A campaign for a children’s literacy program might make their campaign page more user-friendly by including:

• A Clear Donation Section: Prominently placed near the top, this section highlights the action you want your supporters to take.
• A Progress Bar: A progress bar displaying the campaign’s fundraising target and how much has been raised, encouraging potential donors to help you reach your goal.
• Impact Metrics: Key metrics are presented in an easily digestible format, showing the campaign’s achievements and the value of each donation.

• Engaging Success Stories: Visual storytelling elements like images or videos of children reading, accompanied by their success stories, are placed where they’re easy to find.
• Contact Information: Clear contact information for the organization is provided, reassuring donors of accessibility and transparency.

These design elements work in harmony to create a page that guides visitors from learning about the cause to taking action. Your layout and navigation shouldn’t be obstacles; they should be a seamless path toward supporting your mission. With CauseVox, you have the flexibility to design and add to your campaign in a way that best suits your unique story and goals.

Visual Appeal

The aesthetics of your campaign page play a crucial role in its success. Color schemes, fonts, and imagery all contribute to creating a cohesive design. Selecting the right combination can significantly impact your campaign’s effectiveness.

Let’s break down the elements of visual appeal:

• Color Schemes: The choice of colors is more than just a design decision; it’s a psychological one. Different colors evoke different emotions. For example, warm colors like red and orange can create a sense of urgency, while cool colors like blue and green can convey trust and calmness. When you select colors that align with your cause, brand, and target audience, you’re tapping into the psychology of color to evoke the desired emotional response.
• Fonts: Typography plays a more prominent role than you might think. Fonts can convey personality and mood. A playful, handwritten font might suit a campaign for a children’s charity, while a sleek, modern font may be better for a tech-related cause.
• Imagery: High-quality images are the visual anchors of your campaign. Pictures are worth more than a thousand words; they’re worth donations and support.

Wag Love Fest: Where Pink Meets Puppy Love

Wag Love Fest, an organization dedicated to canine well-being, has masterfully harnessed the power of visual appeal in their campaign design. Their choice of branding colors–such as the inviting shade of pink–is not just a design decision; it’s a strategic one. Pink is known to evoke feelings of love, compassion, and tenderness. 

Moreover, their call to “Join the Pack” perfectly aligns with the canine theme of their campaign. It’s not just a button; it’s an invitation to become a part of something bigger, something as loyal and loving as a pack of dogs. 

Wag Love Fest doesn’t stop at just color and text; they understand the magnetic power of imagery. Their campaign page includes a high-quality video that is heartwarming and irresistible. These visuals create an emotional connection with visitors and drive them to support their cause.

Their campaign design is a testament to the fact that the right blend of color, fonts, and imagery can transform a page into a visual narrative. In this case, it’s a story of puppy love, warmth, and the joy of being part of a pack.

Call-to-Action Elements

The design of your call-to-action (CTA) elements can be the difference between a visitor scrolling past and a donor taking action. The placement of your CTAs is vital. You don’t want them to be overlooked so feature them prominently in relevant sections. 

Also, size matters. The size of your CTAs should demand action and convey a sense of urgency.  Include action verbs such as “Donate Now”, “Join the Fight”, or “Give the GIft of Hope”. For tribute donations, consider a CTA like “Make a Tribute Donation” or “Honor a Loved One.”

Remember, A/B testing is your secret weapon for fine-tuning your CTAs. Vet different button designs, colors, and text to discover which combination elicits the best response from your audience.

Mobile Responsiveness

With the growing number of donations made from a mobile device, a mobile-responsive design is no longer a nice-to-have; it’s a must-have.

To ensure your campaign page looks and functions flawlessly on every device, consider these steps:

• Responsive Design: Ensure that your design adapts seamlessly to different screen sizes. Text, images, and buttons should resize automatically, maintaining a visually appealing layout on both small smartphone screens and larger desktop displays.
• Load Time: Mobile users are often on the go and have limited patience for slow-loading pages. Data shows that when load time increases from 1 second to 3, conversion rate reduces by half and bounce rate increases by 6%. Optimize your images and design elements to ensure quick page load times. 
• Content Hierarchy: Ensure your content hierarchy remains clear and logical. Visitors should easily find the most critical information and calls to action without excessive scrolling or zooming.
• Testing: Before launching your campaign, test it on various mobile devices and screen sizes.

Social Sharing

You can design an outstanding campaign but it doesn’t matter if no one knows about it. Harness the power of social sharing to get eyes on your campaign.

Make it easy for your supporters to share your campaign with their networks. Don’t just add sharing buttons as an afterthought; design your campaign page with sharing in mind from the beginning. Integrate social sharing buttons directly into your campaign page, strategically positioning them to capture maximum attention. 

Luckily, CauseVox seamlessly integrates social sharing features into our campaign pages, making it effortless for supporters to spread the word to their networks.

Tell Your Story, Your Way

In the world of fundraising, design is your secret weapon. A well-designed campaign page can be the difference between a thriving fundraising effort and one that struggles to gain traction. It’s not about being a professional designer; it’s about understanding the elements of design that can make your campaign page stand out. 

While you could try to design a campaign page from scratch on your website, CauseVox’s platform offers a host of benefits that can streamline the design process:

• Pixel-Perfect Branding: Craft your pages to be a true extension of your organization. Every element, from typography to imagery, aligned completely with your organization’s identity and message.

• Rich Storytelling, Fast: Engage donors with captivating imagery, videos, and testimonials, all optimized for lightning-quick load times on mobile and desktop.

• Tailored Fundraising Sites: Create a site that’s full featured and unmistakably yours, even if it’s your first time. From program details and sponsor walls to donor listings, mix and match to create a fundraising experience that’s as unique as your mission.

• Make Donors Excited: Keep donors engaged in real-time. Showcase fundraising activity with dynamic progress bars, countdown clocks, counters, badges, and leaderboards.

• Seamless Fundraising Integration: Eliminate the need for multiple tools or code editing. Incorporating donation, event ticketing, and peer-to-peer fundraising forms into your fundraising site is as easy as dragging and dropping.

Get full control over the branding, design, and customization of your campaign sites. Our flexible platform lets you weave your organization’s narrative throughout every element, creating a resonant, immersive experience.

Start designing your fundraising campaign for free today!

• Learn from 28 hand-selected sessions to give you the latest digital marketing + fundraising strategies that generate more results in less time.
• You’re joining 6000+ pros attending the DSF4 on July 21-22 to learn the skills you need to grow digital fundraising all year long.
• It’s Free: You can register for free to attend the 2-day conference! But, free space is limited. Save your seat asap! + Pre-register now for your DSF4 VIP Pass for only $35 ($10 off) for the best experience from the Summit.

The best part is that we tailored this summit to meet your needs. We recently conducted a survey of nonprofit professionals and found that your biggest challenges are growing fundraising with limited time + resources.

This year’s Digital Fundraising Summit is specifically designed to meet these needs: you’ll find out how to raise more while spending less time and money. Want more details? Check out the takeaways you’ll get during our sessions this year.

Watch the 4th Annual Digital Fundraising Summit on On-Demand!

1. Discover how to communicate why donors should make a gift with Nathan Hill, Marketing Director @ NextAfter

When you ask for a gift, every donor has the same question: “why should I give to you?” If you know how to answer that question in the right way, you’ll unlock the key to strong fundraising. Unfortunately, research shows that not enough of us are answering that question effectively. In this session, you’ll get the tools to answer that fundamental question.

Why you should attend: We’ll share research about the 4 elements of an effective value proposition that can lead to more generous donors. You’ll walk away knowing how to speak to your donors in a way they understand.

2. Learn how to convert social media fans and followers into donors and long-term supporters with Julia Campbell, Nonprofit Social Media Expert.

That’s the big question, isn’t it?

If we are spending all this time on social media, what are WE getting out of it?

Even if you aren’t using social media for fundraising purposes, you will still want to get your fans and followers to take a bigger step with you – to sign up for an advocacy action, to download a research paper, or to join your membership.

In this session, nonprofit social media expert Julia Campbell will give you actionable ways to build deeper relationships with your social media fans and followers, and convert them into long-term supporters.

Why you should attend: This session will help you best chart out your social media strategy specifically to help drive donor engagement. This helps you raise more by converting more donors + educating donors so they give again.

3. Find out how to take advantage of the $10,000/mo Google Ad Grant with Grant Hensel, CEO @ Nonprofit Megaphone.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed at improving your Google results when you’re a little fish in a big pond. Join Grant Hensel, CEO of Nonprofit Megaphone to learn how Google Ad Grants can give you up to $10,000 each month to improve your results on our favorite search site.

Why you should attend: You’ll get hands-on advice about how to get the grant and how to use it most effectively for big results. Plus you’ll see some real life examples that help you see it in practice.

Watch for free on-demand!

4. Learn how to build a powerful individual giving strategy for a small nonprofit with Kelly McLaughlin, Fundraising + Strategic Planning Consultant.

We all know the feeling: there’s just so much to do to build relationships with individual donors, and when you’re a small shop it can feel like there’s no time to do it. What if we told you that there are easy systems and processes that can help you launch or expand an individual giving program for effective and easy income? Kelly McLaughlin will share it all with you.

Why you should attend: You’ll walk away from this workshop knowing exactly what you need to do to launch your individual giving into its next phase…and you’ll discover pre-made tools that will allow you to focus more on outcomes and less on how to get it all done.

5. Learn the results of the 2021 Fundraising Effectiveness Project Donor Retention Deep-Dive with Steven Shattuck, Cheif Engagement Officer @ Bloomerang.

Sure, you’ve heard the phrase “donor retention”, but how much do you really know about it? Do you understand the importance of its role in fundraising? Do you know how to improve your donor retention?

If you’re not sure about any of these questions, this session will share data from the Fundraising Effectiveness Project that will give you hard evidence about why donors stay loyal.

Why you should attend: You’ll walk away with strategies you can implement to keep your donors for the long run, based on leading research in the field.

6. Find out what we learned in 2020 and how we can apply it to 2021 with Woodrow Rosenbaum, Chief Data Officer @ GivingTuesday.

It’s easy to look back at 2020 and think that it was a fluke of a year. You probably don’t want to spend a lot of time revisiting the last year. But that attitude will lead you to overlook some seriously important information that we learned during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It also means that you won’t understand the trends for 2021. You’ll learn why donors are highly motivated right now and how you can pave the way for them to make gifts.

Why you should attend: you want to learn how to engage donors during times of crisis, how you can create “giving moments” to increase donations, and why it’s important to give donors agency.

7. Learn how to use technology to personalize donor experience and get the attention you want (and deserve) with Noah Barnett, CMO @ Virtuous

You’ve probably experienced the frustration of sending out carefully crafted communications only for your donors to get distracted and move on before they engage. Today’s donor has a short attention span, and it shows. Luckily, there are ways to build your fundraising system to address these challenges with flexibility, resilience, and responsiveness. 

Why you should attend: you’ll discover new technologies that help you personalize donor experience, as well as real life examples of the best approaches to donor relationships.

We’re only halfway through and that’s already some amazing takeaways you’ll find at this year’s Digital Fundraising Summit.

Join us for one or all sessions!

8. Essential Digital Fundraising Principles Learned From A/B Testing by Jeff Giddens, President @ NextAfter.

There are no digital fundraising experts. In fact, the only people who truly know what works to increase giving online are your donors.

In this session, you’ll discover essential principles that can increase your digital fundraising performance—all based on what donors have shown us actually works through a/b testing and optimization.

Why you should attend: We assume we know what makes our supporters give online, but we’re not mind-readers. This session will help you learn what your donors actually prefer, based on data, so you raise more online.

8. Fight the burnout with Kelly McLaughlin, Fundraising + Strategic Planning Consultant.

It’s been a long year. Most of us were already fighting off burnout before a global pandemic, but after a year of social distancing, lay offs, working from home, and scrambling to make ends meet, burnout is a huge threat. 

If you want to understand where the stress is coming from and how to manage it, this is the session for you. We’ll go deep in understanding what stress us out and how to deal with it.

Why you should attend: Kelly McLaughlin is going to take us beyond the “self-care” buzzwords to truly discover how you can cope and what it will take to recover from burnout.

9. Make your life easier using automation with Jereme Bivins, Managing Director @ Good Dog Strategies.

Imagine this: instead of coming in to work each morning and fighting with a full inbox, a packed calendar, and a to do list full of irritating and time-consuming tasks, you come to work and you get to focus on the important tasks.

That might sound like a wild fantasy, but it’s not: you can make it happen with some strategic use of automation. Save yourself time, stress, and money with a few tools and tactics.

Why you should attend: You’ll spend this session discovering which tasks are the worst offenders for clogging up your to-do list, then we’ll share free and low-cost tools to get you started with automation. You’ll be able to start cleaning up your work flow right away.

10. How to grow your nonprofit with Eric Linssen, Head of Demand Generation at Community Boost.

Nonprofit growth is hard. With platforms changing and new shiny new tactics popping up almost weekly, it can be all too easy to lose the forest for the trees.

But it doesn’t have to be.

The most impactful organizations in the world have built growth models that have endured the test of time— allowing for a laser-like focus on exactly what matters, and an ability to say no to what doesn’t. And these models are right there for us to learn from.

Why you should attend: You’ll walk away with a step-by-step process for growing your nonprofit and scaling impact, learned from the most innovative organizations in the world.

Watch for free on-demand!

11. Learn how to get a digital fundraising campaign off the ground + make it successful with Candace Cody @ CauseVox.

Need to run a fundraiser online and don’t know where to begin? Or, have you already tried running a digital fundraiser, but it didn’t turn out as well as you hoped?

Join Candace Cody, Manager of Content + Education @ CauseVox, as we dive into the best practices proven to help you run a massively successful digital fundraiser for your nonprofit.

Why you should attend: You’ll walk away equipped to set up and run a successful digital fundraising campaign for your nonprofit – helping your organization grow in today’s digital-first world.

12. Learn how to build a nonprofit from the ground up with from founders with a panel discussion hosted by Anand Vora, Vice President @ Public Interest Registry.

In this panel discussion with three nonprofit founders, you’ll learn how they found their supporters, donors, board members, and co-founders. Find out how they embarked on fundraising and crowdfunding campaigns, what challenges they’ve navigated, and what they wished they knew when they were starting out.

Why you should attend: This session is ideal for startup nonprofits – you’ll follow in the footsteps of other successful organizations by learning from their growth!

13. Stay compliant online with these fundraising solicitation compliance tips from Greg McRay, EA, Founder and CEO @ Foundation Group.

40 states, plus Washington, D.C. require nonprofits to be registered with the state prior to soliciting contributions from the public. Rules vary greatly from state-to-state, so it is difficult for many organizations to know what is required of them.

This session will help take some of the mystery out of the situation, and help nonprofits understand the scope of their registration requirements, and even when registration isn’t necessary for them.

Why you should attend: You’ll walk away with the essential information you need to be able to legally fundraise online in the US.

14. How you should plan fundraising events in 2021 + beyond, with a panel discussion hosted by Jenna Notarfrancesco, Customer Success @ CauseVox.

Virtual? In-person? Hybrid?

How is a nonprofit professional supposed to plan events in 2021 + into 2022?

Join us for this special conversation with 3 nonprofits about how they’ve seen success planning events virtually, in-person, + hybrid this year.

Why you should attend: This session will help you chart out your fundraising event plans, based on what’s working for other nonprofits. You’ll ensure you optimize your fundraising event so you raise more.

15. How to plan your nonprofit’s marketing communications in 2021 + beyond, with a panel discussion hosted by Matt Gayer, Catalogue for Philanthropy.

We know audiences, and us all, are tired and overwhelmed. After a year of isolation, we still find ourselves facing uncertainty even as progress occurs. For nonprofits, that means it is more difficult than usual to keep our audiences engaged.

Join us to discuss your communications plan for the rest of 2021 and how to balance the different communication channels available while also tailoring your message to drive your audience to action.

Why you should attend: You’ll learn practical digital marketing strategies you can use to grow your audience online with limited time + resources.

Watch the 4th Annual Digital Fundraising Summit on On-Demand!

Email is one of the most important elements of online fundraising. It’s a great way to retain donors who have made a first gift. It’s one of the most low-cost options for getting your message to potential donors.

And with more and more fundraising moving online, it’s more important than ever that your organization has a solid plan for nurturing donors that includes ongoing email communication with donors.

Your email could be filled with well-crafted and informative content, but if your audience doesn’t even open the email, then all that work was in vain.

There are many ways to beef up your subject lines, you just have to be creative and pique your reader’s interest.

Best Practices For Fundraising Email Subject Lines

There are a few guiding principles you can use to build any subject line: urgency, curiosity, personalization, and timeliness/relevance.

Put these together in different combinations and you’ll end up with a stellar subject line. Let’s take a look at each one.

Urgency: You want to light a fire under your readers. Use words that get them moving. Action verbs are a great place to start, and you can add in urgency with words like “limited”, or “deadline”. Show your readers why they need to open this email now. Another approach to urgency is to entice your readers with something they simply must have: make them feel special or indicate that they’ll receive a special deal if they click through.

Curiosity: Humans are curious creatures, and the best way to get your readers to click on that email is by making them wonder what’s inside. You can do this with a variety of tactics: posing an interesting question, saying something that doesn’t make sense without opening the email, using oddly specific numbers, or even sending an email without a subject line at all (we’ll dive deeper into that option in a minute).

Personalization: Most mass mailers now have the option to add tokens that will add someone’s name or other identifiers into an email or subject line. These are incredibly powerful tools and you want to take advantage of them. It makes your readers feel like you’ve taken time to think about them. Even if you don’t include their name, you can include other elements that will personalize the email. Segment your email lists and create a persona for each segment so that you can use words that will appeal to each group. 

Timeliness/Relevance: If you want your email subject line to do its work, you want to send it at the right time. A great example of this would be sending an email right at 5 p.m. and referencing a Happy Hour, but there are plenty of other ways it comes into play. With fundraising, time is generally of the essence. Fortunately, open rates increase when you express urgency in the subject line. Some words that you can use in your next email to highlight the importance of your email’s contents include “urgent”, “breaking”, “now”, “important”, and “tomorrow”. Also consider connecting your subject lines to larger times and events: if it’s winter, reference the weather. 

These four basic principles help to drive all of the other tips and tricks that we know for great email subject lines. But they can seem a bit abstract. Let’s take a look at some specific tactics:

• Use clear, understandable language. This isn’t the time for you to flex your English degree. You want people to know what you’re talking about.
• Tell your audience what’s coming…but not too much. If you have an interesting story or heartstring pull included in the body of your email, reference it in the fundraising email subject line. Give them an idea of what they’ll see when they open the email. But you want to leave a bit of curiosity in there, so don’t spoil the punchline.
• Use emojis! If it aligns with your branding, emojis are a great way to make an email line feel personal and approachable.
• Keep It Short: It can be tough to trim down your subject lines, but according to Campaign Monitor, the most effective length is right around 7 words (that’s 41 characters for those keeping track at home). This gets you the most opens and clicks.
• Use The Right Words: Choose your words wisely and avoid those that could potentially decrease your open rate. A study by MailChimp found that some words often used in fundraising email subject lines can negatively impact an open rate. While it’s almost impossible to avoid all of these when sending out a fundraising email, keep in mind that words like “helping” and “fundraising” are received more positively than “donate.”

• Put those right words at the beginning. When people skim, they focus on the first and last words in a sentence, and your last words may get cut off on mobile. Front-load your most powerful words.
• Pose a Question: When email recipients see a question in the subject line, they are forced to pause and think about the answer, naturally increasing the open rate.
• Do A Test Run: A/B testing is incredibly powerful and you want to take advantage of the fact that you can get hard data about your own audience. Your email platform will likely have the ability to do A/B testing, which lets you send two versions of the same email and compare results. Try different variables in your subject line: length, punctuation, question vs. statement, etc. Don’t forget to look at all the elements of what makes an email successful: open rates, unsubscribes, and click-throughs.
• Have a recognizable sender name: instead of sending from a “no-reply” email, make sure that your emails come from a name your community knows. Your Executive Director is a great option: from [Executive Director] at [Organization].
• Make people feel special. If you can use words like “exclusive”, “private”, or “limited”, you tell your readers that they’re getting something special. Show them that what’s in the email is only for a select group. 
• Use numbers, and make them oddly specific when you can. This is a great way to elicit curiosity. If I see a subject line that says “Here’s why we need you to donate $3.88” I’ll be much more intrigued than if the same subject line said $5.

In addition to all these tips, there are a couple of important don’ts in email subject lines as well. Keep a list of common spam triggers like “cash”, “save”, or “act now”. These are the words you don’t want to include. 

In addition, watch your use of punctuation: don’t use all caps, or eVeRy oThEr LeTtEr capitalization. Be sparing in your use of exclamation points (you absolutely don’t need three of them in a row). And a final tip to avoid spam filters: don’t include a question and an exclamation in the same line.        

The Subject Line Formula

If all of this sounds overwhelming, take a deep breath. There are some tried and true formulas that you can use to build solid email subject lines without losing your mind. Check them out:

1. The Question: This one is pretty straightforward. Ask a question that resonates with readers and gets them thinking. A great example: “Do you check your emails when you first wake up in the morning?” You can also make the question about your mission: “do you want to help orphans find homes?”
2. The Scarcity: Use numbers and urgency to show people that they’re about to miss out on something. “Hurry! Only 3 consultation spots left.” 
3. The Announcement: If you have an event, class, campaign, or other new and exciting initiative, the announcement is a great choice. You can use words like “introducing” or “new” to get better open rates. 
4. The How-To: Tell people what they’ll learn in your email. You can use this in conjunction with a bit of a heartstring pull to get donors connected to your cause. “How to give struggling students the tools they need.”
5. The Proof: Use specific numbers that show an exact benefit of your work. “You gave 200 families new homes last year.”
6. The Personal Call-out: Use a name token to personalize the subject line, and add in a question or benefit that is specific to them: “Hey Tiffany, are you looking for ways to give back?”
7. Numbered List: People LOVE numbers, so simply saying that you’ll have a list of things in your email makes people more likely to open it. “15 Reasons You Should Be at [Event]”.
8. Curiosity Gap: We talked earlier about plenty of ways to elicit people’s curiosity, but a great formula to use is “What you don’t know about __”. You can fill in the blank with anything connected to your mission.

17 Fundraising Email Subject Lines To Improve Your Open Rate

Now that you have an idea of what your fundraising email subject line should look like, here are 17 examples that you can use or modify for your next fundraising email.

1) Impact Statement: “Help expand the statewide reach of women’s viewpoints”

Readers want to be a part of the work that you’re doing, and when you tell them that they can make a difference directly, they’re more likely to click.

2) The Question: “Can we set up a call?”

This prompts your audience to open the email because it poses a question and encourages a reply. Plus, it’s short and sweet. 

It’s a great way to easily engage a donor in a way that feels personal.

3) The Introduction: “Hello (First Name), I’d like to introduce myself”

A personalized introduction is important, especially for prospective donors, and it sets the stage for working together in the future.

4) The Cheeky Subject Line: “Let’s talk dirty (data)”

When in doubt, get a little cheeky. A well-placed song lyric, quote, or common phrase can work to your advantage in hooking your audience into opening that email.

Here’s a fun list of some song lyrics that may work well in your next fundraising email subject line. This one works especially well because it sounds inappropriate at first glance, and that always garners extra attention.

5) The Intriguing Subject Line: “Confession time: we need you.”

This fundraising email subject line adds a bit of intrigue with the word confession. It makes it feel personal and increases the urgency of the ask by making it seem as if the reader is getting some secret, important information.

6) The Prize-Focused Subject Line: “Be an MVP for patients and Win a Trip to the Super Bowl.”

While this subject line isn’t personalized, it feels like it is because it directly addresses the reader.

Plus it helps to inspire donors by letting them imagine themselves as an “MVP”. It ties everything together with the Super Bowl theme makes it relevant to culture and is a prize that will get donors excited.

7) The Deadline: “Finish your 2020 donations before December 31!”

Fundraising emails that mention a holiday or the year-end open at higher rates, so take advantage of this fact if you’re running an email campaign on or around a holiday.

You can add even more urgency by telling your donors that they have a deadline.

8) The Urgent Question: “Can we count on your support today?”

This subject line poses a question and then cuts to the chase with a timeframe that doesn’t feel overly aggressive.

The example from MeetEdgar is a great variation on the theme: it introduces a specific campaign for a specific day and adds a question that draws in the reader.

9) The Follow-Up: “Did you find what you needed?”

This is a great fundraising email subject line to send out to those that visited your website and provided their email address in exchange for something such as exclusive content.

The email, of course, would build on that question by asking the prospect to consider a financial contribution if they felt that the information they received was valuable.

10) The “One last thing…”

When you send out your last fundraising email, make it known upfront that it’s the last chance to give. Including the number one will make the email stand out in the inbox in general.

This example from NTEN creates a curiosity gap and uses the reader’s name to make it personal.

11) The Last-Chance: “Today is the last day”

Use an urgent tone to get your point across, especially near the end of an email campaign. You can change up your language, but using words like “final”, “last”, or “end” gives people a sense of urgency.

12. The New Announcement: “Announcing the first-ever…”

On the other side of the spectrum, sharing that you’re introducing something new is a great way to build excitement.

Words like ‘announcement,’ ‘new,’ or ‘first’ give the impression that your readers are getting in on the ground floor.

13. The Client Story: “Meet Yasmin and Ahmad”

This is a great heading that you can change up to fit your mission. It’s simple and short which gets eyes on it, it hints at a story that will be in the email, and it lets you share the story of those impacted by your organization.

14. Reverse-Psychology: “Do not open this email” 

Sure it seems silly, but reverse psychology really does work. Telling someone not to do something is a surefire way to make them want to do it.

You can use this kind of a subject line for different contexts: “Do not open this email if you don’t want to make a difference,” if you’re asking for a donation, or “Do not open this email if you want to miss the best event of the year,” if you’re announcing a gala or other event.

15. The invite: “An invitation from our very special guest”

This subject line does a few important things. It makes the reader feel important because it says that it’s an invitation (you only send invites to people you care about). It creates a sense of curiosity and mystery because it doesn’t reveal the special guest. And it pushes the reader to click to find out who that special guest is.

16. The List: “Top 10 SEL tools right now”

Readers want to learn something new, and when a subject line hints that you’re about to teach them something, they are much more likely to open the email.

This subject line does a lot of things right. It includes a number, which increases clicks. It promises tools, which means readers know what to expect and know that they get something out of opening the email. And it says “right now” which increases the urgency.

17. No subject line

That’s right. One of the most powerful subject lines is to not include a subject line at all. According to HubSpot, emails with no subject line are opened 8% more than those with a subject line. 

This isn’t a great choice for an opening email, but for established contacts it can work wonders.

We all know just how easy it is to skip over emails we simply aren’t interested in. Make your email recipients want to read your emails by writing intriguing fundraising email subject lines.

Start Using Your Digital Marketing Skills For Fundraising With CauseVox Today

You need a systematic approach to digital marketing to build your audience for fundraising. You also need the right tools. 

CauseVox has easy to use donation pages that you can brand and embed on your own site. Less hassle so you can focus on your mission. Plus, with stellar customer support, you’ll never have to talk to a robot when you have a question.

If you’re ready to start optimizing, let CauseVox make the process more simple with less clunk. You’ll find yourself a master marketer in no time.

Power up your fundraising with CauseVox.

This post was originally published on 5/28/16 and updated on 1/29/21.

Choosing the right moment to launch with strong momentum can seem a little bit like a guessing game. But like most digital fundraising, there’s a simple strategy you can use to kickstart your campaign to raise more: you can soft-launch your fundraising campaign.

What Is A Soft Launch For Fundraising?

Very simply, a soft launch is sharing your fundraising campaign with some hand-picked supporters before you push it out to your larger networks. But it’s also what lets you build buzz about your campaign, show potential donors that you have support, and create momentum for the larger campaign.

A good soft launch can meld seamlessly with your larger campaign to bring in more dollars with less hassle. Your early supporters will give you word of mouth marketing, and you won’t have to send out a fundraising campaign page that shows that no one has given to you yet. This is what’s called “social proof.” 

Let’s imagine a scenario: you get an email from a fundraising campaign, and you think you’d like to give. You click the link and see a fundraising page with $0 raised. Maybe you feel uncertain about whether this is a good cause. If no one else is giving, do you want to? We’re social creatures and we feel pressure based on what others are doing.

On the other hand, let’s say you click on the same link and see over $5000 from dozens of donors already raised. You’ve just gotten confirmation that other people also see this organization as trustworthy and important. The likelihood you’ll give has just gone up. 

This works especially well if you see that one of your friends or family members has already given, because we’re more likely to trust their judgment.

The Benefits Of Soft Launching Your Fundraising Campaign

A soft launch is a great way to build on the benefits of digital fundraising: it helps you reach more people, build relationships, and create a continuous cycle of fundraising. If that doesn’t sell you, here are some of the other reasons to include a soft launch in your next fundraising campaign:

• It gives your strongest supporters a feeling that they’re special and affirms that you value them.
• Lets you give your strongest donors access to a special challenge. This is especially helpful if you’re trying to raise match funds.
• Lets you raise some funds before the official launch so that new donors see others support you. This helps the social proof of your campaign by showing that there’s already campaign activity, which in turn sparks more campaign activity.
• Allows you to test and fine tune messaging.
• It gives your strongest supporters time to set up their fundraising page (if applicable) so they’re able to promote their completed page on the date of official launch.
• On the day of official launch, any of your strongest supporters that haven’t donated during the soft launch are reminded to give, which also helps get some larger donations rolling in throughout the first day of your campaign.
• Builds momentum for the larger launch.

How Do You Soft Launch A Fundraising Campaign?

The biggest factor for success is the who: if you haven’t taken the time to identify people who will buy in to your campaign early, the soft launch won’t help you out. If you’re not sure who your ride or die supporters are, here are some places to start:

• Board Members
• Major Donors
• Recurring Donors
• Longtime Donors
• Volunteers
• Members (if applicable)

The key is really to target people who are already giving and ask them to give specifically to the campaign. 

Once you’ve identified your supporters, figure out what you want from them: 

• Are you aiming for them to donate? Suggestion: Set a goal and divide it by the number of people you’re reaching out to: that way you can ask them to donate a specific amount. 
• Do you want them to set up a peer-to-peer fundraising page? Send out the link to your campaign and have them get started setting up their page, so they’re ready to promote it when you move into your wide launch.
• Give you feedback on your campaign and provide content for the bigger launch. Your soft launch supporters may have a story to tell, testimonials about your organization, or feedback on the donation process. Include a specific call to action in your soft launch.

Set Your Timeline + Goals

Set a goal: Soft launching your fundraising campaign is all about creating momentum and getting a healthy running start to your campaign. Many organizations that do a soft launch have a goal to raise about 10% of their overall goal. How much do you want to raise ahead of your wide launch?

Then set a timeline: your soft launch doesn’t need to be long, and you want to be clear on when the larger campaign is going live. We’ve found that two weeks is a great time frame for a soft launch.

Once you’ve sent out your soft launch email, follow up with a personal touch. These people should be your strongest supporters. Don’t be afraid to talk to them one on one and really check in. Especially if they’ve donated, give them a quick and genuine thank you. Ask them to share your campaign and give them specific language to use.

Here’s a sample communication timeline for a soft launch:

• Day 1: Introduce your campaign at a board meeting, or all your board members and a few top supporters. Share your goals for the soft launch.
• Day 2: Send out a soft launch email to your targeted audience using your email marketing tool.
• Day 5: Follow up with an individual email to each member of your audience. Ask for feedback or content you can use during the main campaign.
• Day 9: Send soft launch email #2 to your targeted audience using your email marketing tool. Give an update on progress so far.
• Day 10: One last round of individual email follow-ups to those who haven’t given + send thank you emails to those that have.
• Day 14: Email blast out your campaign to your entire email list.

Crafting Your Soft Launch Fundraising Communications

There are many ways to reach out to your top supporters, but there are a few key elements you’ll want to include. In this example, Playwrights Guild of Canada knocked it out of the park. Here’s what they did right:

• The content is addressed to and is specifically written for their closest supporters.
• They positioned the email as a “secret” they were letting their supporters in on- which helps them feel included and intrigued in the content.
• They introduced what their new initiative is, why they’re doing it, and explained how their crowdfunding campaign fits into it.
• They told them exactly when the campaign was launching and how long it was running for.
• They had one specific call to action that engaged their supporters.
• They offered an incentive (that wasn’t a physical perk) for their involvement in the campaign.
• They provided a direct person to contact that email recipients to address their questions regarding their fundraising campaign to.
• While a lot of soft launch emails’ call to action is to donate, instead the Playwrights Guild of Canada actually used their soft launch to invite their supporters to write a short piece of content that would help generate promotional materials for the overall launch of the campaign.

So, while they didn’t actually raise funds with their soft launch, they still used it as a tool to both inform and engage their community and generate social proof in a creative way. This kind of content driven soft launch email meets a lot of the same goals as a donation based soft launch email. 

Another option would be to ask supporters to set up a fundraiser and act as peer-to-peer fundraisers. If you’re planning a peer-to-peer campaign, this is a great way to kickstart the process and easily onboard fundraisers.

You may use your soft launch to ask for feedback from your top supporters. Find out if the message resonates with them, or try some A/B testing to see which messaging works best. Don’t be afraid to tweak and fine tune your messaging before you share with your larger networks.

In addition to sharing information with your closest supporters, your soft launch can also include teaser content to your larger community. Use your social media to count down the days to the campaign, or share snippets of information to get your larger community excited. You can introduce a campaign hashtag, or share testimonials from your supporters.

Is My Soft Launch A Success?

One of the challenging elements of a soft launch is that it’s not quite as clear when it’s been a success. With your main campaign you have a budget goal, or a number of donors in mind. If you reach that number, you’ve been successful!

Soft launches use metrics that are not always so obvious. You can set concrete goals. Perhaps you want to start your main campaign with $2000 from your soft launch, or you want all of your board members to create a fundraising page. Those are solid metrics. 

However it’s also good to look at how many people clicked through to your donation page, what you learned from the soft launch, and the momentum you’ve gained. If you received feedback or content from your soft launch supporters, you’ve gained value. If you have the social proof we talked about earlier through a donation page that already has some donors, you’ve gained value.

When you’re ready to head into the next phrase of your fundraising campaign, it’s important to wrap up your soft launch. All of the people who received contact about your soft launch should get a follow up. That could be thanking them for a donation and asking them to share to their social media networks, or it could be a reminder that they can still participate in the main campaign. 

You can also use those touches to get feedback from your supporters to make your campaign even better, whether that’s adjusting your language slightly or shortening the donation process. I love to use the soft launch to start building my social media content for the campaign. That could include quotes or testimonials from my donors, or it could be thank yous and shout outs to those who donated during the soft launch.

The strongest transitions from soft to hard launch are seamless: they use what you built during the soft launch as you move into the hard launch.

Once you have gained some momentum and activity on your fundraising campaign, you’re ready to email blast it out to your wider audience and share across all your other channels: on your website, on social media, and more. 

Here’s how you can craft your fundraising campaign launch email.

Ready To Get Your Fundraising Campaign Started?

Are you ready to try out a soft launch? CauseVox has tools that make it all easy, from beautiful donation tiers and branded forms, to simple recurring donations and featured matching grants. 

Make your next campaign easy from soft launch to the final deadline.

Raise more with less effort. Easy for you to set up and easy for your donors to navigate.

If you’re ready to try a soft launch on your next campaign, let CauseVox make the process more simple with less clunk.

Get Started with Fundraising on CauseVox.

The M+R Benchmarks study aims to answer these questions and more.

Each year, a team at M+R surveys nearly 135 nonprofit partners to gain a better understanding of the ways they are mobilizing supporters and raising money. These nonprofits influence environmental policies, media, public health, and international aid, and each one brings a set of valuable data that helps us look at the big digital picture.

The 2019 M+ R Benchmarks study analyzed data captured from the 2018 fundraising year. This year in particular, the results were shocking. Whereas online revenue was on an exponential trajectory in years past, 2018 saw a relative flattening of this trend. Researchers also found striking changes in everything from email revenue to Facebook donations.

What does this mean for the state of nonprofits and how will it impact your nonprofit’s development?

Let’s break down the 2019 M+R Benchmarks report.

1. M+R Benchmark: Online Revenue Growth Grew by 1%

After years and years of steadily increasing online revenue, including record-breaking 2016 and 2017 gains for many nonprofits, suddenly that trendline flattened out.

While M+R doesn’t advise comparing reports from past years, it’s safe to say that there was a significant change in online revenue growth in 2018. In 2017, growth averaged 23%, and this followed years of exponential online revenue results.

But in 2018, things changed: online revenue slowed. Researchers note that this result was not expected, but it does make sense. Factors such as the 2016 election and unprecedented revenue growth for such an extended period time are difficult to sustain. “Nonprofits were simply unable to maintain that momentum, and we have returned to a ‘normal’ growth trendline,’” the report suggests.

What does this mean for your nonprofit? If you’ve noticed flatlined online revenue results, rest assured that it may not be a direct result of your digital strategy. Instead of worrying, look at the rest of the report takeaways to determine which areas you can build on.

2. M+R Benchmark: Nonprofits are Investing in Digital Strategies

Overall, digital ad budgets grew by 144% in 2018.

Although revenue has steadied, nonprofits are putting significant money into digital advertising. In fact, M+R found that digital budgets grew by 144% in 2018 for nonprofits that did invest in these online ads. Smaller nonprofits and rights-focused organizations outpaced all others concerning investment.

What does this mean for your nonprofit? Expect to invest ten cents for every dollar raised online. If you’re eager to ramp up your online revenue, consider first expanding your ad budget.

To boost digital fundraising efforts, nonprofits may find online fundraising platforms beneficial. Our community-driven fundraising platform, CauseVox, helps organizations streamline the workload of digital fundraising by helping create custom donation pages for email and social media campaigns, promoting peer-to-peer and crowdfunding campaigns, managing monthly giving, and more.

3. M+R Benchmark: Donors are on Mobile, But They Give on Desktops

While mobile users were about half of all nonprofit web traffic, they accounted for just 30% of gifts, and 21% of revenue.

We’ve known that supporters are connecting with nonprofits online via mobile devices for some time, and M+R validated this. While over 50% of nonprofit web traffic is on mobile devices, donors are more likely to give when on a desktop computer.

Building on this, it’s also important to note that desktop gifts average $53 higher than mobile giving.

What does this mean for your nonprofit? Yes, it’s important to optimize your nonprofit’s web presence for mobile, but keep in mind the donor’s preference for desktop giving when crafting your donation page. Along the same lines, recognize that there are other ways to connect with donors through mobile. For example, M+R found that fundraising text messages have a click-rate of 13%, meaning that there’s a high engagement when it comes to text campaigns.

4. M+R Benchmark: Peer-to-Peer Reigns Supreme on Facebook

The vast majority of Facebook revenue in 2018 came via the peer-to-peer tool known as Facebook Fundraisers. In fact, for participants in our study, it accounted for about 99% of all nonprofit revenue processed on Facebook.

For better or for worse (jury’s still out), Facebook has burst onto the scene with Facebook Fundraisers. This was especially apparent during the busy giving season of November. Although fundraising on Facebook isn’t new, nonprofits saw a significant increase in gifts made through the social media platform in 2018.

Nonprofits averaged revenue from 56 personal fundraisers over the year through their peer-to-peer fundraising tool.

That’s not to say that Facebook is your only online fundraising option. There are definite pros and cons to fundraising on the Facebook platform, particularly when it comes to the loss of data and competing with other nonprofits. In 2018, CauseVox spoke with many nonprofit leaders who struggled to gain traction, manage data accurately, and convert donors on key fundraising days such as #GivingTuesday.

For example, Nora, a personal fundraiser, created a campaign on GoFundMe and then shared it on Facebook. Sounds great, right? It turns out, Facebook encouraged her to add a Donate button as well, which created a duplicate campaign with two funding streams. Since the two systems don’t necessarily “talk,” GoFundMe was unable to add the donations given through the Facebook button. Nora may very well have hit her fundraising goal through the two platforms, but her “official” site wouldn’t reflect that.

Although Facebook is a good tool for organic fundraising, if you want to be strategic with your fundraising, online fundraising platforms such as CauseVox can help you tap into this growing trend of community-driven fundraising, without giving up control of the process.

What does this mean for your nonprofit? Having a multi-channel fundraising approach including Facebook and an online fundraising platform can help you attract a wider range of prospective donors and engage more current supporters while maintaining your data.

5. M+R Benchmark: November is THE Month for Facebook Fundraising

What is clear right now is that November is the month for Facebook Fundraisers – nearly a quarter of revenue came in during that month.

Speaking of Facebook, the results overwhelmingly showed that November is the busiest month for Facebook Fundraising revenue. This makes sense considering that #GivingTuesday, the Global Day of Giving, falls within this time frame. But December, a month known for strong year-end giving revenue, didn’t stand out for the nonprofits surveyed.

Why the big jump in November? Let’s remember that #GivingTuesday is peer-to-peer driven, and Facebook Fundraising caters to this particular online fundraising method, as opposed to year-end giving, which is often promoted through email and direct mail.

What does this mean for your nonprofit? If you’re thinking about asking supporters to run a peer-to-peer fundraiser, promoting these campaigns in November makes sense on the surface. However, there’s something to be said for competition, and your nonprofit’s personal fundraisers will most likely be competing with others on Facebook for attention. Weigh the pros and cons and decide what’s best for your cause.

6. M+R Benchmark: Email Revenue Decreased by 8%

While online revenue grew by 1% in 2018, email revenue decreased by 8% – through email still accounted for 13% of all online giving.

Email, a constant in a fundraiser’s toolkit, experienced a dramatic decrease in 2018 by 8%. Sure, it still makes up roughly 13% of online giving, but the decrease is sure to set off alarms for many in the development world.

What does this mean for your nonprofit? Since email fundraising still makes up a strong portion of online giving, it’s safe to say that you should continue your current email plan, keeping in mind that it takes roughly 1,000 emails to raise $45. Cleaning up your emails so they’re simple, mobile-friendly, and straightforward will help. Also, remember to customize your emails asks depending on the donor. For some, you don’t have to send them to your general donation page–which limits your personalization options and donor tracking. Instead, allow them to give through a mobile wallet option.

7. M+R Benchmark: Nonprofits are Ramping Up Email Messages

Nonprofits sent an average of 59 email messages per subscriber in 2018. This marked an 8% increase in volume from 2017.

While email revenue decreased, M+R found that nonprofits are sending more messages than ever before. Nonprofits distribute upwards of 59 emails per supporter, meaning one email every six days or so.

Are these emails losing effectiveness? Are supporters reading them? Do donors prefer other online giving methods? There are definite changes on the horizon when it comes to email messaging. However, we can’t just assume that more messages equal less revenue.

What does this mean for your nonprofit? If email fundraising is working for your organization, continue on. However, if you’ve noticed a lull, consider some A/B testing to fine-tune your strategy.

8. M+R Benchmark: Recurring Gift Revenue is Up

While overall online revenue may have been flat year-over-year, revenue from recurring monthly gifts increased by 17%.

Out of all the takeaways from the 2019 M+R Benchmarks report, this is one to take some time and reflect upon. Monthly recurring gifts were up 17% in 2018. That’s huge!

If it weren’t for substantial increases in monthly giving, online revenue would actually be down for the year considering that one-time gifts declined by 2%.

Monthly giving helps promote retention, build relationships, and monthly givers average higher annual gift amounts than one-time givers. It should be a part of every nonprofit’s fundraising toolbelt.

What does this mean for your nonprofit? This one is simple and straightforward: invest in a recurring giving program. If you already have one, promote it heavily. Don’t forget to check in with your online fundraising platform and see if it offers monthly giving support. For example, CauseVox offers automated management of recurring donation programs, which takes the stress of planning and management off a nonprofit’s plate.

9. M+R Benchmark: Online Retention Sits at 37%

Overall, 37% of donors who made a gift online in 2017 donated online again to that nonprofit in 2018. That retention rate is about 3% lower than in 2017.

Retention rates are a sticky subject. Nonprofits employ all sorts of ways to engage donors, but all too often, those efforts are met with silence. Unfortunately, M+R found that retention rates decreased by 3% from 2017, and only 37% of donors returned from 2017 to 2018.

What does this mean for your nonprofit? Focus less on new donor acquisition and more on current donor retention. Check out CauseVox’s Donor Retention & Engagement Playbook to help create a detailed plan.

What Do We Do?

It’s safe to say that fundraising techniques are rapidly evolving, and creating a strong and effective digital fundraising strategy is essential in today’s world. With stagnant revenue and decreasing retention, every tool and strategy matters for your nonprofit’s bottom line.

Whether you choose to go all in on email, focus on Facebook, or create the strongest possible recurring giving program, the goal is to get out there and try something.

If you’re in need of a refreshed digital marketing strategy, or you want to learn more about CauseVox digital fundraising tools, schedule a one-on-one demo with a member of our team.

CauseVox makes it easy for you to manage relationships with your supporters and create personalized fundraising sites, peer-to-peer campaigns, and donation pages, all in one place, while also providing a remarkable giving experience your supporters will love.

With CauseVox you get more than a tool. We combine powerful fundraising tools with best practices and an experienced team to guide you to success. We’re here to help you weather every change in the fundraising landscape.