CDE project 18: supporters as champions for your mission

Most traditional fundraising models fail to recognise how connected people are nowadays and how marketing has changed fundamentally over the past ten years. How causes will win and keep customers is changing too, so fundraisers eager to engage with and retain supporters must ensure their prospects and customers will want to engage with them. This project will look at the basic fundraising model differently, to try to define how supporters in future can be used as channels and networks to spread opportunities, grow income and to provide donors and potential donors with a rich array of rewarding experiences.

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CDE project 18 summary: supporters as champions for your mission

by The Commission on the Donor Experience

This project will look at the basic fundraising model differently, to try to define how supporters in future can be used as channels and networks to spread opportunities, grow income and to provide donors and potential donors with a rich array of rewarding experiences.

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CDE project 18 section 2: the approach to compiling case examples

by The Commission on the Donor Experience

Content outline.

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CDE project 18 section 3: action 1 - understand the paradigm shift

by The Commission on the Donor Experience

Putting the principles & actions into practice.

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CDE project 18 section 3.1: action 2 - adopt the right mindset

by The Commission on the Donor Experience

Adopting the right mindset is probably the most important action of all. It is what you need in place at the outset and it influences the actions that follow. In time, it will be part of the overall culture within the organisation.

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CDE project 18 section 3.2: action 3 - ask the question ‘WHY do we exist?’

by The Commission on the Donor Experience

‘With consistency people will see and hear without a shadow of a doubt what you believe.’

Simon Sinek

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CDE project 18 section 3.3: action 4 - tell your mission story

by The Commission on the Donor Experience

All fundraisers are aware they need to tell stories well so they can convey quickly in a way that engages people. Now it is even more important to spend time to understand how to tell powerful stories

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CDE project 18 section 3.4: action 5 - get your supporters to share your story for you

by The Commission on the Donor Experience

‘Your best marketers and your best fundraisers today are not you. Your best marketers and fundraisers are the people - the ecosystem - you create around - the audience you build’

Grant Leboff.

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CDE project 18 section 3.5: action 6 - provide an experience that donors will talk about

by The Commission on the Donor Experience

An ideal opportunity to inspire supporters to spread your story is simply when people give or choose to fundraise for you. It is when they have taken the emotional decision to support you.

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CDE project 18 section 3.6: action 7 - be ready to react

by The Commission on the Donor Experience

As your story begins to spread by your supporters, you should get an increase in inbound enquiries or offers of support that are not a result of a direct response communication, i.e. they are a result of people hearing your story from others they know and trust.

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CDE project 18 section 3.7: action 8 - set up new measures

by The Commission on the Donor Experience

Adopting a mindset of how to inspire people to spread your story rather than target them for money will need new measures away from direct ROI. 

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CDE project 18 section 4: characteristics of applying these principles

by The Commission on the Donor Experience

Check here to see the characteristics you would expect to see of a charity applying this approach.

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CDE project 18 appendix 1: sources

by The Commission on the Donor Experience

Sources that informed and influenced this project.

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