Giving Season is critical for nonprofits and development staff; it’s an opportunity to strengthen relationships with donors while meeting crucial fundraising goals. Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud (NPC) offers a suite of tools to help streamline these efforts.
Below, we explore ways to use NPC at every stage—from planning and campaign management to communication and reporting—to ensure a successful Giving Season.
Using data to shape fundraising strategy
At the beginning of the Giving Season, review past performance and gather insights into what has worked and what hasn’t performed as expected. Nonprofit Cloud’s Giving Summaries feature allows you to filter donors by customizable criteria, such as donor type, donation size, and frequency of giving, to build a comprehensive view of previous donor engagement.
Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud provides a detailed donor profile, combining a household’s giving history, relationships, and engagement activities. Salesforce Einstein enhances this by offering insights into a donor’s likelihood of increasing giving while also suggesting the next best actions. This integration of predictive analytics helps development officers prioritize outreach based on real-time data.
By analyzing the giving patterns of major donors, you might find that they tend to donate early in the season or prefer year-end appeals. Similarly, identifying which campaigns brought in the most recurring donors versus one-time gifts will help you refine this year’s approach.
Salesforce Einstein does more than simply provide or display data—it anticipates outcomes. Using machine learning (ML), it forecasts donor behaviors by analyzing variables such as giving frequency, email open rates, and engagement with past events. This means that development officers can prioritize outreach to likely donors and structure donation asks accordingly, boosting efficiency while reducing time spent on less responsive segments.
Streamlining campaign planning and management with Outreach Source Codes
For development staff, managing multiple, often overlapping, campaigns during Giving Season can feel overwhelming. Nonprofit Cloud simplifies this process by centralizing all campaign activity in one platform. Rather than juggling several independent efforts, you can plan and execute them within a cohesive system.
Track and analyze donor engagement by communication channel with Outreach Source Codes and accurately attribute donations to one or more fundraising campaigns. For example, if your nonprofit uses multiple channels within a campaign (like emails, social media, phone calls, or direct mail), the Outreach Source Code will identify which targeted communication was most effective in bringing in donations. Outreach Source Codes are nested under the campaign in Salesforce, allowing development staff to track efficacy at a granular level while also reporting at the meta campaign level.
Automated task management within the system adds an extra layer of effectiveness. Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud allows Development staff to automate repeat reminders for follow-up tasks, donor check-ins, and campaign performance reviews. This allows development staff to focus on strategy and relationship-building rather than administrative tasks like sending emails or queuing up social media posts individually.
Personalizing donor communication
Donor engagement is increasingly driven by personalized outreach. It’s recognized that donors respond better to communications that speak directly to their past involvement and interests rather than generic appeals. Nonprofit Cloud’s integration with Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (MCAE, formerly Pardot) makes this targeted messaging possible.
The key to successful donor communication is segmentation. Nonprofit Cloud allows development staff to create detailed segments based on factors like donation history, interests, event participation, age, or even the communication medium (email vs. direct mail) using Outreach Source Codes. MCAE can take advantage of this granularity to segment your audience and send tailored messages that resonate more deeply with each group. These communications can also be tied back to when a constituent donates, allowing development staff to see which communications were or weren’t effective in driving donations.
For example, you may send a more personal appeal to major donors with details of the impact of their previous donations and send newer or smaller donors broader stories about the organization’s work. Celebrating recurring donors for their sustained contributions with messaging focused on gratitude and impact over time creates deeper loyalty and engagement. These segments allow you to fine-tune your message’s tone, timing, and even the frequency of communication.
Automated workflows within Nonprofit Cloud ensure that key touch points—such as donation receipts, acknowledgment letters, and follow-up communications—are sent promptly and consistently. Automation doesn’t replace personal engagement but supplements it by keeping communications timely without adding to the administrative burden for staff.
Managing recurring donors
Recurring donations are the backbone of any sustainable fundraising program, and Giving Season is an ideal time to convert one-time donors into long-term supporters. Nonprofit Cloud allows development staff to manage and cultivate these relationships by offering flexible donation options.
One advantage of recurring donations is their predictable revenue, but more importantly, they signal a deeper commitment from donors. During Giving Season, development staff can use Nonprofit Cloud to highlight the ease and impact of becoming a recurring donor. Automated messages can encourage one-time donors, perhaps those giving on Giving Tuesday, to transition into regular contributors by emphasizing how small monthly gifts can make a big difference over time.
Once recurring donations are set up, Nonprofit Cloud can automate the administration of processing these gifts, sending confirmations, and logging them in the donor’s profile. This saves time and ensures donors have a seamless experience, with no missed payments or communication lapses. Beyond the transactional aspect, recurring donors can be nurtured through personalized impact reports or special recognition campaigns that are scheduled in advance, fostering long-term loyalty.
Engaging volunteers and managing events
Volunteers are often critical to the success of nonprofit fundraising campaigns, particularly during Giving Season. From helping with organizing in-person events to coordinating virtual fundraisers, tracking volunteer contributions is essential for understanding their overall impact.
Nonprofit Cloud enables development officers to track all aspects of volunteer engagement, from initial sign-ups to post-event participation. If you’re hosting a Giving Season event, for instance, you can manage logistics such as RSVPs, ticket sales, and donations made by attendees, all while linking volunteer activity to the broader fundraising campaign.
Nonprofit Cloud supports individual volunteers’ fundraising performance tracking for peer-to-peer fundraising efforts, providing real-time insight into how much each volunteer contributes to the overall campaign. This insight creates transparency around volunteer impact, encouraging more engagement and helping leadership allocate resources and recognition accordingly.
Real-time reporting and insights
One of the most powerful aspects of Nonprofit Cloud is the ability to access real-time data. Development officers can view live dashboards that track donations, donor engagement, and overall campaign progress at any point in the season. Avoid the common trap of only seeing performance data at the end of a campaign, which can lead to missed opportunities for course correction.
Real-time reporting allows you to monitor which outreach methods are most effective, whether specific donor segments respond better than others, and how close you are to hitting your targets. Adjustments can be made dynamically, whether that means refocusing on a different donor group, revisiting communication frequency, or reallocating resources to higher-performing initiatives.
Customizable reports also simplify the end-of-season review process. After Giving Season, development officers can generate comprehensive reports that showcase campaign performance to stakeholders, providing insights that will shape future strategies. These reports offer transparency into fundraising efforts and can strengthen accountability to board members, donors, and other key supporters.
Integrating with other fundraising tools
Many nonprofits use third-party platforms to process donations or run additional aspects of their campaigns. Nonprofit Cloud integrates smoothly with payment processors like Classy, PropFuel, and PayPal, ensuring that donations are captured and tracked accurately. This integration eliminates the manual task of importing data and reduces the chance of human error.
If a donor makes a gift through an integrated app, Nonprofit Cloud instantly updates the donor’s record, adding the donation to their history and reflecting it in the live campaign dashboard. This real-time integration ensures that donor data is always up-to-date, enabling seamless follow-up communication, tax receipt generation, and acknowledgment.
Beyond payment platforms, Nonprofit Cloud can also integrate with online portals like Experience Cloud, third-party communication tools, event management software, and other Apps, creating a fully connected ecosystem that consolidates donor information and makes it easily accessible for the entire fundraising team.
Ready to maximize Giving Season?
Giving Season can be a challenging time for nonprofit organizations, but with Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud, development officers have the tools needed to plan, manage, and execute successful fundraising campaigns. By leveraging data, automating personalized communications, nurturing recurring donors, and maintaining real-time oversight, Nonprofit Cloud simplifies the complexity of managing multiple campaigns during this busy period.
Want to learn more about using Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud for fundraising and the Giving Season? Contact Fíonta.