Engaging donors virtually as in-person options return

Development leaders planning to incorporate virtual events into their calendar have two options. One is to designate specific events to be delivered exclusively virtually. The second option is to create hybrid events with an in-person component and a simultaneous virtual component.

We strongly recommend development leaders pursue the first option. On the surface, hybrid events can seem like the best of both the in-person and virtual worlds. In reality, hybrid events typically require making trade-offs to prioritize the experience of one audience over another (in-person or virtual). Both experiences can quickly become mediocre due to the complexity and resources required to produce both simultaneously.

Instead, identify specific existing events that will work well as fully virtual experiences and those that should be fully in-person events. You can also consider adding entirely new events that would be compelling virtual experiences.

Our top recommendation for fully virtual events is informational sessions – short webinars on specific topics. You can efficiently educate many attendees without the capacity constraints you’d face with an in-person session. Current donors and community members alike can enjoy the convenience of joining a webinar on a topic of interest with minimal effort.

We have collected several examples of these types of sessions; three are outlined here.

We recommend offering a series of informational sessions on different topics and then using the registration data to help you understand the interests of both individual attendees and your community as a whole. You have far less to lose by organizing a 30-minute webinar on a niche service than by hosting a large in-person gala, so these informational sessions can be an efficient way to test donor interest in specific topics. Furthermore, virtual sessions can be more convenient not only for donors but also for presenters. It is a substantially smaller request to ask a presenter to join a webinar from their office for 30 minutes than to travel to an in-person event. The option to present virtually may enable a highly in-demand clinician or executive to join an event they otherwise would not have.

Finally, informational sessions can also be a particularly effective way to educate (and learn more about) first-time donors who gave in response to Covid-19. Informational sessions can help these donors understand which institutional priorities interest them and they may want to support.

Many development leaders strongly feel that in-person interaction should and will remain the best way to pursue major gifts. We do not disagree. However, major gift officers can and should use virtual channels to build and strengthen relationships with potential major donors. In fact, many development managers told us that their gift officers’ skills have shown to be very transferable to a virtual setting.

For instance, major gift officers can use a virtual introductory meeting to discover the prospective donor’s interests and associated institutional priorities. Leveraging this information, the gift officer can then plan the subsequent in-person meeting with the prospect’s interests in mind and assemble relevant internal stakeholders such as physicians, executives, or department heads for the prospect’s visit. This process saves travel time and maximizes the in-person interaction when it occurs.

This element of saving time was not lost on Virginia Mason Foundation. They began tracking the average time it took for a gift officer to complete a virtual visit compared to an in-person visit. They established that virtual visits took half the time, so they subsequently increased portfolio sizes for their gift officers to account for this efficiency.

There are many benefits to using virtual channels to engage donors as part of your stewardship playbook. Virtual channels can help you meet the growing preference among donors for easy and convenient outlets to give and communicate. Virtual options can also help you quickly connect with prospective donors. Our grateful patient research has shown the “window of generosity”, or the time that patients are most likely to give, is within 30 days of their discharge from treatment. Virtual tools can allow near-instant communication with donors, especially when compared to more traditional methods such as snail-mailed letters.

We’ve organized several virtual stewardship tactics below based on our assessment of how prevalent they are in the market. These are not intended to fully replace in-person stewardship tactics but offer additional ways to engage with donors based on their preferences.

We recommend all development teams offer the options listed toward the bottom of the chart as a baseline for your virtual stewardship strategy. Moving up the chart will keep your approach competitive with others in the industry and potentially aligned with donor preferences but may also require investing in new technology capabilities.

Before investing in additional outreach technology, assess the expected return. Keep in mind that merely having the capability is not the same as donors enthusiastically adopting it. Plan to invest substantial time and energy in promoting adoption among donors if you decide to roll out a new option.