Branding your giving programs to attract, retain, and upgrade donors

Farra Trompeter and Claire Taylor Hansen, co-directors at Big Duck, and Ishmam R. Rahman, director, audience & donor strategy at the International Rescue Committee, will explore why and how to brand donor giving programs (such as mid-level, monthly, and planned giving) and how to build a connection between them so that donors feel a sense of community and belonging. By sharing insights and examples from a recent project between Big Duck and the International Rescue Committee (IRC), we will review how to understand donor motivations through surveys and interviews.

We’ll examine the ways we factored equity into our processes and outputs, in an effort to move away from traditional “best practices” that can cause harm to your participants. We’ll share how you can establish an ecosystem between giving programs and use it as a tool to retain, upgrade, and convert donors. We will also explore how to create sub-brands for different kinds of giving, like mid-level, monthly, and planned, that link back to your primary brand and tools you can use to reintroduce giving programs to your staff and community.

This session is ideal for anyone interested in or involved in communicating with and engaging donors.

Learning outcomes

• How to conduct research to uncover donor insights and motivations
• Ways to decide how and if you should brand giving programs
• New ideas for using branding to attract, retain, and upgrade donors