How to Find Your Fundraising Power

Connect with your passion

If you want your donors to feel like they belong as a part of your mission, you have to understand what motivates the work in the first place. What’s your spark? When you take the time to connect with your passion, you’re empowering yourself—and your team—to build a fundraising strategy that’s truly aligned with your values and purpose.

If you want to connect your community with your passion, follow the five S’s:

Set an intention

Before everything else, you have to get in touch with your why. What first drew you to this work, and why have you chosen to stick with it? What is your motivation and purpose? Approach your work with honesty, mindfulness, and intentionality. When you have a clear sense of your why, you’ll be more aligned in your decisions, messaging, and reporting. You’ll also communicate more authentically with donors—and connect more deeply with those who share your passion.

Set a goal

Know exactly what it is you’re working toward. What do you need, and why do you need it? How much—and who—do you need to make it a reality? A clear, detailed budget is your best friend; it will help you stay focused on the big picture as you determine smaller daily goals and priorities.  

Pro tip: No matter where you are in your nonprofit organization’s journey—just starting out, or a legacy pillar of the community—it’s always a good time to check in with your growth goals and connect with your purpose. 

Download your free Nonprofit Growth Kit and get expert tips and prompts to help you align your team, scale your operations, and build for maximum impact.

Segment

In fundraising, there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach. If you really want to connect with your people, you have to open up your nonprofit CRM and do a deep dive into the data. Decide which groups you want to engage and why, and be sure to personalize your messaging and call-to-action for each segment. Segment your donors using these criteria:

• Recency – How long donors have been giving to your organization
• Frequency – How often donors make a gift (e.g., one-time, monthly, quarterly, annually)
• Method – How donors give (e.g., online form, text-to-give, physical check)
• Giving amount – How much donors are giving
• Reason – What prompts donors to give (e.g., fundraising event, social media, direct mail)
• Special interests – Particular programs or campaigns they like to support (e.g., education, poverty alleviation, animal welfare)
• Type – What kind of donor they are (e.g., peer-to-peer fundraiser, recurring donor, major donor)

If you’re targeting multiple segments to reach a campaign goal, your approach to each group—how many donors you ask, how much you ask for, and your method of outreach—should be strategically customized for these categories.

Mobilize supporters

You already have a community of passionate supporters. Use them to your advantage! These are your most vocal advocates and champions, engaged volunteers, social influencers, and committed thought leaders. You can teach a lot of things, but you can’t teach passion—so when individuals are showing you that they already care about your cause, believe them. Empower them. Call them in.

Your volunteers are some of your nonprofit’s most dedicated supporters. Their hard work streamlines operations so you have more time for the donor conversations that matter—and your volunteer management system should, too.

With DonorPerfect Online Forms and Easy Reports, you can manage volunteer sign-ups, track hours and impact, and automate communications all in one place. Save valuable time on data entry and visualize volunteer and donor data in tandem. Manage your volunteers with DonorPerfect >>

Share your story

Now, the most important part: get your story out into the world! Your story is your superpower, how you tell it matters. As a best practice, focus on an individual narrative and one key statistic that illustrates the impact of your work. Think of storytelling as a two-way conversation between you and the donor:

1. Hook – Something that quickly grabs their attention and pulls them in (e.g., a photo of animals in need of adoption)
2. Guide – Explain the situation: the need, the urgency, and who would benefit 
3. Empower – Emphasize their power to create change, and give a clear path to impact
4. Result – Tell them exactly what a specific gift amount would achieve

When you tell your story, you aren’t just broadcasting information about your nonprofit’s work and mission. You’re starting a dialogue with your donor that resonates with their story and passion, and offering an invitation for them to respond.

Connect with your people

Once you’ve aligned your strategy with your passion and made a bid for support, you need to sustain connection with your people. Effective fundraising isn’t a one-and-done ask; it’s a meaningful, long-term relationship based on shared values and vision. You need to engage your donors in ways that are authentic and geared toward action.

Follow my three D’s of connection:

Go deeper

What is your full story? Be open and honest with your donors: give them the highs and lows, the challenges and triumphs. When you go deeper with your donors, you build trust, genuine connection, and personal investment in your cause.

Give directions

What do you want each person to do? How will they help you? Give clear and specific instructions for how your donors can engage and what their impact will be. These instructions should go beyond a simple “Donate” button. Call on your people to volunteer, to subscribe to your newsletter, to attend an event, to share a post on social media. When your donors are aware of all the ways they can show up for your organization—and what those kinds of support will help you achieve—the more connected (and committed) they will feel to your mission.

Pro tip: As a good rule of thumb, stick to one specific direction per campaign. Your communications should clarify the donor’s role and impact; too many instructions can lead to donor confusion or burnout.

Communicate “daily”

Your fundraising communication needs to be consistent, even if not quite every day. Determine a regular cadence for outreach, and stick to it. And don’t limit communication to just asks; your donors don’t want to be solicited every time they hear from you. They want progress updates on the work you’re doing and thank-yous for the support they provide.

With the right email and digital marketing solution, communicating with your donors is a breeze. Every DonorPerfect system is fully integrated with Constant Contact, meaning you can customize branded email templates, track opens and clicks, and segment donor lists with ease—all synced directly with your nonprofit CRM. 

Don’t have DonorPerfect? Learn more and request a quote today >>

Connect with your purpose

Once you’ve connected with your passion and your people, you need to connect with your purpose. This brings us back to where we started: what drives you? What vision for change drew you to this work? What is the special superpower that you bring to the mission? 

Your purpose is more than a spark; it’s the energizing force of your work. When you and your team take time to continually reconnect with your purpose, you grow in alignment with your values and sustain the momentum that keeps you moving forward.

Follow my three Rs to connect with your purpose:

• Remember your why. What is your core motivation? What brought you to the work, and what keeps you here? 
• Reflect on what you’ve accomplished. What has kept you connected to the work? What work still needs to be done, and how will you get there?
• Realize your power. What could you be capable of achieving if you believed you were unstoppable?  

Conclusion: Connect with your power

Real connection has to start with you. In order to build the deep, lasting relationships that help your mission thrive, you first need to get connected with your power. 

Because when you believe in yourself as an unstoppable force, you can show up to the work with confidence and without fear. When you know your power, you’re equipped to lift others higher and to help them connect with their own power, too.

For today’s donors, connection means more than a financial transaction; it’s a meaningful relationship built on shared values and trust. But your supporters are unique, just like you—and that means there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to engaging them. 

DonorPerfect’s Donor Engagement Models for the Digital Age offer four modern frameworks that go beyond the traditional “donor funnel” to build deeper connections and inspire authentic, lasting engagement with your nonprofit. Learn how to identify your most engaged supporters, convert new ones, and enhance long-term retention with the help of your nonprofit CRM.