Attracting prospective donors to open a donor-advised fund (DAF) requires more than just compelling messaging—it demands a strategic approach to lead generation.
While your development team is usually at the forefront of donor engagement, marketing can significantly bolster their efforts.
Even the smallest teams can benefit from a marketing-first strategy for donors, and here’s why.
Understanding Lead Generation
Lead generation content can be invaluable. These are documents, reports, webinars, or other types of collateral that interest potential donors. For community foundations, this collateral is tailored to the interests of potential donors.
Consider a “Donor-Advised Fund How-To Guide.” While staff at community foundations discuss donor-advised funds daily, most new philanthropists and first-time donors have little knowledge about them.
This is where marketers play a crucial role.
Marketing Advantage
Instead of relying solely on your development team to have individual conversations with potential new donors, marketing can nudge donors along their giving journey.
At its core, lead generation is about identifying and attracting individuals interested in your cause and nurturing them into potential donors.
Imagine this: A donor hears about your community foundation and wants to learn how to give their charitable dollars. They might search your site, but without guidance, they might leave without connecting.
That’s a potential donor lost.
Now, imagine they see a sidebar or pop-up offering a “Donor-Advised Fund How-To Guide.” Curious, they provide their name and email to access the 3-4 page document you created. Not only do they gain valuable information, but you also capture their contact details for follow-up.
Cost-Benefit Analysis
You might think, “I don’t have time to create something like that and incorporate it into our website.” But consider the cost-benefit analysis.
Creating lead generation content may take extra hours to perfect the message and design the document, but the alternative is time-intensive, one-on-one conversations that add up quickly.
If a development team member spends 30 minutes per conversation and has 10 such conversations a year, that’s five hours spent. Is it worth five hours of your time as a marketer to strengthen the new donor pipeline?
Over multiple years, the benefits become even more significant.
A lead generation tool can live on your site indefinitely, passively generating new leads for the development team. Once created, your heavy lifting is done, and you reap the rewards.
While you’ll need to make tweaks and improvements over time, the initial investment can yield significant returns.
Getting Started
So, what are you waiting for? It’s time to start creating. And if you need any help, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Whether you’re looking to bring in more donors or improve your network of professional advisors, we can help you begin the process or build a lead generation tool from scratch.
