How to use new technologies to cultivate donors in the arts

New technologies might be fundamental tools to support cultivation strategies arts organizations put in place toward their donors. Figure 14.3 represents the summary of digital tools that might be more appropriate to support the achievement of different goals of the annual fundraising campaign. In the following, we discuss how digital transformation offers innovative ways to connect with new and existing donors. We then offer a discussion of crowdfunding and digital tools that might support donor management systems. New technologies have opened endless opportunities to attract

Figure 14.3 Digital tools in annual fundraising campaign for arts organization. Source: Our elaboration.

new online donors (e-attract), who might not even be even interested in the arts but are interested in supporting some social or community projects that an arts institution is carrying forward. Driving traffic to the arts institution donation webpage and increasing online visibility of arts institution is the main step to attract new donors. Different actions and tools might be adopted to increase organizations’ visibility and facilitate the introductory donation online, namely:

• • Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Arts institutions might utilize SEO in order to ensure that the name of the organization comes out earlier in results from users’ relevant keyword searches. Sites that have a higher keyword density will generally obtain a higher ranking but Sargeant and Shang (2017) notice that a Google algorithm will weigh quality and Pay Per Click Google Ads¹ more in the future. Arts organizations should, therefore, not only care about traditional tactics (i.e., encouraging inbound links, clever choice of domain names, use of meta-tags, etc.) but must also adopt proactive actions like periodically reviewing and refreshing the content of their website and donation pages and engaging online users (eventually influencers or social media champions) with news and updates that are worthy of a link-retweet (Ahmed, 2012; Sargeant & Shang, 2017).
• • Banners and Display Ads. Banners and ads that are placed in third-party sites resemble offline advertising. In this perspective, ads should be catchy and invite viewers to act: banner animation is frequently used to achieve this scope (Yoo et al., 2004).
• • Online Video and Micro Video. This tool is one of the fastest-growing strategies being adopted by nonprofit organizations according to Me Nutt et al. (2018). In fact, video allows dynamic and effective storytelling about the organization, its causes, and its activities. With the advent of smartphones and improvements in audio and video production equipment, the production cost of videos is extremely low, making this tool increasingly attractive for arts institutions.
• • Viral communication and “word of mouse” spread. Arts organizations might encourage their constituents to share promotional emails, tweets, or a text messages (i.e., the “viral agent” to friends and acquaintances). The content of the communication (i.e., news, stories, exclusive event, videos, and music) should be compelling and worthy to be spread in the web. This often happens if the material becomes social currency (Klein, 2016): the recipient of the communication perceives the exclusivity of the communication he/she has (it should be nearly a secret) and might use it as a way to create social bonds or eventually—just because it’s secret!—spread it to friends. At times the message explicitly urges the recipient to take action and pass it to a friend or relative. In many cases, viral campaigns aim to drive traffic without explicitly asking for a gift (Sargeant & Shang, 2017).

• Digital Ambassadors and Influencers. Putting aside arts celebrities (who might be eventually recruited for a fundraising campaign online and offline), nonprofit organizations might choose a person or a group of people within the organization that can perform the role of ambassador by offering digital testimonials and motivation behind their donations to the organization. Arts organizations might involve influencers to attract new donors that are removed from the arts. In particular, if we look at the artification process that is occurring in the fashion and design industry (Massi & Turrini, 2020), the rising number of bloggers and influencers represents a great opportunity for cause-related fundraising/ marketing initiatives that might increase the reputation and visibility of both the influencer and the arts institution.

The use of digital ambassadors and influencers represents the digital realization of the principle that the likelihood of a donation increases when someone you know recommends you to give to a particular organization. For this reason, the choice of the ambassadors and the influencers who might attract new gifts should be aligned with the organization: he/she has to represent the values and the “personality” of the organization, and at the same time, he/she should be able to be attractive new categories of donors.

As mentioned before, new technologies might enable achievement of other goals of the annual fundraising campaign like transforming ticketholders or subscribers into donors, retaining or upgrading donors, and recognizing the gift of donors.

Offline, graded recognition programs, like giving clubs, giving societies, or membership programs, are meant to cultivate donors according to the amount of their annual gifts (Burk, 2003). The best membership programs offer donors multiple options—different levels, different benefits, and different ways to get involved—without being overly complicated. Above all, the very best arts membership program should sustain the transition from the typical, transaction-oriented relationship of a ticketholder or a subscriber with the organization to a long-lasting, philanthropic relationship. As Wiepking and Bekkers (2011) suggest, membership programs are not only about bringing tangible benefits to members. Graded recognition programs in the arts should rather offer involvement opportunities, updated information about the outcome of the organization and the benefits that the arts create in the community, an increased sense of belonging and a stronger connection with the group of constituents and leaders of the arts institution.

Program directors of arts membership have additional e-transform tools that might be helpful in achieving this task. Solicitation to become members begins by asking the audience for permission to send informative or fundraising emails or text messages. This might happen at the ticket counter or highlighting opt-in email request in the website or in the online ticketing webpage. In general terms, the use of emails and text messages should be strictly controlled by the organization in order to avoid the recipient unsubscribing from the arts institutions mailing lists. As we will see in the following section, a shared and accurate CRM information system is fundamental to coordinating the overall quantity and periodicity of promotional emails from the marketing and the development department.

Emails and text messages should, above all, aim to drive traffic to the membership program website/webpages which extensively explain the benefits members receive. As a matter of fact, based on the 2019 Global NGO Technology Report, 86% of NGOs worldwide recognize that the website is the most effective communication tool for raising funds, which implies a very careful design of it (Nonprofit Tech for Good, 2019). Concisely, webpages regarding membership programs should respect common principles when designing a website by a nonprofit organization (Ahmed, 2012; Klein, 2016; Sargeant & Shang, 2017; Weinstein, 2017), namely:

• 1 Webpages should convey credibility, informing the possible prospects/ members about the organization, its mission, its activities, its constituents, and its financial viability. In particular, the organization should reassure about the security it grants in processing the payment by the member/donor.
• 2 Webpages should convey engagement, push prospect members to action, and try to establish some form of connection or relationship. This also means that the membership program webpage should include an eye-catching call to action such as the “Act/Donate now!” button” and the headline of the membership program should be compelling. Having a mobile-optimized membership website is fundamental nowadays as well as the use of powerful pictures and images.
• 3 Webpages should be also very informative describing in a concise way all the benefits the member can enjoy on the basis of the size of the gift.
• 4 Simple and straightforward navigation is important as well as an easy-to-process payment. A clear navigation map or breadcrumbs might help the user to see where they are on a site, and can help the decision to join as member, The “Join Now!” button should take user to a secure site where they can make a gift by credit card, PayPal, or the like.

As mentioned before, converting ticketholders into members represents one of the major challenges for arts institutions and should be the first step for donors’ cultivation. However, new technologies support other fundamental tasks in individual fundraising, such as recognizing, retaining, and upgrading donors once they become members.

Fundraising practitioners know that a donor should be thanked immediately after the gift. A delay in acknowledgment might appear to the donor as a lack of care or efficiency and might be counterproductive. E-recognizing tools support the speed of communication with the possibility of sending an email or text message of gratitude shortly after processing the gift. Arts organizations might exploit other possible ways of e-recognizing donors

The impact of digital transformation 253 such as virtual donors’ walls (a virtual space where the member’s name is listed and his/her gift is acknowledged publicly) or donors’ memorial websites (which are websites reserved to recognize and remember wealthy members who passed away and left a legacy to the organization).

Retaining existing and new members (and donors) might be very challenging: nonprofit organizations might experience almost 40% of annual retention rate and, and as we have seen before, even less online (Fundraising Effectiveness Project Annual Report, 2018; M+R, 2019). As a matter of fact, it is important not to forget donors after having received the gift or acknowledging it: retention is an ongoing activity that encompasses informing the donors about the activities of the organization, engaging and involving members, increasing their sense of belonging to the organization and its mission. The digital revolution has enabled arts organizations to fulfill these tasks through different type of e-retaining tools: social media (above all Facebook, Twitter and Instagram), e-newsletters and blogs (which might take the form of online journals or virtual spaces where arts organizations posts allow readers to comment on the posting), e-anniversary cards (to celebrate members’ birthdays, weddings, births, or other important donor’s life moments), virtual experiences (such as virtual visits to a museum collections, online lectures and tutorials, reserved accessed to virtual libraries, concert streaming online, etc.), and proprietary apps (which engage the members with enriched content about the arts organization or the type of arts proposed) (Sargeant 8c Shang, 2017). Even if all these tools can be utilized to appeal for funds, the focus should remain on the institution and its accomplishments. In other words, all these online tools are not meant to immediately get donations but to cultivate and steward existing donors.

Finally, new online actions might complement the offline efforts of arts organizations in upgrading donors either by proposing to advance from their current-level of membership to the next level or by increasing the total amount of money a member might give to the organization in a given year. In the first case, the fundraising staff of an arts institution ask explicitly for a larger gift. An explicit upgrade e-mail to the member/donor might be the effective if it describes the mission-related reasons why the donor should give more on a regular basis. Making the payment process easy, in this case, is fundamental and the email should highlight web links directing the recipient to the online giving page of the arts organization. In the second case, arts organizations might incentivize additional donations in different ways. Matching gifts, for example, are donations that leverage on the commitment of a sponsor or the institution itself: the member donates because his/ her gift will be doubled or tripled by a third party. Peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns rely on social pressure of other online users or members and trigger also imitative behavior. E-appeals or text-to-give campaigns exploit the sense of urgency and the ease of giving. In particular, with text-to-give campaigns the donor is invited to text the arts organization to make a donation, typically of small size and for an urgent matter. The act of textingdirectly triggers a donation that is billed to the mobile phone account so the single member/donor concretely pays when he/she receives the bill from his/ her phone carrier (Heyman, 2017; McNutt et al., 2018).