Let me introduce you to Sarah.

Sarah holds a senior administrative position at a sizeable law firm, is 35 years old, highly educated, married, and has one child.

Living in the inner city, Sarah frequently volunteers her time to her neighbourhood community centre.

She sees the need and enjoys supporting local charities. She donates frequently to two groups, but lately, she's grown disappointed with their poor communication.

Even though she only contributes a modest amount, she feels under appreciated by the organizations and is anxious to learn about the impact produced by her gifts.

Sarah wants to know if her donation made an impact.

New possibilities

Sarah scrolled through her Facebook newsfeed and came across a post from a local organization called "Hope for the Homeless."

She liked what she saw and stopped scrolling.

She jumped onto the website and was immediately captivated by the stories of individuals whose lives were changed by the organization.

A week later, she came across a social media post from Hope for the Homeless. It shared a link to download an ebook that provided stories about its mission and impact.

Sarah read it cover to cover.

Still wanting to learn more, Sarah subscribed to its email newsletter to receive updates on their great work.

Sarah continued to receive regular updates about their latest initiatives and the impact of their work in the community. She witnessed the change first hand.

There was a call to action in one of those emails. Sarah donated.

She felt good about her decision to financially support the organization and was happy to be a part of their mission.

Sarah also shared her experience with her friends and family and encouraged them to support the organization.

Capturing Interest

When Sarah first connected with Hope for the Homeless, they shared value with her at every stage of her giving experience.

One step naturally led to the next.

Sarah discovered what Hope for the Homeless did by coming across it's posts on social media. She quickly moved to the interest stage by visiting their website, downloading the ebook and signing up for the newsletter.

Then she found herself in the evaluation stage by reading the ebook and learning more about the organization's mission and impact. Eventually Sarah entered the commitment stage by making a donation and becoming an advocate by sharing her experience with others.

Finally, Sarah received a well-crafted thank you note for her gift and shared how the amount would be used and make a difference.

Four months later - success! Sarah learned how her investment and made an impact to help the homeless people she first intended to help.

A Value Ladder

What appears to be a perfect scenario is doable for every organization.

I like to call it a value ladder framework. It helps your audience build trust with your organization over time.

Creating a value ladder is a first step toward acquiring new donors. It provides a way for you to move your online audience through different levels of engagement, ultimately leading to a donation.

Each stage requires a corresponding level of commitment or investment from the donor.

Step 1: Awareness - Creating awareness for your prospective donor becomes an opportunity to share the value you bring to the community. Investing in marketing and engagement through clear and consistent efforts in social media, email campaigns, and community events is essential.

Step 2: Interest - Offer value by sharing compelling information. Prepare a white paper, an e-book, or delivering a webinar. Sharing what your organization does is great for exchanging the product for an email address. (if you do, be sure to communicate often).

Step 3: Evaluation - Building donor trust is an important step. Share what your organization has done to make a difference. Share others’ feedback through your website and add testimonials.

Step 4: Commitment - Your potential donor gives a one-off donation or becomes a monthly donor. You’ll see a rise in contributions by optimizing your online donor experience, including compelling donation landing pages, donation forms, or email signup pages.

Step 5: Advocacy - This is the best part. Your donor is activated and shares your impact with their closest friends and family members. Make this easy - provide them with a template to copy and paste into emails or social media posts.

Attracting donors in the online space is a different strategy. But, as a growth-minded social profit, you can create value to engage and attract new donors.

By creating a clear and easy-to-follow experience for donors, you’ll see them move from the awareness stage to becoming longtime supporters.

👉🏼Ready to optimize your social profit's online donor experience? Hit reply! I'm happy to get you started and welcome more donors like Sarah.

Link Love

Are you ready to up the ante when creating your next team presentation? Scale your video production upwards for a fraction of the cost with Synthesia.io​

Ready to dazzle your donors using a new email marketing superstar? ConvertKit has a free starter plan so you can practice what I preach 🏄🏼

A.I. Prompt of the Day. Try this prompt on your next visit to Chat.GPT:

[You're a major gift fundraiser, please share a top-level proposal for my donor to give $250,000* to support an investment in a new building* so we have more space to support more students in our programs.

*(replace the amount, the investment and the reason why you need the support).

Hit reply and share the output. It'll be interesting to see what the AI comes up with. 🚀

​

​