So you’re in charge of your nonprofit fundraising campaigns and you’re looking for some pledge fundraising ideas. Well, I promise you that you’ve come to the right place.
Pledge fundraising is a fantastic way to engage your supporters, but of course, it comes with its own challenge
- Donors might not be motivated to donate after making the pledge.
That’s why you need to make a lasting impact on your supporters and have a system in place to make sure those pledges are turning into donations.
So how do you run a successful pledge fundraising campaign for your nonprofit?
Learn: More best practices for nonprofit fundraising
Boosting your donation numbers is easy by putting these fundraising tips into practice:
Use Text To Give
You can make it super easy and super quick for donors to pledge to your cause through text.
After choosing your preferred text to give tool, all you need to do to set it up is:
- Deciding on a Keyword, making sure it’s simple and relevant. For example, PLEDGE.
- Choose the phone number or shortcode that donors will send the keyword to, for example, texting PLEDGE to 45392.
- This can link to the webpage where donors can specify the amount they wish to pledge to your cause.
Note: Make sure the page you are linking to is mobile optimized, especially if it is built specifically for your text campaign.
Now all you have to do is promote your keyword and number through your campaign, including printing it out on posters and posting it on your website.
Provide Pledge Incentives
Who doesn’t like a reward for doing good? A nice incentive will go a long way in encouraging donors to pledge more to your campaign. Here are some examples you could use for your next pledge fundraising campaign:
- A physical item when a donor pledges a minimum amount of money, e.g. every person who pledges 50$ or more gets a custom t-shirt.
- Add high level pledgers to an exclusive club with perks, like exclusive parking space at events or discounts at your nonprofits store.
- Inform your donors about matching gifts, where corporates match donations of employees 1:1.
Note: Custom merchandise such as clothing can double as free advertising for your cause whenever your supporters wear them in public.
As long as you make good on your incentives only after the donation is confirmed, you have a great way to boost pledges for your campaign.
Introduce Pledge Conditions
Setting conditions for your pledge campaigns will drive interest and make people more passionate about pledging towards your cause.
For example, setting a goal for the amount of funding you want to raise for your campaign, and only collecting pledges when the goal is reached. Say, you set a goal of $5,000 for your campaign within a certain period of time. Your pledgers will only have to follow through on their donation once the total pledges amount to 5,000 dollars.
Note: Make sure the goals you set are actually achievable. It would be a shame to almost reach a goal only to run out of time before you hit the mark.
There are other ways you can go about setting up conditions for your campaign:
- Collecting pledges for things that might happen, like natural disasters or food shortages. In case nothing does happen, there is no obligation to follow through on their pledge.
- Collecting pledges for milestones reached by your organization, say, having donors pledge $50 for every 10 volunteers you recruit to your nonprofit.
Pledge conditions are a way to get creative with your pledge fundraising campaign.
Track Your Pledges
You’ve probably experienced the headache of having to keep track of too many things at once. If your not careful, the same will happen if you don’t organize your pledges.
It always pays off to have a system to set reminders for your fundraising staff to contact pledgees and remind them about their pledge.
Depending on the size of your organization and the tools available to you, there are a few ways to go about it:
- Most fundraising software have built-in pledge tracking systems that will give you reminders about pledges
- If you’re nonprofit is too small for tracking software, set up an organized excel sheet and set your calendar reminders to follow up on each pledge.
Note: Make sure you thank your donors once they have made their pledge and once again when they follow through and donate.
Pledge fundraising is a great option for donors who don’t have the means to give right away and the ideas given above offer you plenty of room to get creative when running your pledge campaigns, while making it easy for your donors to pledge and for you to keep track of them.
How does your organization run the perfect pledge fundraising campaign? I’d love to know at [email protected].
Feature image source: Kenny Eliason/Unsplash
