Picture this: It’s getting close to the holiday season, and you want to embrace this time of generosity by donating to charitable causes. You’ve received messages from a few organizations, including a nonprofit you donated to years prior and your university. 

While you haven’t heard from the nonprofit since your last donation, your university has engaged with you regularly since you graduated. Just looking at the images on the mailer they sent makes you nostalgic and remember your connection to the school fondly, whereas you struggle to recall the nonprofit’s mission. In this scenario, which organization would you be mostly to support?‍

This example highlights how much your relationships and communications with supporters matter, whether you’re fundraising for a nonprofit, school, or association. Here are some key strategies to remember during online campaigns to engage your supporters.

Encourage user-generated content.

User-generated content is content created by your supporters, usually in response to prompts or campaigns you share with them. In particular, videos that include supporters’ own thoughts and voices provide a sense of authenticity that’s hard to replicate. These pieces of content are particularly effective, as they motivate supporters to actively participate and engage with your campaigns, encourage supporters to think deeply about your cause, and foster a sense of community. 

However, collecting video content can be difficult without the right approach. Use these tips to inspire your community to take action and collect excellent videos:

• Employ a user-generated content platform. Use a platform that simplifies recording, editing, and collecting videos for your staff and supporters. This lowers the barrier to entry, increasing supporter involvement. Plus, staff can save hours of their valuable time.
• Track the right metrics. Views aren’t everything—in fact, a high view count on a video doesn’t mean much if viewers don’t engage further. For a comprehensive understanding of the video’s performance, track website traffic, donation page engagement, and fundraising dollars received after the campaign.
• Encourage authenticity. Authentic stories are what make videos so impactful. Share strong, compelling prompts with supporters and urge them to speak from the heart about personal experiences and motivations for supporting your organization. For example, encourage them to talk about the moment they decided to make their first contribution.

Remember, collecting and sharing video content doesn’t have to be expensive or time-consuming. These days, filming on a smartphone and using free or low-cost editing tools can produce quality, inspiring videos—and that’s all you need to secure donations.

Use specialized tools.

Choose fundraising software that optimizes your campaign for your team and supporters. 99Pledges’ guide to fundraising platforms recommends using a tool with key features like quick and easy setup, secure and flexible payment options, and access to fundraising resources or a coach to offer the best experiences possible. 

When it comes to developing relationships with supporters online, look out for these features: 

• Communication and marketing tools: Connecting with your supporters across several platforms will increase their awareness of your organization, familiarize them with your cause, and strengthen your relationship. Choose a platform that can segment donors and automatically deploy scheduled messages to save you time.
• Streamlined, simple donation form: Making a solid first impression is key, but so is ending on a high note—that’s why your donation form is so important. The form should load quickly, only ask for the most critically important information, and securely accept various payment types.
• Peer-to-peer fundraising tools: Peer-to-peer campaigns allow supporters to fundraise on behalf of your organization. They’ll have an individual donation page to share with friends and family to gather donations. This method places the fundraising responsibility on your supporters and gives them hands-on experience supporting your organization.
• Sharable pages: If you choose to hold a peer-to-peer campaign, make fundraising as easy as possible for participants. Choose a solution with shareable donation pages participants can link to in social media posts, texts, emails, and more. This way, you’ll reach more people and get more supporters involved in the fundraiser. 

Without the right technology, communicating with supporters and managing donations can quickly become overwhelming. Take the time to select the right tool for your needs so you can focus on fostering personal connections with donors.

Offer regular updates.

While promoting your fundraiser with emails, social media posts, and video content is what initially attracts supporters to the campaign, ongoing updates keep them engaged in the campaign’s outcome.

One of the best ways to keep your supporters informed about fundraising progress is with a fundraising thermometer. As Double the Donation describes, fundraising thermometers are “a graphic that represents the progress a nonprofit organization has made throughout a fundraising campaign.”

Some other ways to provide progress updates include:

• Recurring social media posts that summarize the progress you made in a week. Include key metrics like new donations and donors gained that week, as well as total fundraising dollars.
• A milestone tracker that you reference any time you hit a key milestone. These milestones could either be numeric (e.g., “We are 25% of the way to our goal!”) or more tangible (e.g., “Our school has raised enough to buy 100 new textbooks!”).
• Progress videos that show your team working behind the scenes to secure donations and put funding to good use.

If your fundraiser will culminate in an event, invite supporters to attend and document the fun for those who can’t make it. For example, a walk-a-thon fundraiser usually ends in a community event in which participants walk a planned route to secure the donations their sponsors pledged. Invite sponsors to spectate and capture plenty of photos and videos for social media and future marketing materials.

Keep the conversation going.

Your supporter engagement strategies shouldn’t stop just because your campaign does. Communicating with donors should be a continuous process that evolves over time as you learn more about them. 

Kick off these efforts by following up with donors after your campaign wraps up. Because they supported your cause, they likely want to know whether you reached your goal and how you intend to leverage the support you received. Consider sharing:

• Thank you messages that express gratitude for their donation and any past support. Include personal details like their name and what the gift will be used for.
• Donation reminders, particularly if you ran a fundraiser with pledged donations that are collected after the campaign ends. Even if these donations will be withdrawn automatically, it’s best to send a courtesy email. 
• Sneak peeks at future campaigns to get donors excited about supporting your cause again. Specify how the campaign will benefit your organization and highlight intriguing details, like a highly sought-after item in a silent auction.

Don’t forget to share a detailed impact update! Compile metrics like total funds raised, fund allocation details, number of donors, and year-over-year growth to highlight the campaign’s performance. And, circle back a few months later to provide an update on how the funds were used and the tangible impact they had on your organization and its beneficiaries.

Engaging supporters online doesn’t just secure more support for your current campaign—it pays dividends in the long run. You’ll establish strong, personal connections with supporters, show them the value of supporting your cause, and convey how much meaning their support offers. This fosters a base of loyal donors you can count on to aid your organization through challenges, urgent needs, and large-scale projects.