Fundraising professionals in Indianapolis and across the globe have been seeking out new ways to cultivate donors and fundraise for their cultural organizations after a global pandemic has upended normal ways of doing business and organizational needs. Digital donor engagement was identified as a need for local Indianapolis museums through the Indy Museums Respond to COVID-19 needs assessment. To address that need IUPUI Museum Studies students and fundraising professionals at museums across the city have teamed up to discuss common struggles, lessons learned, and victories achieved over the course of an isolating and challenging year.
Donor Engagement and COVID-19: How to Keep IN Touch
On April 16th, 2021, Indy Museum Exchange hosted Digital Donor Engagement and COVID-19: How to Keep IN Touch, a webinar on engaging donors of cultural institutions during the pandemic, discussing lessons learned from 2020 and emerging trends of 2021. Speakers working in fundraising for cultural institutions in Indianapolis and the Lilly School of Philanthropy explored how you can best engage your donors at a distance while meeting your institution’s goals. Featuring Nataly Lowder, Vice President for Advancement at Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art; Marissa Nielsen, Individual Giving Officer at The Great American Songbook Foundation; and Bill Stanczykiewicz, Assistant Dean for External Relations, Clinical Associate Professor, and Director of The Fund Raising School at IUPUI’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. The webinar was organized and moderated by Karen Breece and Ross Edelstein, IUPUI Museum Studies M.A. students.
Additionally, you can find a list of resources below that can provide guidance on online fundraising during this time. Please note, we cannot verify the currency of resources and grants listed on external websites.
Resources
I have an hour to spare and want in-depth, up-to-date information and guides:
The Lilly School of Philanthropy does a free podcast every week highlighting current issues in fundraising. They post episodes on this webpage: https://philanthropy.iupui.edu/professional-development/podcast/index.html Some recent highlights discussing digital fundraising from the first months of 2021 include:
- Digital Fundraising: Where Are We Going?
- Digital Fundraising: Trends and Next Steps
- Foundation Fundraising During the Pandemic
Bloomerang donor management software has a long list of COVID-19 resources and articles largely focused on fundraising but includes other topics (such as working from home) as well: https://bloomerang.co/resources/covid19/
Bloomerang also has webinars that are free. You can sign up for upcoming ones here: https://bloomerang.co/resources/webinars/. Their webinar archive offers recorded sessions on several useful topics like:
- “How to Prepare a Grants Strategy During Uncertain Times”
- “How Some Nonprofits have Thrived during COVID-19…the art of ‘Pivoting’”
- “Keys to a Successful Virtual Fundraising Event”
- “3 Steps to Digital Marketing Success for Your Nonprofit”
- “Virtual Fundraising: Building Your Online Community”
- “Take Your Fundraising Event Virtual”
Donorbox has several great resources for fundraising during the pandemic published recently:
- “A Powerful List of Nonprofit Fundraising Trends in 2021” gives a long list of fundraising trends for 2021, many of which are digital, such as text fundraising, birthday fundraisers, and live-streaming:
- “An Easy Guide On How to Host a Virtual Fundraising Event” is a step-by step guide on how to plan a virtual fundraising event, and even has a list of streaming platforms with pricing:
- “15 Techniques to Boost Donor Acquisition – Best Practices (2020)” is a guide that includes basic donor acquisition tips, but with digital fundraising in mind:
Some resources from the early days of the pandemic (Spring 2020) that may be useful:
The Chronicle of Philanthropy has a list of all their articles about fundraising during the early days of the pandemic listed on their website here: https://www.philanthropy.com/package/covid-19-coverage-fundraising-during-the-pandemic. A highlight is “Arguing for the Importance of the Arts During a Public-Health Crisis (Q&A)” that interviews the CEO of the Creative Coalition, an arts advocacy organization, who says that the way to illustrate the importance of arts in the current moment is to empathize their capacity to heal.
The Arts Council of Indianapolis has a list of COVID-19 resources, some of which may be outdated, but are worth checking out. Look especially under “Fundraising” and “Grants and Other Funding Sources:” https://indyarts.org/covid19
Less-than-5-minute reads for ideas and inspiration:
The Saint Paul and Minnesota Foundation has a list of ideas to try for donor stewardship during the pandemic, such as healing from your donors themselves about how they are feeling and making communications more personal: https://www.spmcf.org/blog/fundraising-during-covid
MuseumNext has a list of small campaign ideas for digital fundraising here that include asking people to donate loose change they find around the house when they are quarantining at home and virtual trivia: https://www.museumnext.com/article/digital-fundraising-ideas-to-inspire-museums/.
GlobalGiving: This resource is not just for digital donor engagement, but for online fundraising in general. GlobalGiving has a list of online free resources here that can be used for everything from sending mass emails to donors to graphic design for social media campaigns: https://www.globalgiving.org/learn/listicle/27-free-resources-for-nonprofits/.
