Mobile

Fundraisers know how big a role mobile plays in peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns, which makes responsive design a must for your event website.

Mobile email open rates continue to climb, and there are major impacts of this trend on your nonprofit. Here are three things this trend will drive your nonprofit to address should you want to continue to use email to engage and fundraise.

Got an idea for an app that could connect a charity or nonprofit with its supporters and beneficiaries in an ongoing way, one that could become part of their daily or at least weekly lives?

It’s no secret that nonprofit marketing trends have shifted within the past few years. Technology has advanced, online fundraising has grown and the way donors like to interact with nonprofits has evolved. As these changes occur, it’s become increasingly important for organizations to be mindful of how supporters want to be engaged. With that said, here’s a roundup of three major nonprofit marketing trends that any savvy organization should keep an eye on: content, mobile and personalization.

Stepping into the world of mobile fundraising may seem like parachuting into the middle of a wild jungle with nothing but a canteen and backpack. You look around; it’s unfamiliar. There are no roads, and you have no map. You could literally venture anywhere and not know if you’re going the right way or walking into a dark cave of tarantulas, a la Indiana Jones.

Nobody likes a dark cave of tarantulas, so let’s build some parameters around your mobile strategy.

If you look at your website’s Google Analytics, you’re likely to see that about a quarter of your website visitors come knocking on your door via mobile devices — that’s a lot! You’ll want to open your door, as it were, with a friendly smile on your face. So how can your organization be as approachable as possible via mobile? elow, we’ll cover: 1) making sure your website is responsive; 2) the importance of Instagram; 3) the rise of mobile messaging apps; and 4) tips for using responsive emails for impact.

In terms of fundraising, nonprofits are limited to sharing images embedded with keywords and short codes on Instagram. For cause awareness, Instagram is a highly engaged community. Your nonprofit will likely receive more Instagram likes than Facebook likes and Twitter retweets combined, and it’s a community that is very responsive to nonprofits and images and videos that foster social good.

At World Wildlife Fund, we’ve seen an explosion in mobile visitors over the past three years, and I’m betting that you’ve experienced the same. We want to make sure we can provide these supporters with the content they are seeking, no matter what device they are using.  Thinking “mobile first,” we’ve focused optimizing our marketing efforts in these three key areas: website, email and SMS.

Here is a mobile and social fundraising success checklist excerpted from "Mobile for Good: A How-To Fundraising Guide for Nonprofits" by Heather Mansfield, founder and principal blogger at Nonprofit Tech for Good. By reading the book and implementing the steps necessary to launch a comprehensive mobile and social fundraixsing plan — and checking off the must-do items as you go along — your nonprofit will have in place mobile and social fundraising plan flexible enough to adjust to rapid changes in fundraising and communication technology that will occur over the next decade.

If your organization’s messages aren’t getting read, your constituents aren’t engaging. And if they aren’t engaging, they probably aren’t donating. Our quick check of nonprofit emails in our inboxes suggests that the vast majority are not mobile-friendly.