Know your audience
If you’re planning a fundraising campaign – stop! Don’t write or design anything until you know exactly who it’s for.
Parents, do you find the same things funny as your teenage kids? Do you have the same priorities? I doubt it! You can’t expect the same message to appeal to everybody, and that’s why experts recommend segmenting your audience and targeting different groups with different messages.
Donation history is one obvious way to segment your audience. Our most successful fundraising campaigns adopt a different approach for people who are already regular givers, those who have donated recently, those who haven’t donated for a long time, and ‘major donors’ (who need something completely different).
But what else do you know about your supporters? Why do they support your charity? How did they first get involved? What’s their motivation? If you understand this, you’ll be able to connect with them better, send more relevant messages and keep them excited about what you’re doing.
What about when you’re trying to reach a new audience – the people you want to support your charity? Before you start, get to know as much about them as you can. What’s their age, what sort of things are they interested in, how do they mainly communicate, how do they like to give? Be specific. For instance, when it comes to bringing younger people on board, it’s worth considering whether you’re asking them to respond in the same way as somebody 50 years older. A retiree may feel a strong loyalty to a particular charity and therefore reliably respond to an appeal or keep up their direct debit, but younger generations generally aren’t in that same mindset.
So what would make them excited about being involved with your charity? They’re probably highly motivated to do something meaningful. How would they like to contribute? Have you actually asked them?
Finally, are you sure you’re targeting the right groups? Our philosophy at Better Story is that fundraising shouldn’t involve people feeling harassed or charities feeling guilty! If you feel like you’re constantly begging and pleading with people to give to your charity with little reward, what’s going wrong? Is it possible they’re not the right audience for you?
“Finding your tribe” is a popular concept right now, and you can apply that to building your charity’s support base. We believe there are plenty of people out there who are passionate about the same cause as you and would love the opportunity to make a difference. That’s your target audience. You just need to find them and give them the outlet they’re looking for.
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