Maximize Your IG Membership: 5 Fundraising tips to start today!
Take back control and change the way you fundraise with your Impact Genome Membership!
We hear it all the time from nonprofit organizations:
“I don’t know how to prove results or stand out to donors”
“I can’t measure my impact”
“We spend a ton of time on reporting and measurement”
“It’s not a level playing field”
“All my funders ask for different metrics”
So how can you take back control of your destiny – and change the way you fundraise from requesting donations to “selling your impact”?
It all starts with owning your impact. And the first step to owning your impact is to join the Impact Genome Registry and get your programs Impact Verified®. The Impact Verified® seal signals to your donors that you are having an impact, your impact is evidence-based and there is a “price” for your impact. Here are 5 ways that you can using your Impact Verified status to start selling impact to your donors right now!
According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, 8 out of 10 donors will only continue to support nonprofits that demonstrate their impact clearly. This means up to 80% of your donors could lapse if you're not communicating a compelling, credible story about your results.
1. Build Trust with Donors
The first question donors always ask is: “but will my dollars make a difference?” In other words, donors want to know that your program works – that its effective. Most nonprofits struggle to prove this out –resorting to pricey external evaluations or inundating donors with reams of statistics that don’t really answer the “so what” question. Since trust is the most powerful currency in the nonprofit sector, the credibility of your impact claims is everything. Your IG Membership gets you the Impact Verified® seal, and enables you to:
- Use the Verified Impact® seal to build trust in your work
Display the Impact Verified seal on your website and annual impact report. As an IG Member you can download the logo and begin using the Impact Verified seal today. - Demonstrate a Third-party Verification of your impact claims
It's not only you who thinks you're awesome, but as an IG Member you can leverage your third-party program Verification as an asset to your fundraising team. Every donor you're connecting with should know that you are Impact Verified! - Show how your impact compares in the field
Accessing the IG benchmarks provides your donors with better insight into what is happening in the sector. Impact is expensive and shouldn't be rewarded for being cheaper if it's not yielding outcomes! Quick tip: look at the last section of your Verified Impact Report for easy access to your outcome benchmarks.
2. Share Your Impact
You now have the ability to communicate your impact and build trust with donors. Use your Verified Impact Report ® to provide regular impact updates to your existing donors. This is a tool to educate donors about your outcomes, what you measure, who you impact, how your program works and more... all in one simple page. According to Leanne Nicolle of Big Brothers Big Sisters Toronto, "We can’t compete with others who spend millions on marketing. Our impact report is our solution. We use it all the time. It goes in every mailer, every packet, to every donor.”
Here’s a great example of how one nonprofit posted their VIR on LinkedIn and immediately got over 100 likes and 15 reshares.
To share your report, use the share button (top right) to share on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, or click the copy icon to share access to the virtual report.
3. Influence the Size of Your Donations by Pricing Your Outcomes
Donors often feel good about donating any amount of money, and they should. But donors can feel even better knowing that they funded the cost of a beneficiary to achieve an outcome. Your Verified Impact Report® validates your outcomes achieved and your “cost per outcome”. This is a powerful tool to educate your donors on the value of their donation and the size of their gift. Without an established 'price tag' on your impact, donors often under-fund nonprofits, leaving the organization to subsidize their own impact. Here are some tips on how to do this:
- Frame donation asks in terms of specific impact (e.g. "$X provides Y outcome for Z people"). An outcome represents a person, that’s powerful for a donor to understand the power of their donation!
- Remind donors of their last gift size and ask them to “buy an outcome” this year, by giving a slightly larger donation.
- Use your cost per outcome data to size your grant requests and justify funding needs with precision. This gives you control over the grant size and enables you to “push back” when funders come back with a smaller grant - “no problem, we’ll just re-set the number of outcomes we can achieve so that it’s aligned with your funding...”
4. Bring the Impact to Life
Impact isn’t always about numbers, it’s about the story of how you’re changing the world. Your VIR is just a starting point. Here are some ways you can build your impact data into telling a larger story:
- Use storytelling to bring your impact to life by sharing specific examples and beneficiary stories alongside data.
- Visualize your impact through infographics, videos, and interactive content.
- Highlight both annual and long-term impact to show immediate and lasting change. Your Verified Impact Report represents a year of impact and will show your impact trends over time every year you return.
5. Attract New Donors While You Sleep
One of the most amazing features of the Impact Genome Registry is that it is used by funders and donors who collectively giveaway billions of dollars! By going into your profile and sharing your VIR it becomes discoverable by our funders and ecosystem-partners . Select ‘Share Impact’ (top left tab) and ensure you’ve checked I accept that you can share my details with the partners.
Note: The Registry never shares any personally identifiable information or raw data.
