Fundraising

INNOVATIVE offers charities and not-for-profit organizations a suite of services designed to assess fundraising campaigns and donor communications, understand what motivates various donors to give, benchmark fundraising efficiency and evaluate program impact.

Not-for-Profit Brand Research

Brand promises are as important to not-for-profits – if not more so – than they are to other private and public sector organizations.  Passion equals action, and brands are one source of motivation for donors and volunteers.  The stronger your brand’s connection to your supporters, the more likely it is that they will respond to your organization’s call to action.

INNOVATIVE helps not-for-profits establish a clear baseline measurement of where its brand stands today and where it needs to move tomorrow.  Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative research approaches, INNOVATIVE provides insight into how not-for-profits are perceived by various stakeholder groups – both independently and in relation to competing organizations – as a way of increasing the impact and effectiveness of future communications campaigns, fundraising and sponsorship efforts.

Patron, Patient and Alumni Loyalty and Satisfaction

Brand considerations aside, if the organization’s actions do not match its words, the brand statement isn’t worth the paper on which it is written.  Experience with an organization is a key driver of action – whether that action is giving, volunteering, attendance or behaviour change.  

Just as private companies must actively monitor and manage their customer relationships, charities and not-for-profits must monitor and manage their relationships with clients, donors and patrons.  Our Hospital Brand Model documents how patient satisfaction impacts both the hospital brand and a potential donor’s likelihood to give.  INNOAVTIVE has the tools and experience you need to secure your patrons, patients and alumni’s loyalty and support.

Audience Segmentation

Understanding the key differences among donors, patrons, alumni or customers is critical to meeting their unique needs, connecting with their various motivators and overcoming their specific objections.   

Creating a profile of stakeholders – whether they be donors, patrons, alumni or customers – is helpful for not-for-profits when it comes to developing targeted appeals, engagement strategies and communications campaigns.  Knowing who your most important donors or customers are, how best to reach them, and with what message will improve the effectiveness of any engagement or communications campaign.

INNOVATIVE has a wealth of experience with a broad range of not-for-profit organizations, providing comprehensive audience segmentation to profile motivations, behaviours, demographic and regional characteristics. 

Campaign Feasibility Assessment

Contacting the wrong donors or designing a fundraising campaign that fails to take into consideration the needs of donors can waste valuable fundraising resources and leave campaigns coming up short. 

Connecting with the right donors and designing effective fundraising campaigns that maximize donor giving can be a daunting task for even the most experienced professional fundraiser.

With limited financial and volunteer resources, it’s important that charities and not-for-profit organizations understand what motivates their donors and that resources are effectively allocated towards the right messages aimed at the right donors in order to successfully achieve fundraising targets and goals.

INNOVATIVE helps charities and not-for-profit organization design optimal fundraising campaign strategies by aligning campaign objectives with donor preferences. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative research techniques, we determine the concerns and motivations of a client’s current and potential donors and design strategies that help fundraising campaigns meet their goals.

Social Marketing

Social marketing is all about getting people to change their behaviour.  Getting a flu shot.  Using less electricity.  Taking precautions when investing.  Simply stated, but not simply achieved.  

INNOVATIVE’s Social Marketing Model sums up the three roads to behavioural change – priming, persuasion and trial.  Our Dynamic Model of Public Opinion  provides us with a framework to assess your target audience to identify the key opinion anchors for priming, the best new information for persuasion and the most appealing offers for trial. 

Fundraising Performance Benchmarking

Donors, government and the public are going to ask more and more questions about how effectively funds are raised and who makes decisions about how those funds get spent.

Understanding how one’s charitable organization performs – whether it’s delivering on programmatic imperatives or determining the efficacy of fundraising operations – is critical for every organization’s long-term strategic planning.  INNOVATIVE’s Fundraising Performance Benchmarking (FPB) helps management in answering key performance related questions and provides justification for program investments over time.

FPB reports are developed using data from the Canada Revenue Agency (T3010 form: Registered Charity Information Return).This analysis identifies the fundraising performance strengths and weaknesses of Canadian charities by benchmarking a variety of performance indicators against peer charities at the individual, local, provincial and national levels.  

Program Evaluation

Resource scarcity means donors, volunteers, corporate sponsors, government funders and the public are all looking for ways to maximize not-for-profit program impact.  It’s become necessary to prove that the time and money invested is put to good use, and is delivering on the mission of the charitable organizations to which they are directed.

INNOVATIVE understands that research needs to be actionable and translate into compelling arguments in order to secure future commitment from funders and volunteers.  Data produced from such evaluations need to provide a decision-making resource used to verify that a program is meeting its objectives.

INNOVATIVE’s model of program evaluation clearly identifies the goals of the program, critical initial beliefs about both the ‘problem’ and the ‘solution’, core values that are engaged in the process, and perceptions of the value of the intervention.  Our program evaluations have been used to measure:  the impact programs have on changing public attitudes, behaviours towards the intended deliverable, and the impact they have on society.

Using sound primary research methodologies and often robust economic modeling, INNOVATIVE delivers compelling studies to help organizations justify the need for ongoing financial support from various funders. We understand that high quality, rigorous research is just the foundation of this project; the real success will come from applying reliable, defensible research to improve the impact of program delivery.