Wondering about additional ways to make money for your nonprofit? Well, did you know that there are many different ways to approach collecting donations for your NPO?
Learning about various nonprofit donation methods is a key way to expand how you receive them. You can set up a good donation page or website and even request them. Here are 9 kinds of donations that your nonprofit can receive.
One-time donations are the most popular giving method for nonprofits and charity organizations. These include any money donated to the company via phone, in-person, online, or in the mail.
You can make this option available through your website or donation page. BiddingOwl's custom website and payment and donation features help you track and receive once-off donations with ease.
Another nonprofit donation type you can manage easily through your nonprofit website is recurring donations. After clicking on that oh-so-popular red 'donate' button, most NPO sites allow donors to choose between once-off or recurring gifts.
Recurring giving programs allow donors to give at a chosen interval. This can be a custom interval or a more common period like weekly, monthly, quarterly, biannually, or annually. Recurring donations form a consistent part of nonprofit revenues and garner 42% more per year than once-off donations.
Once givers choose an interval, you should have a payment portal in place to help them set up the repeated payment method.
Your nonprofit can work together with a company or business to set up recurring giving programs in the workplace. Through these programs, donations to your organization can be a recurring payroll option. The payroll team repeats deductions from employee pay and the donations are a tax-deductible benefit for them.
Imagine you are running a fundraising campaign and manage to raise, let’s say $10,000 overall. A matching donor is someone who may offer to give the same amount, doubling the money made. Donors may also come in at the beginning of a campaign and offer to match your income if you reach a certain amount. Or to match donations for the first few months of a campaign or another set amount of time, for example.
There are many different ways to approach donation matching. The core principle is that you find a big donor willing to double some or all of what you’ve raised.
This donation technique is very popular among corporations, foundations, philanthropists, and public figures.
A legacy or planned donation refers to substantial gifts made by donors, usually as part of their life planning, estate, insurance, etc. Generally, these are sizeable financial gifts that add great value to your work. Donors might add your organization to their list of trust or life insurance recipients, offer large cash donations or property in their will, and more.
This isn’t the kind of gift that people give on just a whim online. It is intimate and personal and may require in-person meetings and consultations with a possible donor. However, you can make it clear on your website that your nonprofit is open to planned giving and can support donors who are considering it through the setup process. Have a clear contact option so they can get in touch about their planning.
Similar to the personal celebration of lifelong giving that motivates legacy donations, people may also want to set up charitable giving in memory of someone they love. They may want to donate annually on special dates like birthdays, death anniversaries, past wedding anniversaries, etc.
Again, you can highlight this as an option on your donation page, website, and donation forms. Also, include a way for people to get in touch with you for more details about how to dedicate a tribute or honorarium to remember a loved one.
Nonprofits are not limited to accepting monetary donations. You can also receive gifts of tangible property including real estate, boats, cars, furniture, and art amongst others. The donor may receive a tax benefit in return and you acquire an asset that you can choose to keep or sell.
Property donations aren’t really the sort of thing that people might want to pass ownership of online or through donation pages. It’s best to make this option available to your networks by letting them know that you accept property donations via email, at fundraising galas, etc.
In-kind giving is another type of charity donation that doesn’t rely on cash giving. Here, people and other entities can donate non-cash or property gifts that your company can use in your operations. This can help you in decreasing your operational costs substantially.
These can include:
Again, you can state that your nonprofit accepts these types of nonprofit donations on your website. You can also leverage your network (past donors, staff connections, local businesses, previous sponsors, etc) to ask for in-kind donations.
Another way to think about non-cash nonprofit donations is to consider securities. Some donors might want to donate bonds, stocks, funds, and other financial securities. Donating them removes the need for them to liquidate their securities and reduces the tax on the stock amount.
You may also encounter someone wishing to donate using cryptocurrency, especially if your NPO targets younger demographics.
Stock and crypto donating may not resonate as particularly conventional, however, you should stay open to learning more about them. Expand the kinds of donations you accept to fintech-inclusive giving and you could make thousands more a year.
There are many ways to receive donations and engage donors as a nonprofit or charity. Introduce several of the approaches above to your donor relations and integrate them into your website and donation pages. The more donors are informed about the variety of giving types you have, the higher the chance that they will diversify their giving.
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