As a nonprofit, you might get overwhelmed by the influx of support and physical donations you receive throughout the year. Donors, in good faith, often donate goods that you might already have plenty of, or simply not need at the current moment in time. One way to make it easier for donors to know what type of support your nonprofit needs is to use a donation drive.

A donation drive is when individuals and groups can donate items or monetary amounts to nonprofits in need. Everyone wants to help so by creating a donation drive you direct that support. When most people think of donation drives they think of a time-based campaign, generally focused on donating physical items. However many donation drives are simply focused on hitting a specific or time-sensitive monetary goal. At RoundUp App our platform helps nonprofits manage their recurring monetary donors and gain new recurring or one-time donations.

Nonprofits might be looking to quickly raise enough money to buy winter coats for individuals without homes during the winter. You might be working to improve a set part of your community quickly, or just simply attempting to get in as many donations as possible before the end of the year.

Whether you’re hosting on behalf of a nonprofit or a nonprofit hosting one yourself: here is how to get started with your donation drive:

Create a Goal for your donation drive

By starting your donation drive with a goal in mind you can optimize the success of your campaign. This part is easy, look at your organization and identify the biggest need. Is your goal to raise a monetary amount for the nonprofit or do they need more physical items? 

There are two groups you want to keep in mind as you create your goal: the impacted and the donor. The “impacted” is the who or what your nonprofit seeks to help or change. What are their needs? When you find their need, think about the involvement of the donor. Not everyone is comfortable doing the physical aspect of the donation. Make sure your ask is achievable!

Nonprofits using RoundUp App have two ways of setting goals for their nonprofits. They can set a donor goal to attempt to signup a set amount of donors within a time period, or use our campaign function to track donations to a specific cause or time-based donation effort.

Marketing your donation drive

Now it’s time to get the word out. Share! Share! Share! Meet your donors where they are at. Create a social media campaign to share relevant updates, facts, or statistics from your donation drive! This could be a chance to get people to share with a branded hashtag. Make sure you utilize an email campaign to nurture people who’ve given in the past. 

By creating campaigns with easy calls to action you can get your donor working. It’s important in all marketing to make your goal and timeline understandable. The easier it is for your donors, the better.

At RoundUp App we provide nonprofits with a free marketing library they can use to increase the success of their donation drives. Our library has resources for getting donors onboarded to RoundUp App, engaging current donors, and growing your audience of donors through email, text, and social campaigns.

Hosting your donation drive

Once your donation drive is scheduled, it’s important to have volunteers and employees on the same page. Start off your donation drive with a group meeting explaining your goal and processes. By starting on common ground, there is going to be less confusion. 

Now is the time to share time-sensitive materials and communicate the urgency of your drive. If your donation drive is happening over a day or a week, make sure to post updates on your social media to give your following an idea of how successful the drive is. Push your goal and share how it will impact your nonprofit. Hopefully, with the right messaging, your donation drive will be thriving! 

If you’re hosting a donor drive primarily asking for physical donations you can also double your impact by running a connecting digital campaign. With RoundUp App you can create separate campaigns and connect your donors directly to your new campaign. By creating a connecting digital campaign you’re helping double the efforts of your donation drive. While many donors will have physical items to donate to your organization, plenty of others will still want to give, but lack the necessary items. Ask these donors for one-time gifts or recurring monthly or RoundUp donations. You can easily make these through RoundUp App by linking donors to your embedded brand profile!

After your donation drive

After you’ve hosted your successful donation drive, hit your goal, or received as many donations as you can handle, you’ll want to follow up with your audience. Your two primary goals are: saying thank you and sharing your success!

Thank Yous

After you hit your goal or receive donations, you want to make sure you thank everyone for their time, effort and donations. By sending out a thank you email you have an opportunity to nurture the relationship between your nonprofit and the donor, creating lasting benefactors.

Sharing Your Success

Now that you’ve wrapped up a successful donation drive, make sure to share on social media and to your email list. Donors love seeing the impact their donations made, so it’s a great way to engage your audience!

Use your social media accounts to share the story of your donation drive. You can include videos of your volunteers collecting donations, share pictures of the types of donations you received, or post eye-popping graphics and statistics to let your donors know what impact they made!

Finally, you’ll also want to include any success metrics from your corresponding digital campaigns. At RoundUp App we provide all nonprofits with a donor dashboard that lets them track the total donations made from their donors. You can also use features like our donor goal and campaign tracker to track the success of your digital donation drives.