Creating a Donor Funnel

It may tempting to think of everyone as a potential donor, and the idea of missing someone who might have been your next big benefactor can be scary. However, to optimize your reach and your resources, it is important to plan your fundraising activities around a donor funnel.

So, what is a donor funnel? A donor funnel helps you plan your development campaigns and provides a map to intentionally move individuals from never having heard of you to becoming not just a donor but an advocate.

A quick Google search will show you a variety of versions of the donor funnel, each with its own stages and labels. But, consistently, the wide top of the funnel is your entire pool of potential donors, restricted only by your ability to reach them. As you move prospects through the funnel, they will discover more about your organization; become supporters; make the decision to donate; and ultimately some will become advocates in the community.

At each stage of the funnel, you will engage with fewer people, but those engagements will become increasingly in-depth and resource-intensive. As you build your funnel, keep in mind:

• Tailor your resource allocation to the level of the funnel. Ask yourself if an expensive media campaign to raise awareness is a better use of your resources than creating an event to convert new donors into bigger donors, or donors into advocates.
• Be sure you capture the funnel level for each individual in your CRM. You want to have authentic relationships with your high-value donors and advocates. You risk damaging those relationships if you send them the same kind of awareness-building campaign you send to those at the top of your funnel.
• Plan a retention strategy. Do not take those at the bottom of the funnel for granted. Remember that it is much harder to develop a new donor than to deepen the relationship with an existing one.

A donor funnel should be a part of your strategic plan. Capturing it will help you clarify the goals for your campaigns and help you to evaluate their ROI in the context of those goals.

I'd love to help you build your donor funnel. Reach out to me today for a complimentary consultation.