Ecosystem Analysis

One of the most important things to us at Donor Organizer Hub is that we learn from and share what is and isn’t working to organize donors from thousands of hours of training, coaching, and convening donor organizers. Here are some patterns we witnessed in 2024 on what brought in more donors and volunteers, and what didn’t.

What Worked

Spending time identifying 3-5 initial leaders to seed a volunteer fundraising team (1-3 months)

• Leadership identification is not about just those who raise their hand but who have 2-3 characteristics you’re seeking as a volunteer fundraising leader (for example, follow-through)

• These characteristics can be determined through structure tests - asking pointed questions or giving small tasks - to see if the potential leader’s response aligns with the characteristics you’re looking for

Training people to fundraise their networks, then coach others to do the same

• Once someone “tapped their networks,” this gave them a job to do

• Additional leadership layers were built to train fundraisers and coaches and to make decisions on team direction (donor -> fundraiser -> coach -> trainer -> decision maker)

Setting 1-3 explicit goals for each event/campaign - team and individual (total dollars raised, number of donors, etc.)

• The act of building the goals help make it crystal clear what is both ambitious and achievable

• Reviewing these goals at the beginning of each planning meeting allowed for adjustments to be made to meet those goals (instead of just “moving through the checklist”)

Building a robust co-host model for fundraising events

• Making the ask incredibly clear for co-hosts: inviting 20 friends through multiple channels (ex: email blast first, then follow-up individual calls/texts, then reminder calls/texts to RSVPs)

• Convening existing co-hosts to share tips on what is/isn’t working encourages deeper co-host commitments

Fundraising pitches with testimonials from donors making their deepest investment possible - forgoing vacations or a dinner out each month

• Anchoring in questions like, “What is your investment in democracy?” or “What will you contribute to make meaningful structural change happen in our lifetimes?” supports people adding a zero or more to their contributions for the first time

• Allowing people in the room to share their pledges/donations as they make them builds ripple effect energy in the room

Using traditional donor prospecting language for volunteers to determine “whether they had a network” or “who in their network has money”

• Millionaires and even a billionaire has told Donor Organizer Hub, “I don’t know many people with money.” As Mike Gast shares in Organize the Rich, people tend to compare up, distancing themselves from the resources they do have by pointing to others who “have more.”

• Instead:

  • Encourage yes-and energy when list building- prioritization can happen after

  • Remind yourself and others that there’s no (easy) way to prospect people’s networks- you can learn about them through making asks

Not developing enough asks of donors - simply, “Will you give again/give more?”

• While retention and upgrading are critical metrics in fundraising, organizing donors involves considering an array of resources that they have (time, talent, treasure, testimony, ties) that can support a group’s mission

• Instead:

  • Get trained (or re-trained) up on organizing 1:1s to see how you can incorporate different kinds of asks into your meetings with donors and volunteers

  • As a guiding question, consider, “What would an organizer do in this moment?”

Making fundraising as easy as possible for new volunteers by encouraging them to make lower-impact asks (email blasts, social media posts) rather than higher-impact asks (1:1s, house parties)

• There’s inevitably a psychological barrier to overcome for people to ask their friends for money - even something as seemingly simple as a BCCed email or social media post

• Instead:

  • Name that it’s OK to be nervous about asking people for money

  • Allow opportunities for volunteers to build relationships with one another so they feel supported in making higher-impact asks through peer learning

Spending days rather than 2-3 hours perfecting a volunteer toolkit with slick copy-paste messaging

• People encourage other people to take donate, fundraise, and coach by using their own words, not reading or pasting from a script

• Instead:

  • Using questions that help volunteers build their own asks like, “Why do we need to act now? Why should they be a part of it?” built leadership in new volunteers

  • Allowing volunteers to share with one another what has/hasn’t worked in their asks provides on-the-moment adaptability from real-world experiences

Trying to play with social media algorithms > investing deeply in relational organizing

• Some donor organizers spent lots (and lots) of time crafting flashy social media posts to drive people to their events and campaigns - and very few if any people were driven to them

• Instead:

  • Don’t eliminate social media entirely for promoting an event or campaign - encourage it to be the last step after volunteers have made their direct asks

  • Rest assured that the great people working in narrative change are working on this so you don’t have to as a donor organizer- and consider investing in those groups who are!