Today I co-led Managing Your DIY Workshop at The Peer to Peer Professional Forum with Nancy Palo of Blackbaud. As part of the workshop, we split up in two breakout groups; one with people getting ready to launch an IFE (also known as DIY) program and one for people with a program they want to improve. I led the group of people wanting to launch a program.
Goals, Audience, Landscape. These are the 3 pillars to define your IFE strategy. Define your organization goals and in addition to the obvious, revenue, what other goals does your organization have for launching an IFE program? What are the audiences that your organization has who are strong candidates to become IFE fundraisers? What are other similar organizations doing successfully? What can you learn from their success?
The group shared some of their goals and audiences. I’d like to share this list to help you think about what goals and audiences might best fit your organization.
Goals
- Increase revenue
- Re-engage and invigorate past walk or endurance program participants
- Provide more fundraising options
- Respond to donor requests
- Support existing event programs to create new ways to fundraise
- Branding the program with choices and internal structure that support the organization’s strategy
- Build awareness and nationwide support for a regional organization
These goals fall right in line with results of our IFE Survey. Organizations launch an IFE program driven by donor engagement, which for 57% is the top reason to start an IFE. Following donor recruitment, 23% of organizations want to bring in more revenue and 20% to get wider recruitment.
Audience
- Families impacted by cause
- Alumni
- Volunteers
- Companies
- Schools
- Millennials
- Survivors
- Doctors or other professionals serving your organization
- Engaged direct response lists
- Major donors
- Soft launch group
As you identify audiences that are likely to become IFE fundraisers, consider how many people you have in those audiences, what their response rate is for other peer-to-peer programs and general fundraising asks, and which groups might have a higher response for a program like an IFE. This will help guide you to the potential your organization’s IFE program could harness and direct you to which audiences can benefit from an audience specific campaign.
Nancy and I enjoyed working with so many organizations investing in growing IFE programs. It’s no surprise given that 63% of nonprofit professionals expect their IFE program to grow by 10% or more annually and 25% expect their IFE to grow by 20% or more.
Interested in more information on IFE programs?
Read the Charity Dynamics IFE Study now, or attend our webinar on March 5th!