Easy Engagement Strategies to Drive Acquisition and Loyalty


The dust from the holidays is starting to settle and most organizations are blessed with an avalanche of donors — both new and old — whose generosity and goodwill cast a rosy hue over the financial outlook. But these feelings can quickly dissipate without a strategy to keep donors engaged throughout the year. With overall donor retention in decline and smaller dollar donors diminishing at alarming rates, it’s critical to focus on the implementation of an engagement strategy for future sustainability.
Engagement is the cultivation of audiences and donors for the purpose of acquisition, conversion and retention. As part of the growth funnel, these activities offer the ability to connect, inspire and delight. Stronger bonds are developed with constituents leading to ongoing support and long-term impact.
The Impact of Engagement Efforts
Most fundraisers are in favor of these activities and understand the need for them. But in a busy development office with limited resources, engagement efforts can seem out of reach and fall to the bottom of the priority list. However, consider an experiment conducted by the NextAfter Institute in which it aimed to show the direct monetary impact of engagement efforts.
An organization launched a series of informational emails before a large campaign to a test audience. The emails simply spoke to the impact of the organization and how donations helped fuel the mission. At campaign time, there was a 197% increase in donations with this test group, and these donors were three times more likely to donate at year end over the audience who did not receive the emails.
My own experience, and perhaps yours too, bears witness to these findings. In 2022, I made small donations to 10 different organizations. I received receipts from six of them, thank-you letters from three of them, and only one consistently stayed in touch with me in the months following. However, by the next November, I started receiving solicitations from many I had not heard from the entire year.
Who was more likely to receive another donation? Certainly, the organization that stayed in touch and perhaps the ones that sent thank-you letters. The rest I eliminated from my donation list.
Foundational Engagement Elements
Thus, let’s ensure that the rosy-glow and feelings of endearment from our year-end donors continue. Now is the time to establish essential engagement elements and develop an annual strategy that will lead to greater donor loyalty and a positive outlook for future campaigns.
Before getting started on a structured engagement plan, there are a few essential and foundational communication elements that organizations must have in place to engage, cultivate and steward their donors. As mentioned previously, sending a receipt and a thank-you letter is critical. A first-time donor welcome series is ideal. Consider setting up an automated anniversary email to trigger one year after the donor’s first gift.
And don’t forget your email subscribers. They are valuable prospects. Create a welcome series for this audience to share all of the wonderful content they will start receiving. Include impact statements, testimonials and opportunities to volunteer or attend events.
Developing the Engagement Strategy
An engagement strategy can be created in three simple steps: Identify your available tools and resources; create a calendar to reveal gaps and opportunities; and finally, utilize this information to craft an overall strategy and implementation plan.
1. Identify Tools and Resources
There are four categories of elements that can be utilized for engagement efforts. Evaluate these tools and make an inventory of which ones align with your internal resources. In other words, what can you or your team support and implement? If you don’t have a texting service, cross that off the list for now. But if you have the technology to create surveys or polls, add it. This list will serve as the inventory from which to choose as you work through crafting the annual plan.
Communications. Use tools that offer direct communication or touchpoints, such as email and automations, social media, livestreaming, podcasts, texting, and phone calls.
Interactivity. These elements require action or response from the audience. They include surveys, polls, quizzes, trivia, events and classes.
Incentives. Elements that encourage participation through rewards and benefits can include prizes, thank-you gifts and downloadable content. Even goals and deadlines can be incentives for participation.
Promotion. This includes marketing and publicity tactics for program activities. Online and print ads, TV and radio spots, website popups, postcards, billboards, buckslips in thank-you letters, blogs, and ambassador engagement fall into this category.
2. Create a Calendar
Next, create an annual calendar that maps all of your fundraising initiatives throughout the year, if one does not exist already. This includes direct mail campaigns, online efforts (such as GivingTuesday and year end), and fundraising events and galas.
Once these are documented, look for gaps in between. These are excellent spaces to fill with engagement efforts, as well as considering how to maximize the existing campaigns with segmented communications to further recognize and acknowledge current donors, volunteers and board members.
3. Develop the Plan
Finally, pair your available resources with the inventory of engagement tools and build the plan utilizing the calendar gaps. These can include additional donor touchpoints throughout the year, evergreen communications or defined engagement initiatives.
For example, if an organization decides to elevate the communication with donors by incorporating quarterly thank-you calls (with board member or ambassador help), a quarterly donor thank-you email from the development director with an update on activities and a few trivia questions, an online annual report with a donor feedback survey, and an annual donor virtual townhall with the CEO.
The organization prioritizes email signups for growth and conversion. It creates a new subscriber welcome series and incorporates consistent promotion including online ads (such the Google Ad Grant ads), ongoing social media posts, buckslips in thank-you letters, and flyers with QR codes for volunteers and on-site visitors.
With no other activities in the month of May, the nonprofit creates a defined engagement initiative over a four-week period. It includes a series of four emails, weekly trivia related to spring flowers with the chance to win a spring essentials prize box. A birdwatching guide and a local florist host two virtual events. The organization targets ads to audiences interested in these topics with an incentive to download an online booklet featuring recipes and crafts.
Taking the time to craft a thoughtful engagement strategy is an investment in the stability and future growth of your organization. These efforts fuel the donor pipeline. New subscribers will have a higher likelihood of converting to donors. They will be more likely to give longer and at higher amounts. With this increased loyalty, retention rates and lifetime value improves.
Don’t miss this critical opportunity to create an engagement plan that will have a swift and immediate impact on your bottom line. Your constituents are waiting!
The preceding post was provided by an individual unaffiliated with NonProfit PRO. The views expressed within do not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of NonProfit PRO.
Related story: 3 Simple Donor Acquisition Strategies for New Nonprofits
- Categories:
- Acquisition
- Annual Campaigns
- Retention

Jen Newmeyer, CFRE, is a digital fundraising strategist specializing in integrated campaigns and online engagement. Through her groundbreaking work and creative approaches during her more than 20-year tenure, she's raised more than $10 million in online revenue for nonprofit organizations while managing development budgets of more than $25 million and leading teams through collaborative campaign projects.
She is the author of "The Insider's Guide to Online Fundraising: Finding Success When Surrounded by Skeptics" and host of the podcast “From The Nest with CharityJen: Where Fundraising Takes Flight.” Jen is the director of digital fundraising strategy at the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and the vice president of education for the Association of Fundraising Professionals, Washington, D.C., Metro Area Chapter.