Factors To Consider During The Process Of Unique Fundraising Events

By Joyce Price


An academic institution s normal operations involve lecturing, conducting research in the laboratories, maintaining old buildings and equipment, buying new equipment and erecting new buildings and etcetera. All these require a lot of money. The students contribute by paying tuition fees, the state also contributes by giving the institution a set percentage of the operations costs. However, institutions cannot survive only with the money from these 2 sources, it needs more to run efficiently and to maintain top quality. So, most of the institutions carry out unique fundraising events to keep their operations running.

Three factors make fundraisers struggle with attaining and retaining donors. The first one is the use of big data by large companies like Amazon and other non-profit organizations, it allows them to create personalized marketing and also to find insights about their potential donors.

Big data and data analysis now allow companies and institutions to make direct marketing. They can extract data about the possible donors and use algorithms and models to predict whether they are likely to donate to academic institutions or not. That way, they will target directly those who are likely to donate instead of wasting money trying to convince those who are unlikely to donate.

Technology can really make raising awareness of how an individual alone can help improve their local academic institution through donating money. Messages and advertisements can be sent to chosen possible donors who have been identified to be likely to donate, or things like Facebook, Twitter, and Linked pages can be used to advertise to the public as a whole. The advantage of this is that they can easily be shared and very fast. One post is made and everyone in the world has a great chance of seeing it.

Caution should be taken to avoid scaring first-time donors. When asked, people say they don t donate to some organizations because they have a lot of requirements and force them to commit in the long run, it s like they are signing a contract with them. They run away immediately when they hear that there is a minimum donation they should make each month or year.

People will support motives which they find useful to them, others or the world. University research is about finding solutions to real-world problems, not everyone knows that. If these institutions make a compelling case to the public about how they impact the world, then some may want to donate to support that.

Tertiary academic institutions have to be able to answer this question; why should I give you money while I can give it to hospices that take care of people living with disabilities, why should I be the one funding someone else s child education?. They should be able to make people understand that they too are also trying to come up with solutions to a problem like these.

Thanks to technology, higher institutions can now conduct direct marketing to possible donors and send messages to millions of people.




About the Author: