June 24, 2019 | Read Time: 4 minutes
As the 2020 presidential campaign heats up, it’s clear that strategies to engage smaller-dollar donors will be front and center for both parties.
Joe Biden’s campaign recently raised more than $6 million in its first 24 hours, and 97 percent of online contributions were less than $200.
In April, President Trump’s re-election campaign reported that its first-quarter haul of more than $30 million came almost exclusively from donations of $200 or less.
Political campaigns have been shifting their focus from major donors to lower-level contributors since 2004, when Howard Dean proved the power of pooling small online gifts from large numbers of people. Nonprofits — especially colleges — would be wise to learn from this evolution over the past 15 years.
Unlike political campaigns, college fundraising remains heavily focused on people capable of making large donations. But as these donors age, those institutions must begin cultivating younger donors who make smaller gifts.
After all, Michael Bloomberg’s recent $1.8 billion donation to Johns Hopkins University didn’t fall out of the sky: Bloomberg gave consistently to the institution for decades, starting with just $5 the year after he graduated.
‘Valley of Death’
Underinvesting in efforts to engage emerging donors has created a “valley of death” in many colleges’ donor pipelines — a frighteningly tiny number of contributors under the age of 40.
The most common rationalization colleges make for this underinvestment is that they have to prioritize those most likely to yield cash, and younger donors don’t have that capacity. Facing pressure from presidents and trustees to show near-term results, many advancement leaders have had little choice but to focus on the big fish.
Data from political fundraising, however, shows that engaging large groups of people who give small amounts can lead to record-breaking sums.
For example, during the 2018 election cycle Democrats used the online platform ActBlue to raise more than $1.6 billion from 42 million people. The average contribution was $39.
The aggregate impact of engaging those donors is even more apparent on GoFundMe, the crowdfunding platform on which people and organizations now raise more than $1 billion every few months. More than two-thirds of GoFundMe contributions are $50 or less, and nearly 60 percent come from people younger than 45.
Investing in efforts to engage younger, lower-level donors is more than just a viable strategy for raising huge sums; securing modest financial support from these contributors also cultivates a sense of ownership.
People donating $3 to Bernie Sanders — who in 2016 raised $134 million from people giving less than $200 — are more likely to vote for Bernie Sanders. They also are more likely to text friends and knock on strangers’ doors asking them to vote for him. Their $3 contribution means they have skin in the game, which can be just as valuable as cash — if not more so.
Healthy Steps Forward
Some argue it’s more challenging for colleges to engage smaller donors because those institutions can’t easily point to outcomes as concrete or immediate as those offered by politicians and on GoFundMe.
A politician wins or loses an election. A GoFundMe campaign raises money needed for a cause — or it doesn’t. For colleges, the argument goes, the impact of a $5 donation is more difficult to convey.
College advancement leaders should reject this argument.
The impact of $1 million is the same whether the money comes from one donation or from hundreds of them. The effects of many small gifts may be more distributed, and explaining them may require enhanced storytelling and increased transparency. But these are healthy steps forward in the art and science of fundraising.
Telling stories about the collective impact of small donors also creates an opportunity to focus on the high-level value that colleges deliver to the world.
Some colleges have already made progress in this direction by reframing their solicitations as an opportunity to give “through” the college instead of “to” it. Institutions often appear to be amorphous entities; causes like fighting cancer, alleviating poverty, and protecting against climate change are not.
Successful strategies for engaging younger, smaller donors may not transform revenue for colleges as quickly as they have for political campaigns. But if you give these efforts the time, resources, and attention they deserve, the data is clear: They will produce meaningful income in the near term and build a pipeline of engaged and loyal supporters ready to help advance your institution’s mission however they can.
Kestrel Linder is co-founder and chief executive of GiveCampus , a digital fundraising and engagement platform for K-12 schools, colleges, and universities.
