Digital fundraising can be a key element to the overall success for any Republican campaign or conservative group. However, it requires thought and care to ensure that your effort pays off. 

These days, a successful political fundraising campaign is not guaranteed. However, with good advice you can greatly increase the chances that your efforts will not only break through the noise, but pay off with a victory!

Table of Contents

Before we dive, let’s look at how digital fundraising helped a high profile Republican candidate.

Case Study: Digital Fundraising for Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy

This example looks at how a digital fundraising campaign significantly helped win the reelection of Alaska’s Republican Governor, Mike Dunleavy. 

Arena built an honest and transparent campaign that cut through the noise of nationalized fundraising, dishonest tactics and intrusive over-sending of emails and SMS. 

For Governor Dunleavy, Arena did not utilize dishonest language or tactics where donors may have accidentally and/or unknowingly donated more than intended. We also did not use scammy tactics like pre-checked future donation buttons, opting-in to pay transaction fees, countless upsells and one-click automatic donations. 

Instead, we planned to send more realistic appeals and asks that looked genuine and always let the donor or prospect know whom the communication was coming from. This resulted in more donations and higher user engagement.

As a result, Governor Dunleavy was able to defy the odds to become the first Alaska Republican Governor to be reelected in 44 years, while also skirting the ranked-choice voting tabulation by receiving more than 50% of the vote in a 4-way race.

Our small-dollar fundraising efforts brought in close to $500,000. As a result of our honest and transparent program, our refund rate was extremely low at .003% of all donations. True to our fundraising roots, we focused on the net dollars for the campaign and our cost of fundraising was below average at 45%.

How digital fundraising works

Digital fundraising, or online fundraising, uses techniques and applications to reach a larger audience, steward new donors and build greater relationships with a donor base. Digital fundraising is an ongoing process starting with online outreach techniques such as websites, emails, texting and social media.

This guide is designed to provide an overview of the things you need to know before deciding whether your Republican campaign should include digital fundraising in your mix.

Disclaimer: When done correctly, digital fundraising has a lot of moving parts. Once you understand the scope of the task, consider working with an experienced team that can make life easier and make your fundraising more successful.

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Chapter 1: Defining Your Digital Fundraising Campaign

Defining your digital fundraising campaign is a lot like writing a business plan. As part of the process, it’s important to be realistic with your goals. Digital fundraising is not ‘one-size-fits-all,’ and a full program with a vendor is not always a good fit for smaller campaigns. 

Can you afford to lose money in the first few months, knowing that it could eventually bring higher returns after you build out your list and successfully ‘warm’ it up? 

Understanding what you need, setting realistic goals and implementing a strategy and schedule will help ensure that your digital fundraising campaign works for you!

Pre-planning your digital fundraising campaign

Digital fundraising doesn’t have to be complicated, here are some things to consider as you start planning:

• Who are you raising funds for?
• What do you need money for?
• How much money do you think you need to raise? 
• Who will donate to your political campaign? What will motivate them to give? Define your audience.
• What resources do you have already lined up?
• What type of content (ads, social posts, etc.) do you intend to put out and on what schedule?

These and other questions are important to know. Defining your online fundraising campaign clearly and sharing it with your team will help set the direction, establish goals and provide a roadmap for your fundraising efforts. 

Without further ado, let’s get started defining your digital fundraising campaign.

Clarity of purpose

Defining a digital fundraising campaign brings clarity to your purpose and mission. It also helps you articulate why you are fundraising. The reason could be to support a specific cause, solve a problem, or achieve a specific objective. 

Regardless—by clearly stating your purpose, it is easier to communicate your message to potential donors. Your message will clarify your sense of purpose and it will inspire them to support your cause.

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PRO TIP: Know what makes your brand different from competitors. Build out a document detailing why someone would give to your organization and a list of items money will go toward.

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Goal setting and strategy

Defining your digital fundraising campaign will help you set clear and measurable goals. When you create realistic fundraising targets, you know what you need to do to find success. Additionally, you can better track your progress and adjust as needed. 

Knowing your goals will help you determine the best strategy. For example, which methods and channels are best to reach donors willing to donate to your conservative cause?

Fundraising requires an ‘all of the above’ approach, it’s not a one-size-fits-all program and your strategy will form when you set a defined goal.

Targeted messaging and audience engagement

Defining your target audience is important because it helps you craft messaging they will relate to. Knowing demographics, interests, values and motivations will help you connect and persuade on an emotional level. 

Understanding your audience will help you build trust and community by addressing their concerns and demonstrating the impact of their contributions. 

Ultimately, a well-defined online fundraising campaign enables you to engage with your audience consistently by sharing updates, success stories and expressing gratitude.

Mobilizing digital fundraising resources

Once you’ve defined your campaign, you will be able to determine the financial and non-financial resources you will need. Knowing your resources will help you understand how and when to use them. 

With this plan in place, you can begin to rally volunteers, secure sponsorships and leverage partnerships that align with your campaign’s objectives. 

Develop your content calendar

As you consider your digital communication resources (social media, email, public relations, etc.,) you’ll need to create a solid content calendar. Consistency and frequency are very important, you’ll want to make sure the resources are lined up. You’re in this for the long haul so make sure your resources are dispersed appropriately across your timeline to ensure consistent messaging.

Running a digital fundraising campaign is a worthy cause and it helps to have a solid group of early stakeholders—emotional, physical or financial. If you are in the startup phase, having a well-defined plan will help you build your team.

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PRO TIP: Respect your donors. Give them something to invest in. Don’t treat them like an ATM.

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Best practices and ethics of your online fundraising campaign

Given the nature of digital fundraising in the modern age—with spam sending, daily messages and scam tactics to squeeze every last dollar from donors—it’s important to adopt a set of best ethical practices to increase the odds of finding sustained success. 

• Transparency and Honesty: Be transparent about the purpose of your fundraising campaign, how donations will be used and any fees or administrative costs associated with donations. Avoid misleading or deceptive tactics that may misrepresent your cause or organization.
• Regular Updates: Provide regular updates on the progress of your digital fundraising and the impact of donor contributions.
• Keep It Local: Donors are increasingly being turned off with appeals from candidates running for offices thousands of miles away who have no national profile. Expand your donor base with local and personal messaging. 

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Chapter 2: List Building

Make your list and check it twice! List building is the foundation with which your campaign will ride on, but it is not a one-and-done project. Your list must be regularly maintained to maximize deliverability and ensure your message is reaching your intended audience. 

A message can only go so far and, without a good list, your digital strategy will go nowhere. 

Lists will naturally have attrition and subscribers who no longer want to receive your communications. Maintaining your housefile (i.e., your campaign list) and growing it is essential to a successful program.

How to build a list

List building is not complicated. In fact, you’ve probably performed some sort of list building in the past. List building is merely the process of collecting contact information and adding it to a spreadsheet document (e.g., Excel, Numbers, etc.).

There are several ways you and your stakeholders can get started building a great list:

• Existing Assets: Begin by capturing your organization’s existing contacts or house file. You should already have, or at least plan on, gathering organic signups from your organization’s website. Build an early community on social media and email and encourage them to contribute to the list by signing up. At a minimum, include phone and email.
• Organic: Using your website as a passive way to collect information is a great way to add quality contacts. Create an amazing incentive (like an e-book!), have an email signup form in your sidebar, use exit intent pop-ups and install an opt-in bar at the top of your website. You can also add a signup form to any landing pages you are driving prospects to from your email, digital advertising and social media campaigns.
• List Rental: They can be very effective. You define your target parameters and pay the rental fee, but you don’t see the list. You do get to keep any contacts that you convert. 
• Revenue Share: This is where you use an existing list and pay a commission—typically 70-90 cents on the dollar—for any money raised. Like list rentals, you don’t see the actual list, but you keep any contact you convert. 
• Advertising: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, native and programmatic advertising are all good options that can drive targeted audiences to donate or sign up. Your goal is to motivate them to take action. 

For example, you can run a Facebook ad that asks the audience to sign a petition to secure the southern border. Ads can be petitions, polls, surveys, or pledges on topics that appeal to your targeted audience.

List segmentation

It’s important to get out ahead of your emails by ensuring your mailing list is properly segmented. Segmenting allows you to target individuals based on their activity levels and better cater to their interests. Making this a regular practice for your team will lead to better reception and deliverability and much lower spam rates.

The idea of list segmentation is to categorize your audience by unique motivations in order to deliver targeted messages.

Example list segments:

• prospects
• donor type (major, grassroots)
• age
• gender
• geographic location
• different issues
• etc.

Some digital fundraisers have in-house data teams that use sophisticated techniques to take this concept to the next level. At a minimum you should segment your lists into prospects and donors.

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PRO TIP: Don’t over-send to your subscribers. Annoying your most active supporters can lead to impacting your brand in a negative way and opting-out of future messages.

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Finalizing your list

You never really finalize your list. You always want to be data tagging, updating existing contact information, gathering new contacts and new data. That being said, prior to sending out any email or text campaign, take a deep dive into your data—especially any new data you’ve added—to make sure it is scrubbed, cleaned and standardized. 

Remember, just like in the private sector, garbage in, garbage out. The better your list, the better your fundraising will be. 

Best practices in list building

Don’t use unethical list building practices such as scraping sites for emails or purchasing contact lists. This could result in your emails being routed to the junk folder or worse: your domain or sending IP address could end up being blocklisted. 

To avoid these spam traps, be sure to regularly clean up your contact lists and send to people who want to see your content.

Honor list removal requests by truly opting out subscribers when they make the request.

Data Privacy and Security: Safeguard donor information and comply with data protection regulations. Ensure that personal data collected for fundraising purposes is kept secure and used only for the intended purpose with the donor’s explicit consent.

Honoring Donor Wishes: Respect donor preferences on communication frequency and content. If donors request to opt-out, promptly honor their request.

Opt-outs: Fully opt-out users the first time they unsubscribe.

Signup Forms: Include proper attributions, disclaimers and privacy policies when asking people to sign up.

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Chapter 3: Online Donation Platforms

Online political donation platforms enable campaigns and advocacy groups to efficiently collect and manage online donations, process contributions securely and provide a seamless user experience.

Tools and services provided by online donation platforms

Every platform offers some or all of the tools and services listed below. Before you begin a review of possible vendors, consider which services are important to your campaign.

• Donation Processing: The core function of fundraising platforms is to provide convenient and secure processing of online donations. The top online donation platforms will offer payment options like credit and debit cards, online options like Venmo and Paypal, electronic fund transfers (e.g., ACH) and more. In the future, expect crypto options as well. Be aware of transaction fees and percentages.
• Customizable Donation Pages: Branded and customizable donation pages allow you to add your branding and messaging, as well as images, unique calls-to-action and custom amounts.
• Recurring Donations: Recurring contributions allowing for ongoing support and a predictable revenue stream for the campaign.
• Donor Management: Campaigns can manage their donor database by tracking donor information, segmenting and more. This allows for better targeting and personalized communication.
• Fundraising Thermometers and Progress Bars: These visual elements are often displayed on campaign websites or donation pages to show real-time progress of your fundraising goals. This type of device will help encourage donors to contribute and help you reach your milestones.
• Peer-to-Peer Fundraising: Some platforms allow supporters to create personalized fundraising pages to solicit donations from their personal networks. This could help amplify the campaign’s reach and impact.
• Email Marketing and Communication Tools: Integration with email marketing services helps campaigns send targeted messages, updates and fundraising appeals to their donor base.
• Reporting and Analytics: Comprehensive reporting and analytics tools provide valuable insights into donor behavior, fundraising performance and the effectiveness of different fundraising strategies. This data can be used to optimize your campaign.
• Compliance and Regulation Support: These tools help campaigns comply with campaign finance regulations like contribution limits and reporting requirements.
• Integration with Social Media: Integrating with social media platforms allows campaigns to promote the fundraising to a broader audience.
• A/B Testing: A/B testing allows fundraising campaigns to test two different messages (e.g., two separate emails) to identify which resonates best with their audience. This allows you to adjust and optimize your campaign messaging. 
• Mobile Responsiveness: Responsive technology ensures your donation pages display correctly on all devices (e.g., desktop, mobile and tablet.)

About online donation platforms

There are two online donation platforms that most political digital fundraising teams use:

1. WinRed: WinRed is one of the primary fundraising platforms used by Republican candidates and conservative organizations. It was established in 2019 to rival ActBlue, which is a prominent fundraising platform for Democrats. Learn more about WinRed.
2. Anedot: Anedot is a widely used fundraising platform that caters to various political campaigns, including conservative ones. It offers tools for donation processing, donor management and fundraising analytics. Learn more about Anedot.

The landscape of online fundraising platforms can change over time and platforms may come and go. The best practice is to stick with the top rated platforms to ensure you have the security and tools you need to succeed.

Best practices for managing donations

Don’t use scams like pre-checked donation boxes or dishonest tactics. Your reputation will take a hit.

Here are a few tactics and options you should employ:

• Monthly Recurring Donations 
• Future date money pledges 
• Donor-paid transaction fees

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PRO TIP: Don’t trick donors into giving more than they intended to. Pre-checked buttons and endless upsells will only lead to unnecessary refunds, anger supporters and erode trust in your brand.

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Here are a few tactics and options you should never employ:

• Forgo one-click email donations if the subscriber was a WinRed user
• Fake donation matches or multipliers
• Pre-checked future donation buttons
• Endless upsells

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Chapter 4: Email Fundraising

Email fundraising for your Republican campaign is the most powerful digital fundraising tool available and provides the most cost-effective way to drive donations and to engage and build relationships with the targeted audience of voters and potential donors.

Unlike traditional fundraising, where face to face contact and networking targets big-dollar donors, email fundraising focuses on small donations for a much larger audience.

Choosing an email marketing platform

With your audience defined and a solid email list, you’ll be ready to choose an email marketing platform. With an email marketing platform and your imported mailing list, you can send out personalized emails to very large audiences. You’ll also be able to send automatic replies and reminders.

Email marketing platforms allow you to create, manage and optimize your email campaigns. You can track metrics like open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates and unsubscribe rates and more. With this information, you can evaluate the efficacy of your campaigns and make data-driven improvements.

Features of email marketing platforms

All email platforms are not created equally. Here’s a list of the top features of email marketing platforms that you should consider when choosing:

• Campaign Creation Tools: Drag-and-drop editors and customizable templates allow users to design visually appealing emails without the need for coding skills.
• Contact Management Tools: Import, segment and organize contact lists to enable targeted and personalized email campaigns based on user preferences and behaviors.
• Automated Email Sequences: Set up automated email sequences or drip campaigns triggered by specific actions or time intervals, nurturing leads and engaging subscribers.
• A/B Testing: Test two email variations against each other (subject lines, content, visuals) to determine the most effective version before sending to the larger list.
• Personalization: Personalization features automatically add recipient names, location-based offers and other personalized elements to your emails.
• Analytics and Reporting: Analyze email campaign performance, including open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates and other key metrics to measure the success of campaigns and optimize as needed.
• Email Scheduling: Schedule delivery at specific times based on your target audience time zones and behavior patterns.
• Subscriber Management: Set subscriber preferences, unsubscribe requests and bounce rate management to maintain a clean and engaged email list.
• List Growth and Lead Capture: Forms, pop-ups and landing page integrations that facilitate lead capture and encourage website visitors to subscribe to email lists.pEmail Deliverability: Monitor and optimize deliverability rates to ensure emails are reaching inboxes and avoiding spam filters.
• CRM & e-commerce Integration: Seamless integration with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems and e-commerce platforms that make it easier to synchronize customer data.
• Spam Testing and Compliance: Ensure emails comply with anti-spam regulations and guidelines to prevent emails from being flagged as spam.
• Mobile Responsiveness: Ensures emails are mobile-friendly and display correctly on multiple devices.
• Segmentation: Create advanced audience segments based on specific criteria like purchase history, engagement levels, or demographics for highly targeted campaigns.
• Email Design and Deliverability Testing: Tools to preview and test emails across different email clients and devices, ensuring consistent design and deliverability across platforms.

The specific features offered by email marketing platforms may vary, so it’s essential to choose a platform that aligns with your unique needs and objectives.

Email marketing platform brands

Arena’s digital fundraising team uses several top platforms, because of their advanced professional features. If you’re new to email marketing platforms, you might consider one that has fewer options but is easier to use. This might include MailChimp or Constant Contact. Here’s Forbes’ list of the 10 best email marketing platforms. 

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PRO TIP: Segmentation matters. Make sure your platform can EASILY segment your lists by activity, subscriber type and any other data point you provide. It will save you time and stress to not use Excel each time you send.

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Required elements for your fundraising email

Email fundraising campaigns typically involve crafting persuasive messages that trigger emotional responses and lead to donations. At the heart of every campaign is the actual email itself. Here’s a list elements you’ll want to include in your fundraising email, as well as a few tips on how to compose them:

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PRO TIP: Keep your CTAs toward the top of your message. This will result in a higher click-through rate (CTR) for subscribers using mobile devices.

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Writing good fundraising emails

Using the right language helps your email stand out from the crowd and beat the noise. The donor relationship is important to the longevity of any campaign and future campaigns. If a donor trusts your message, CTA and campaign, they will more than likely give again.

Create a sense of urgency

Goals, supplies, merchandise, ad campaigns, end-of-month or end-of-quarter deadlines and supporting volunteer efforts are all concepts that can motivate a potential donor by making your donation request tangible and quantifiable. For example:

“My campaign just hit its 10,000th voter contact thanks to our team of hardworking volunteers, but we’re not stopping there! We are on track to hit 20,000 contacts by the end of this week. Will you help keep our volunteers fueled and motivated by giving $3 to cover a soda or $20 to cover the cost of a pizza?”

Be transparent

Canned emails can land you in the junk folder. To avoid this, use transparent language and messaging that won’t get caught in spam traps. Americans are more connected than ever, which means it’s easy to get lost in the noise. 

Use pronouns to speak directly to your reader

Pronouns help the audience picture themselves in the text and relate to what you’re saying. More than any other single technique, using “you” and “your” pulls users into the information and makes it relevant to them.

Copy editing is important

Nothing turns off a potential donor faster than poorly written copy and typos. There are a lot of great online writing tools that can help. Ultimately, tools like Grammarly can miss poor writing, you’ll want to make sure other trusted members of your team review emails prior to sending.

Personalization 

Customize fundraising messages to make them personalized for each recipient. Using personalized messages increases donations and engagement. Everyone is unique so try to not use a ‘one-size-fits-all’ fundraising strategy to achieve your goals. Research your clients thoroughly and actively monitor your campaign and region to ensure that your message is 100% YOU.

Relevance

Create messages that provide relevance to the recipient…ideas that they can relate too. 

• Clarity in CTA: Clearly state the desired action you want donors to take, such as making a donation, sharing the message, or engaging in a specific campaign activity.
• Using Emotions: Guilt, fear and emotional tactics can be used to persuade donors to contribute, but be sure to present the value and benefit to a donor.

How long should a fundraising email be?

A good email appeal should be approximately 250 to 500 words max. Best practice is to keep it short. Your donor already knows you need their money.

Technical considerations

Stay on top of your subscriber’s inbox with Send-Time Optimization (STO) and strategic re-sends to non-engagers. 

Accessibility: Make your fundraising communications accessible to all recipients, including those with disabilities. Ensure that email content and text messages are designed in a way that accommodates different assistive technologies.

Best practices for political email fundraising

• Frequency and Timing: Be mindful of the frequency for email communications to avoid overwhelming donors. Consider the recipients’ time zones and preferences to choose an optimal time for sending communications.
• Be Genuine and Authentic: It is important to send realistic appeals and asks that are genuine and always let the donor or prospective donor know who the communication was coming from. There should be no question who the email or text is coming from. 
• Transparency: Ensuring that fundraising efforts are conducted in a responsible and transparent manner, to maintain trust with donors and stakeholders, build credibility in your community and ensure a positive brand for your campaign. Here are some suggestions:
• Social Responsibility: Ensure that your fundraising campaigns align with social responsibility principles and do not promote harmful or discriminatory behavior.
• Don’t Over-Promise or Exaggerate: Be honest with your donors and keep your message real. For example, instead of saying “if you don’t give $5 now I’ll be forced to suspend my campaign,” you can say, “anything you can give helps keep this campaign going, even if it’s just $5.”  
• Don’t be Scammy: NO, there is not an angel donor who will match every donation 1050% for the next 10 hours. Gimmicky, scammy fundraising will turn off your donors and erode trust in your campaign or brand. Avoid strategies like absurd donation matching, automatically-checked recurring donation boxes and endless pop-ups, to name a few. 

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Chapter 5: Text Fundraising

Like email fundraising, text fundraising is only as good as the list you start with. There are two types of text messaging: SMS (Short Message Service) and MMS (Multi-Media Messaging), SMS is a short amount of text only and MMS can include images, GIFs and video.

Your donors likely all have a smartphone, so why not take advantage of that and send a message to the palms of their hands? In some cases sending a text can be even more lucrative than sending emails! In one month, one Arena client sent significantly more emails than texts. Their emails for that month resulted in nearly 1,900 donors, raising around $53,400. Comparatively, the texts they sent resulted in 2,300 donors, raising around $64,600!

Text fundraising offers a simple and cheap way to reach your audience with brief text messages. Nearly 95% of texts are opened by the recipient in the first five minutes, so texting should be included in your rapid response digital fundraising program.

Text fundraising offers a simple and cheap way to reach your audience with brief text messages. Nearly 95% of texts are opened by the recipient in the first five minutes, so texting should be included in your rapid response digital fundraising program.

Content of your text message

Your message should be short and to the point, announce who you are, have a clear CTA and you always need to include an opt out.

Technical considerations

Text messaging is becoming a highly regulated process and verification is required by all mobile carriers or you risk being blocked. The FCC created a set of rules and regulations that protect Americans by requiring callers to have their identifying information verified before calls can be made. 

Bottom line: text fundraising requires a cost to set up. When looking at digital fundraising firms, make sure they have experience in this area.

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PRO TIP: In the last two years, carriers have cracked down on spam-texting. Make sure a subscriber knows who you are and why you’re messaging them as well as opting them out as soon as they say ‘STOP’ or risk a large fine.

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Best practices for text fundraising campaigns

Frequency and Timing: Be mindful of the frequency for text communications to avoid overwhelming donors. Consider the recipients’ time zones and preferences to choose an optimal time for sending communications.

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Chapter 6: Website Fundraising

Every visitor to your website is a potential donor. Why are they visiting your site? Probably because they want to determine if they should support your campaign. If they determine they want to support you, then they are a highly qualified prospective donor.

For this reason, it’s important to ask visitors for financial support as quickly as possible. Because visitors may only stay for a few seconds, you’ll want to make sure your first CTA is in the main menu or header section. 

You’ll also want to provide CTAs in the middle of and at the end of all content on all pages.

Website fundraising isn’t typically a task assigned to an outsourced digital fundraising team, but it is an important part of your overall fundraising strategy and uses some of the same tools and approaches.

Most likely, you’ll have a web development team working with you. You’ll also need to establish an account with an online fundraising platform.

Connecting your website to a fundraising platform allows you to seamlessly direct donors to the platform, where they can donate. These platforms can also be used to capture contact info for future campaigns

Most email and text fundraising campaigns will send donors directly to a donation platform landing page. Sometimes, however, a landing page within your campaign website may be warranted. These landing pages can be designed for a specific audience or segment. This way, specific language and/or graphics can be used that resonates more effectively with the segment, then would a generic page.

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PRO TIP: A functioning and easy-to-navigate website will result in higher conversions and engagement. Keep your donate buttons high and loud. Have a sign-up option readily available without scrolling down.

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5 Simple Steps to Start Fundraising With Your Website:

1) Create an account with a fundraising platform.

WinRed and Anedot are two of the more popular online fundraising platforms used by political campaigns and conservative causes. (see chapter 3)

2) Generate your button codes

Login to your fundraising platform and navigate to the “Fundraising” or “Create Buttons” section. Select the type of button you want to create, such as a donation button or a sign-up button. Customize the button settings to match your branding and campaign goals. Generate the button code, which typically comes in the form of HTML or JavaScript code.

3) Access your Website backend

Most likely, your team is using a Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress to manage your site. You’ll need to have your site manager log in and locate the section where you can edit the CSS code.

4) Insert the button code

Your web design/copy team should create CTAs on your website that would have embedded links to your payment vendor. These CTA’s should be located at the top of your site as well as locations that require minimal scrolling

In the backend of your website, find the page or section where you want to place the button. Insert the generated button code provided by WinRed into the appropriate area. Save the changes to update your website. After connecting your website to your WinRed account, it is essential to test the functionality of the button. 

5) Test and monitor

Visit your website and click on the button to ensure it directs users to the WinRed platform correctly. Regularly monitor the performance of the button and make any necessary adjustments to optimize the user experience and fundraising results.

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Chapter 7: Using Social Media for Fundraising

Using organic social media for fundraising is a widely untapped resource in the last few cycles as email and text have taken the attention away from it. The focus should be to bring in supporters and donors with very small asks that aren’t intrusive or more than anyone can afford. 

Arena utilizes Facebook, Threads, Instagram, Twitter and Youtube to reach followers with small asks and list building opportunities. 

In 2022 and 2023, our clients raised thousands with no additional costs attached to it thanks to outreach via social media posts with specific goals in mind and new merchandise. A great program will use all social media platforms to maximize visibility and fundraising potential. 

While email and texting are must-haves in digital fundraising, Social Media is continuing to grow in importance. As of April 2023, roughly 4.8 billion, or 59.9 percent of the world’s population, use social media. (Source: Statista)

Posting your message on social media has a twofold advantage:

It echoes your core message across channels, which reinforces effectiveness and ability to engage a donor.

It grows your list of potential donors organically, as like minded social media users drive up your visibility and hopefully share your posts to their friends and followers.

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PRO TIP: Frequency and consistency is the name of the game. Post and schedule your content every day of the week, especially weekends.

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Best practices for social media fundraising

Primarily for soft asks: sign your name, take a survey, etc.

Some direct fundraising but limited (get a yard sign, volunteer, etc.)

Great for selling merch & events

Being consistent…build a calendar

Shouldn’t be all about fundraising

Last word

If you work with a professional digital fundraiser, you’ll want regular reports on relevant metrics from emails and donations so that you can track the progress of your fundraising program and gain insights on what messaging is working for your campaign.

Respect your donors. Shy away from scammy tactics. Be more authentic. 

In a world of full inboxes, stand out amongst the noise and give your subscribers a reason to keep opening your emails with new information, ways to invest and reasons to continue giving to your worthy causes.

The Arena Fundraising Team has 25+ years of combined experience and the tools to make your digital fundraising hugely successful!

Contact us today and let us help you get started with digital fundraising.