The 8-Step Digital Fundraising Campaign You Didn’t Know You Needed

Are you thinking about embarking on a fundraising campaign this season? If your choir is like most, you don’t have a dedicated staff member focused on fundraising or a huge fundraising budget. Creating a digital fundraising campaign can be very effective, especially if you have a good social media following and an email list of donors and patrons to communicate with.

What is a digital fundraising campaign? Simply put: it’s a way to ask for donations online. Putting the campaign together can feel overwhelming. Where do you start? If this is your first digital fundraising campaign, or even if it’s not your first rodeo, these steps will help you get started.

CAMPAIGN PREP (6-8 weeks)

It takes time and effort to put together a digital fundraising campaign. Do not skip or delay these steps! Each step is important to your campaign’s success.

1. Start with why.

Why are you running this campaign? Are you hoping to capitalize on year-end giving? Do you have a special project to fund — like a choir tour, a recording, a new commission, or concert? Do you want to engage your existing audience, encourage your donors to give, or gain new donors? (Surprise: a digital campaign can do all of these things!) Clarifying why you are running this campaign will help in setting your campaign goals and in creating the campaign message.

Pro Tip: Tying your campaign theme and message to a project is a great way to promote your campaign. If it’s tied to a concert, you’re already sending email reminders for the concerts so adding in a message about the campaign is a less intrusive way to remind your audience about it.

2. Determine when.

Now that you know why you’re running this campaign, you need to determine when you’re running this campaign. If it’s a year-end campaign, you’re looking at the month of December. If you have a specific project to fund, consider if you need the funds before you can launch the project and when.

How long should your campaign last? A year-end campaign could just be December while a spring campaign could last 3 weeks or 2 months. 1 week isn’t really enough time to get the word out and for folks to remember to make a donation, and longer than 2 months can be difficult to keep up interest and momentum.

3. Craft your campaign message.

Knowing why and when you are running the campaign will help shape your campaign message. If the campaign will fund a project, the message should focus on an overview and impact of the project (who will be served, how many more people will be served, etc.).

If it’s a year-end campaign, share the impact your choir has had over the last year. Have you seen an increase in attendance? Have you served more youth? Has your choir membership grown? Share the message of your choir’s impact in your community.

Don’t overthink this. The message, or case for support, should be one to two succinct paragraphs. Say what you need to say in as few words as possible (this is not the time to be long-winded!). You don’t have to be too clever. Keep it simple.

Pro Tip: Solicit a Matching Gift. Do you have a donor that gives a large gift each year? Approach them about tying that gift to the campaign and offer it as a match to incentivize your donors to give. Matches do double duty: they make your donor happy to know their gift is going to go twice as far, and it makes your new donors happy to know their gift is being matched. You can offer the match at the start of the campaign, or announce it in the last week to build a big finish.

4. Assemble your campaign materials.

Now it’s time to assemble the basic elements of the campaign. How will you accept donations? What visuals will you use to communicate the campaign message? Who are you trying to reach? How often will you communicate with your audience?

Don’t skip this part and don’t wait to work on it! These materials are the basic elements of the campaign.

Platform: Determine how you will accept donations. What online portal will you use? You can simply use your current donation platform to accept donations or sign up for a new one (there are so many to choose from, it’s hard to know where to begin).

Graphics: These are the visual elements you will use to brand and communicate the campaign to your audience. All of the graphics should be consistent. You’ll want a few different sizes that will work in your email blast, social media posts, and website. (Not sure how to create graphics? Sign up for Canva and then follow the ‘Create Digital Graphics’ tips of this post.)

Audience: Who are you trying to reach with this campaign? To keep it simple, you’ll want to communicate with your main email list, plus ticket buyers and donors of the last three years.

Communications Calendar: How will you communicate with your audience? Aim for one email and one social media post each week during the campaign to keep things manageable (unless you have time and you’re sure your followers won’t mind, I wouldn’t email or post more than twice a week). Here’s a sample calendar:

Draft Now - Even with a short campaign, you are looking at a minimum of five e-blasts and posts, so start writing now, well in advance of the campaign.

Pro Tip: Be sure to announce your campaign plans INTERNALLY first. Get the buy-in of the board, staff, and choir members before you start and let them know what the campaign goals are. Digital campaigns are successful when your team helps promote the campaign so encourage them to like and share your choir’s campaign posts and forward the e-blasts to family and friends and ask for their support.

CAMPAIGN LAUNCH (1 week)

5. Campaign Launch

Woohoo! You made it this far. Make sure your announcement e-blast is ready to go on day one of your campaign. Cue up your social media posts and consider scheduling these so you don’t have to worry about timing them just right on launch day. Here’s your campaign launch checklist:

• Update your website a day or two before your campaign begins. Update the Donate page with campaign information, make sure your Donate button is going to the right platform to accept donations, and add information to your Homepage to make the campaign easy to find.
• Schedule the campaign announcement e-blast and social media posts to send on campaign launch day.
• Email your team and remind them that the campaign is launching the next day and to help boost the campaign by liking and sharing the post. 

CAMPAIGN (2-6 weeks)

6. Mid-Campaign Lull

There is a natural ebb and flow with any campaign and you can expect a spike of activity in the beginning and then it will be a slow trickle until the last week. This is where you will wonder if you will ever reach the goal and keeping up momentum will feel a bit daunting.

Keep the cadence of one email and one to two social media posts each week. Your choir’s supporters need to be reminded the campaign is happening. When you email and post, and then your team of board, staff, and singers share it, it helps remind anyone that hasn’t yet given that there is still time to give.

Change up the content of your posts and emails. Even reframing the language slightly helps to keep things fresh. Consider also sharing key milestones throughout the campaign. You could say that you’ve reached the halfway point of the campaign, that you’ve reached one-third or 50% of the goal, or there’s one week left to go, etc. Each of these milestones will also show forward movement for your audience and it helps motivate the team on the campaign’s progress.

7. Final Stretch

Almost there! You’ve reached the final stretch of the campaign and you may be thinking this is the time to slow communications. Well, you would be incorrect!

The final days of your campaign are vital and you will want to send more reminders. Donors often wait to see how a campaign is going to decide how much they will give—while others saw the campaign a while back and thought, I’ll do that later. You want to remind these folks they still have time to give by the deadline.

You’ll send three emails in the final week. One early in the week reminding it’s the final week; one three days before the campaign ends, and one on the last day of the campaign. And don’t forget to remind your team internally to keep up liking, sharing, and forwarding in the final days!

POST CAMPAIGN (2-3 weeks)

8. Post-Campaign Gratitude

Whew! You made it. Congrats! All done… or are you? Just when you thought the campaign was OVER, it’s NOT! You’ve made it to the final critical step of the campaign: donor appreciation.

Now it’s time to tally the donations (give yourself a week to collect and donations that are coming in by mail) and put together the materials to say THANK YOU to all of your choir’s supporters.

• A week after the campaign, say a big THANK YOU to everyone that donated, letting your followers know how much their support means to the choir and how much was raised. Post this on social media and in a follow-up e-blast.
• Gather a list of everyone that donated to the campaign. Include their name, mailing address, and gift amount.
• Write a thank you letter that shares the results of the campaign (and doubles as a tax letter for their records). You’ll want to do a mail merge to personalize each letter and include their donation amount. Then print, sign, assemble, and mail the letters (ask volunteers to help you!).
  

DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP. Showing gratitude for the folks that support what you do is not just the right thing to do, it is the first step toward repeat giving!

Pro tip: For gifts over a certain amount, enlist help from board members to make thank you calls to your donors. Write out some talking points for them in case they are nervous (how much was raised, your support helps us present programs, etc. and of course to say thank you).

If you’ve made it this far, and mailed your final thank you letters, here’s when that congratulations is truly earned. Congratulations! You’ve just spent time sharing the impact of your choir and engaging your community in supporting both your organization and people in the organization your donors care about by giving them an easy way to give.

Did you reach your goal? What did you learn during the process? Do you need more hands next time? Start planning earlier? Extend or shorten the campaign? Did you fall short of your goal and need to adjust for next time? Let the answers to these questions inform the next campaign. Each time you do it, you’ll learn and get better and better at running it.

What other tips have you learned from digital fundraising? Share your wisdom in the comments below!