Nonprofits and New Blood

Acquisition is critical to your organization’s success.  You need to continually be on the look out for new donors, members, advocates and volunteers. These folks will provide the dollars, labor and voices that you need to change the world.

In the commercial world, acquisition takes many forms: advertising, public relations, and increasingly - outreach via social media. It also usually requires a big budget!  In contrast, direct mail has long been the staple of the acquisition diet for nonprofits.  However, new research shows that direct mail is in serious trouble.  For example, a new report from Blackbaud, the Target Analytics 2009 Index of National Fundraising Performance for the Third Quarter, shows direct mail declining rapidly in effectiveness as a way to acquire new donors. In the past five years, new donor acquisition has declined almost 20 percent, or about 3.6 percent annually, the report says.

In response to this decline and the high cost of direct mail, many nonprofits are incorporating new tactics for finding “new blood.” In particular, many are turning to online recruitment and advertising.

Organic Online Recruitment

Organic online recruitment is the process of acquiring new stakeholders directly through your organization’s website.  Most groups have some mechanism for inviting people to engage with them (If you don’t, you should!). For example, the e-newsletter sign-up box has become a staple of the online acquisition diet for many charitable organizations, and is a great vehicle for staying in touch with people who want to engage with your organization.

A few things to keep in mind re: organic recruitment.  First, it’s NOT free!  You must do the work to keep your website and e-communications up to date.  This means having a marketing/communications person on staff that is responsible for creating dynamic, engaging content; performing list hygiene and maintenance; and managing your outbound marketing program.

That said, the great thing about organic recruitment is that people who find your site on their own may be some of your best prospects. Think about it:  They have taken the time to seek you out or have been referred to your website by another “customer” (perhaps a colleague or friend) to explore your work.  All smart companies (and nonprofits) know that customer referrals are among the very best sources of new “leads.” 

On the other hand, the challenge of organic recruitment is that it can take a long time to build up a sizeable list.  And time is money.

Lead Generation or Cost Per Lead (CPL) Advertising

In addition to organic recruitment, you should consider paid advertising, especially if you want to grow your online list quickly and connect with cause-conscious consumers you can nurture over time.  There are numerous options for paid advertising including Google Ad Words, Facebook Ads, Email List Rental and Co-Registration.  Look for an upcoming whitepaper from Care2, which will deal with the pros and cons of these different acquisition tactics.  In this post, I want to examine lead generation, which is what we do at Care2.

Lead Generation, also known as Cost Per Lead Advertising, is an online advertising model, where the advertiser (that’s you) pays for an explicit sign-up from an interested consumer.  According to Wikipedia, “CPL models are at the pinnacle of the online advertising ROI hierarchy because CPL advertising enables advertisers to generate guaranteed returns on their online advertising dollars, which is especially useful in a tough economy.”

CPL advertising has shown explosive growth in recent times. Fortune 500 marketers, nonprofit organizations and political candidates -- including the 2008 Obama campaign --have been using CPL advertising to build e-newsletter databases, community sites, and other acquisition programs with consumers who are passionate about their brands/causes.

How lead generation works:

1. You determine how many leads you want to acquire, based on your budget.
2. You create an engagement vehicle, such as a pledge, petition or poll to display on a third party site.  In the case of Care2, we create a custom campaign for you.
3. The third party site promotes and drives traffic to your campaign.
4. When people take action on your issue, they are then invited to subscribe to your e-newsletter.
5. New leads are delivered to you throughout the campaign.

Again, the unique value of Cost Per Lead (CPL) advertising is that pricing is based on performance, meaning you only pay for the actual leads you receive.  This significantly lowers the risk for you, the advertiser.  Instead of paying for “eyeballs” or “clicks” that may not convert into new online subscribers, you only pay when someone “raises their hand” and says, “Yes, I’d like to join your email list and learn more about your organization.”

The subscribers you acquire this way, via CPL campaigns, turn out to be some of the highest quality leads you will ever get, because they have already taken action (signed a petition, pledge, etc.) on an issue and are therefore more likely to stay engaged and, ultimately, donate to your cause. At Care2, we go even further and guarantee uniqueness, so you never receive the same Care2 name twice.

Want to learn more about Care2 and our lead generation model?  You should watch our latest Care2 101 webinar.

In summary, all businesses need to find new customers or die.  It’s no different for nonprofits, whose lifeblood is the constant flow of new donors, advocates, volunteers and members.  There are numerous ways to acquire new prospects to fuel the work you do. Having a strategy and a plan for doing organic recruitment via your website is imperative, but if you want to really jumpstart your online marketing, fundraising and advocacy program you should also consider lead generation. 

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