If you’ve done the hard yards to identify the key impact stats that matter most to your donors and selected the essential data your team will track, congrats! You’ve done the hard part. Now comes the fun, creative bit: Deciding how, where and how often you articulate your organisation’s impact so you keep it front of mind for all members of your community (donors, sponsors, partners, volunteers and staff).
Establishing consistency establishes trust
When your community feels they can trust your organisation, and can expect a consistent level of dedication and communication from you, they’ll feel more connected to your cause and more compelled to keep supporting your work.
It’s how great brands build cult followings, and how great nonprofits create diehard supporters.
There are several touchpoints where prioritising and communicating your results and progress is essential, and plenty of optional extras that add a nice touch to the supporter experience.
Think about engaging all of your audiences (in no particular order)
Regular donors
Appeal/campaign donors
General one-off donors
Major donors
Corporate partners
Corporate sponsors
Bequests
Workplace givers
Fundraisers
Volunteers
Ambassadors
And, by no means least, your staff
Think about the best channels/formats to engage each of your audiences
Dashboards (with real-time results)
Infographics
Stories from the field
Photo galleries
Videos/slides
Think website
Home page impact dashboard
Our work pages
Dedicated impact page(s)
Campaign pages
Donation and monthly giving pages
A lovely clean and simple home page dashboard by Oz Harvest
Think emails/communications/social
Regular impact updates (donors, partners, sponsors, volunteer, staff)
Campaign specific thank you messages (donors, partners, sponsors, volunteers, staff)
On-boarding/journey emails for your donors and volunteers
Convert your regular impact updates into one or several bite-sized posts
.Post campaign-specific impact to thank donors, partners, sponsors, volunteers and staff
PetRescue’s Valentine’s Day impact update shared via email and social
Think print and online collateral
With all printed collateral and downloadable brochures, be mindful that impact stats date quickly. You’ll need to commit to keep them updated. These are all good opportunities to remind your supporters of the impact value of their gifts (see donate page example above).
Annual report
Major gift program/case for support brochure
New partner/sponsor proposals
Bequest brochure
Regular givers welcome pack
Workplace givers welcome pack
Fundraising kit
St John of God Community Services impact report presenting the division’s myriad community outreach services together for the very first time.
And wear lots of shoes
Focus on your audience’s perception of your organisation and the impact of their personal contribution. Put yourself in their shoes and strive to make every one of them feel as though they directly make a difference to the results in the field - because they do.
Across this series of Caboodle blog posts, we’ll be sharing key steps and ideas to help you kick-start your year-round impact communications strategy, with a little more deep-diving into how and where to communicate your impact.
Find out more about our charity and fundraising copywriting experience, or contact our freelance copywriters to discuss the messaging and strategy for your impact communications.