From Students to Donors: Cultivating Long-term Relationships with your Constituents

When nonprofits start to build their individual giving program, one of the first hurdles many come to is thinking they don’t have any prospects. Going from zero donors to one can feel like an overwhelming task, let alone going from 10 donors to 50.

But in many cases, those organizations are missing a key source of potential donors: their constituents. All too often, nonprofits look over the fact that their program participants or volunteers or even mailing list subscribers are prime candidates to become donors. They have already raised their hand and said in some form or another, “I like what you’re doing!” Now you need to shift them from raising their hands to raising some funds.

Turning the people your nonprofit serves into donors isn’t some overnight magic trick—it’s a slow burn, not a quick win. You can’t just toss them a branded water bottle and expect a check ten years later.

No matter what kind of constituents you’re working with, building real, lasting generosity starts way before your clients, students, artists, etc. may be able to donate. This article dives into the long game of donor development—the unglamorous, essential work of turning the folks you serve into the kind of supporters who are eager to give back.

Playing the Long Game

When you’re delivering services that have a short timeline, it can be easy to move someone from a volunteer to a donor. But if you’re running a program that is long-term in nature, you’re going to run into some significant challenges.

When we talk about long-term programming, we mean programming where you deliver services to your constituents and don’t see the measurable outcomes from those programs until months or years later. For example, for about a decade I ran an educational program. Undergraduate students would join my team for a summer residency, then go back home and complete a year-long, team research project. The next summer, they would return to campus for a closing summer residency.

The goal of the program was to build a pipeline of underrepresented students in graduate programs and research careers in the information sciences. It was the definition of long-term. We had to track students from their undergraduate programs to graduate school to their early careers, a process that takes many years. That is certainly an extreme example of long-term, but many nonprofits deliver programs and services that have some degree of a long-term commitment.

But in many cases, once those students started their careers, those students were grateful for the impact of the program and wanted to make a contribution to it. Many of my students would eventually become donors, but cultivating that relationship over a long period is a skill that takes time to develop.

Keep Track Of Your Constituents

The constituents that are positively impacted by your long-term programming are an excellent source of prospective donors, but it can be a challenge to reach them. The first step you need to take is to make sure you are keeping track of your people.

So let’s take stock. Are your constituents segregated into different databases/CRMs? Do you have a database for clients or students and another database for donors?  Maybe a third database for volunteers? That may make sense on some rare occasions — maybe you have extremely sensitive data that you need to lock down. But often that’s just a function of how an organization’s staff is set up and what legacy systems have been purchased and utilized over time.

Sometimes this is cost-saving practice as well. Many CRM software platforms increase their price as you add more people to your database, so some cost-conscious organizations add and remove people to keep their costs down. If you opt for a CRM that offers unlimited data, you can avoid this issue (and the associated busywork) altogether.

The bottom line is that if your constituents are spread across multiple databases, it’s harder for your team to see a holistic picture of their journey over time. If, however, all of your constituents are in a single CRM, now you can see their program application data, their evaluation forms, their email opens, that one time they made a $12 gift, when they filled out the volunteer interest form, and so on — all in a single place. That’s real knowledge. That’s real power.

Continue Providing Value

Another major challenge you’ll face is keeping in contact with your constituents over time. Maybe you delivered some fantastic services for a year or two, and then those constituents finished your program or aged out of a service. Now it’s years later and you’re wondering why they don’t donate to your organization. Well, you probably missed a lot of opportunities to continue providing value to those folks.

Notice I didn’t say “keep in touch with those folks.” Sending periodic emails is easy, but it does not equate to value.

When I was running my education program, the official program lasted only one year. But we needed to keep tabs on those students for 5 or 10 additional years. So what did we do? We found creative ways to stay engaged and reinforce what our core program offered.

We sent surveys asking them what other types of services they would find useful. We set up Facebook and LinkedIn groups for networking and community building. We invited former students back as guest speakers and mentors. We hosted grad school prep webinars. We offered resume and cover letter workshops. Our mission was long-term. So therefore our services and our relationships needed to be long-term.

These offerings provided value to our students, but it also helped our organization. It allowed us to maintain updated contact information in our CRM. We tracked their activity metrics in our database, which allowed us to see which students were highly engaged and which students were falling through the cracks.

It allowed us to demonstrate to our former students how rewarding it was to give back to a program that invested so much in them. And what do you know — many of those students donated money and volunteered their time when they were able to.

Make the Right Ask

The last challenge I’ll address here is a psychological one. It’s the feeling that you shouldn’t ask your constituents for support because it’s not the right time. They’re still students. They’re struggling artists. They’re in recovery. They’re too young, too broke, too whatever.

That is certainly the internal monologue that ran through my mind. But what I learned over time was that mentality was robbing my constituents of the opportunity to give back. I was pre-judging all of my students’ capacity to contribute and making that decision for them. Some smart folks working in fundraising and development helped me see the error of my ways. I had to unlearn that thinking.

So what did my team do? We found creative ways to solicit support from students. We ran crowdfunding campaigns where the goal was not how much money we could raise, but instead, which cohort could get the most members to donate any amount. For students who wanted to give back but couldn’t swing a financial gift at the time, we invited them to do a workshop or webinar or serve as a research project mentor. We asked students to share our fundraising appeals with their friends and families.

We tried our best to meet them where they were. We stopped waiting for the right time to make an ask, and instead focused on making the right ask and finding ways to collaborate as partners.

When you’re looking at your org’s bottom line, it can feel like the only thing that matters is getting the next donor in the door so your org can keep operating. But thinking outside of the box and finding creative ways to collaborate with your constituents can often be even more impactful.

Wrapping Up

When it’s difficult to show the immediate impact of your programming, the task of identifying prospective donors can feel particularly daunting. But if you take the time to develop a long term strategy for donor cultivation, you can turn your program participants and volunteers into fundraising champions.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind

• If possible, keep track of all of your constituents in one database or CRM. That way you can see the full story of a constituent and use the information to cultivate the relationship. You can use their survey data or participation history in your donation solicitations.
• Find ways to continually provide value. It’s great to keep all your program participants and volunteers on your mailing list, but try to identify ways for additional engagement. Create alumni groups on Facebook or LinkedIn or invite constituents to come back for an annual gathering.
• Make the right ask. Making a financial contribution may not always be feasible for your constituents, especially if they are just getting started in their careers. But there are plenty of other ways to get them involved, such as asking them to promote your fundraiser or inviting them to return as a volunteer or mentor.

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