Five Ways to Attract Donors

Attracting donors is a high priority at every United Way, so let’s look at five ways your United Way can attract donors.

#1: Giving Opportunities Outside of Campaign

This shouldn’t surprise you, but our research has found that over 50% of all people who did not give to United Way last year, have previously given to United Way. So why aren’t all these people supporting United Way now? The big two reasons are they no longer work at an organization with a campaign, or they have retired. The solution: you need to ask them to give outside of campaign. The most common way United Ways do this is by holding an event open to the public such as a golf outing, auction, Power of the Purse, etc.

Super Success Advice for Events: When you hold an event, you MUST collect the names and contact information of everyone who attends. This is the most valuable thing you can do (even more important than the money you raise) because it gives you the ability to develop an on-going, direct relationship with someone who cares enough about what your United Way is doing to support your event.

Learn more secrets for doing incredibly successful events from our webinar Five Essentials for High-Return Special Events. 

#2: Ask People to Fund Your Initiative

If your United Way has an initiative like Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library or VITA, you have a great donor magnet. When you can say “Your contribution of $5 a week will help eight children be ready for kindergarten by providing them with a book every month from Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library” you give donors a clear message of how they can change lives through United Way. Show a picture of a child reading their book and a quote from their parent and the donor can see how their contribution will change lives.

Super Success Advice for Initiatives: When you are talking about your initiatives, be sure to focus on the results of the initiatives – not the processes. Donors do not want or need to know how many volunteers are part of your VITA program, or the number of hours the volunteers worked. Donors need to know how their contribution will change lives by supporting the program. Note that the example statement does not say that the goal of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is providing 500 children books, but rather that the donor can change the lives of eight children by supporting Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.

 If someone is going to give to your United Way, they need to be able to picture the results of their contribution, not the process used to achieve the results. Talking about the dozens of volunteers that dedicated hundreds of hours to the allocation process will not get you more donors. Ditto for talking about your administrative costs. Yes, there are a couple donors (about 4% from our research) who will take the time to look up your administrative costs, but no donor anywhere woke up this morning and decided they would give money to the charity with the lowest administrative costs. If you want to learn more about how to communicate results, check out our webinar How to Communicate Your Impact: What to Say and How to Say it.

#3: Volunteering for United Way

Younger donors are more likely to volunteer for an organization before they financially support the organization. If you want to attract younger donors, one of the best ways to do so is to offer them an opportunity to volunteer FOR your United Way.

I’ll bet you noticed the word “FOR” was capitalized in the sentence “volunteer FOR your United Way.” This is not an accident. If you are going to attract a younger donor, you cannot be passing them through to volunteer at a partner agency. When someone is passed through to volunteer at a local nonprofit organization, guess who they will be likely to support financially – the organization they volunteered at and not United Way.

Super Success Advice for Volunteering: You need to provide a direct volunteering opportunity where someone is volunteering for your United Way. Plenty of United Ways have volunteering opportunities related to their allocation panels, but that is not what will attract donors. A direct volunteering opportunity is a short, easy commitment of time and effort which is clearly connected to changing or improving lives. Anyone who volunteers should be able to say, “I volunteered at United Way today to help halt hunger, reduce poverty, end homelessness, etc.” Learn more about direct volunteering from our blog post How to Do Volunteering Right.

If you are interested in learning more about how to get the younger generation to give, check out our webinar The Next Generation Wants to Give, Get Them to Give to You.

#4: Me Before We

If you want to attract a donor, you need to make it about the donor, as in “what’s in it for me?” Admittedly, most people who support nonprofit organizations aren’t selfish and self-centered, but they need to know what their gift will accomplish.

If someone looks at your website, social media, or campaign materials, what do they see? Is it all about your United Way with a lot of sentences using the words “we” and “our?” Or is it focused on the donor with “you” and “your” in a lot of sentences? It is easy to see the difference between “Last year, we raised over $4 million to support our community” and “You helped Laura and her family get on their feet.” (BTW - these are both real sentences used by two local United Ways). Learn more about how you can evaluate your United Way’s focus on donors from our blog post Take the We/Our Versus You/Your Test.

Super Success Advice for Me Before We: Make this your mantra: We will show potential donors how they can impact their cause through United Way. Note the four parts of this mantra: show potential donors (visualize), how they can impact (demonstrate how their contribution changes lives), their cause (an issue they care about), through United Way (empower them to make a difference). If you want to learn more about how to do this, check out our blog post Get Emotional to Get Donors.

#5: Adopt an Issue Focus

A traditional United Way that raises money and allocates it to local partner agencies and funded programs will have a hard time attracting donors – especially the younger generation. The future of your United Way depends on your ability to connect with potential donors emotionally so that they can impact their cause through your United Way. Issue focused United Ways do this everyday.

Issue focused United Ways work on impacting one issue, so it is super easy for potential donors to understand United Way’s issue or cause. If your United Way does not focus on addressing a specific issue, you are missing out on donors because they will not see your United Way as addressing their cause.

Issue focused United Ways find it easy to attract donors because they can say things like “Donating to United Way helps end homelessness in our community,” or “Supporting United Way helps all children enter kindergarten ready to learn.” United Ways should be the one-stop place a donor can give to reduce poverty, end homelessness, halt hunger, or change lives.

If you want to learn more about the possibility of adopting an issue focus at your United Way, be sure to check out our United Way Survival Guide video. 

Get Busy

You now have five ways you can attract donors. Check out all of the links to our blog posts and webinars for help. If you have questions or want more information, feel free to reach out and we’ll talk about how your United Way can attract donors.