How to Create Multichannel Donors Who Give More Often

Multichannel donors are incredibly valuable. They give more frequently and are more likely to stay with your organization than single-channel donors. This is because multichannel donors are simply individuals who immerse themselves in your mission and engage with your content across various channels. 

By immersing themselves in your mission across channels, these donors demonstrate their passion for your mission and ultimately support that mission across channels — usually making gifts in various ways through events, direct mail, email, SMS or online. 

This donor segment is incredibly valuable, but for many nonprofits, it’s a small segment of donors. 

One reason multichannel donors make up a small segment of many donor files is that they’re made — not found. 

Why Can’t Multichannel Donors Be Found?

Multichannel donors aren't an endangered species — they're everyday people. A mulitchannel donor is the lady in front of you at the coffee shop, the man reading the paper on a park bench and the driver in the car beside you. We already found them when we acquired them as donors. The challenge isn't finding them — it's cultivating them.

All people have multiple channels of influence. 

As a society, we read the newspaper, listen to the radio, Google things, scroll Facebook, watch TV, get mail, drive by billboards and watch wrapped buses drive by us. We answer the phone, get text messages, and sort through crowded email inboxes. All of these interactions leave an impression on us – they all influence us in different ways.  

This multichannel behavior extends to how people transact. According to a variety of studies, more than 80% of U.S. adults have a credit card, more than 50% of Americans use checks, and more than 80% of people have used cash in the last 30 days. We live in a multichannel society.   

The Challenge of Making Multichannel Donors

If society is multichannel, then why are multichannel donors a small segment of most donor files? 

Making multichannel donors means providing the opportunity for donors to be multichannel. 

One of the most common ways nonprofits segment audiences is by the channel through which donors give. The conversation is about these event donors, direct mail donors or online donors. So from the start, the idea of donors being tied to a channel is sewn into the fabric of our development and marketing programs. 

This information is often taken forward throughout communications. Existing online donors are used for digital ads. Event donors are shielded from direct response asks in the mail simply because they give to our events, and direct mail donors are kept out of digital asks because they are check-writers. For larger nonprofits, the complexity of multiple constituent relationship management (CRM) systems and separate event management software adds a layer of complexity that makes it easy to silo donors.

Beyond the segmentation by channel that comes from CRMs and is felt through communications channels, budgets are often set on a channel basis, resulting in the need to track channel key performance indicators. This results in each channel owner needing to hit channel-specific goals around retention and revenue. 

3 Ways to Start Making Multichannel Donors

While there are many ways to create integrated multichannel direct response programs, here are three key ways nonprofits are making multichannel donors.

1. Use a Multichannel Welcome Series 

The first 90 days after a donor's initial gift are critical for securing a second donation. This is why many organizations are using this as an opportunity to thank donors across multiple channels — direct mail, SMS and email. This indicates to the donor that all of these channels matter to you as an organization and allows them to engage with the channels that fit into their lives. If this is tracked and tagged, you can see the channels of preference that each person self-selects and ensure that communications and asks are both included across these channels. 

2. Use Channel-Specific Offers

Channel-specific offers encourage donors to engage through new channels. Consider a text message that says, “The next 15 gifts via this link will be matched” or an email to event attendees inviting them to donate online and make even more of an impact by “being the match” for your next big campaign. These offers provide incentives to engage with new-to-you channels that provide opportunities to make even more impact. Because multichannel donors are the donors who care most about your mission, they are typically looking for ways to help you expand your efforts. As a result, they want to maximize their impact and are often willing to expand their comfort zone if you have a compelling ask. 

3. Co-Target Acquisition Campaigns

Co-targeting, or reaching the same audience across multiple channels, is increasingly common. This is an effort that targets the same audience across multiple channels — a direct mail piece and a Meta ad, a Meta ad and an email, etc. Donors who give to these acquisition campaigns often do so because the multichannel nature creates more touch points, allowing them to completely immerse themselves in your work. Keeping track of these donors to ensure that they continue to receive communications across channels is a great way to build that base from the ground up. 

Better Lifetime Value Through Multichannel Communications

When someone only hears from you via email, your organization exists in a single dimension of their life — the dimension of their inbox, competing with hundreds of other messages. When they see your Instagram story in the morning, receive your email at lunch and read your direct mail piece after work, you've woven your mission into multiple moments of their day.

If you do so in compelling ways, this creates cognitive availability — you’ve made your mission more mentally accessible, more top-of-mind and more real. And when something feels more real, people invest more in it and it increases their lifetime value as a donor. 

Multichannel donors still have preferences — they're people, after all. But when given the opportunity, they'll amplify their impact through the channels you make readily available. 

The preceding content was provided by a contributor unaffiliated with NonProfit PRO. The views expressed within may not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of the staff of NonProfit PRO.