How Do You Keep Donors Engaged After Their First Donation?

Your Nonprofits Has Donors, Now What?

Acquiring new donors is hard work. It doesn’t matter what type of nonprofit you are or what your cause is, getting people to make contributions is expensive and requires a lot of effort. When somebody gives to your organization and indicates that they want to be involved, how do you keep them engaged so that they give again?

You probably start off by thanking them for their donation and sending them either a personal handwritten note or an automated email that expresses your gratitude and gives the donor some insight into how their donation will impact your cause. But after that, what’s next? 

Reactivate Past Donors

You may add them to your newsletter list so that they get periodic updates about what you’re doing, but are you really doing anything to ask donors to re-up their contribution or telling them how the money they gave has impacted the people or ideas that your organization supports?

One of the best ways to re-activate past donors is to send them a personal email to follow up a few months later. We suggest sending a personalized, automated email that goes out 90 or 180 days after a donor last gave, updates them on the impact their contribution has made, and asks for another contribution (even referencing the last donation amount they gave).

You can update the content either every 90 or 180 days so it’s consistent with what’s going on at your organization, but the rest of the content can be dynamic based on who the person is, how much they gave and what campaign or program they gave to.

As an example, let’s say that over a 180 day period you have 500 donors who on average give $150. If 80% do not give again within 180 days, that’s potentially $60,000 of potential donations sitting out there. If you were able to capture 15%-20% of those people, that’s an additional $9,000-$12,000 of money you could raise and put to good use.

Setting up and sending a re-activation email should only takes 15-20 minutes and with the integration between DonorPerfect and Klaviyo, you can make that happen quickly and pain free.

We all know how difficult it is to acquire a new donor. How much relief would you and your organization feel if you could consistently generate recurring donations from more of your new or recent donors?

Daniel Esrig is part of the Growth Strategy team at Klaviyo. He and his team work to make great email accessible to all types of organizations. His desire to help marketers and their teams be smarter and more engaging in the way they communicate is what drives him not only to help Klaviyo grow but also to help marketers of all types to be more successful.