Five Easy and Effective Ways to Increase Revenue

We know your nonprofit isn’t about revenue—you’re committed to delivering your mission. But, we also understand that you have to maintain and increase revenues to support and expand your programs. Here are five fast, high-impact ways that Doubleknot can help you raise more money for your organization.

1. Collect more donations at your site and events. Guests are most receptive to donation requests when they’ve just visited an exhibit, watched a presentation or attended a class that calls their attention to the plight of an animal, an ecosystem or a valuable initiative. Place your staff in strategic locations to ask each visitor for support, and collect donations on a smartphone or tablet so that all the donor has to do is swipe a credit card. One of our clients recently collected more than $6000 in on-site donations at a weekend event using Doubleknot’s Sales Station app and secure card reader on iPads!
2. “Adoption” campaigns aren’t just for zoos. Zoos around the country rely on animal “adoptions” as an important fundraiser, but adoption can be adopted by almost any other kind of nonprofit. For example, museums could offer the adoption of an exhibit while nature centers can offer adoption of a habitat, a trail or local wildlife. And, the same Doubleknot features that support adoption can also be used for fundraisers like donor plaques, bricks and more.
3. Make adoptions giftable! Grandparents and other adults appreciate the option to give a charitable gift in a young person’s name that’s meaningful to the child. And, children can appreciate the gift of a donation when it comes with a personalized certificate and a plushy or other small memento. Additional on-site recognition opportunities for adopters, like awarding every young adopter with a ribbon that they can proudly wear on their visits, can help drive attendance and increase positive engagement with your organization.
4. Integrate a donation request with every purchase. It’s easy for visitors to ignore a Donate Now button, even if it appears on every page of your web site. An integrated checkout donation request places the “ask” exactly where you want it—at the beginning of the checkout process when the visitor has already decided to make a purchase at your site. One of Doubleknot’s clients raised an extra $100,000 in donations just by adding a donation request during every membership signup.
5. Drive new memberships with meaningful incentives. Standard membership benefits like free admission, gift shop discounts and reduced registration fees may not be enough to convert some of your visitors to members. Consider other kinds of incentives that purchaser’s will value but won’t reduce your revenues, like offering early members-only hours on popular days or priority early member registration for camps and classes: for many parents, locking down summer and holiday plans early is easily worth the membership cost.