How to Fundraise $1,000,000 Every Month?
A success story for charities to embrace and make the same impact for their own clients and cause - written by human (Chuan).
$1,000,000 is a lot of money to raise let alone raising it every month. “Rome wasn’t built in a day”; and to truly take in this wisdom is to learn to constructively chart the journey and persevere it. However, success must begin with a strong will, supported with courage and fortitude. Easier if you have the right partner to walk this journey with you. I’ve worked with many charities and only the wise and humble make it to this goal. During this journey, there are several fundamental challenges we must understand before we can embark on this path with confidence. Wisdom must prevail and executive support is pivotal.
“$1,000,000 is a lot of money to raise let alone raising it every month.”
Brand Identity
Without a distinct brand identity with strong emphasis on your cause will not aid in your quest. Neither does convenience by just putting up campaigns in third-party fundraising platforms. Don’t get me wrong, third-party fundraising platforms is quick to set up and they are convenient, and that’s how they are design. They don’t advocate one particular charity, they promote the sector and a sub-segment within the sector maybe. Your brand advocacy is your responsibility. No one will do that for you. If you throw your campaigns into a bunch of campaigns along with other charities, its call brand dilution. Anyone with common marketing knowledge will know that this is to be avoided as much as possible.
How to strengthen your Brand identity?
A logo is not a brand. The brand of a charity is the soul of the organisation. The word “compassion” is made up of two latin words; “com” means “with, together” and “passion” in english which is “pati” in Latin, means “to suffer”. Therefore, compassion means to suffer together. Essentially all charities manifest their compassion through their concrete actions to suffer with their clients who desparately seek their help. The more the charities feel the sufferings of their clients, the more the “force” compels them to change the circumstances for their client. Compassion is in the soul of every charity without an exception. Your brand identity is tied to this compassion, and the strength of your brand is tied to your actions. The more your actions reinforce this compassion, the stronger your brand identity.
Communicating this cause with passion using the stories about the plight of your clients helps donors and prospective donors to resonate with this suffering. The brand resonance in feeling this connection is the quintessential force igniting the compassion of the person to act. The idea is to connect the donor’s compassion with the charities’ as one force to walk in this journey with the client. The countenance of this goodness will shine brightly paving the way in alleviating the client’s predicament.
“Compassion is in the soul of every charity without an exception.”
“Your brand identity is tied to this compassion, and the strength of your brand is tied to your actions.”
How does digital technology help?
The latest currency in the digital world today is convenience. Any digital experience or any experience for that matter that cannot deliver their services with convenience, will fail.
“The latest currency in the digital world today is convenience.”
When the donor is ready to act, convenience is at the top of their mind when they click on a link. As a digital experience architect, my job is to ensure they can make the donation as fast as possible with minimum effort and a high level of trust. To achieve this feat, we selected the most advance, flexible and scalable technology to achieve this goal, not to mention the most cost effective. In our solution stack, we use these three excellent technologies that complement each other symbiotically to deliver a high perform system. They are; Salesforce.org, Stripe Payment Gateway and Amazon Web Services (AWS). High performance because it allows me as an architect to put together a silky smooth donation journey for the donor. Our solution can help a brand new donor make a donation of any amount in less than a minute. (We timed our experience performance). Included in this journey is receiving a confirmation email showing gratitude and reaffirming the donor of their contribution.
When the donor is ready to act, convenience is at the top of their mind when they click on a link.
“Our solution can help a brand new donor make a donation of any amount in less than a minute digitally. — Contact us”
Compassion coupled with convenience is a powerful experience to take away as a donor simply because exercising compassion is now made easy. Everyone wants to show compassion whenever given the right opportunity, and a well-designed digital solution activates the desire to share their feelings when it resonates. Many charities might overlook the importance of the design of the donation page. This is because the particular is not easy to observe. Take a look at this donation page designed by us. When the donor decides to support a programme, the next page takes them through the process in double quick time. Now imagine the email is received in seconds immediately after spending only a minute making the donation; confidence is established and trust ensues. An experience with such sensation reinforced with immediacy will simply linger longer in the hearts of the donor. In marketing term we call this mind share, and this is crucial to the sustenance of brand identity after the donor was first acquainted with the brand when they donate. Emotional connection with the brand will last longer.
Well Designed Processes Deliver Consistency
When the journey is optimised not only simplistically but with sophistication, the system becomes consistent not only for one type of donor but for many. This design approach and implementation will require users to make a paradigm shift in their perspectives. Productivity and efficacy take a different turn.
Let’s take the assumption that you managed to be super successful in asserting your brand identity and cause. Donors are flocking in to make donations. Let’s imagine you are hitting $1,000,000 worth of donations per month. If you are an Institute of Public Character (IPC), you might need to issue tax-deductible receipts to your donors. (IRAS listed InterAktiv as one of the vendors to perform this integration) Assuming your average donation amount is about $20 per receipt for 50% of your donation another 50% is about $100 per receipt. Combining the two numbers, you have to issue 30,000 receipts.
$500,0000 divided by $20 = 25,000 receipts
$500,000 divided by $100 = 5,000 receipts
Total Receipts to issue = 30,000 receipts
If you don’t have a fully automated process, this means users have to perform these tasks semi-manually or even worse, manually. It would be an impossible task to complete within a specific time frame to ensure promptness in engagement and resonance in the brand promise. Donors will lose confidence and future receipts will suffer when errors creep in due to human labour. There are two ways to cope with this work; leverage technology in its proper form or drive your colleagues to the ground and tire them out to maintain the work cadence. The first option is the preferred option as it frees up time for people to create more campaigns and reach out to more donors. Many charities don’t understand the ripple effects of a poorly design experience journey with lack of automation and consistency in its service delivery. It not only deter donors but also affects the morale of the users.
Strategic Approach
As your technology partner and experience architect, we are only as good as you want us to be. If our ideas are talked down instead of understood, then the ideas won’t have a chance to come to fruition. However, if attempts are made to understand and to embrace, albeit the errors along the way, we have a chance to do something different. Strategic approach are risky inherently, but they are extremely rewarding.
“Strategic approach are risky inherently, but they are rewarding.”
Conclusion
Every charities serves a different sector or region in our society. There are many donors out there. With the right approach donors is more than willing to fork our their cash for a better cause. Singaporean has strong compassion for the marginalised and afflicted; they want to do something if they can connect with your cause. Charities and NGOs need to step up their game and go digital. National Council of Social Service and Commissioner of Charities are our national advocates with funding capabilities to aid your your digital quests. InterAktiv is the system integrator who can put the pieces together both strategically and tactically to fulfil your vision and mission. Singapore is currently sitting at position 22 in the World Giving Index with our neighbour Indonesia taking top spot.
Singaporean has a lot of ground to catch. We at InterAktiv wants to work closely with you and make an impact on this index. But more importantly, we want to build a more equitable society empowering everyone who of no fault of theirs to be left behind. When charities has good digital infrsstructure, they will be able to do more with less; then more can benefit from the same pool of resources.
God bless Singapore🙏
