When you reach out to a constituent, many nonprofits mistake that the constituent will understand what they are being asked to do. This is where misinterpretation comes into play, and creates a potentially harmful situation that will affect your relationship. Therefore, it is so important to be specific in your call to action with your donors, grantors, legislative officials, and volunteers.
When you ask for a donation, do you say it’s going to the general operating fund? While that is where most nonprofits have the greatest need, it can be in your best interest to make an ask for something specific that would have otherwise come from the operating budget. An example is funding for a new database management solution. For this, you would need to explain why your current system is antiquated, and how the new system can help your organization save time. This in turn will give you more opportunities to work on other fundraising initiatives, as well as serve more clients. Once you have funded the database conversion, it’s critical to provide data regarding time savings, and how those savings give you the chance to have an office volunteer (who was manually entering volunteer information) move to a more critical project, since the new volunteer system is now automated.
Being specific in your call to action can also be applied to advocacy requests. Don’t say “become an advocate of our organization”. Give them the legislator’s name to contact, provide a phone number or email, and give them a script for an email or call. This will keep constituents from saying a blanketed, “Please don’t cut funding to XYZ Organization.” Instead they can say, “Please vote no to amendment A that will cut funding to XYZ Organization. This cut would cost our city $150,000 from its tax base.”
I hope these examples give you some insight into the value of being specific with your constituents. Ask and you will receive. Contact a member of the DonorLynk team today at 615-988-4600 to understand how a better system gets you better results!
Shanda Wicker is a Business Development Executive at DonorLynk, LLC. DonorLynk is focused on helping nonprofits increase effectiveness and efficiency.