Love in the time of Corona

May 19, 2022
John Baguley

Sad to say, we are all suffering in one way or another, but looking on the positive side we are also faced with several opportunities. Let’s use this time to be closer to our donors and not just shut down events and meetings creating an ever-widening distance between us. Your donors will still love you and you should still love them, show this by keeping in touch and being responsive.

Putting your digital strategy at the forefront

This crisis may even help us to fully implement our digital strategy and to open-up new lines of communication with our donors and prospective donors. The virus gives us a reason to call, email, zoom and use social media to communicate not just to put off meetings but to seal those deals. I have found that if you postpone a planned and budgeted piece of fundraising it is very hard to recover that lost income and often impossible. Maybe this is the right time to move into DRTV. See here forWikipedia on DRTV if you haven’t already considered it.

Helping our donors with legacy planning

As Boris Johnson said recently, sadly we will lose some of our loved ones. Right now, many people will be thinking about and planning for something they thought to put off for a long time - that is making out theirWills. Let’s help them and as ever with legacy fundraising we should chose ourwords and actions thoughtfully. I have done it and even added a codicil as things changed over the years. See how we can help here

Moving events online

Many events can simply be moved online and with goodwill maybe even more effective as the potential audience is much wider than any you are likely to fit in a hall. Though the excitement of performers connecting with alive audience is palpable it is perfectly possible to run concerts, poetryreadings, book readings, auctions, Facebook challenges etc online.

Time to aggressively push your social media marketing to bring on board thousands of new supporters. Spending money on Facebook etc is afar faster way of building a community than hoping for a post to go viral.

We can help develop your digital strategy here      

Helping our local communities

Let’s think how we can reach out to help people and institutions around us and perhaps to set up schemes that may evolve to tackle loneliness at the same time. See the Campaign to End Loneliness here

Setting up a local Recovery Fund

Our US Director Laurence Pagnoni writes:

“Define Your Recovery Fund: In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, New York foundations(Ford, New York Community Trust, and the United Way) mobilized with national funders (Kresge, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, Prudential, and U.S. Trust) to setup the New York Recovery Fund. The fund, run by Nonprofit Finance Fund, channeled crucial grants to affected nonprofits, with a rapid turnaround and quick assessment to determine what losses resulted directly from service disruption safter the terrorist attack. The Robin Hood Foundation had their own impressive initiative. Many nonprofits were able to bounce back only because of this support.”

His advice on what to do next is set out on his full blog: Click here to read the full blog post.

Our donors still love us and want to help – let’s show them we love them too!

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