why you need to profile your donors post-event

At a recent fundraising event, an organization sold 9 of our 6-adult Tuscany Villa packages for $10,000 each, netting $45,000. That’s a dream come true for many non-profits. However, this article is not about how they used consignment items to raise more money for their non-profit. It is about how they can continue to raise that kind of money for their non-profit in the future.

We were speaking to someone people from the organization post-event and remarking how amazing it was that they had just identified 9 major donors for their organization. After a little bit of conversation, we also learned that they had never met 4 of those donors. They were brought along as guests. This is where profiling your donors comes into play.

Why You Need to Profile Your Donors

Think about how much work and effort goes into meeting and building relationships with donors who have the capacity to make $10,000 donations. When you profile your donors, you can identify the donors who have the ability to make large donations and those who bring other things to the table, like guests or special access, to ensure you get the right people in the room at your fundraising events.

So not only does it help you to make sure you identify the donors to invite to fundraising events, but it can also help you prioritize your donor outreach. Here at HGA, we’re big believers in picking up the phone to create those relationships with donors. However, there needs to be some level of prioritization. You may want to get your chairperson or CEO to call some donors. You might be short on time and need to prioritize who to call. By having a donor profile, you can prioritize those resources.

How to Profile Your Donors After a Fundraising Event

Following the fundraising gala, create a spreadsheet with a list of the people who made donations and how much they donated at the fundraising event. We also recommend creating 3 extra columns:

• Giving Capacity 10k+
• Brings Guests
• Special Access
  
  

These columns are yes or no columns. For example, you may have some donors that don’t have a $10,000 giving capacity but have a network full of people with that kind of giving capacity. Alternatively, they may have special access to a private jet or something else that may be useful to your non-profit organization in the future.

If you use fundraising software, it might be able to generate this kind of report automatically, which can allow you to compare additional data. Still, a simple spreadsheet will do the trick.

What to do with Your Donor Profiles

Immediately following the event, this donor profile allows you to identify which donors you want to contact as a priority. For example, those 4 new donors who spent $10,000 should get a call from the chairperson or a director thanking them for their donation. Creating that connection from the top is crucial because it makes them feel special if the Director of Development is calling them.
We recommend nurturing the relationship by:

• Thanking them for their donation
• Showing them the return on their investment (Because of your donation, we were able to send another 5 kids to camp.)
  
  

Don’t invite them for coffee because that’s still an ask. Just express gratitude. You are probably going to send out emails later, and you can call them another time to arrange for them to see the work your non-profit does.

Your donor profile will also allow you to compare data and look for trends. For example, you may notice that some of your table sponsors don’t bring guests who donate. It happens a lot, and we’ve talked about this before, but a lot of table sponsors will give seats as an incentive to their staff when we really want them to bring their friends who have the capacity to donate.

Having that data to show that the guests they bring aren’t donating allows you to make decisions regarding your fundraising events. In some cases, you may have a frank conversation when it comes to buying tables about the sort of guests that you want them to bring. For example, we once sent reports out to the table sponsors to show them how much money their table raised in total. They were invested in our cause, so they could see that bringing guests with the capacity to give meant raising more money for their cause.
 
HGA’s Jason Ledlow and Trevor Nelson discussed how to use donor profiles to raise more money at length on our free weekly webinar series for nonprofits. Watch Episode #101 below!

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