Welcome to Grassroots Your Giving Season, our AB Charities guide to empowering donors online and making both your end-of-year fundraising and your long-term grassroots giving program the best that it can be! This blog series will start with introducing you to some exciting new AB Charities features, and we’ll continue sharing tips through December for growing your email list, engaging your board members, writing a fundraising pitch, and more.
We don’t have to tell you why fundraising online is more important than ever this year. But people aren’t just online: they’re engaged. In 2020, as a result of both the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing protests for racial justice, people are reimagining what society can and should look like. Nonprofits have a crucial role to play in supporting this work! Many of these people are your supporters, and they’re ready to invest in change.
No matter what type of organization you are, we want to help you build a sustainable core of supporters to help you respond to current events and carry out your work long-term. Nowadays, that looks like meeting people where they are: on their phones, laptops, desktops, and tablets! You can (and should!) start planning now to grow your virtual network, connect with your supporters online, and figure out what AB Charities tools will help you build a small-dollar donor base this giving season!
Our team of nonprofit experts, who work day in and day out supporting organizations like yours, will be here every step of the way. We also have a team of engineers who are dedicated to perfecting our online grassroots fundraising tools and making it easy for donors to support causes they care about. Over the last few months, we’ve rolled out a series of tools that will power-up your fundraising and make it easier than ever to create a completely virtual supporter community!
Embeddable forms and buttons for your website
Right now, your supporters are motivated to give and are actively looking online for organizations that can help them make change. Embeddable forms and buttons make it possible for donors to support your work without even leaving your homepage — so when people land on your website, whether it be from searching on Google, being referred by a friend, or navigating from one of your social media channels, they have the opportunity to give right away. And here’s the best part: You don’t need any knowledge of code or programming to embed an AB Charities form or donation buttons on your website! Check out our embeddable forms and buttons support site article to learn more about how to use this tool.
Embeddable videos and livestreams for contribution forms
We know your in-person events were super important to your fundraising plan! Planning ahead to host virtual events can help you get back on track during the end-of-year push. Embedding a video or livestream on an AB Charities form means people can donate without missing a minute of your event. And you’ll have access to the donor data from your virtual event so you can keep engaging with your most dedicated supporters! Don’t know where to start? We came up with some questions to help you think about what kind of virtual fundraising event is right for you.
New recurring donation tools
COVID-19 disrupted a lot of organizations’ fundraising programs, especially those that relied on one-time donations. Recurring programs can bolster your work during future interruptions and give you a sustainable source of money to budget and plan around!
Here at AB Charities, we love recurring gifts so much that we’ve introduced multiple new recurring tools this year! Our recurring pitch feature gives you the opportunity to tell donors why they should make a recurring gift and what their donation will help support, right on the contribution form. And the new recurring incentive tool means you can offer a free gift to donors who make their donation recurring!
We’ve also updated our pop-up recurring toolkit: Our new Smart Options pop-up suggests multiple recurring donation amounts that are lower than a donor’s initial one-time contribution. It also gives donors the option to set their own recurring amount — giving your supporters the agency to engage with your work in a way that works for them.
You’re taking the time to build your grassroots program before end-of-year — take this opportunity to sustain your fundraising for the long haul!
This post is only the beginning of our 2020 Grassroots Your Giving Season series! We’ll be reposting evergreen tips from last year along with publishing new articles to help you adapt your end-of-year fundraising to this historic year. Want to talk to one of our nonprofit experts directly? Schedule a strategy call with your Outreach contact: We are always happy to help!
