Donor profiles: How to create them to boost your fundraising
This content comes from our Workshop: Elevate Your Fundraising with ChatGPT. Learn more here.
Raising funds is crucial for nonprofits. It's the bridge between the dream that motivates them and the tangible impact they can make. However, attracting, nurturing, and retaining donor relationships can be challenging in an ecosystem where thousands of other organizations exist.
Therefore, the narratives we create in our communications are EVERYTHING. But not all donors have the same interests or motivations. That's where segmentation and profile creation can make a difference in reaching meaningful relationships.
What is a donor profile?
A donor profile is a detailed portrait of the characteristics and behaviors of individuals or groups who might donate to your cause (according to ChatGPT).
For example, Adriana from TeenSmart, a fellow from our cohort 3, tells us that segmenting their donors has allowed their organization to design strategies, processes and specific flows for them that truly strengthen the relationship between what donors want to hear and what you have to offer. Here are some other benefits:
• Save time and resources to send effective communications to potential donors.
• Understand your donors to focus your efforts on those most likely to support your cause.
• Personalize your narratives to resonate with the specific interests, values, concerns, and capacities of your potential donors.
For Eliana from Más por TIC, which supports small Colombian producers with technology, personalizing communications to their donors has been crucial. Our fellow from cohort 2 believes that for some donors, only data and graphics may work, while for others, stories and emotions may be more effective. Creating their profiles can help you excite each group perfectly.
Thus, you can deepen your relationships with your donors. Diego from LALA, an organization from our cohort 1 that promotes youth leadership in LatAm, considers that using profiles, along with trust and responsibility in their work, is what has helped them retain more collaborators.
Step-by-step to create a donor profile
1. Analyze existing information: Review your current donor database and extract key information from each, such as demographics, donation history, and interests.
2. Identify patterns: Look for patterns among donors to divide them into groups based on shared characteristics.
3. Create profiles based on your donor types: Establish which characteristics within these patterns belong to each group. You can divide them by donation capacity, frequency, interests, or other aspects.
4. Assign labels: Place categories on each profile to facilitate their identification, such as "recurring donors," "potential donors," "high-value donors," etc.
This will help you create more efficient and effective communications in attracting and retaining donors. Thus, by measuring the results from your donors, you will continue to evolve your donor profile and refine this technique within your organization.
Learn how to use AI to create your donor profiles and personalized narratives in our Workshop: Elevate Your Fundraising with ChatGPT.
Written by Alexandra Guerra with support from ChatGPT.
