Fundraising Top Ten The top ten features that can help you become a more effective fundraiser Ghazal Vaghedi, Head of North American Market Development Community conference Twitter hashtag: #EN2011 and

Fundraising top ten will help you: Create a rewarding donor journey Effectively connect donors to your cause Create long-term donor loyalty Convert new supporters to donors Expand your fundraising reach on the social web Decrease barriers to giving Integrate your fundraising with the rest of your activity on the Engaging Networks Platform

1. Payment gateways Pick the payment gateway that makes the most sense for your organization's fundraising needs: Worldpay (Business and Corporate Gateways) IATS RSM Paypal

2. Payment options Recurring payments -- options vary by gateway IATS -- recurring payments are submitted to IATS and managed via the merchant account RSM -- recurring payments are managed via your Engaging Networks account Worldpay Corporate -- recurring payments are managed via your Engaging Networks account Worldpay Business -- recurring payments have to transact on a hosted page PDD -- supported by RSM ACH -- supported by IATS Lower barriers for giving by giving donors more giving options

3. Customise Customising your donation pages enhances the overall supporter journey and increases level of engagement Brand your appeals AND donation pages (general ask versus specific cause related appeal) Use dynamic fields Dependencies Style two column formats for better visual appeal Examples: Global Greengrants, UNICEF CanadaGlobal Greengrants UNICEF Canada

4. Personalise Personalise your content to build a stronger donor community Create supporter profiles for various donor levels and use conditional content in your outbound communications as well donation landing pages Donor levels should match specific asks--a historically high level donor should never get an ask that is below their previous giving level Bottom line: it all starts with segmenting your database which leads to targeted messaging and more personalised communication, which yields to higher levels of engagement BUT, personalisation doesn’t stop with the ask...you must cary all the way through to your thank you message

5. HTML donation receipting Customize with your own orgs brand or campaign brand Provide your own language and include transactional data and where where applicable tax deductibility information Attach to automatic thank you or in-line in thank you

6. Donation widgets Create a widget for any number of your donation pages and embed in social networks and create data formats compatible for mobile devices For an issue focused appeal, specially when the issue is making front page news, it's important to be as portable with your appeals as possible--- aids in lowering the barrier to give Widgets allow you to take your appeal to donors where they are instead of asking them to come to you With the rise of social networks and increasing reliance on mobile devices, studies are showing a consistent decline in orgs website traffic

7. triggers triggers allow you to convert existing supporters to donors or re-engage lapsed donors in your database Examples: Welcome series Lapsed donors Cumulative donor recognition Fundraisers are busy! So triggers are key to helping you save time while 'automating' both current donor and prospective donor engagement

8. Testing: Split testing and tracking Social media experts say: "you must measure, listen, and adapt" Create tracking links for all your donation pages Run split tests for your appeals to measure: Performance for subject line and content Conversions for donation landing pages Testing may tell you that you need to adapt your ask Always listen to what works for you and what works against you

9. Manage transactions Manage transactions directly in software dashboard Up to 20 segments of transactional data collected for both recurring and single payments Depending on the gateway, manage recurring payments directly in dashboard

10. Donation reports Obtain relevant reporting for donation pages and relevant donor transactions that includes payment type -- all stored as part of supporter record Run reports based on donation pages and transaction amounts and cumulative amounts Once you start collecting data on your donors, you can start building donor profiles to manage and track engagement

Upcoming Features Peer-to-peer fundraising Pledge management Donor journaling/notes

Thank you!