5 Tips for Raising Funds Using a Survey

Looking for an appeal that is both an effective fundraising tool and a good opportunity for your supporters to give you useful feedback?

Effective fundraising appeals all have one thing in common: the ability to motivate a donor’s gift. But many times, organizations are left wondering what is motivating that gift. Including a well-thought survey in an appeal has shown to be effective at both: raising money and discovering useful information.

To help you get started, here are some important tips to keep in mind:

1. Keep your survey relatively short (something that can be completed in just a few minutes). There isn’t a magic number of questions you should ask, just as long as it’s simple for the donors to complete.
2. Identify key information that will be useful for your organization to capture. Craft meaningful questions to help capture why a donor gives to your organization. You can also ask questions to get donors’ opinions on areas you would like for them to learn. Make sure your communication helps the donor feel as though their input is both important and needed.
3. Use different types of survey questions: closed-ended questions, rating questions, and multiple-choice questions.
4. Thank responders who give to the appeal for participating in the survey on their receipt. Additionally, if you have a newsletter, be sure to use it to acknowledge participation, and share some of the learnings so the people feel their voices have been heard. And, if a donor had a comment that needs to be addressed, a follow-up phone call is strongly encouraged.
5. Consolidate the survey results. Responses should be put together in a way that insights can be gleaned (and shared as appropriate). This is something that many organizations often forget to do, but when the results are analyzed in a meaningful way, it can help guide future donor communication strategies.

By executing these 5 tips, you will be well on your way to developing an engaging way to motivate your donors’ next gift while also discovering some useful information along the way.