How to identify high propensity fundraisers and why it matters

23 July 2018

It is a truth universally acknowledged (in our world, at least) that some people are better fundraisers than others. Some people dive in, full throttle, posting asks on social media and innovating on the fundraising platforms. I recently talked to someone who had started raising money for a charity on JustGiving. She was doing a race, and she wanted to show her training so she started posting race charts on JustGiving as pictures. It was her first time fundraising and no one at the charity had asked her to do this. Clearly this woman is an absolute gem in fundraising terms, but happily for us she isn’t the only one. If you’re from a charity, the likelihood is that at least one person in your events is this enthusiastic. The question is, how do you know who these people are - and why does it matter?

Firstly, why it matters

Firstly, why it matters. We know that great fundraisers account for a small percentage of your total fundraisers, but for a much larger percentage of total donations. Regularly in our events, more than 50% of funds are raised by the top 10 or even 5% of fundraisers - with many active participants not raising funds at all. To take one event called The March Charge, fundraisers collect donations for walking or running as far as they can during the month of March. For this, 5% of fundraisers raise over 60% of funds, and just 3% of fundraisers raise 20% of the total money raised.

The discrepancy in amounts raised by your fundraisers reflects not just practical considerations - larger networks to reach out to, for example - but says a great deal about the mindset of your fundraisers. If someone is a great supporter of your charity, but nervous about fundraising, then they might not reach out even with a fantastic network. If someone is a great supporter and not nervous, that’s a different and exciting proposition. The two different mindsets of your fundraisers invite different styles of communication, fundraising asks and potentially fundraising targets.

To properly tailor your communication to your supporters, you need to know if they’ll be uploading training graphs from the word go, or not. So Strava charts aside, how can we find your potential fundraising greats?

To identify the mindset of your participants, you can look at their behaviour when registering. We find a significant correlation in more money fundraised and behaviours including:

  • Changing their fundraising target
  • Adding a profile picture
  • Changing the default information on their fundraising page
  • Making a personal donation

On Funraisin this information is captured on your fundraising platform and can be sent to marketing automation tools to create communication that’s customised and relevant to the fundraisers you have. Admin notifications can also alert you in real time when these interactions are occuring.

The beauty of sending customised emails to your fundraisers - alongside receiving donations - is seeing their behaviour change. As you normalise fundraising and encourage them, some participants will increase their engagement in your event and this is something you can monitor, and adapt communications to accordingly.

Common indicators

Common actions our charities look out for from participants are:

  • The last login to their fundraising page
  • Whether they’ve added their own fundraising blogs/personal stories
  • If they’ve connected up a fitness device to track activity
  • If they’ve logged fitness activities
  • Their fitness distances achieved versus distance goals
  • The number of sponsored donations received
  • If they’ve self donated
  • Whether they’ve changed their default fundraising target
  • If they’ve uploaded their own profile pic

Knowing when participants are taking these actions means you can celebrate successes in real time with your fundraisers. Some charities set up real time alerts for high propensity fundraisers being sent to event managers, so they can jump on the phone to congratulate them on a goal reached, and see if there’s anything they can do to help them.

At Funraisin, we find the propensity to fundraise a powerful indicator when evaluating how successful someone might be when fundraising for you. I hope you can use these indicators to identify your potential fundraising greats!

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