4 Ways You Can Use AI to Retain Your Giving Tuesday Donors

Giving Tuesday, a global day of generosity, is an excellent opportunity for nonprofits to attract new donors and boost their fundraising efforts. However, the real challenge lies in engaging and retaining these supporters beyond the initial donation. Here are five AI-powered strategies to help you build lasting relationships with the people who supported you on Giving Tuesday.

1. Increase Their Awareness of Your Cause

Once a donor has contributed to your cause, it’s crucial to keep them informed about the impact of their donation, as well as further educating them about the ongoing need for support. Here are a few ways to do this:

• Update your welcome series: When was the last time that you reviewed your welcome series? Make sure you’re sending up-to-date content to new supporters. Sending information about a variety of topics or programs that you work on will help you collect interaction data that signals what each donor finds most interesting and motivating. Dataro’s AI content assistant is trained to help you draft personalized fundraising copy quickly, so that regular updates to your email drip campaigns don’t need to take hours to complete. 
• Maintain a regular update cadence: Send periodic communications detailing the progress of your projects and how donations are being used.
• Tell stories: Share compelling stories of the people or communities your organization is helping. This personal touch can deepen their connection to your cause.
• Make it personal: As you learn more about your donors, start personalizing your outreach for them. For example, you can use Dataro’s Interest Areas tool to analyze email interactions and discover which topics are most compelling to each of your donors. 

By keeping your donors well-informed, you foster a sense of ownership and involvement, making them more likely to continue supporting your organization.

2. Convert them to monthly giving

Monthly giving is a powerful strategy for increasing donor retention and lifetime value. Monthly donors tend to give more over time compared to one-time donors, making them a valuable asset to your organization. If you acquired new single-gift donors on Giving Tuesday, use your Year-End campaign to convert them to monthly giving for the year ahead. 

Dataro’s monthly giving models identify the donors in your database most likely to convert to monthly giving, or upgrade a current monthly gift, so that you can reach out with personalized asks. 

3. Keep an eye out for large giving potential

While all donors and all gifts are valuable to your organization, there are some that you’ll always want to pay extra attention to. You can use Dataro’s AI models to identify which of your Giving Tuesday donors are likely to be most valuable in the long term and plan specific nurture strategies accordingly. Here are some of the additional donor propensity scores to pay attention to:

• Likelihood of making a midlevel gift
• Likelihood of making a major gifts
• Likelihood of making a planned gift
• Projected long term value

A donor’s projected Long-Term Value is a particularly useful piece of information, as it takes into account all giving projected over the next 5 years. By recognizing and nurturing high-giving-potential donors early, you can unlock significant funding opportunities for your organization.

4. Convert volunteers and other non-donors

If you, like many organizations, also offered non-monetary ways to get involved on Giving Tuesday, from volunteering to taking action online, you may have also recently acquired some new supporters who aren’t yet donors. Because these people already care about your cause and are familiar with your organization, they are some of your best prospects for future giving. 

Dataro’s First Gift model indicates the readiness of a supporter to make their first donation. For donors that are ready, you can use Dataro’s Ask Amounts, Interest Areas, and Preferred Channel models to send each donor the right message. For the donors that aren’t quite ready yet, keep nurturing!

Bonus: Find more donors like them

Once you have engaged your Giving Tuesday donors, it’s time to repeat the cycle. Whether you’re looking at the Giving Tuesday donors who have a projected high long-term value, are likely to convert to recurring giving, or who care deeply about a specific issue – you can easily use Dataro’s online advertising integrations to target acquisition ads toward similar people using lookalike audiences. 

By finding more donors with similar profiles, you can expand your donor base and increase your fundraising potential.

Engaging and retaining Giving Tuesday donors requires a multifaceted approach that includes increasing awareness, converting to monthly giving, identifying high-potential donors, converting volunteers, and finding more donors like them. By implementing these strategies, you can build a loyal and supportive donor base that will help your organization achieve its long-term goals.