Finding New Donors to Support Your Mission

1. Grow your audience

Have you heard the saying, "content is king?" Invest the sweat equity into driving web traffic, building your email list, and growing your social footprint. It's important that your content adds value to your followers - does it educate, encourage, or entertain them? Ensure your content does more than ask for money. Take time to celebrate the impact of your donors with intentional, creative content.

2. Ask for introductions

Board members, staff, volunteers, top donors, and social sharers all understand your mission. Through one-on-one conversations with these individuals, you can often identify new prospects that align with your mission and the opportunity to support it.

3. Online Fundraising

One of the best ways to reach a lot of new donors at once is to run a crowdfunding or peer-to-peer fundraising campaign! Which one is best for you?

Crowdfunding

This type of online fundraising works best if you have something specific for donors to rally around - like a highly motivated individual taking on an extreme challenge, a celebrity or athlete ambassador, or a specific project, program, or day of giving. Crowdfunding campaigns typically drive a lot of smaller donations from many new donors.

Peer-to-Peer (P2P)

The success of a P2P campaign is typically proportional to the number of participants you recruit. But fear not -- recruiting peer-to-peer fundraisers is easier than you think! The activities can range from the traditional run, walk or ride events to creative fitness challenges like a golf marathon or a burpee-a-thon. Bonus: Score extra credit with your Executive Director or Chief Development Officer by using Pledge It for your Crowdfunding or P2P campaign. Not only can Pledge It data easily import into your CRM, but it also offers you a unique insight: donors who make a "performance pledge" are indicating that they have a higher capacity to give!

​​When in doubt, start with who you already know. The benefit of crowdfunding and P2P is the ability to tap into networks you otherwise may not have had exposure to. Tools like Pledge It makes it easy for existing supporters to raise more for the causes they care about and helps you find new donors!