4 Signs That Your Nonprofit Needs a Custom Website
Your nonprofit needs a website, but you may be torn between a template-based design and a custom site. Here are four signs that a custom site is right for you.
You can think of your website as your nonprofit’s online headquarters. This is where you provide information about your mission, offer updates about campaigns and events, and house important tools like donation forms.
Because your website is the hub of your nonprofit’s online presence, it’s worth taking the time to get the design of your site just right, whether you’re building a website for the first time or revamping your current one.
But these days, especially with the increasing ubiquity of user-friendly nonprofit website building tools, it may be difficult to know whether a template-based design or a custom job is right for your organization.
Here’s the thing about custom nonprofit websites that give them an edge over DIY-type, template-based designs: A custom nonprofit website is like a fingerprint—it’s unique to your nonprofit and your nonprofit alone. And on top of having a unique look and feel, a custom website is built with the features and tools that meet your specific organization’s needs.
To help you decide which path your nonprofit should take, let’s take a deeper dive and explore four signs that your nonprofit needs a custom website:
Even if your nonprofit isn’t quite to the point where you need a custom website, knowing these four signs can help you be proactive in how you manage your current site and make it the best it can be. Plus, you’ll be able to recognize your nonprofit’s needs and kickstart the custom design process when the time comes. Let’s jump right in!
1. Supporters are struggling to find you online.
Say a potential supporter meets one of your staff members at the grocery store. They strike up a conversation, and the potential supporter expresses an interest in donating to your organization. The staff member excitedly encourages the potential supporter to go to your website to complete their gift.
Back at home, the potential supporter Googles your nonprofit, but your website is nowhere to be found! Consequently, your nonprofit loses the donation this potential supporter wanted to give.
The last thing you want for your cause and your beneficiaries is to be MIA on the internet. But you have to be proactive in helping your audience find you, just like sending out invitations when you plan a party.
So, how can you let people know your nonprofit is online? Here are three suggestions:
Employ SEO best practices. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website content so that it’s more visible to search engines like Google. According to Cornershop Creative’s guide to SEO for nonprofits, doing things like targeting specific keywords in your website’s written content or securing backlinks to your website from other authoritative sites can signal to Google that your website should be ranked higher up on its results pages, thus increasing visibility.
Apply for the Google Ad Grant. The Google Ad Grant is a little different from a traditional grant. It’s simply a grant that provides eligible nonprofits with $10,000 of monthly Google Ads—the paid search results that show up at the top of the Google results page when a relevant query is Googled. It’s an easy way to get attention for your nonprofit! Check your eligibility to start the application process.
Direct people to your site from your social media profiles. You can also let your supporters know that your website is alive and well by leveraging your social media presence. After all, the average internet user spends about two and half hours a day on social media. So, by linking to your website content in your social media posts and including a link to your website in your profile, you can nudge your followers to check out your website and all it has to offer.
An experienced web design professional can help your supporters find your nonprofit online. For example, as they design your custom site, they can set you up with the framework for an SEO-friendly website and coach you through optimizing future content for the web. Some web designers can even provide consulting on opportunities like the Google Ad Grant!
2. The user experience on your current site could be better.
When a visitor lands on your website, what is their experience like? Do they find your site useful and intuitive to use? Does an impressive design draw their attention to your important tools and resources?
Taking a look at your website from your visitors’ perspective might show you that there’s some room for improvement when it comes to how your website looks and functions from the front-end.
Here are a few potential user experience problem areas a web design agency can help you with:
Load speed: To improve conversions on your website, your pages should be loading in 1-4 seconds, according to Portent. In other words, the longer it takes for your web page to load, the less likely it is that your website visitors will do something other than get frustrated and exit your site. To improve your website’s load speed, compress all of your visual files and minimize redirect chains.
Accessibility: Your site should be accessible to users of all abilities. If it’s not, you’re shutting out part of your community of supporters who could make a big difference in your organization’s ability to move its mission forward! You may even be coming up short in meeting website accessibility requirements for your country or state. Maximizing accessibility can begin by ensuring that your content is easy to read and understand and all multimedia content has alt text or captions.
Mobile-responsiveness: Have you ever done the “pinch-and-zoom” when looking at a website on your mobile device? It can be incredibly frustrating to try to read content that isn’t mobile-optimized. To make sure your website can be viewed on all devices, minimize the use of pop-ups, check that the typography you’re using is legible on mobile, and size buttons, links, and menus so they’re able to be tapped.
When you invest in a custom-built website, you can better anticipate your website visitors’ needs before they arise. A skilled designer can help you identify potential problem areas and make proactive changes. For example, if your volunteer registration form is difficult to find, you might build specific call-to-action (CTA) buttons into your homepage so that visitors can more easily access that resource.
3. You want your site to stand out from the crowd.
When you explore your options for a DIY, template-based website, do you ever feel like you have limited choices for how your website will look? Maybe you’ve tried to set up your website by yourself on WordPress, for example, and you kept running into templates that you’ve seen a dozen times before.
It’s no wonder that picking through a list of templates can be a little off-putting. By settling for an oft-used website template, you’re doing your nonprofit a disservice because you’ve likely spent countless hours engineering your nonprofit’s branding strategy.
Everything from your logo to your tagline and chosen color scheme are unique to your organization and its mission. So, trying to shoehorn your branding into a pre-built website template may feel like trying to put a square peg in a round hole.
The beauty of a custom-designed website is that your final product will truly be tailored to your organization, strengthening your organization’s branding and boosting recognition from supporters. You won’t have to settle for a certain font or navigation menu configuration just because “that’s the way the template is.” Instead, you can get exactly what you want.
This is not only great for standing out on the web, but also for providing a cohesive, streamlined experience for your community of supporters. For example, when someone sees the decor at your organization’s gala and then sees the same branding and design elements on your website, your organization will come across as organized, professional, and legitimate.
4. You want custom engagement and fundraising features.
One of the most important functions of your nonprofit website is to host useful tools and resources that empower your community to take action for your cause. For example, you might want to offer the following resources to your community:
Custom donation and registration forms
Online merchandise store
Board member, staff, or volunteer portal
Advocacy tools
Peer-to-peer fundraising pages
Events calendars and landing pages
In addition, you may also want your nonprofit website to seamlessly integrate with your organization’s CRM and payment processing systems. The right web design partner can help you create custom integrations between your website and the software your nonprofit already relies on to keep its operations running.
An experienced web developer can also take on tasks to build more complex features. For example, say you want a customized eCommerce website for merchandise or sponsorship opportunities, or an interactive giving day website with a fundraising thermometer and a leaderboard to encourage competition. The right designer can bring your vision to life.
If you’re starting to see the signs that your nonprofit needs a custom website, the next step is to start researching potential web design agencies to work with. Take a close look at your top picks’ portfolios and customer reviews, and be sure to choose an agency that will respect your organization’s unique website design needs. Good luck!
About the Author:
This is a guest post from De’Yonté Wilkinson at Cornershop Creative. De’Yonté is a late-80s baby who found his passion for web design and development during MySpace’s heyday when he helped his friends create awesome profiles. He has spent the last three years specializing in WordPress and conversion optimization and is an active proponent of coding guidelines. In his off time, he enjoys cooking, Rugby, and hanging out with his wife.
5 Ways to Raise Funds Besides Collecting Monetary Donations
Your donors can support your nonprofit in a variety of ways outside of direct monetary donations. Explore these ways to raise funds to diversify your income.
Nonprofits rely on a variety of revenue sources, from major gifts and planned giving contributions to online donations and public crowdfunding campaigns. However, there are a variety of income streams nonprofits can leverage that aren’t direct monetary donations.
While there’s no question that donations are integral to many nonprofits’ fundraising strategies, increasing your giving opportunities provides flexibility for you and your donors. Tapping into these new revenue sources helps nonprofits diversify their income, while also giving donors new ways to support their favorite causes. This can be especially helpful for donors who want to increase their support, but might not have the extra funds to do so.
To help your nonprofit get started offering more donation opportunities, this article will explore five ways to raise funds besides direct monetary donations:
As you weigh your options, assess your current plan to determine which fundraising strategies fit best with your nonprofit. There’s nothing stopping a nonprofit from implementing all five giving methods, and while some supporters may prefer to stick to just one in addition to direct donations, others will take advantage of multiple ways to give.
1. In-Kind Donations
Does your nonprofit need supplies? Or do your constituents need specific items like blankets and winter coats? If so, your nonprofit can benefit from accepting in-kind donations. Essentially, in-kind donations encompass any donation that is non-monetary based, such as items, goods, or even experiences.
Nonprofits can set up in-kind donation programs to receive gifts from both businesses and individual supporters. Businesses have the capacity to provide large-scale in-kind donations, such as a whole office of slightly outdated but still perfectly usable computers when the business decides it's time to upgrade its technology.
Individuals are capable of donating a variety of small items that can add up when enough supporters participate. For example, a food bank might request non-perishable items or a local library might ask community members to donate their new and slightly used books.
While in-kind donations give your nonprofit less control over the gifts you’ll receive, there are also times when your organization might prefer in-kind donations over monetary support.
For example, if your nonprofit hosts a silent auction, your procurement team will need to secure numerous valuable, in-kind donations. Think along the lines of gift baskets and experiences, like spa days, tours, or trips. Also, consider the need for venue space, tables, and other setup essentials. Laying the groundwork for your program ahead of time and building relationships with potential in-kind donors can be especially helpful for situations like this.
2. Events and Experiences
Considering that you’re asking donors to part with their hard-earned money with no benefits for them in return, getting supporters excited to donate can be a challenge. This often makes donating a hard sell and can be an obstacle when asking long-term donors to increase their support.
Many nonprofits solve this problem by offering events and experiences to help generate revenue. This is a great way to bring your community together and boost supporter engagement. Plus, people can justify making a contribution if they’ll get some sort of value out of it. Some of the most important elements that will help drive value (and therefore revenue) through your events include:
The type of events. There are a wide range of nonprofit fundraising event types to explore, so consider what activities would best appeal to different members of your audience. For example, you might host both a formal gala and a community potluck to provide value for two different groups of supporters.
Product sales. Product fundraisers give your guests something to take home from your event. Set up merchandise booths and sell products that fit with your event. For example, at a walk-a-thon, you might sell water bottles, hats, and t-shirts, but save the mugs and anything breakable for a less active event.
Virtual attendance options. Not all of your supporters will be able to attend in-person events, and some of them may just prefer virtual attendance options. Make sure these supporters have events they can attend as well with hybrid and virtual events. For example, you might live stream your auction and have all guests bid online, or offer virtual lessons or webinars led by instructor experts.
The event opportunities your nonprofit offers will obviously depend on your cause, resources, and audience. For example, while schools often find success with family-friendly activities like walk-a-thons and potlucks, a nonprofit with an older working audience can likely get more of their supporters involved with a virtual networking event.
3. Branded Merchandise
Nonprofit merch is a great opportunity to give your supporters something tangible in return for their donation and market your organization at the same time. Design your merchandise with your nonprofit’s logo and colors, as well as any unique images, phrases, or other elements that represent your organization and its mission. If you want to try something different, use your existing brand material as a jumping off point to get creative and explore different font and color combinations.
Plus, if your design is particularly eye-catching, your t-shirts will naturally draw attention when supporters wear them out in public, and others will view individuals wearing your t-shirts as the ultimate form of endorsement!
Of course, first you’ll need to decide what merchandise you’re going to sell. There are a variety of popular, go-to items to create for your nonprofit’s merchandise line, such as:
T-shirts and hoodies
Mugs
Hats
Water bottles
Tote bags
These items can be a good starting point, and nonprofits can go further and get creative with items that represent their specific cause. For example, an animal shelter might offer branded leashes or pet clothes.
Best of all, your nonprofit can sell branded merchandise all year round. Set up a dedicated store on your website where visitors can submit their orders. This is also a wonderful opportunity to encourage purchases with discounts and limited items. For example, a nonprofit could offer a special line of apparel with holiday-themed designs that are available only during the holiday season.
4. Passive Fundraisers
If your nonprofit is truly interested in a fundraiser where supporters don’t need to spend any more than they would in their normal day-to-day activities, consider launching a passive fundraiser. Passive fundraisers and fundraising campaigns that generate income when your supporters take actions they likely would have anyway, such as making routine purchases or going out to dinner.
Here are just a few examples of passive fundraisers your nonprofit can host:
Shopping fundraisers. Shopping fundraisers earn nonprofits revenue when their supporters make purchases at participating retailers. For each qualifying purchase, a percentage of the sales total will be donated to your nonprofit. For example, AmazonSmile’s online shopping fundraiser has a fixed donation rate of 0.5% for all purchases.
Grocery store fundraisers. Many grocery store chains have programs that allow shoppers to support local nonprofits, schools, and other participating charitable organizations. Research your local grocery store chains to see what the qualifications for signing up are. Then, encourage your supporters to sign up for the program to help your nonprofit when they make their weekly grocery run.
Restaurant partnerships. While shopping and grocery store fundraisers often run all year-long, restaurant partnerships usually take place on just one night. Partner with a local restaurant to set up a sponsorship night where a portion of the evening’s proceeds will be donated to your nonprofit.
These fundraisers involve partnering with a specific business that has a philanthropy program your nonprofit can join, or signing up for a program that facilitates these business relationships for your nonprofit. As all the revenue from passive fundraisers comes from these business partners, it’s likely in your nonprofit’s best interest to join an already established program. Alternatively, you might have a third party negotiate the contribution rates if your team doesn’t have time to thoroughly research businesses, present offers to them, and continue maintaining the relationships.
5. Volunteer Grants
Volunteers are essential for helping your nonprofit complete its initiatives, raise funds, and generally advance your mission. Plus, your volunteers can earn revenue for your organization just by coming into work for a few hours each week if they qualify for a volunteer grant.
Crowd101’s guide to corporate volunteer grants explains that these grants are donations companies make when their employees volunteer for a certain amount of time at a charitable organization like your nonprofit. This is a great way for them to financially impact your organization without paying out of pocket.
As these donations come from your volunteers’ employers, they are essentially free money your nonprofit can claim just by having volunteers fill out a few necessary forms. Different companies will have different requirements such as the number of hours a volunteer needs to work to qualify for a grant and when the grant application form needs to be submitted by.
Help your volunteers research if they are eligible for a volunteer grant and provide them with any information they need to complete their application for a grant. Then, after they submit their form, be sure to thank them for going the extra mile to help contribute to your nonprofit.
Giving your supporters several ways to help out your nonprofit can diversify your revenue sources, lead to increased support, and give donors unique opportunities to engage with your organization. Explore your options and choose new non-monetary fundraisers that will be popular with your unique set of supporters. Good luck!
About the Author:
This is a guest post contributed by Kevin Penney, CMO and Co-Founder of Bonfire. Kevin Penney has been working in digital media for over 10 years. He is the CMO and Co-Founder of Bonfire, an online platform that is reinventing the way people create, sell, and purchase custom apparel. He enjoys strategizing, working closely with his team, and hockey, exactly in that order.
Planning School Fundraisers For Any Season: 6 Top Ideas
The best school fundraisers for any season will engage students and parents while benefiting the school. Check out 6 of the top school fundraising ideas here!
If you’re a PTA parent, teacher, coach, administrator, or anyone else with a strong connection to schools, you’re always looking for fresh ideas for fundraising. The most successful fundraising drives are the ones that not only benefit your school but also excite and engage students and parents in the process.
Depending on your school’s schedule and needs, you can plan different fundraisers throughout the whole year. In this post, you’ll find what you need to know to get started with six great school fundraising ideas for any season:
All these ideas can fit anywhere in your school’s calendar with a little planning and creativity. Try out a few different fundraisers to see which ones are most interesting to students and parents and meet your school’s particular needs.
1. In-Kind Donation Drive
Many organizations benefit from in-kind donations, and schools are no exception. In-kind donations refer to any non-cash contributions from supporters to your organization, including goods, services, and experiences.
While school fundraisers often focus on bringing in money, in-kind donation fundraisers can be extremely effective if your end goal is to get new physical items for your school, like equipment for sports teams, books for the library, or classroom supplies. Make a list of everything you need, give it out to students and parents, and schedule a day for them to drop the items off at school.
The main benefit of in-kind donation drives is that they take the purchasing step out of the process. Instead of asking for money to buy basketballs and poster boards, your school gets the basketballs and poster boards outright. You’ll save time by not having to shop for the items yourself, and your school can use the money that comes in through other fundraisers to support larger projects.
2. Product Fundraiser
Product fundraisers are one of the most exciting school donation drives for donors and students. In return for their generosity, participants get to enjoy a fun reward! This fundraiser can also be really beneficial since a portion of the sale of items people may be purchasing anyway goes directly back to your school.
The opportunities for product fundraisers are endless, but some of the most popular products for schools to sell include:
Delicious treats, like gourmet popcorn, candy, and cookie dough.
Holiday-themed items, like decorations and wrapping paper.
Money-saving tools, like discount cards or coupon books.
Custom school swag, like t-shirts, hats, and travel mugs.
Household items, whether they’re as small as candles or as big as mattresses.
You’ve probably seen kids and parents walking around with paper order forms during product fundraisers, but you can also take your fundraiser online if you partner with an organization that offers fundraising web stores. That way, you can send out a shareable link and get more orders in a way that’s convenient for your buyers and sellers.
3. Auction
If you want a school fundraiser that particularly appeals to local parents, set up an auction. Parents will attend the event and be able to bid on a variety of items that interest them and their families. The highest bidder for each item goes home with it, and the money they pay will go back to your school.
You can set up an auction fundraiser in four easy steps:
Gather items to sell. This fundraiser is another one where in-kind donations will be useful. Contact local businesses or parents who have previously donated to your school well in advance to find people who could provide gift baskets, art, vacations, party packages, or services to auction off. You could also include some items specific to your school, like a VIP parking pass, front row seats to performances and graduations, or lunch out with the principal for their child and a friend.
Spread the word. Send out several emails to parents about the auction, post about it on your school’s website and social media if you have them, and send home a flyer with your students to make sure parents don’t miss the message about the auction.
Set up your space (in-person or online). Your school gym or auditorium may be the best place to hold an auction—just make sure you have enough chairs for the number of attendees you predict will come. You’ll also want to have a food and beverage table, a stage or area where items will be shown, and a place to put auction paddles when they aren’t in use. Otherwise, you can get as creative as your budget allows in decorating the room. If holding an online auction, selecting auction software that is easy for parents to register and bid can eliminate this work altogether!
Run the live auction. You’ll need at least two volunteers to show auction items and call bids, plus a few more to run the food table, take payments at the end, and make sure all the bidding is civil. Or, use auction software to simplify the payment and pickup process.
If you don’t feel that a live auction is right for your school, you can also hold a silent auction. Collect in-kind donations the same way and lay out all the prizes on tables in the event space with sheets of paper for participants to write down their bids, with each item still going to the highest bidder at the end of the night.
4. Matching Gifts Drive
Although many schools overlook matching gifts as a form of fundraising, they can bring in lots of revenue for projects. When members of your school community who work for certain companies donate to your school online, the company they work for will make a contribution to your school as well—sometimes in the exact same amount, sometimes as a percentage of the original gift, and sometimes double or even triple the amount.
You can use a number of different tools to promote a matching gifts drive, including:
Contacting local businesses. Research what companies in your area have matching gift programs and let them know about your school’s drive so they can pass on the information to employees.
Email blasts. Parents will benefit most from information about a matching gift drive at their child’s school since they’re the closest people to your school who would work at a company with a corporate matching gifts program. Send them an email with a shareable link where they can check their eligibility for matching gifts and donate online.
Your school website and social media. To increase your reach, post the donation link you put in the email blast on your school’s website and social media accounts (if the school is on social media). This way, anyone who wasn’t on the email list or didn’t open the message will still have access to the link.
Although many people associate education-related matching gifts with high schools, universities, and educational nonprofits, a matching gifts drive can still work for an elementary school. A number of major companies will match gifts to elementary schools, including Home Depot, Verizon, and The Walt Disney Company. So don’t count this idea out if you’re looking for elementary school fundraisers.
5. Family Movie Night
If you want to bring your whole school community together while raising money for a cause, hosting a movie night will do just that. Students will have a fun time attending with their families and friends, and you’ll bring in donations in several ways.
To set up a family movie night at your school, follow these easy steps:
Decide where to hold the event. The best movie night space will depend on your school’s facilities and the time of year you choose to hold the event. If you hold the event in a month with warmer weather and your school has a large field where you can set up a projector, hosting the event outside would make it even more fun for kids. During colder months, the school gym or auditorium will work well.
Pick your movie. You’ll definitely want something family friendly (G or PG rating) so that attendees of all ages can enjoy it. Keep in mind that even if your school’s students could possibly handle a more mature movie, they might bring their younger siblings with them. Also, if your movie night happens close to a major holiday, you could pick a movie with a festive theme.
Spread the word and sell tickets. Send out email blasts to teachers and parents advertising the event, and post flyers in the school hallways for students to see. As far as tickets go, you could sell them all at the door. But you’ll probably get a better turnout if you sell some in advance, either in person or on your school’s website.
Get some movie snacks and beverages like popcorn, candy, and soda. To bring in more donations, you can sell these at a concession stand for a profit, and/or partner with food trucks, pizza places, and other easy-to-deliver food to earn a portion of sales.
Set up the space in advance and make sure all your technology is working before you open the doors.
Although it requires some strategic planning, the rewards from your school’s movie night will be high–both in terms of donations and family fun.
6. Fun Run
A fun run fundraiser is also a great way to bring your school community together and get everyone excited about your cause. Plus, these events have the added benefit of encouraging students to be physically active. While you can pull off a fun run by yourself, getting some organizations to sponsor the event will help with basic costs so that more of the money your participants raise will go back to the school.
In order to pull off a successful fun run, you’ll need a few supplies:
A way to collect pledges. A useful and efficient way to do so is through your nonprofit CRM. For each pledge collected online or by mail, note who’s pledging to give, and for how much. Then, follow up with pledgers using the contact information in your CRM to make sure they remember to give.
A race course. The target distance for many fun runs is one mile, two miles, or a 5K (about 3.1 miles), with shorter distances usually working better for younger participants. You can set up a course with a start line, finish line, and mile markers in the school gym, on an outdoor sports field or track if your school has one, or at a local park (with permission, as permits may be required).
Snacks and water bottles. Your participants will be hungry and thirsty after they finish running, so you’ll need plenty of water and snacks for them. If you aren’t able to get these donated or sponsored, consider partnering with a local grocery store to buy the food at a discounted price.
Event t-shirts. Most races give out t-shirts to participants to build excitement, and you can thank sponsors by putting their logos on the shirt.
Volunteers. Anyone connected to your school who doesn’t want to run can still be involved with the event since you’ll need plenty of volunteers to hand out the t-shirts and water bottles, set up and break down the course, and keep all the runners on track. You might need a few volunteers who have first aid training in case of an emergency. If all goes well, your volunteers might also donate before or during the event.
Although months with mild weather are the most popular for fun runs, they too can be done at any time of year if you plan well. If the event happens during a colder month, order long-sleeved t-shirts, and set up an indoor course if it’s rainy or extremely hot. You could also pick a theme for the event based on the season, like a Turkey Trot in November or a Bunny Hop in April.
School fundraisers are great opportunities to get creative while bringing in useful donations. With a little planning and experimenting, any of the six ideas here can work year-round and engage your entire school community.
The Future of Nonprofit Galas: Trends That Are Here to Stay
Galas are a mainstay of the fundraising world for their ability to attract and retain donors, leverage a wide variety of donation procurement channels, and celebrate the impact and community that your organization has created. Many donors look forward to them each year, and nonprofits that host them rely on these events to help hit their annual revenue and engagement goals.
If you’re like thousands of other nonprofits, the onset of the pandemic in 2020 left you scrambling to cancel, postpone, or quickly create socially-distanced alternatives to your annual fundraising events.
In looking back, we thankfully see that the traditional nonprofit gala hasn’t gone away, but rather diversified and evolved.
There are more options than ever for nonprofit galas, thanks to fundraising software and the nonprofit sector’s resilience and creativity. Although these events may come in new shapes and sizes, throwing a celebration to engage your donors and ask for future support will never go out of style.
So what are the changes, trends, and lessons that we’ve learned since the pandemic? We’ve got five key takeaways to keep in mind and incorporate into your next special event.
Mixed events and hybrid galas are the new norm.
Mixed events (aka hybrid fundraisers), where guests can attend either in-person or virtually, have skyrocketed in popularity in recent years. We found that this approach grew significantly between 2021 and 2022, with 57% of nonprofits hosting hybrid experiences.
So what does a hybrid event look like? Here are a few common best practices we’ve seen emerge:
Nonprofits should treat mixed-events as dual experiences rather than fully separate events. Equal attention should be given to both the in-person and remote experiences.
In-person invitations are often reserved for major and mid-level donors and community partners for face-to-face engagement and classic gala activities like live auctions.
Remote attendance can be free and open to all supporters to join, or nonprofits might create tiered ticket options that have virtual-friendly perks and rewards.
The event’s main activities should be accessible for both audiences, like livestreamed entertainment and speakers or a hybrid auction run through mobile bidding software.
Virtual-centric activities should also be developed for the remote audience, like interactive chat rooms, prerecorded content, and social media contests.
The key takeaway is that the benefits of dual audiences are undeniable—the ability to engage donors no matter their location, reduced event overhead, and flexible new ways to tailor the attendee experience. We’re unlikely to see this trend go away anytime soon.
Many nonprofits have already invested in the technology and strategies needed to host hybrid events, which makes it even easier for them to create new events of all sizes going forward. If you have yet to go hybrid, it’s never too late to explore your options.
Gala programming is diversifying.
It makes sense that as the gala format evolves, so will the activities and appeals that fill their programs. The range of programming available to nonprofits has grown dramatically as they explore new options and get creative to maximize engagement in mixed-event environments.
Auctions are the perfect example. A traditional gala auction revolves around live bidding as an auctioneer presents items. This approach still works when limited to in-person audiences, but the key to success with hybrid galas lies in ensuring both audiences can easily engage.
Mobile bidding software allows you to host flexible auctions better suited to dual formats. You might:
Host a silent auction open to everyone throughout the duration of the event. Attendees browse items and place bids via your mobile bidding software. Use notifications and live updates to announce bidding closures and keep the energy up.
Livestream a traditional auctioneer presenting your items, and allow both in-person and virtual attendees to place bids via their smartphones.
Open up bidding before your gala to give everyone a chance to explore your items and place bids, then save your showstopper items for livestreamed bidding and mobile bids.
Technology helps you be more flexible as you work to engage everyone no matter where they are.
Note that engagement doesn't have to be simultaneous or look the same for both sides of your event. In-person activities like dinner and dancing can’t be easily replicated, but there are other engaging things your remote attendees could do in the meantime. Mix in a variety of fund-a-needs, bidding activities, video content, raffles, livestreamed entertainment, and more. This will allow you to create engaging programs that overlap in key spots and offer different options in others.
Elevated virtual experiences have increased in popularity.
As virtual and dual audience events become the norm (and perhaps even the preferred option) for many of your donors, it’s important to remember that you can still offer VIP experiences when reaching donors through their laptop screens or smartphones.
After all, one of the benefits of traditional galas is that they allow nonprofits to get valuable facetime with their most important supporters and partners. If you host a purely virtual gala or create a “Virtual VIP” tier for a hybrid gala, don’t let those personal touches fall by the wayside for your mid-level and major donors. Nonprofits have seen success with these strategies:
Partner with a restaurant to deliver dinner to remote attendees.
Provide hand-delivered goody bags and swag to VIP virtual guests before the event.
Recruit “living room captains” or fundraising ambassadors to host other supporters at their homes to enjoy the virtual event together. The ambassadors can then help facilitate activities and lend a personal touch to the event.
This last strategy is particularly useful because it can easily create a competitive spirit as each ambassador tries to generate the most excitement and donations. Live scoreboards and rewards for top ambassadors are a must to make the most of this tactic.
The underlying idea is to find ways to drive more engagement by connecting what’s happening at home with what’s happening at the event, and it can be applied to all remote attendees, not just VIPs. For instance, try showing photos and tweets on your main event screen in real-time as supporters post about your gala and packages they’re trying to win on social media. Everyone appreciates a shout-out!
Smaller, more frequent events can also keep donors engaged.
As nonprofits invest more into their virtual and hybrid strategies, it becomes easier and more cost-effective to launch new events. Many nonprofits will prefer to stick with the traditional big annual gala model, but you have more options!
It’s possible today to host smaller, more frequent events and drive similar levels of engagement. This approach also allows you to more deliberately target specific segments of supporters. For example, you could host:
Small in-person auctions and dinners
Virtual telethon events
Virtual run, walk, or ride events
In-person golf tournaments
Virtual workshops
Whatever types of events most appeal to the different segments that make up your donor base, there are flexible, cost-effective ways to focus your efforts and maximize engagement. Donors can choose the events that best fit their interests and schedules, you can target specific segments to invite, and your sponsors will even have more options to fund events that align with their needs.
For your annual gala, try this idea: Rather than hosting a single, large event as your annual celebration, break it up into a month of celebration. Plan a series of small, targeted events (in-person and virtual) leading up to a main virtual event or scaled-down hybrid event with limited in-person attendance.
Peer-to-peer fundraising is a flexible addition to gala strategies.
Peer-to-peer fundraising has been around for a while now, but it’s only increasing in popularity. Social giving is on the rise, with 27% of US adults giving to peer-to-peer-style campaigns between 2020 and 2021. This method brings quite a few benefits:
Expanded visibility and donor acquisition as supporters spread the word online
Deepened relationships with donors who take leading roles in your campaigns
Decentralized approaches that can reduce your direct involvement, particularly for DIY-style campaigns
Integrating peer-to-peer elements into your gala plans can be a gamechanger for both your revenue and donor engagement goals. The main idea is to host a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign leading up to the main event, generating interest, registrations, and donations along the way.
A favorite strategy is to recruit fundraising ambassadors. As mentioned above, ambassadors might host viewing parties for your virtual events, but they can help in other ways, too. Recruit excited, well-connected supporters to create their own campaign pages and compete to generate the most registrations and donations for your gala.
Then, highlight your ambassadors during your program by thanking your top performers, having them complete funny challenges, and giving them time to speak about why your mission matters—the options are limitless. Ambassadors give your campaign and event an even more personal connection for the donors and attendees they’ve secured for your cause.
By getting creative and turning to your supporters to help drive more engagement for your gala, you can see some amazing results.
These are five ways that we are currently seeing nonprofit galas adapt to changing circumstances, donor preferences, and trends. While your nonprofit doesn’t necessarily need to dive headfirst into unfamiliar new strategies, getting a little out of your comfort zone and updating your gala can show donors that your organization is responsive and energetic.
Setting Your Company Apart: Benefits Employees Care About
The last three years have been challenging for many employees.
While some may have enjoyed the transition to working from home, others may have missed the camaraderie of connecting with their co-workers in-office and the work/life separation maintained by a physical office. Some may feel fulfilled in their roles, while others may feel like they need to do “more,” whether that’s socially, politically, or something else. And, some may feel secure in their careers, while others feel like they’re quickly being left in the dust in the wake of rapid technological development.
With all of this in mind, the “gimmicky” employee benefits that many companies relied on in the past—pizza lunches, employee lounges, and ping pong tables—may not actually improve employee engagement.
So, which benefits will set you apart as a company that employees want to work for? In this guide, we’ll cover three benefits that modern employees are seeking from their workplaces:
Skills Training
Corporate Philanthropy
Flexible Workspaces
Modern employees want to work for companies that empower them to be better humans overall, whether through training, giving back, or better managing their day-to-day lives. With that in mind, let’s start with the first benefit that employees care about.
Skills Training
For many of your employees, there's a decent chance they've recently needed to develop new skills they didn't have in the past decade, or even the last three years. A few that come to mind include using video conferencing platforms like Zoom, hosting virtual meetings, working effectively from home, navigating new project management systems, or even using new technologies as your industry evolves.
If you thought the past few years have been ripe with innovation, realize that this process is only speeding up. This is why many employees are worried about upskilling in order to keep up with and maintain their current roles.
It’s worthwhile to reevaluate your company’s training curriculum to incorporate more skills training opportunities for employees who want to continue in their professional development journeys.
How to Incorporate This Benefit Into Your Offerings
The best way to incorporate skills training into your overall training curriculum is to invest in micro-credentials. Skyepack defines micro-credentials as “short, stackable courses that learners—whether students, employees, or organization members—take to develop specific skills in their field.”
Micro-credentials tend to target skills in high-growth fields, such as IT support, project management, UX design, cybersecurity, and digital marketing. They’re often asynchronous, meaning employees can begin a micro-credential and work toward it as it best fits into their personal schedules.
Consider working with an instructional design partner to develop micro-credentials that target key skills that would benefit your employees in their personal professional journeys. This partner can work with your training team to develop the digital course materials for your team.
Corporate Philanthropy
After a few years of social, health, and financial distress across society, many employees are seeking to not only work but to make a positive impact on the world while doing so. They want to work for companies that prioritize giving back and are taking direct action both behind the scenes and publicly to do so.
In response, many companies are embracing corporate philanthropy, defined as “the voluntary actions that businesses take to improve their impact on the environment, their communities, and society at large.” This includes sponsoring and donating to nonprofits, incorporating giving programs into their benefits packages, and incentivizing employees to give back themselves.
How to Incorporate This Benefit Into Your Offerings
There are multiple types of corporate philanthropy programs that you can incorporate into your benefits package. Choose the options that would interest your employees the most and align with your available resources.
Some examples include:
In-Kind Donations: This involves your company donating products or services to nonprofits, rather than monetary donations. These could be resources (ex: gently used computers that your organization no longer needs), your own products and services (ex: a restaurant catering an event or tickets to an amusement park), or even pro bono services (ex: a marketing agency donating a consultation). To match your company and resources with a nonprofit that aligns well with those offerings, consider using an online donation portal designed for creating such matches.
Matching Gifts: According to Double the Donation, a matching gift program is “a type of philanthropy in which companies financially match donations that their employees make to nonprofit organizations.” Your organization simply sets the parameters for the program, including the types of nonprofits to which you’ll match, the maximum and minimum donation amounts you’ll match, and the ratio at which you’ll match (ex: one-to-one). Then, you share the opportunity with employees.
Volunteer Grants: These are very similar to matching gifts, except the donation your company makes corresponds to the number of volunteer hours an employee serves at a qualified nonprofit. For this program, you set the parameters for the types of nonprofits, the maximum and minimum volunteer hours, and the financial amount corresponding to the hour amounts. For example, you might pledge to make a $250 donation for every 25 hours worked.
Run/Walk/Ride Sponsorships: This program is fairly straightforward and involves your company paying registration fees for employees who choose to participate in Run/Walk/Ride events.
Regardless of which type(s) of corporate philanthropy you choose to incorporate into your benefits offerings, the most important thing is communicating it to your employees. That way, they can see that your company prioritizes supporting local organizations and giving back—something that many employees are looking for values-wise.
Flexible Workspaces
Your company may have sent employees to work from home due to the uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. When that change happened, and then was extended, employees saw that their work experience could look different than the standard 9 am to 5 pm, in-office tradition.
Now, as offices are reopening, there’s a constant back-and-forth between companies that want a more traditional culture and employees seeking more autonomy over their work weeks from both location and scheduling perspectives. As the conflict evolves, many employers are realizing that a balance of the two priorities is key.
How to Incorporate This Benefit Into Your Offerings
Incorporating this benefit will look drastically different across companies. Begin by examining your long-term business goals, company culture, and work product. Aim to understand what level of flexibility would be possible for your organization when all of these factors are taken into account.
Here are a few examples, listed from most to least flexible:
A fully work-from-home schedule with flexible working hours. This is built on the idea that as long as deliverables are completed in a timely manner, scheduling is less relevant.
A hybrid model with designated in-office days. This option gives employees the best of both worlds when it comes to working in-office with colleagues and from home.
A return to the office with increased flexibility in scheduling. This could mean allowing employees to “reallocate” hours across the week if they need to leave early or come in late one day. For example, an employee might leave three hours early on a Friday afternoon but come in early on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to make up for the time lost.
The strategy you choose could be a combination of multiple examples or none of the above. The most important thing is that you define what flexible looks like for your specific company and then clearly communicate it to employees.
For the past three years, your employees have been functioning with the uncertainty of if they were returning to the office and if so, when. The last thing you want to do is give them a vague pronouncement of flexibility and then not clearly communicate what that means. When you communicate the parameters of your new policies, employees will be able to create their own schedules within it.
Benefits are directly tied to employee engagement, satisfaction, and long-term retention. However, the days of pizza-driven employee appreciation efforts are in the past!
These three benefits target what employees truly care about—self-improvement, philanthropy, and flexibility. Consider how they could fit into your overall benefits package to stand out from the crowd of companies trying to work with your top talent!
How to Write Effective Grant and Funding Proposals
Learn how to write effective grant proposals, and discover essential elements and key tips in researching and carrying out your fundraising activities.
Grant writing is a task that requires a medley of skills and talents. Your work needs to be thoroughly researched, and it needs to be compelling.
And of course, for many charitable organizations, it’s an essential process that is fundamental in funding and maintaining their services. So you need to know how to do it well!
The thing is, there is a lot of competition. Grant appraisers might read hundreds of applications for each round of their funds.
This short article will outline how to write effective grant proposals. Whether it’s a cover letter or a formal application, you’ll find essential and actionable tips below.
What Should a Grant Proposal Do?
In short, a grant proposal is an appeal for money. To do that as effectively as possible, you should refer back to these four critical points in the writing process:
A grant proposal should be precise about a specific project: In other words, a reader should know exactly what you’re asking money for.
You need to offer an adequate explanation of the need for the project (define the problem): This is where you show your knowledge and research on the social issue at hand. This inspires the reader with confidence that you understand the problem and are thorough with your research and expertise. You should use statistics and facts to back up your argument.
You need to explain how your project fixes that problem: Tell the potential funder what your project will do with their backing. Don’t forget to add key details like anticipated start and end dates of the project, geographical locations, and targeted outcomes.
You need to be precise about costs: You need to be exact about how much your project will cost and why it’s going to cost that much. You will also need to provide accounting records for your charity. They need to see they can trust you with their money and understand how the funds they provide will further your mission in a way that isn’t currently possible.
How Should A Grant Proposal Look?
The standard structure of a grant proposal—at a minimum—should look like this:
The Premise (Intro)
Who We Are
a) The Problem
b) The Solution
Costs
Let’s dive a little deeper into what each of these key sections should look like:
The Premise (Abstract): Your first task is to neatly surmise everything you’re trying to say in 2-3 sentences. The reader shouldn’t have to read half of your application to figure out what it is you’re on about.
Who We Are: After you’ve told them what you’re doing, tell them who you are. This gives a face to your project and lets you state your credentials. Tell them why you should be trusted to put their money to good use.
a) The Problem: Here, you should describe the issue your project is working to overcome. Why is this issue important, and why does it deserve their investment?
b) The Solution: After you’ve stated the problem, you need to articulate how your project is going to change it. Be specific to outcomes and long-term impact where you can.
Costs: In a standard letter to a charitable trust, you won’t have the space to give a complete costing report. However, you should have a brief synopsis of how much it will cost with a summary of what the money is going towards.
Applications That Go the Distance
Applications that go the distance will also include the following sections:
Case Studies: If you can show proof of your work's real impact, you’ll strengthen your case. In short, show them your success to inspire faith in your application.
Monitoring and Evaluations: If you can tie in monitoring and evaluation into your outcome section, you again show your ability to be thorough and that you’ve done your research.
Exit Strategy: A grant proposal with real depth is one that looks ahead. As most funding is one-off payments, how will you fund your project when the initial money runs out? What are your plans for sustainability?
Additionally, here are a few other things to consider:
It’s common for funders to also ask for a copy of a signed account and sometimes your organization's charter.
Unless stated otherwise, do not include anything else in your application - i.e. brochures - especially if you’re delivering physical copies to the funder's address.
Adding anything else not only creates clutter, but is also inappropriate. Funders want to see the four key points illustrated previously. If they want to see anything else, they will ask you.
Extra Tips For Grant Writers
Beyond the essential grant proposal elements we’ve just gone over, consider these additional best practices:
Tailor to whom you’re writing: Giant appraisers receive a lot of applications. So do some research into the interests of whom you’re writing to. Why? This will make you stand out from the crowd.
Use examples and research effectively: Good grants will use research to illustrate the need for their project and use examples to show the success of similar projects to show that it is viable. For example, here’s how to use a Google Grant effectively.
Investigate: Research is everything. The chances are, you won’t be reinventing the wheel. Someone else will likely have already done a project at least a bit similar. Don’t be afraid to speak to them. Ask them why, how, and where. Ask them how they fund their projects. Ask them what they wish they’d known before. Ask them what their most significant issues were/are.
Keep it short: Your reader will appreciate you keeping to the point. Writing more to sound more comprehensive isn’t advised.
Tell Them Where to Find Your Website and Social Accounts: If the appraiser is at all interested in your application, they’re going to want to do some further investigation into who you are. Be sure to let them know where to find your website and your social accounts to make their life easier. And while you’re here, check out this article on how to continuously improve your nonprofit's website.
Double and triple check: As with everything you write, it’s good practice to carefully edit for mistakes of all kinds, syntax, spelling, grammar, and so on. This attention to detail will reflect on your organization and your passion for your project.
Tell a story where you can: It’s not enough to convince someone your project is worthwhile with numbers. You also need to captivate hearts, so don’t be afraid to use some creative license and tell a captivating story.
Be positive: Passion is everything. It needs to shine through in your proposal. You want readers to buy into your positivity.
Ask for feedback: Most grant applications aren’t successful. Even worthy, high-quality applications are often knocked back. Asking for feedback makes rejection a learning experience. See it as an opportunity to improve. What’s more, by showing a willingness to improve, you could build a strong relationship with the funding body moving forward.
Adjust and Improve: Following on from this last point, a finished and polished proposal can continuously be improved. Whether it’s reacting to feedback from funders, a change in data or costs, or you’ve found a nicer way to fashion one of your sentences.
Keep up-to-date records of your applications: There is a good chance you’ll be applying to many funders. Having an excel sheet that tracks your applications will streamline your process. This is important as it will stop your charity from applying to the same foundation twice.
Collect data during your project(s) for case studies: Sometimes, you’ll be asked to supply a case study. Either to prove how you’ve carried out successful projects before. Or, sometimes charities that have given you money will request a case study of your activity to show what you’ve done with their money.
Wrapping Up
Mastering the process of applying for funding is essential. It requires a medley of skills and can be a lot of hard work.
However, if you follow the steps and advice above, you’ll have a competitive application. Moreover, you’ll find the process rewarding!
If you’re hungry to learn more, then check out these 5 podcasts for charity fundraising advice.
This article was contributed by Harry Prince, Creative Content Manager at Spacehuntr.
How to Plan a Successful Donation Drive: 6 Top Tips
Donation drives are important for quickly reallocating resources to community members who need them most. Follow these six tips to make the most of your drive.
Guest Post by Jacob Spencer, Customer Success and Account Manager at Donately.
For organizations big and small, a donation drive can be daunting. Achieving success can take months of coordinating, organizing, and soliciting financial donations and in-kind support.
To make your life easier, we’ve compiled our list of important considerations for planning a donation drive. We’ll cover why you should:
Yes, the stress a donation drive potentially can have on your organization and staff is intimidating. But with these six tips, you can spend less time and energy on your donation drive and yield higher, more impactful returns.
1. Be unafraid to ask for donations.
What’s the worst that could happen? Making a clear and direct request is the only way people and organizations will know to donate. Your request should answer these questions:
What need in your community will your donation drive address? What will be the measurable impact of the drive? What is your goal?
When will the drive take place? What are the dates when supporters can donate? Will there be an opening or culminating event?
How can supporters get involved? In addition to the donations themselves, will you need volunteers to collect, organize, and/or distribute donations?
What exactly can (and can’t) supporters donate? Are you requesting in-kind or financial donations? Are you requesting new or used items?
In addition to asking individuals for donations, plan to solicit corporate support from relevant for-profit businesses. For example, for a winter clothing drive, you could ask clothing retailers with a local presence for in-kind donations of jackets, caps, and gloves. Companies are often happy to donate to nonprofit community drives—especially when they get public recognition for their donations in return. In these asks, be explicit about how a donation will benefit their organization—often through CSR publicity.
2. Offer incentives.
Not everyone donates purely out of selflessness. In fact, people and businesses usually have multiple reasons for donating.
Yes, they’re probably donating because it’s the right thing to do. But they may also be looking to get something out of their participation. For some, it may simply be the feeling of having done something good for someone else. For others, such as businesses, it may be publicity. In general, however, these groups are donating because you’ve already done the work to establish a strong, personal relationship.
But when it comes to lapsed donors or new donors unfamiliar with your cause, they likely don’t have the personal or emotional connection to your organization that drives the core of your donations. To garner their interest, consider offering specific incentives for donating:
Events. Host events (e.g. a bowling night, gala, or online concert) specifically for active donors.
Raffles. People love games and winning. Consider holding a raffle (where it is legal to do so) for all monetary donors who give at least a certain amount.
Merchandise. Offer donors wearable merchandise as a token of your appreciation, such as hats, buttons, or tote bags. You can even customize your merch to your organization or drive’s brand.
If you offer more than one incentive, you can establish tiers with each level requiring a certain donation amount. For instance, your top donors might receive VIP access to your events and a large gift basket, while basic donors might receive a button or shirt.
3. Quickly reply with thanks when a company or person donates.
Don’t burn any bridges by ignoring the donations you receive. You never know when you might need a company or individual to support you again in the future. According to Fundraising Letters’ guide to donor thank-yous, “Only 19% of new donors will give again after their first donation.” One of the major reasons for such a large donor churn is the lack of a simple thank-you.
Send your thank-yous as quickly as possible after a donation is received. With many giving platforms, you can set up emails to automatically go out when a donation is in-put into the system. Additionally, every thank-you should include:
The donor’s name. With current technology, it’s easy to add a personal touch to every thank-you you send. Use your donor management software to input the donor’s name (plus other relevant information such as their title or address) into the blanks of a prewritten letter.
Relevant financial information. Both financial and in-kind support to 501(c)(3) charities can be tax-deductible. Make it easy for donors to claim their gifts as deductions on federal taxes by providing the date and value of their donation as well as your nonprofit’s Tax ID Number.
Impact. Your donors just made a positive impact on the world. Remind them what their donation will do for the community and who it will help. Use a combination of anecdotal stories and quantitative facts/figures to show the impact of the drive.
Recognizing even the smallest gifts with a well-written thank-you email or letter shows your gratitude and helps grow your relationship with each donor. When you reach out to them during your next drive, they’ll be more likely to give!
4. Keep a donor registry.
You also don’t want to keep asking the same donors to donate to your cause every time you have a new event. Moreover, having a large, diverse body of donors will financially protect your organization from the effects of losing any single donor.
Thus, try to mix it up and tap into different pools of donors. How do you accomplish this as efficiently as possible? We recommend you:
Monitor received donations using donation management software that allows for easy, long-term tracking and reporting.
Using filters and search tools, create specific lists of donors based on their donation history and amounts.
Depending on the specifics of your drive, focus your outreach efforts on the most relevant potential donors.
By utilizing a donor registry to track your donors and donations, you’ll retain your supporters and save money on new donor acquisitions.
5. Use different avenues to market your donor drive.
According to Donately, over 80% of Americans now own smartphones. As a result, digital marketing can be one of the most effective ways to get your donor drive in front of the right eyes.
While these days social media receives a lot of attention in digital marketing, Facebook and Twitter aren’t your only opportunities to reach existing and potential donors. Consider using a combination of digital outreach tools, including:
Text
Google Ads
Email
That being said, especially if you’re focused on addressing a local issue, try incorporating traditional outreach methods (in addition to your digital fundraising efforts) into your marketing plan, including:
Direct Mail
Local News
Local Partnerships
Phone Banking
Even as you use a variety of marketing channels, make sure you’re still focusing all of your organizational efforts and marketing for donations to one drive at a time. This will help you avoid any internal competition for donations or confusion for donors.
6. Tell your story.
As you can probably see by now, the more a donor can connect with your cause, the more likely they are to (1) donate and (2) donate in generous amounts, and (3) donate again in the future. A touching, cohesive story can solidify that connection. In general, your donation drive’s story should have a clear beginning, middle, and end:
The Beginning should introduce a compelling main character (such as a volunteer or community member) and a problem in your community.
The Middle should demonstrate the increased stakes if the problem is not addressed and propose a possible action or solution.
The End should offer your audience a way to get involved, solve the problem, and be a part of your story’s resolution.
Your story will be the heart of your outreach plan, and you should rely on it in both your physical and digital marketing. When available, such as on social media, plan to enhance it with relevant multimedia elements. For example, for a food drive, you might post interviews with donors, volunteers, and recipients alongside photo updates of incoming donations. Especially online, photos, audio, and video can break up blocks of text and lead to increased engagement and sharing.
Ultimately, there’s no one way to plan a donation drive, and fundraisers never go exactly as expected. But by using these tips to create a thorough, adaptable plan, you can be successful in your donation drive endeavors no matter the circumstance. Keep your eye on the prize and shoot for the stars!
About the Author
Jacob Spencer | Donately Customer Success and Account Manager
I strive to make every step of our customer journey as enjoyable as possible. My goal is to turn everyone who trusts Donately into a raving fan! Raising funds can be daunting, but we know that with the right tools, it can and should be easy.
Throughout my career, I've been able to help sales and success teams tackle new markets, grow and expand.
Leading with empathy, listening to actually solve problems, and remembering that we are all human are the key elements to growing any business in a meaningful way.
When I'm not working you can find me spending time with my wife, 2 boys and our Border Collie, Abbie. Family>Everything.
Catching a Thief with the Help of DonationMatch
Six years ago, we at DonationMatch had a brush with the law. Here’s what happened.
By Renee Zau, Co-founder of DonationMatch
Seven years ago, we at DonationMatch had a brush with the law. It’s a good thing, as it highlighted how our system uniquely protects nonprofits AND businesses and made us even more committed to our policies that minimize fraud. Here’s what happened.
THE CASE
On August 12, 2015, our staff was contacted by an Investigator at the San Diego District Attorney’s Office who told us he was working on a criminal case involving the former CEO of a local nonprofit. The former nonprofit CEO had already been charged in July, 2015 and pleaded not guilty. DonationMatch was linked to the case through system emails sent to the former nonprofit CEO. The investigator wanted to know—did we have information regarding donations that had been solicited and given to the former nonprofit CEO for the nonprofit’s recent event?
The answer was yes, of course—records of all requests, offers, responses, and even copies of donated vouchers and tickets received from our network were automatically saved by our system. Through a subpoena, the San Diego DA’s Office now had access to them, too.
WHAT DID THEY FIND?
The San Diego DA’s Office was able to see a list of all donations that were given to the former nonprofit CEO by businesses through DonationMatch. Using the contact information saved in our system, he reached out to each business involved to find out whether donated gift certificates had been used, and by whom. As suspected, it was discovered that the former nonprofit CEO had, “…solicited items and gift cards from stores as donations to auction off at fundraisers, but she would instead use them herself.” Some businesses recognized her photo and contact details, even when a fake name was used.
TIMELINE
July, 2015: Former nonprofit CEO pleaded not guilty.
August, 2015: DA’s Office investigator contacted DonationMatch and received DonationMatch records regarding donations approved to the former nonprofit CEO’s account, which were subsequently investigated further with each donor company.
September, 2015: Former nonprofit CEO changed her plea from “not guilty” to “guilty” of grand theft.
December, 2015: The former nonprofit CEO was found guilty and sentenced.
Ultimately, presumably due to the new evidence discovered, the former nonprofit CEO decided to plead guilty and was sentenced to a year behind bars, five years of probation, and restitution payments totaling $18,000. [Link to NBC News article]
WHAT DID WE LEARN? COULD THIS HAPPEN TO YOUR ORGANIZATION?
Leaders of organizations, especially CEO’s, typically have a lot of independence when it comes to making decisions and working with partners and donors. In the wrong hands, or simply at an opportune time, bad decisions can be made. EVERY organization has the potential to fall victim to crime, but it is the responsibility of all stakeholders to do their best to be alert and ensure there are checks and balances whenever possible and practical.
TAKEAWAYS FOR NONPROFITS:
Do criminal background checks when hiring, especially when access to bank accounts is possible. The former nonprofit CEO had past brushes with the law.
Share about current donation solicitation efforts and ways to contact your organization to verify requests clearly on your website.
Create a shared/group organization email address monitored by staff for event volunteers to use when soliciting donations.
Let the public know that only those using official organization email addresses should be soliciting donations. This helps to prevent your organization’s EIN and/or name from being used to solicit donations without your knowledge.
Utilize trackable methods of donation solicitation whenever possible. Come up with a reason for donors to let you know they donated, such as inviting businesses to send their preferred Business Name, website URL, and social media handles to your event committee/shared email address.
Invite in-kind donors to events: This proactively deters theft and misuse when donors attending will expect to see their own packages presented. It also potentially increases your supporter base.Nonprofits need to address potential fraud in order to protect their organization’s reputation, maintain their ability to qualify for desired donations, and accurately provide tax receipts for donations and in-kind donation reporting on state tax returns.
TAKEAWAYS FOR BUSINESSES:
When we at DonationMatch check a contact’s authority to solicit donations when an account is created, only 85% pass this test. When businesses not using DonationMatch aren’t vetting solicitors themselves, it could mean donated items meant for fundraisers do not show up at events. How do you prevent this?
Know who is asking you for a donation: If you don’t know them personally, ask for credentials and verify them. Legitimate contacts should be glad you did.
Use trackable methods to donate: Customize vouchers or gift certificates with recipient organization information and dates, and give them to organizations’ employees or leaders directly. Collect contact information when redeemed. Drop off physical products directly to a charity’s office and let multiple contacts know to expect it.
Attend events yourself: Not only can you see and give feedback about how your donations are presented, but events are great opportunities to meet others in the community who care about the same causes.
If you donate to more than one event a month, consider using a platform like DonationMatch that automatically vets all applicants, e-delivers donations you approve to only vetted accounts, and creates trackable gift certificates/tickets/vouchers for you. And if event plans change or (knock on wood) special circumstances arise, it’s easier to know who donated and reach you.
We at DonationMatch were very glad to hear that in this 2015 case, records from our system in 2015 provided evidence to serve justice and help the affected nonprofit recover what it could. Our hope is that with awareness and more vigilance by donor companies and platforms that enable donations, this type of theft will no longer exist.
Tracking In-Kind Donations for Nonprofits & Businesses
Tracking and accounting for in-kind donations to nonprofit organizations is essential for businesses and nonprofits to know. Master the subject with this guide.
Please note that the following article is not meant to be taken as tax or financial advice. Everyone's situation is different, and your tax advisor should ultimately be consulted before making decisions.
In-kind donations are an important part of the mutually-beneficial relationship between many nonprofit organizations and businesses. Through in-kind gifts, nonprofits receive essential goods, products, and services, while businesses reap the rewards of corporate philanthropy—from increased customer loyalty to tax deductions.
However, while everyone may enjoy receiving (or giving!) in-kind donations, the task of tracking, recording, and reporting them is a chore that few are excited for. Accounting for in-kind gifts may be important for internal operations and tax purposes, but you’re among good company if part of you dreads this process.
To make things a little easier, we’ve created this short guide for nonprofits and businesses to get their records in order and simplify in-kind donation tracking. We’ll review the following topics:
Ready to learn how to effectively track, report, and manage your in-kind gifts? Let’s dive in with a brief overview of in-kind donations.
What Are In-Kind Donations?
To take a page from our Guide to In-Kind Donations, “in-kind donations are just non-cash contributions… This typically includes goods such as your own company’s products, gift certificates, supplies, or equipment.”
For example, say that a wine sampling company decides to package up its extra inventory and create gift baskets for local nonprofit raffle fundraisers. Alternatively, a theme park could donate “experiences” by providing special day passes as prizes for charitable programs.
While these two scenarios may seem to fall under very different umbrellas of corporate philanthropy, they are both completely valid and effective examples of real-life in-kind donation programs that the DonationMatch team counts among our corporate success stories.
To clarify things a bit more, let’s briefly dive into the different kinds of in-kind gifts, as well as what doesn’t qualify as in-kind giving.
Types of In-Kind Donations to Nonprofits
Describing in-kind donations as simply “non-cash contributions” leaves a good bit of wiggle room for a variety of different gifts that a business might donate to a nonprofit, including:
Goods. These are tangible products. One of the most desired types of donations by events, DonationMatch often enables the distribution of product samples or merchandise from brands to attendees at nonprofit events.
Experiences. Experiential donations are typically tickets or passes that are redeemable for engaging experiences, such as a day at an amusement park, a hot air balloon ride, or even a destination vacation.
Services. The intangible donations of time and labor also qualify as in-kind giving. From pro bono legal work to free social media marketing consultation, the donation of professional services is another valuable form of corporate philanthropy.
While they are all very different and benefit both charities and companies in unique ways, these donations are all common and important forms of in-kind donations. So, what donations fail to qualify as in-kind gifts?
What Is Not Considered an In-Kind Donation?
Not every non-monetary product, service, or experience transferred from a donating organization to a nonprofit necessarily meets IRS requirements of an in-kind donation. In particular, the following gifts are disqualified from being officially reported as in-kind donations by the IRS:
Volunteers hours (unless the volunteer is performing a specialized skill)
Donations with stipulations on how they will be used
Gifts that have been earmarked for specific individuals or other organizations
Donations given in exchange for something that exceeds their fair market value (FMV)
Of course, these charitable gestures provide their own advantages for the nonprofits and businesses that use them. For example, creating a volunteer grant program and incentivizing employees to donate their time to noble missions is a great way to increase employee engagement and positively market your brand.
That being said, at least for your own records and for taxation purposes, these donations should not be tracked, accounted, or reported as official in-kind donations.
Why Should You Track In-Kind Donations?
In-Kind Donation Tracking for Nonprofits
For nonprofits, tracking what donations are given to the organization is an essential part of following Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). GAAP is a set of official standards by which most nonprofit and for-profit organizations publish their financial statements. On the nonprofit side of things, this:
Allows donors and donating organizations to understand and share their impact on the nonprofit and the nonprofit’s mission.
Enables grantmakers and other funding organizations to assess the nonprofit’s qualifications for certain grants, funds, and awarded gifts.
Enables government entities, particularly the IRS, to assess the nonprofit’s qualifications for tax-exempt status.
Additionally, knowing the resources you have at your disposal is an important part of internal management and acknowledging gifts. Beyond showing gratitude to donors, gift acknowledgments are essential documents that donors and donating corporations need to present on their taxes to be eligible for tax deductibility. They must include:
The name of the donor or donating entity
The name of the nonprofit organization
A declaration of the nonprofit’s EIN and 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status
The date of the gift
A description of the gift itself
Without a robust and organized in-kind donation tracking system, it would be impossible to create these acknowledgments, as well as complete the other important reporting tasks that we’ve named. For nonprofits to manage this process effectively, technology can be an incredibly valuable resource.
In particular, a dedicated in-kind donation platform is an especially useful tool for in-kind gift tracking. This will not only allow you to easily find and submit requests to corporate donors, but also automatically record dates, names, times, values, descriptions, and detailed reports of in-kind gifts that can be easily accessed and published in a matter of seconds.
In-Kind Donation Tracking for Businesses
For businesses, tracking the movement, amount, and type of in-kind donations can affect operations on multiple levels. For one thing, knowing the precise impact that you’ve had on your nonprofit partner can go a long way in cultivating an effective cause marketing campaign.
Cause marketing is a form of marketing performed by for-profit businesses through their collaborations with nonprofit organizations. From engaging in matching gifts programs to hosting robust in-kind donation programs, corporate philanthropy and charitable donations can strengthen your business by:
Boosting customer loyalty through increased trust and respect in your brand.
Creating unique tax deductions for your business to take advantage of.
Raising brand awareness through the public promotion of your philanthropy.
By knowing the details of the donations you’ve sent to your nonprofit partners, you can more precisely and effectively market your philanthropic efforts, manage your nonprofit partnerships, and regulate your internal operations.
Of course, you can’t forget about taxes!
As we mentioned, the tax-deductibility of in-kind gifts is another big reason to carefully track your in-kind donations to nonprofit partners. Depending on the filing status of your business, you may be eligible for a range of different deductions, such as:
A 50% to 60% deduction ceiling for sole proprietors, S corporations, and some other businesses and pass-through entities, deducted as business expenses
A 10% to 25% deduction ceiling for C corporations, deducted from federal income tax returns
Just like nonprofit organizations, businesses can reap a host of benefits by properly tracking and organizing their in-kind contributions, a process that can also be far more easily managed with the right technology.
A powerful corporate giving platform can help streamline and enhance your corporate philanthropy initiatives. For example, DonationMatch boasts a powerful in-kind giving platform that can help you to easily find the right, qualified nonprofit partners among thousands of potential organizations, as well as track, manage, and create custom reports on key pieces of data throughout your in-kind partnership program.
How Are In-Kind Donations Accounted for & Reported?
How Nonprofits Account for In-Kind Donations
When a nonprofit accepts an in-kind donation, the organization must record and report its fair market value (FMV) as contributed revenue to the organization. The process of doing so depends on the type of in-kind gift, for example:
For goods and products, the nonprofit could ask the donor for the open market value or retail price of the items at the time of the donation.
For professional services, the nonprofit could estimate the hourly rate of the specialized work being provided and multiply that by hours donated.
For experiences, the nonprofit could find out what the open market value or potential cost of the ticket or experience is at the time of the donation.
This information allows nonprofits to report (according to GAAP standards) the total organization’s annual revenue and value of contributions received. This is an important factor for financial reporting, auditing, grant applications, and a number of other financial and legal functions.
On top of that, reporting the FMV of tangible in-kind donations is a requirement for completing Form 990, the document that determines the tax-exempt status of nonprofit organizations.
How Businesses Account for In-Kind Donations
Companies have the choice to report their in-kind contributions as either an operational/marketing expense or as a deductible charitable donation. Both options have their own potential tax deductions for your business, though reporting your gifts as donations has the added benefit of bolstering your reported totals for charitable giving and improving your public image.
Your business will need to determine the fair market value of your in-kind donations; providing this to recipient nonprofits will save them effort as well. For many goods and products, this will often be the same as their open market retail value. However, for services donated, the expense can vary and is usually closer to what your business actually spent, as personal time can’t be deducted but employee wages can be.
Once you’ve determined the value of your in-kind donations, you will fill out the proper IRS documentation based on your filing status. For instance:
Sole proprietors, S corporations, and pass-through entities fill out Form 1040, Schedule A
C corporations and most other businesses fill out Form 1040, Schedule C
If your tax-deductible value is between $500 to $5,000, complete Form 8283 Section A
If your tax-deductible value exceeds $5,000, complete Form 8283 Section B and perform an appraisal
If your tax-deductible value exceeds $500,000, complete Form 8283 Section B and attach an official appraisal to the form
For more information on this subject, check out the DonationMatch tax deduction guide, contact your tax advisor, or visit the official IRS page on reporting charitable contributions.
What’s the Best Tool to Track In-Kind Donations?
Using the right software or platform to track your in-kind donations can make a huge impact on the speed, accuracy, and efficiency with which you manage your in-kind giving program and fill out your financial reports.
Of course, getting a professional tax advisor is ideal for navigating the annual in-kind accounting process. But on a day-to-day level, it’s important to have a dedicated tool in place that is tailor-made to manage, record, and keep track of your in-kind gifts.
DonationMatch: The Only True In-Kind Giving Platform
While many CSR software solutions deal very generally with the ins and outs of in-kind donations, DonationMatch is the only true, dedicated in-kind giving platform that tracks and helps manage every step of the in-kind donation process between businesses and nonprofits.
Take a look at a handful of the intuitive features offered by our intelligent in-kind giving and matchmaking tools:
Proactive, custom search portals that allow you to finetune your giving parameters to enable the perfect nonprofit partners and giving opportunities to qualify
True automation of the entire giving process, streamlining everything from the request screening process to secure e-delivery and tracking your donations
Robust data tracking and reporting, providing you with up-to-date, key metrics and information about your in-kind donations, events, and nonprofit partnerships
Without our turnkey in-kind platform, you can effortlessly generate custom reports, track key performance indicators, and easily access the most important metrics and data you need to report and account for your in-kind donations.
Additional Resources
Recording, reporting, and accounting for your in-kind donations can feel like an impossible series of hoops to jump through. Fortunately, these insights and tools should help your organization to more confidently balance your books and keep track of your in-kind donations.
Eager to learn more about in-kind donations and tax reporting? Check out our other resources:
In-Kind Donations and Tax Deductions 101 | DonationMatch. Explore the intricacies of tax reporting and potential tax deductions for in-kind gifts.
In-Kind Donations: Everything Your Organization Should Know. Learn everything there is to know about in-kind giving with our definitive guide to in-kind donations.
6 Nonprofit Tax Tips for Reporting In-Kind Donations. Save money and perfect the tax reporting process for your in-kind donations with these essential tax tips.
In-Kind Donations and Tax Deductions 101 | DonationMatch
Businesses and individual donors alike should know whether their in-kind donations are tax-deductible. Explore our complete guide to in-kind tax deductibility.
Please note that the following article is not meant to be taken as tax or financial advice. Everyone's situation is different, and your tax advisor should ultimately be consulted before making decisions.
To encourage the support of social betterment programs and charitable organizations, the U.S. government incentivizes nonprofits, businesses, and individuals alike with unique tax benefits. For qualified 501(c)(3) organizations, this means income tax exemption. And for donors and companies that support these charities, deductions on federal income taxes are available!
However, actually calculating your tax deductions, especially for in-kind donations, can be a bit of a challenge. From reporting the market value of your contributions to differentiating what is and isn’t tax-deductible, there are multiple factors to take into consideration.
To lend a hand, we’ve compiled this simple guide to navigating tax deductions for in-kind donations. We’ll cover:
Maybe you feel a personal obligation to support nonprofits that champion missions close to your heart. Or, your in-kind giving may be more strategic—donating helps businesses positively market their brand and increase customer loyalty.
Whatever your reason and whoever you may be, these insights can enable you to make the most of your in-kind contributions and save revenue. Let’s dive in.
Charitable Gifts: In-Kind vs Monetary Donations
Tax-deductible donations are typically gifts contributed to organizations that, in the U.S., the IRS recognizes as “exempt organizations.” These contributions can take a variety of forms, from money to products and services.
All of these methods of charitable giving are potentially eligible for tax deductions, but they must meet certain criteria. For example, your donations:
Cannot be made out to political organizations, candidates, or campaigns
Cannot be made in return for benefits, such as event access, that exceed the fair market value of your contributions
Must be made out to officially registered or recognized tax-exempt organizations
Contributions to registered 501(c)(3) organizations are potentially tax- deductible, based on your filing entity’s tax situation, but they aren’t the only organizations that qualify. If you’re unsure whether an organization has 501(c)(3) status, you can always take a look at the Tax Exempt Organization Search from the IRS.
After your donations meet these basic requirements, you can begin considering how to calculate and report them for tax purposes. This is where monetary and in-kind contributions start to differ.
Reporting Monetary Donations for Tax Deductions
For cash, checks, and other monetary donations, the process is more straightforward. This is because your cash gifts already have an explicit value. A dollar is a dollar.
However, from one-time cash donations to donated products to matched employee gifts, you should keep track of all charitable contributions throughout the year.
Maintain organized receipts of your donations, such as bank records or written acknowledgments from the nonprofits that receive your donations. When the time comes for reporting, the forms that you fill out will depend on whether or not you are filing as a business, and how your business is structured. For example:
Individuals and sole proprietors attach donation receipts to Form 1040, Schedule A; Individuals are subject to a $300 per-person limit before they must itemize deductions while proprietors itemize deductions immediately
Partnerships, S Corporations, and pass-through entities attach receipts to personal returns (Form 1040, Schedule A), with deductions processed as business losses
C Corporations attach receipts to Form 1040, Schedule C, deducting donations from federal income tax returns
For more information on how you or your business would report charitable contributions, check Tax Topic No. 506 from the IRS.
Reporting In-Kind Donations for Tax Deductions
For in-kind contributions, companies typically can choose to write off products provided to charitable events or programs as either a marketing expense or charitable donation, whichever is easier or more advantageous. For example, classifying items as donations can help when wishing to communicate higher charitable giving totals.
There are a few more things to consider about in-kind donations in tax reporting. Namely, you need to determine the fair market value (FMV) of your donations. This is a calculation of the amount of money that a donated good—like a raffle fundraising basket full of your products or pallets of products—would reasonably be worth.
After all, you can’t very well declare “auctioned vacation experience” on your tax returns. The donor is responsible for determining and giving the IRS a tangible, calculable value to factor into your tax deductions. For physical products, retail value could work. For services like spa treatments, the amount eligible to be written off may be different and closer to what providing the service actually costs the business, since personal time cannot be deducted, but employee wages can. To learn more about fair market value and how to determine the FMV of your in-kind gifts, reference IRS Publication 561.
Additionally, if total tax deductions exceed $500, Form 8283 (for non-cash charitable contributions) is required in addition to Form 1040. Take a look at the section “How do I report my in-kind donations for tax purposes?” for more information about completing IRS Form 8283.
That being said, there are some exceptions to these standards! For example, special rules apply to select types of charitable donations, like inventory and similar items, pre-valued.
But don’t be discouraged! There are hundreds of IRS resources that delve into the finer details of charitable donation reporting to help you make the most of in-kind donations.
Furthermore, if you’re a business professional managing a robust in-kind giving program, investing in a dedicated in-kind giving platform can streamline the entire vetting and reporting process through intuitive data tracking and record-keeping.
FAQs: The Deductibility of In-Kind Donations
If you’re still buzzing with questions about the tax deduction potential of in-kind donations, you’re not alone! Tax deduction reporting is a complex process with unique standards, rates, and rules to consider. Let’s tackle a few of the most frequently asked questions regarding tax deduction and charitable donations.
Can businesses deduct charitable contributions?
The simple answer is yes, businesses can absolutely deduct charitable contributions (both monetary and in-kind) from their taxes. While you will not receive a deduction for the donation of services, physical products and costs associated with donated experiences are eligible for deduction.
How much can you deduct for charitable contributions?
The answer depends on several factors such as how you are filing, other deductions, and what kinds of donations are being reported. At the time of this article’s publishing, in-kind donations have a deduction ceiling of about 50% to 60% of gross adjusted income (AGI) for some businesses and most individuals.
Up to 100% of monetary donations can be potentially deducted, but actual allowances still depend on the classification of organizations you donate to and other factors on your own tax returns.
Take a look at the different kinds of deduction ceilings depending on how you file your taxes and to whom you donate:
A 30% deduction ceiling is imposed for donations to certain veterans groups, cemeteries, fraternities, and private foundations
If you receive something in return for your donation, like event access, you can only deduct the leftover fair market value after subtracting the value of what was received
C corporations have a deduction ceiling between 10% to 25%, which they must affirmatively elect for each contribution
For more information on your specific access to in-kind tax deductibility, consult the IRS website and your own financial/tax advisor.
What in-kind donations are not tax-deductible?
If you want your in-kind gifts to qualify for tax deductions, you’ll have to do a bit of research in advance. For one thing, time and services do not typically qualify for a deduction. However, you can deduct additional expenses incurred during your hours of service—a great reason for businesses to promote employee volunteering!
Additionally, you’ll want to pay very close attention to the organizations you’re donating to. Once again, the following kinds of gifts are not eligible for tax deductions:
Political gifts
Donation amounts that are exceeded by the FMV of benefits you receive in return
Donations to organizations that the IRS does not recognize as exempt
This is one of the reasons it’s so important to partner with the right nonprofit organizations!
To ensure that your business is sending its valuable in-kind contributions to qualified nonprofits, consider investing in DonationMatch’s turnkey donation matchmaking software. Our intuitive corporate giving platform allows you to be strategic about giving to nonprofits that are vetted and have upcoming event opportunities, maximizing your chances for fit with your goals and tax deductibility.
How do I report my in-kind donations for tax purposes?
As we mentioned, you will first determine the FMV of your donations. Remember, FMV describes the appraised cost of a non-cash charitable contribution.
Once you’ve determined the value of your in-kind donations and collected the proper donation receipts, you will complete the appropriate form(s) to report it.
In addition to Form 1040 (Schedule A for individuals, sole proprietors, and pass-through entities; Schedule C for most other businesses), you will be asked to fill out Form 8283. Fill out Section A if your tax-deductible value is between $500 to $5,000. For deductible values of single items exceeding $5,000, complete Section B and perform an official appraisal. For deductible values exceeding $500,000, fill out Section B and attach the appraisal to the tax form.
3 Tips to Save Money on Your In-Kind Donation Tax Reporting
Now that you’ve considered when, how, and under what circumstances your in-kind donations are eligible for tax deductions, it’s time to top off your understanding with a few best practices. Follow these essential in-kind donation tax tips to begin tackling the in-kind donation deduction process like an expert.
1. Record and document your contributions.
It’s impossible to stress this point enough—keeping organized records of your contributions is one of the first and most important steps to successfully securing tax deductions.
While there are hundreds of resources to guide you through the tax reporting and form-filling process, none of them can do you much good if you’ve lost the details and proof of your charitable giving.
Be sure to practice good data hygiene with your personal or organizational records—remove outdated or unhelpful information, utilize effective database software, and perform data audits when necessary.
2. VeT Organizations for fit and compliance.
While you can technically donate to organizations, people, or causes that are not IRS-recognized 501(c)(3)’s, your potential ceiling for tax deductions may be significantly lower.
Furthermore, if you are a business owner, other advantages of corporate social responsibility—such as positive impressions, cause marketing, and increased customer loyalty— work best when you partner with qualified, well-respected nonprofits.
To maximize the benefits of in-kind giving for your business (and your nonprofit partners!), take the time to verify the validity of your potential donation recipients’ 501(3)(c) status and the person reaching out to you to ensure they are legitimately connected with the organization. DonationMatch’s built-in vetting finds 10-20% of donation solicitations to be questionable or unauthorized, most commonly due to contacts soliciting donations without permission or lack of IRS-recognized exempt status.
3. Leverage dedicated software to manage in-kind donations.
From automating communications to simplifying data tracking, the right in-kind donation software can completely transform how you manage your in-kind giving processes.
While individual people can get by with a simple spreadsheet of their occasional charitable giving, your business and its more robust, complex giving programs would greatly benefit from specialized software.
In-kind giving platforms like DonationMatch are built to easily facilitate, record, and manage the in-kind giving process for companies that distribute thousands of donations a year. This means that everything from vetting and picking out the targeted nonprofit recipients of donations to printing out detailed reports of your contributions is made possible with just a few clicks.
Wrapping Up
Reporting tax deductions is an essential tax duty for countless businesses, yet it’s something surprisingly few people have a firm grasp of—and it’s no wonder why. Tax deduction reporting, and specifically reporting for charitable contributions, is a delicate process that takes careful attention.
However, with the help of these insights and best practices, you should be far better equipped to tackle your in-kind donation programs, assess their tax deductibility, and make the most of your charitable giving!
Interested in learning more about in-kind donations, in-kind giving software, and tax filing best practices? Check out these additional resources:
In-Kind Donations: Everything Your Organization Should Know. Beyond a tax deduction, there are far more ways that in-kind donations can benefit your organization. Dive into the fundamentals of in-kind giving, from business benefits to essential tools.
6 Nonprofit Tax Tips for Reporting In-Kind Donations. Learn more about the nonprofit side of the tax process with these expert tips for in-kind donation tax reporting.
Corporate Giving Platform | Give Smarter with DonationMatch. Invest in corporate giving software that can not only help you organize your in-kind donation program, but completely optimize it. Give smarter with DonationMatch.
3 Simple Steps to Protect Your Nonprofit From Financial Fraud
Fraud doesn’t have to be your worst nightmare. With these techniques, your nonprofit can prevent fraud and easily manage scams that slip through the cracks.
Financial corruption is a specter that haunts every sector of the working world. However, nonprofits are not only at great risk of falling victim to fraud, but they suffer the most from its consequences.
After all, nonprofits are mission-driven, faith-based, and rely heavily on grants and donations. A financial corruption scandal can completely dry up goodwill, making it impossible to retain donors and acquire future support in the form of volunteering, corporate sponsorship programs, or other reputation-driven engagements.
Yet, as frightening as fraud may seem, you don’t have to curl up into a corner and wait for the inevitable. There are options available to you to not only prevent fraud, but efficiently deal with these situations if and when they occur.
Over the course of this short guide, we will break down the following essential techniques to quickly and effectively maneuver around financial and data corruption:
Employee and Volunteer Training
Internal Oversight
Secure Payment Technologies
Fraud is a complicated reality for any professional to tackle, especially for those working in a sector that relies so heavily on good faith and digital transactions. When your donors decide to give, they shouldn’t have to worry about providing financial details in your forms. However, with the following preventive measures, you should be able to brave these attacks with complete confidence.
1. Employee and Volunteer Training
If fraud does occur within your organization, the sad truth is that much of the time it will be a betrayal of trust from one of your employees. Sometimes these transgressions will be intentional, and other times entirely unconscious, but all the same they can often be linked to staff. That being said, your best resource to manage organizational purity and keep clean books are those very same staff members.
This may sound like a paradox, but the reality is that there are few greater drains on your organization’s time and resources than burdening a small circle of upper management with fraud detection. For the most part, your team is a dedicated and passionate group of individuals working towards the same goal.
By providing anti-fraud training to all of your employees, you spread financial responsibility to corners of your organization that you never would have been able to effectively manage.
Here are some of the essential anti-fraud employee training tools and resources that you should consider implementing:
A learning series. In order for your team to effectively deal with fraud, you need to be able to recognize it. Educate current and incoming employees on common types of scams that they may come across, such as embezzlement, fund misappropriation, and vendor schemes. These courses will not only tighten up your financial defenses, but they can be used as an opportunity to engage your employees and create a sense of team solidarity.
A fraud protection manual. Draft up a dedicated resource for employees to regularly turn back to if they ever have questions or need further clarification on what constitutes fraud. This guide should also include a clear plan of reportage and a point of contact for staff to follow if they do encounter fraudulent activities.
An audit committee. In the event of fraud, a team of dedicated staff must already be organized to address the issue. This committee should comprise professionals across multiple departments, eliminating the potential for corruption. Additionally, they should undergo extensive coaching to understand how to confidently, quickly shut down the scam and minimize any bad press that might arise.
We also encourage you to set up a similar system for volunteers. Many nonprofits tend to be laxer on training and managing their volunteers because these helpers are unpaid and the organization is eager to raise volunteer recruitment rates.
While it may seem inconvenient, these programs should be common practice for anyone that is granted organizational access higher than a common member of the public. Of course, this is especially important for volunteers who join special committees or become involved in financial management.
Your staff is your first line of defense against fraud. Your own attempts to individually police fraudulent activity will never outperform their readily available support.
2. Internal Oversight
No amount of bad intentions can facilitate a successful fraud scheme—the scam can only occur if the opportunity is present. Disorganization and poor account management provide that opportunity. This is part of what makes nonprofits more susceptible to fraud than corporations.
After all, while profit-driven entities are more centralized and closely managed, nonprofits tend to be run with a bit less oversight and far more trust. There is a natural assumption that everyone involved with the organization is concerned with the mission, rather than their own self-interests.
While this trust and solidarity are essential, there shouldn’t be large gaps in your operations that lend themselves to potential exploitation.
We recommend some of the following strategies to tighten internal oversight and safeguard your finances from opportunistic corruption:
Pay attention to your tax returns. This may seem like a no-brainer, but too many nonprofits have prolonged the lifecycle of a scam by not reviewing their tax statements. Treat these tax reportings as a diagnostic of your financial health and retain an account team that will be able to recognize the symptoms of fraud.
Minimize individual management. Even the most trusted employee shouldn’t be managing significant financial data alone. On the other hand, you shouldn’t be giving out data permissions to just anyone, as sharing a blanket of access to financial accounts also poses a risk to security. The solution is to make sure that you have multiple, dedicated team members trained in handling financial data who can hold one another accountable and more efficiently monitor your finances.
Leverage your technology. You don’t have to completely rely on manual oversight. For one thing, you can invest in special applications to help you manage data, track finances, and delegate tasks. The iATS Payments buyer’s guide to Salesforce apps provides a list of tools and solutions that can help protect the data of Salesforce users. It’s also a good idea to optimize your nonprofit website to more effectively manage backend operations.
For the most part, fraud is a crime of opportunity. With these operational management techniques, you eliminate the major safety gaps that might catch the attention of a would-be fraudster.
3. Secure Payment Technologies
If your own human approaches to fraud prevention aren’t enough, strengthening your payment system itself is a good back-up against various kinds of schemes. In fact, some types of fraud are specifically facilitated by a weak payment processor security, such as phishing, pagejacking, and merchant identity theft.
To maximize the security of your payment system, we suggest that you opt for a dedicated payment processor, rather than an aggregate system. This ensures that your payment processing is carried out through a closed channel, rather than a third-party platform running payments concurrently with thousands of other clients.
Additionally, you should be mindful of the following key safety features when assessing your own payment technology:
Dedicated anti-fraud processes. Rather than just assessing the general security of a processor, look for features that are specifically built for fraud prevention. This iATS Payments article on donation page best practices goes into a bit more depth on ideal features for donation processing, such as BIN and CVV2 verification.
Tokenization and encryption. These encoding systems disguise precious financial data, rendering them unreadable to fraudsters, black hat hackers, and malware programs.
PCI compliance. This is a system security certification that must be officially verified and administered by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council. This is as close to a guarantee of security that is possible, according to the highest standards of the credit card industry.
There are some scams that could slip past even the most prudent team of nonprofit professionals. However, your first line of defense shouldn’t be your only defense—these technical safeguards can help to repel thieves and end many scams before they even begin.
The possibility of fraud is a chilling prospect, but it doesn’t have to be a boogeyman that stops organizational operations in their tracks. When or if fraud takes place, you will now be able to minimize its scope and effectively take action.
These measures should not only put you more at ease, but allow your entire team to capably navigate your financial operations with more grace and precision than ever before.
Corporate Philanthropy: What Your Business Needs to Know
Discover how your business can leverage corporate philanthropy to increase employee engagement, secure customer loyalty, and positively promote your brand.
With social activism and ethical business practices taking center stage in national conversations, it makes sense that corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate philanthropy programs are on the rise. Instead of just selling valuable products and services, your business is now expected to take an active role in social causes.
In fact, according to a Cone Communications study on CSR, 63% of Americans hope businesses will take charge in driving social and environmental change in the absence of government regulation. Corporate philanthropy is increasingly becoming less of a “nice-to-have” offering and more of a “must-have” element for businesses to keep up with consumer desires.
But while your organization may be facing pressure to implement these programs, you don’t have to view them as a burden. In fact, if implemented correctly, your corporate philanthropy programs can be a driving force for customer loyalty, cause marketing, brand awareness, and employee engagement.
This guide will provide a roadmap for marketing managers, community giving managers, and HR professionals taking the dive into the world of corporate philanthropy. You’ll not only learn what corporate philanthropy is and its different types, but how to start a successful CSR program of your own by going over the key essentials of CSR, including:
No matter your business’s products or services, these strategies should help you take action and launch your own robust corporate philanthropy program. Let’s get started with a brief overview of what corporate philanthropy is and what it might look like for your business!
What is Corporate Philanthropy?
Corporate philanthropy is the voluntary actions that businesses take to improve their impact on the environment, their communities, and society at large. These programs have become incredibly popular in the business sector, with over $21 billion in corporate gifts given to nonprofits last year alone.
This may seem like a hefty investment to please your customers, but the benefits of corporate philanthropy go far beyond presenting a positive image for your business.
For instance, corporate philanthropy can provide an essential boost to your employee engagement rates. Over 71% of employees say it is imperative or very important to work at a business where the culture supports giving and volunteering.
This statistic might seem surprising if your idea of corporate philanthropy is just cutting a check to a local charity. For many people, the first idea that comes to mind when thinking of philanthropy is a cash donation. But there are a variety of different corporate giving programs that provide aid to nonprofits in different ways—which we’ll later discuss in more depth.
How Corporate Philanthropy Benefits Businesses
You may wonder if the cost of investing in corporate philanthropy is worth the benefits. After all, every single one of the corporate philanthropy programs we’ve discussed, with the exception of in-kind donations, involves donating money to an organization without necessarily receiving anything tangible in exchange.
So, how can corporate philanthropy strengthen your business and earn back its return on investment?
In addition to providing crucial support to worthy causes in your community, corporate philanthropy offers businesses many advantages such as:
Increased employee engagement. As mentioned earlier, corporate philanthropy can significantly improve employee engagement and retention rates. This Re:Charity report on corporate giving shows that employees who engage in corporate giving programs tend to have 75% longer tenures with their employers. The message is clear: your employees want to be a part of a business that improves their communities and creates change beyond the walls of their office. Your corporate philanthropy programs aren’t just for public vanity—they can and do create real, positive changes in your work environment’s quality and overall team member satisfaction.
Better engagement with customers. In an age when mass media is instantly available at everyone’s fingertips, customers have become increasingly mindful of the companies they support through their purchases. As quickly as bad news about a company will spread, good news about your company’s involvement in charitable causes will also reach customers. In fact, 87% of customers will purchase a product because a company advocated for an issue they care about.
A marketing and reputation boost. When you partner with nonprofits and other charitable organizations, you can expand your marketing reach. These joint efforts, such as charitable events or fundraisers, expose both of your organizations to audiences that may have otherwise been difficult to reach. Additionally, these activities can lead community members to view your organization as a philanthropically-minded force for good. For example, this America’s Charities workplace giving survey shows that 69% of respondents reported increased sales after launching CSR programs.
Creating an effective cooperative giving program may require a bit of investment, but it will more than make up for the initial planning and donations required to keep these initiatives running.
For example, Six Flags North America has used its corporate philanthropy program to engage employees, partner with community leaders, and create a sense of customer loyalty that will last a lifetime. From its Project 6 program to its Make-a-Wish sponsorship, Six Flags has leveraged the power of in-kind donations to share thrilling theme park experiences with children and community members in need, cementing itself as a pillar of social good in its communities.
Types of Corporate Philanthropy
Corporate philanthropy programs can vary widely depending on a business’s industry and community engagement goals. Just as each business’s day-to-day operations, products, and services are different, every corporate philanthropy program will work differently.
That being said, there are several common corporate philanthropy initiatives, including:
Monetary Donations
DIRECT MONETARY DONATIONS
Direct monetary donations, sometimes structured as grants, are payments that your organization makes to nonprofits. This is one of the most common and straightforward forms of corporate philanthropy.
Direction donations can be as simple as writing a check to a charity. Alternatively, you could partner to contribute a portion of your sales during a given time period to a designated nonprofit or host an ongoing donation drive.
MATCHING GIFTS
Matching gifts are donations that businesses make to match their employee’s monetary contributions to charitable causes. This allows you to engage your employees on a one-on-one basis, showing support and giving to organizations that each of them finds personally important.
The process of actually facilitating these matching gifts is usually a shared, online exchange between your matching gift system and the nonprofit’s matching gift database software, where:
Your employee logs into the nonprofit’s donation page to submit their gift.
Employees search for your company’s matching gift form through the matching gift database embedded in the donation page.
Employees can automatically submit a request for you to match their donation.
The ratio and maximum amount of these matches vary for each organization. For example, many businesses offer 1:1 matches, but some provide 2:1 or even 3:1 matches.
However you go about setting up your match ratio or your matching gift form, just be sure to make sure that employees know about the program!
SPONSORSHIPS
Corporate sponsorships are a form of corporate philanthropy where your business supports a nonprofit during an event or specific fundraising effort.
This time-based type of philanthropy is flexible and can be mixed and matched with other philanthropic initiatives, such as a holiday direct donation campaign, to build up a more concentrated wave of support. Consider implementing sponsorships into your current corporate philanthropy program to complement and enhance your other campaigns.
In-Kind Donations
IN-KIND DONATIONS
In-kind donations are the donation of goods, experiences, or services rather than money.
For example, DonationMatch has helped many product-based businesses donate their extra inventory and product samples to charity events, turning unnecessary overhead into a marketing opportunity.
On the nonprofit side of the engagement, these charitable organizations are able to get in touch with businesses and immediately receive valuable or otherwise unattainable items that can be put directly towards fundraising for their mission.
Even businesses that don’t sell physical products, such as the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, have been able to participate in in-kind giving by donating tours, tickets, and valuable experiences to local community programs.
SPONSORSHIPS
As we mentioned, corporate sponsorships involve your business offering support to a nonprofit during a specific event, campaign, or project. For instance, you might donate dining gift certificates to be put up for bid at a charity auction or send employee volunteers to help facilitate a 5K.
Corporate sponsorships intersect with several other types of corporate philanthropy. For example, donating those auctionable gift certificates would count as both a sponsorship and an in-kind donation program.
You can pair corporate sponsorships with all of the other types of corporate philanthropy on this list to create a concentrated, time-sensitive campaign that will bring attention to your philanthropic efforts.
talent donations
VOLUNTEER GRANTS
Volunteer grants are contributions that employers make to nonprofits that their employees have volunteered with for a specific amount of time.
Volunteer grants, volunteer grant funds, or dollars for doers programs are a particularly effective way to engage your employees, rewarding them for actively helping charitable missions.
No matter the most compatible corporate philanthropy program, be sure to choose one or two well-suited nonprofits with which to create ongoing partnerships. As you learn more about your nonprofit partners, you can understand what types of donations and giving initiatives are most helpful for them.
Additionally, partner with charitable causes that align with your business’s mission or sector. Doing so will help create a more consistent, positive public reception of your brand. Before getting started, be sure that your business has the right tools to find the best nonprofits for your philanthropic partnership.
5 Steps to Create a Corporate Philanthropy Program
Launching your own corporate philanthropy program can be difficult without a bit of guidance. The DonationMatch team has had years of experience organizing and facilitating in-kind corporate philanthropy initiatives for businesses, and with these fundamental strategies, you should be well on your way to starting your own program:
1. Establish your goals.
Before you decide what type of corporate philanthropy program to pursue, you need to establish your CSR campaign goals. Think about what you’re hoping to gain from your campaigns, such as increased employee engagement or a reputational boost. Only then can you really begin to build out your corporate philanthropy program.
Here’s how you should walk through the goal-setting process:
Determine target benefits. What are you looking for in your CSR program—employee engagement? Brand exposure through cause marketing?
Assess CSR strategy’s compatibility with your business. How does the giving program you’re considering help you achieve the goals in step 1? Are there other types of corporate philanthropy that might be more beneficial for your target goals?
Establish specific return on investment markers. In other words, figure out what specific key performance indicators (KPIs) you can measure to assess whether your program is doing well. We’ll touch more on this later.
For example, if your main goal is to create a more active and more public partnership of giving between your business and community organizations, then an in-kind donation program may be the best fit for you. By contrast, if you want to improve employee engagement, then a matching gifts or volunteer grant program may provide better results.
2. Gather the necessary technology.
Gathering the right tools is a must for building your corporate philanthropy program. While smaller businesses may be able to run a rudimentary corporate giving program through manual means, CSR software tools can optimize your campaigns and maximize their effectiveness.
To ensure that your program will run smoothly, reach the widest possible audience, and facilitate relationships with the right nonprofits, invest in these software solutions:
In-kind donation portal. There are thousands of charitable organizations and nonprofits that are eager for your donations. However, qualifying and choosing organizations that are well-suited for your program is a far greater challenge. Fortunately, an in-kind donation platform can help. This tool allows you to cut through the clutter and match your business with qualified nonprofits that meet the specific criteria that you’ve entered, which may include location, cause type, and supporter demographics that match your own customers.
Communication platforms. How you communicate with your customers and employees about your philanthropic initiatives can determine your program’s success. For example, a volunteer grant program won’t succeed if no one in your organization is aware that you are offering grants. Leverage communication platforms, such as your email marketing tools and social media strategies, to promote these opportunities.
A tracking and reporting system. Data tracking and data reportage are two of the most fundamental tools necessary for tracking your program’s performance. This data will show you where your program can improve and where you’re doing well. For instance, tracking data for your in-kind giving program will allow you to determine which nonprofit partnerships have been the most rewarding and what products you should continue to allocate to your partners.
Investing in these tools may seem like a costly investment. Fortunately, there are comprehensive platforms that can help you achieve all of these goals.
For example, the DonationMatch platform is able to automate and streamline nearly every step of the in-kind giving process, from partnership matching to facilitating donations and performance tracking.
When you begin searching for your own corporate giving tools, look for effective, turnkey platforms that centralize all of these features into one or two powerful solutions.
3. Connect with nonprofit partners.
Finding nonprofit partners that fit your corporate giving goals can be a challenge.
The number of nonprofits you want to engage will greatly influence the reach and depth of your campaigns.
Here are a few key features you should consider when choosing your nonprofit partner:
Years in operation
Community reach and impact
How their mission aligns with your business
Past corporations they’ve partnered with
What types of programs they might be open to
If a deeper, long-lasting, integrated relationship is desired, take your time to choose the right partner and foster a relationship. If you want to maximize brand visibility and reach, then engaging more organizations with a turnkey program will be more effective. The beauty of these programs is that you can do both. For instance, as we mentioned earlier, Six Flags North America chose to partner with Make a Wish to nurture a robust and highly beneficial relationship over years, yet continues to donate tickets to thousands of charity fundraisers each year.
4. Build excitement around your initiatives.
Your corporate philanthropy programs may serve a practical purpose, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be fun and engaging. In fact, that’s one of their most important benefits!
Stir up excitement amongst your employees and customers by:
Gathering employer and customer feedback
Promoting your initiatives during team gatherings
Creating an employee and/or customer-led corporate philanthropy council
Sharing information about your programs on your company website
This will help to better guarantee that your programs will perform successfully and make the most positive impact!
5. Track your progress.
We’ve said it once and we’ll say it again: data tracking is one of the most fundamental parts of running an effective corporate philanthropy program. How else will you know how to avert failure or repeat the success of past campaigns?
Track the following key statistics to help measure the impact of your program and the level of engagement:
Total contributions annually
Participation rates (such as who took advantage of matching gifts!)
Changes in rates of employee retention and overall satisfaction
Changes in rates of customer retention and overall satisfaction
Changes in sales and net revenue
Changes in sources of new customers
Associated costs, savings, and ROI
Expressed feedback and appreciation for giving programs (through survey responses)
These essential metrics should give you a good starting point, but you’ll want to sit down with your team to decide what data points from your campaigns you should focus on. After all, your own corporate philanthropy is unique, and will have its own unique goals and objectives.
Wrapping Up
Appealing to your customer base, engaging employees, and positively promoting your business are worthwhile goals to strive for. The social changes that have begun to rock the corporate world have only accelerated the rise of corporate social responsibility as a necessary cornerstone of your business practices.
With this guide and the right, intuitive corporate giving tools, take your business one step closer to launching your own effective corporate philanthropy program.
For more information on corporate philanthropy, different CSR programs, and DonationMatch’s solution to corporate philanthropy, check out these additional resources:
Top 3 Things Donating Can Do For Your Business. Take a deeper look into the benefits of corporate giving and how it can generate greater exposure, customer loyalty, and even increased revenue for your company.
Corporate Philanthropy Made Easy — DonationMatch. DonationMatch is dedicated to your corporate philanthropy endeavors. Explore how our turnkey platform has revolutionized the in-kind donation process.
Workplace Giving: Explore Matching Gifts From the Other Side. Employee engagement is a high priority for all corporate philanthropy programs. Dive into tips, tools, and software solutions to initiate your workplace giving campaigns and engage employees.
