Imagine you run a nonprofit in an area you really care about and you get generous donations from 10 new donors. Time for a victory lap? Not so fast. According to one statistic, only three will come back and give money again next year. The rest move on.
What are those other seven people doing? Maybe their finances changed, maybe they didn’t feel their donation made a difference.
Compelling more of those one-time donors to become repeat givers was one focus of the San Diego Fundraising Conference 2024, put on by the San Diego Foundation with the of 20 sponsors and held this year in a virtual format.
The conference gave tactical and big picture advice on using AI for fundraising, telling stories to engage potential donors, thinking strategically, standing out through clear writing and showing gratitude for charitable gifts.
Here are takeaways from two sessions with applications beyond fundraising:
Stories stick. While data, statistics and numbers are a clear way to make a case, a well-crafted story hits differently. People “store” stories, while numbers “tend to numb,” said Kirsten Farrell, the director of The Goodman Center, a company that teaches storytelling as a marketing tool.
This summary is reductive — the session lasted almost an hour and addressed much more — but points to a larger point she made. Storytelling is effective because it makes an emotional connection that lingers. Conversely, when people don’t donate or a cause, it can be because they believe a flawed story — for example, that their donation is too small to matter. To change that behavior, change that story.
Use a telescope to identify goals. Kim Klein, a Berkeley-based fund-raising consultant, encouraged the audience to set ambitious goals that look far beyond this or next year.
“You should probably always fall short of your goals,” she said. “Your goals should way exceed your reach.” If your goals are nearsighted, they’ll lack vision, idealism and the potential for steeper, meaningful progress. One way to set lofty goals is to “time travel” by envisioning that the problem you’re addressing has been solved. How did your get there? “You can achieve your goal if you don’t just look year to year,” she added.
In an interview, Mark Stuart, the president and chief executive officer of the San Diego Foundation, stated the conference’s own goal: to offer San Diego nonprofits, especially smaller and newer ones, access to “world class” speakers. “This is really one of the biggest and best learning opportunities that they could have, right here at home,” he said.
Registration was $125. An out-of-town conference, plus travel, could cost many times that.
“A lot of what I had dreamt about for this conference was to see San Diego become one of the most charitable places in the country, that was marked by all these long-term relationships between donors and their institutions,” he said.
Almost 900 people ed, up from 400 in its first year. “We’re planning to take the conference even bigger in 2025,” Stuart said.
