When your nonprofit is behind in your fundraising goals, it can be a little intimidating to ask for help.
Nevertheless, hiring a fundraising consultant can not only lift your nonprofit out of a fundraising slump, but craft new strategies to ensure a steady flow of donations in the future.
What’s more, if you’re worried about finding the right fundraising consultant for your operations, don’t sweat it! These handy nonprofit assistants range in size, location and specialities to fit your exact needs every time.
In fact, you can always count on a fundraising consultant’s fresh perspective and expertise to help revitalize these nonprofit tasks:
- Reshape donor engagement.
- Conduct effective feasibility studies.
- Design rockstar fundraising strategies.
- Offer leadership training and services.
Despite popular belief, even the process of hiring a fundraising consultant is simpler than you ever imagined.
So the next time you find yourself in a donation funk, don’t hesitate to reach out for some professional fundraising consultation from these trusted nonprofit allies.
Oftentimes, the root of many of your nonprofit’s fundraising challenges may stem from low donor engagement.
Fortunately, fundraising consultants can help you address this important factor by determining new ways of identifying prospects and boosting online donations. Let’s take a look!
Identify Major Giving/Planned Giving Prospects
The majority of a nonprofit’s donations typically comes from major or planned gifts with amounts surpassing five or six digits. Therefore, having an effective way to pinpoint ideal major or planned giving donors is essential to your nonprofit’s overall fund development.
Fundraising consultants can work with your nonprofit’s major gift officer to utilize prospect research tools that narrow down prime major/planned giving contenders in your donor database.
They can even give you a heads up for what specific factors to look for while searching for key donors like:
- Stock ownership.
- Real estate investment.
- Past giving to nonprofits or charities.
- Nonprofit volunteer involvement.
No matter what, you’ll be amazed at how quickly a major giving or planned giving consultation can turn your nonprofit’s fundraising around.
Revamp Online Donation Forms
A clean and easy-to-use online donation form can make a world of difference in engaging your virtual donors.
For nonprofits struggling to connect with this vital demographic, fundraising consultants can provide tips for optimizing your online donation forms to collect more digital donations.
For instance, a consultant can help you use striking visuals and colors to catch an online donor’s eye as well as design your page to be easily accessible on mobile devices.
In addition, they can help you experiment with default or customizable donation amounts to determine which method generates the biggest donor response.
Takeaway: Fundraising consultants can help your nonprofit target and engage major giving and online donors for elevated fundraising.
Before your nonprofit can put on a giant, lucrative fundraiser, it’s best to coordinate a detailed feasibility study first to anticipate your fundraising project’s success down the line.
Fundraising consultants will work with your nonprofit to ensure you’re getting the results you need to move forward with a rewarding capital campaign.
Get a Fresh, Third-Party Perspective
When it comes to organizing a large-scale fundraiser, we’re positive that your nonprofit’s fundraising team is on the ball.
That being said, sometimes your team may be so excited to move along in your fundraiser that critical details or warning signs fall through the cracks during the initial planning period.
A fundraising consultant can help you avoid common feasibility study mistakes and conduct it strategically so your nonprofit can focus on building sustainable solutions from the findings.
A consultant’s outside perspective can also be used to help resolve roadblocks your nonprofit may otherwise have been stuck for a solution on.
In this way, a fundraising consultant can bring feasibility study challenges to light that an in-house representative may have missed altogether.
Avoid In-house Interview Bias
Speaking of in-house feasibility studies, during this critical stage in your capital campaign, it’s always safe to go with a professional fundraising consultant for directing interviews.
This ties back to how even the most well-intentioned in-house interviewers may let important information slide in favor of pushing the project forward.
To avoid this setback, consider the following ways a fundraising consultant can help you conduct beneficial feasibility study interviews the first time around:
- Interviewees are more likely to be straightforward with an interviewer without a personal stake in the project.
- A third-party interviewer can provide objective and honest feedback about feasibility study results.
- A trained fundraising consultant can help utilize your findings for creating a strong case for support and development strategies.
For more must-know feasibility study tips, check out Double the Donation’s six steps to success!
Takeaway: A fundraising consultant will start your feasibility study on the right track with fresh ideas and objective interviews.
There are many different directions your nonprofit can choose to go in for organizing a killer fundraiser.
Why not use a fundraising consultant’s expertise to help decide on which profitable fundraising avenue is right for you?
To help get the ball rolling, here are some of the top strategies a fundraising consultant can assist your nonprofit in developing every step of the way.
Fundraising Events
Everyone loves a good fundraising event and a professional consultant may be just the help you need to ensure yours makes a lasting impression with donors.
In many cases, these trained professionals can help your nonprofit plan, market and host a creative and successful fundraising event practically in their sleep.
No kidding; from creating a budget and selecting a venue to branding your event and training your staff, a fundraising consultant has got you covered in hitting the essential points in your fundraising event checklist.
Online Fundraising: Peer-to-Peer and Crowdfunding
Another popular fundraising approach is to reach out to your online constituents through a peer-to-peer or crowdfunding campaign.
Fundraising consultants can give you advice and recommendations on the right software platforms, tactics and marketing to efficiently launch either one of these online fundraisers.
They can even work with your nonprofit’s development director to help set in place stable peer-to-peer or crowdfunding campaigns to generate donations for a long timespan.
Incorporate a Matching Gift Program
Any fundraising consultant can tell you that a matching gift program is one of the best ways for your nonprofit to not only encourage regular donations, but double your fundraising altogether.
These experts can help lay the groundwork for this donation tactic by appealing to corporate sponsors to participate in your matching gift program, and defining minimum and maximum matching gift amounts.
On top of that, they can even recommend matching gift software for you to access all of your corporate sponsor and donation information from one convenient source.
Takeaway: A fundraising consultant is always ready to aid your nonprofit in designing and executing a fundraising game plan that fits your needs.
As we mentioned before, the purpose of a fundraising consultant is not to just boost your current fundraising, but guarantee your nonprofit continues to exceed your donation goals.
One of the best ways to achieve this objective is by setting in place thorough and efficient leadership and training services at your organization.
So without further ado, let’s break down the top techniques for establishing a strong fundraising leader and volunteer team.
Develop Executive Fundraising Training
If your fundraising is lacking, chances are it’s because your nonprofit’s board and executive leaders may need a refresher on the best ways to secure necessary donations.
A fundraising consultant can partner with your executive authorities to address fundraising concerns and develop training services to educate and prepare fundraising staff.
These workshops or classes can reinforce your nonprofit’s fundraising mission and priorities as well as stress team accountability.
Furthermore, they can help you design fundraising best practices as downloadable resources to provide tangible assistance to every member of your fundraising team.
If you’re still in need of extra help, rest assured a fundraising consultant can direct you to a local nonprofit executive search firm for strengthening your board and executive leadership.
Learn more about local nonprofit executive search with Aly Sterling Philanthropy’s exclusive services in Ohio, Indiana and Michigan.
Grow your Fundraising Volunteer Base
Likewise, when it comes to fundraising, your nonprofit can never have enough assistance from staff and community volunteers. However, sometimes it’s difficult for nonprofits to reach out and motivate potential volunteers.
Fundraising consultants can help you implement successful tactics for building the volunteer alliance you need to ensure maximum fundraising.
For instance, a strong social media presence never hurts to promote online fundraising opportunities like peer-to-peer and crowdfunding as well as draw in valuable supporters.
A consultant can even help you organize in-person or remote fundraising workshops as well as additional resources to help fundraising volunteers be the best they can be.
In addition, these experts can help you make the most of your donor database by connecting with supporters who have already shown an interest in nonprofit or charity volunteer work.
Overall, an experienced fundraising consultant should have no problem helping your nonprofit bring any of these volunteer engagement strategies into play.
Takeaway: Fundraising consultants can make sure your nonprofit leaders, staff and volunteers form an effective fundraising alliance for years to come.
Believe it or not, fundraising consultants share the same goal as your nonprofit: to make certain you receive the funds you need to make a difference in your cause and community.
Above all, remember that these long-standing allies are always available to your nonprofit and ready to take your fundraising to the next level the minute you ask.
