The big question is, how do you find more donors? That's what marketing is all about. Get in front of more audiences and get them to convert and become your customers. In this episode, I discuss ways to find donors within your existing audience. Tune in to learn more about how to tap your existing donor base to help you keep your organization growing and thriving.

What you’ll learn:

→ Your biggest fans can help you find a new audience without having to go after cold ones.
→ Retaining donors cost so much less money than finding new ones.
→ Maximize on those folks that you already have.
→ We often forget about the basics of what it is, and we get all excited about the marketing.

Want to skip ahead? Here are some key takeaways:

[01:22] How to find more donors
[01:47] How to tap our existing donor base to help us keep our organization growing and thriving
[02:09] Taking a look at your database in your CRM
[03:41] Your email list
[05:50] Simple actions you can take right now

Full Transcript

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] So one of the questions I get asked all the time is how do I find more donors? And yes, that's what marketing is all about getting in front of more audiences, getting them to convert getting them to become customers of yours. And that is what we're going to talk about today. But with a little twist, we're going to talk about ways to find donors within your existing audience. Stay with me. My name is Sami Bedell Mulhern, and I am the host of The Digital Marketing Therapy Podcast. Thank you so much for joining me for today's episode. It's going to be a good one, I promise. 

But before we jump into finding your donors, this episode is brought to you by our patrons, I hope that you'll join me at thefirstclick.net/Patreon, we offer so many additional pieces of support, and ways for you to take action, including a workbook that goes every month with the episodes that are coming out so that you can take action and get things done. So for as little as $5 a month, you can join our Patreon community and get moving in your marketing in your business. So again, thefirstclick.net forward/Patreon. I can't wait to see you there. Let's get into the episode. 

[Canned Intro] You're listening to the digital marketing therapy podcast. I'm your host, Sami Bedell Mulhern. And each week, I bring you tips from myself and other experts, as well as hot seats with small business owners and entrepreneurs to demystify digital marketing and get you on your way to generating more leads and growing your business. 

Okay, so how do we find more donors? This is always something that organizations are working on, because there's just that natural attrition, right, some donors fall off. We need increased funds in order to fund the new program that we're working on all of the things. But I want to challenge you to flip that mindset a little bit. And instead of going after new donors, how do we tap into our existing donor base to help us keep our organization growing and thriving? And there are a couple of ways that I want you to think about this. Because no, I'm not suggesting that you don't need new donors. But I'm suggesting that your biggest fans can help you find a new audience without having to go after cold ones or people that have never engaged with your organization. 

So the first one is taking a look at your database in your CRM, and really thinking about the lapsed donor. So who can you go after that hasn't given it a while, who hasn't heard from you in a while that might want the updates that you've got going on and all the amazing things that you've been doing in your organization. So that's number one, there can be a whole wealth of people in there that just haven't heard from you. So they haven't given to you. Retaining donors costs so much less money than finding new ones. And so let's maximize on those folks that we already have. While we're there, if they're not willing or able, at this time to make a donation, maybe they're willing to refer new people to you. 

So this could be from your existing donors. So you might have one email or campaign that goes out to existing donors, asking them to introduce you to friends and family, business colleagues, and what have you. And you might have an email that goes out to your cold donors that are your lapsed donors that says, hey, haven't heard from you from us in a while, we haven't gotten a donation from you all, maybe phrase it a little bit better than that. But you know what I'm saying, hey, we'd love to get back in touch with you, share with you, or share with you what we're up to share with your upcoming campaign and ask them for referrals as well. So two separate emails, because you have two different messages that you're probably sending. But again, hitting them up and asking them to introduce you to new friends, family, colleagues, what have you. 

The last one that I want to mention today is just your email list. You never know if you're sending weekly broadcasts or monthly broadcasts to your list, just simply stating, hey, we're looking for donations, we need funds for this. You might be doing that, but maybe sending one that's just very specific. Help us reach our campaign for x  By donating $25. Today, if we can get 100 people to donate $25 today that will outfit us for the dog food that we need for all of the cute ones, make it specific, make it intentional, and make it something that people can feel like hey, I'm giving this amount. And it's going to help with this tangible thing. And if I can ask three friends to do the same, then I'm tripling my impact or making a big difference for this organization. 

So you'll notice I didn't say anything about hopping on social media. I didn't say anything about creating a bunch of content or running ads or doing a huge campaign right? We often forget about some of the basics of what it is and we get all excited about the marketing. So let's use the marketing tools that we've put in place. To support us in retaining our donors and using our existing base to support what it is that we're trying to do, and doing that consistently. 

So no, I'm not suggesting that you send an email to your list every week asking for my right that's gonna get old. And that's definitely not a strategy that we teach. But when you think about your year, you think about the content that you're pushing out the emails that you have scheduled, you're thinking about the campaigns that you have in place, putting these conversations back out to your existing donor base, asking for those referrals, asking for those donations, asking for them to come back to you and you showing up consistently to them, is really going to increase that retention rate, which is going to just naturally increase your donations from your organization. 

Okay, I hope this was helpful. This was a short and sweet into the point episode, but I think that there are some simple actions that you can take right now. And we've been an organism or been in business for a while, we tend to kind of forget or forget the power of some of the simple basics. We want the shiny object things that are happening, right. So I hope that you'll head on over to thefirstclick.net/Patreon Become A patron for as little as $5 a month get that workbook I've got some prompts in there for you so that you can take action on what you learned today. And make sure you subscribe, wherever you listen, you can check out the show notes for this episode at thefirstclick.net forward/podcast or the video version of this episode at thefirstclick.net/ YouTube. See you there.