Fundraising for Social Change, 8th Edition

PART THREEStrategies for Acquisition and Retention

This section discusses in detail the strategies organizations use to invite people who have never given to become donors—direct mail, email, websites, social media, the telephone, special events, and canvassing—and then how to use those same strategies to invite people to give again and again. We start with a discussion of one of the most important concepts in fundraising, the overarching approach called “multichannel” fundraising. Multichannel fundraising means that you are delivering the same message across all the strategies you are using. Multichannel fundraising is the practical application of the concepts in Chapter Three, “Be Clear About What the Money Will Do.”

Making sure everyone is getting the same message is not a recommendation to repeat yourself; rather, it is to think about the differences between how you tell your story on Giving Tuesday and how you tell the story in a direct mail appeal. How you describe your work on the phone will be different from what you invite people on Twitter to comment on and retweet. But all these roads will lead back to your case for support. No matter the channel, the purpose of the communication is the same: to educate all the people who might be attracted to your work so that they are inspired to support you.

We then describe the basics of acquisition and retention strategies—including what they all have in common, especially direct mail and online fundraising—as well as specific ...