As a charity, talking to supporters is a vital source of income and an important way of retaining regular contributors, but it takes more than a news update to build that resource and increase not only contributions but active involvement and support. Everything needs to work in harmony; PR, direct mail, web & social media, but too often it’s fragmented.
Basic marketing sense tells us charity supporters need to know how their money is spent. This means reporting back on the impact the charity is having on real people, lobbying, research, animals or environments – we like to know we’re part of something, we want to buy into the brand, the mission and feel warm about the results we help achieve.
A crucial part of supporter communications is data. It’s your list of people who you know have donated or supported your charity before, and are actually more likely to do so again given the right trigger. Keeping your data up-to-date is easy if you keep in touch with them regularly, but if it’s been a while it can become necessary (and a legal requirement) to clean up your data before using it again.
