Finding effective Greek fundraising tools isn’t always easy. Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this blog, right?
Yet finding the right tools is crucial. Fundraising and donor management is a fact of life for alumni associations everywhere. And while some fundraising goals may come easier than others, there are times when you must launch a capital campaign.
Large-scale capital campaigns, like those used to fund a renovation for Greek housing, require engagement, a feasible plan, a nuanced understanding of the financial potential of your donor base, and the right tools.
Your best alumni donors will always be those who care deeply about their organization and want to give back—but who also feel engaged by their organization.
A major key to capital campaign success, therefore, is mutual engagement between you and your donors.
Identifying and targeting key donors early can make a massive difference in campaign success, but it’s also crucial to keep all members engaged—regardless of how much they’re likely to contribute—in a healthy and robust way.
How do you drive this engagement? How do you target the right donors at the right time with the right tools?
Essentially, the right tools will give you organic outreach to build donor engagement and, by extension, help you facilitate contributions to your overall fundraising goal.
As an organization of trusted Greek fundraising professionals, Pennington & Company strives to ensure fraternities and sororities like yours succeed every day.
With the right tools, you’ll be well on your way.
Here Are the 4 Best Greek Fundraising Tools Period.
There are many ways to manage your membership database. However, since capital campaigns can extend for a lengthy period of time, you need a system that’s strong and consistent enough to manage your fundraising efforts in the long term.
But what makes up a good donor management system?
A member database should be consistently updated and will contain crucial information about members and their giving potential as donors.
For each member, your association should keep and manage information such as:
This database can give you a great starting point for launching email campaigns, sending print and digital chapter-alumni newsletters, inviting them to events, and contacting members about contributions or thanking them for past giving.
It can also help you formulate a plan for targeting donor prospects in the future.
You want a reliable gift management system in place long before you collect your first donation.
This means a system that can handle contributions both large and small.
It also means having a system in place that facilitates the year-round giving of a typical annual campaign as well as a recurring-gift fundraising model.
Your gift management system should allow you to:
Your gift management system helps you analyze past and current fundraising efforts, as well as strategize for the feasibility of future campaigns by identifying key donors and markers of fundraising success.
You can lay the groundwork to meet your Greek fundraising goals with a system that encourages more frequent, recurring gifts, provides crucial data on potential key donors for current and future campaigns, and fosters effective messaging that engages donors over the course of each year.
Thus, building consistency in gift management will lead to more giving and allow you to focus on fundraising goals with more confidence.
At the core of member engagement sits communication. Communication, of course, means contacting prospective donors during a fundraising campaign effort and being straightforward about what you need from them.
Yet it cannot mean that alone.
A frequent complaint from alumni is that their graduate peers make little to no effort made to keep them engaged, and that when they do give, they don’t feel appreciated.
This often leads to one-time gifts and one-time donors. This is, quite literally, the opposite of what you want.
Thus, it’s important to keep the lines of communication open in a consistent and relevant way that makes alumni donors feel appreciated and needed.
Alumni newsletters can keep members in the loop about important accomplishments by their peers and undergraduate chapter members. You can also include news about your university—important new research grants, gains in academic rankings, noteworthy faculty news, or other relevant updates.
Newsletters should be physically mailed to members, as well as digitally produced and shared, for the best outreach.
Social media can give you access to members by creating special alumni groups and generally connecting with them. You can promote campaign updates, publicly recognize donors for their contributions, share photos from alumni events, and more.
Email campaigns can help you target different donor groups with specific messaging that is likely to interest them and benefit your capital fundraising efforts.
Websites are a great way to provide centralized information about your capital fundraising, feature articles about alumni and chapter happenings, share an events calendar, and more.
Pennington & Company offers professional fundraising consulting to ensure your capital campaign runs smoothly, from the early planning stages until the moment you reach your goals.
Our comprehensive services include:
Our consultants can help bring your most valuable Greek fundraising tools together in a cohesive way that maximizes your organization’s chances of capital campaign success.
Pennington offers software solutions for fraternity chapters for recruitment, budgeting, alumni communication, and more. Learn more about our services or call direct at 785-843-1661.
Leave your questions or comments about Greek fundraising in the comments below!