Blog Articles

Patrick Moraw, VP Sales & Marketing

Today, more than ever, nonprofits and charities are having to work harder and harder to reach new donors, manage those donors, and retain those donors long-term.

According to Inside Philanthropy, the "signs of an impending slowdown in charitable giving are emerging from multiple studies examining contributions last year, particularly those from donors of modest means.  For example, a new analysis of giving to more than 4,500 charities released by the Association of Fundraising Professionals this week found that overall donations in 2018 were up by only 1.6 percent, lower than the rate of inflation."

These types of studies catch our attention, but there are ways to optimize fundraising methods and grow giving in a sustainable, scaleable way...we (at Paperless Transactions) like to point to the steady growth of the e-commerce business market where inbound marketing is the primary sales focus and converting leads to customers is the goal.  What if nonprofits could capitalize on these same inbound marketing business principles and apply them to donor fundraising?  

To that end, Paperless Transactions has been on a mission over the course of the past few years to make "missional marketing" a real possibility for charities and nonprofits.  With that, we're excited to announce two new products (Paperless Websites and Paperless Marketing CRM) that fall into this Missional Donor Marketing philosophy.

First, traditional website design has caused for donor fundraising to flatline for most charities.  Simply having a "Donate Now" button on your website is not enough to drive donors to give and oftentimes websites are designed to fail from the onset by not considering the "customer" which in this case is the donor.  The purveying result is a website that conveys stagnant content; it's not personalized to the donor and it only displays high-level missional ideas instead of dynamic, direct donor calls to action (and thereby misses the mark on really impacting the donor).

Conversely, Paperless Transactions has done numerous studies and has invested time and resources into what's called "Growth-Driven Design" for its Paperless Websites product and how it can propel fundraising and donor engagement.  Growth-Driven Design (as shown below) focuses on personalizing the donor's experience by displaying on the nonprofit website stories and a message that matters to that particular donor.  For example (in the case of an educational charity), a donor that's previously subscribed and read content about say providing education to orphaned children will be welcomed with that type of content when they go to the charity's website.  This is called "missional marketing" becomes it makes the donor experience "personal" and thus the call to action is more likely to have a greater impact on the donor.

Once the donor has subscribed to the personalized website content, they are then opted into a donor marketing funnel that will send them related donor-centric emails that again revolve around their donor interests.  With the Paperless Marketing CRM, we can help design automated emails that go out to the donor and provide calls to action that produce higher conversion rates and keep the donor more engaged.

Overall, we want each nonprofit and charity to experience the difference that Growth-Driven Design and Missional Marketing makes.  If you're interested in hearing more, our team is eager to do a website and marketing audit for you to demonstrate how these exciting new product offerings can impact your organization's bottom line!

‍