“Did you know that the average participant in your fundraising races or walks recruits three to four donors for your cause?” asks Katya Andresen of Katya’s Non-Profit Marketing Blog. “Unfortunately, most organizations do little to cultivate these new supporters, writing them off as tangential. Are you doing all you could to embrace these friends of friends?”
While Katya is specifically referring to folks who turn out for breast cancer and AIDS walks/runs, etc., the same can be said for folks who show up to walk door-to-door and/or make phone calls on behalf of political campaigns.
“Your event is over and you have a new pool of donors that have been introduced to your organization,” write the authors of an e-book titled 4 Steps to Converting Event Donors to Organizational Donors. “How do you turn this group of one-time supporters into long-term advocates and donors?”
Same question can be asked about grassroots volunteers on campaigns: How do you convert someone who mainly shows up for a door-to-door walk or phone bank because a friend invited him or her into an active campaign volunteer themselves? Katya has the answer.
“The burden is on you to pursue a deeper relationship and engage them outside of their relationship with the event participant,” she writes. “If you do not take the first step, chance are the relationship will never move beyond their support of the event participant.” As such, Katya advises to be sure to:
1. Learn as much as you can about these friends of friends. Collect contact information.
2. Engage them. Show the volunteer that you want to get to know them with plenty of communication. You’re not yet making an ask, you’re setting the stage for the ask.
3. Qualify and cultivate. Single out interested potential supports and offer them a variety of ways to help.
4. Convert. Make the ask!