Key Focus Areas and Opportunities:
 

I. Matching Funds + Crowdfunding Campaign: 

Since you have so many program alumni, it would be advantageous to launch a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign that mobilizes that community.

 

This can be done in a number of ways:
 

Option #1: Matching Funds/Crowdfunding Campaign in the framework of a 24-hour giving event (Mayanot World Center example).  

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A 24-hour campaign brings together tens or hundreds of volunteers in a shared space to make calls to prospective donors as one big group. Volunteers will have shifts of 2 - 4 hours throughout the fundraising campaign. You can have multiple call centers across the country and in other regions.

Launching a 24-hour campaign (or 48 hour campaign) has one main power: to mobilize your volunteer network to actually show up and give their time. The reason a 24-hour event has this ability is because it is a novel and exciting event, which people more easily want to be a part of. Secondly, it is easier for people to conceptualize in their mind that they can give one day out of the whole year to your organization. Lastly, if you do a good job ramping-up the excitement around the event (e.g. decorate your building, post photos of your campaign committee in “team t-shirts;” make community announcements), then you will be much more likely to mobilize your volunteer corps.

The value-add of securing volunteers for your fundraiser is tremendous:

 

Fundraising Power:
They are better at fundraising from smaller donors than nonprofit staff because they are part-and-parcel of the community. This means people will feel more intuitively inclined to give knowing that their own peer is asking for funds.
 

Force multiplier:
You probably have more phone numbers than you have staff hours to make those calls. Having an army of volunteers means that you can reach people you otherwise would not have time to reach.
 

 

New donors:  
​Part of the request from volunteers is that they reach out to their own friends, family, and colleagues. You can get many new donors by doing this.

 

The main concern to analyze when considering a 24-hour campaign is whether you have the human resources to invest in making it happen. Given that you are coordinating tens or hundreds of people to all show-up within a time window of time, investing the energy in coordinating these logistics and volunteers is important to consider.

 

Option #2: 30-day peer-to-peer campaign encouraging people to set-up their own private micro-individual pages (Birthright example).
 

In contrast to a 24-hour campaign, a 30-day campaign affords you the space to take a more “slow and steady” approach. You can still collect volunteers for a physical launch party and/or encourage people to sign-up for their own micro-fundraising page as part of a virtual team of fundraisers. You will get less value per volunteer but this is still a well worthwhile approach. 

 

It would be valuable to combine either approach with a Social Media contest. 

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Our strong recommendation is to do 24-hr giving event given the huge untapped potential of your alumni network. 

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II. Targeted Messaging Campaign: 
Another strategy that you can employ is to create multiple iterations of the same campaign with different messaging for each iteration. Each iteration has its own unique URL and landing pages, but all donations from each iteration cross–propagate to the other iterations. This can allow you to target different audiences with specific campaign pages. Here is an example: 
 

• Campaign targeting Christians: LINK

• Campaign targeting liberals: LINK

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From these examples you can see how it is possible to hyper-target different segments of your audience by having separate campaign pages but have all donations from each iteration reflected consistently across all pages. 

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III. International Friendly Donations + High-converting Donate Page: 

Your current donate page requires TWO clicks just to arrive to zone where a donor can enter the amount that s/he wants to contribute. Secondly, you do not have any option to donate in Canadian Dollars, British Pounds, Euro, or other currencies. Beyond this, the donate page is NOT optimized for giving. It has many calls-to-action, large amounts of unnecessary text, and a large variety of fields that will confuse the donor. 

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Using CauseMatch's donate page, you can have only one click for allowing the donor to make a donation and a page that is optimized to convert donors. 

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Example Donate Page that Integrates with PEF, UK Toremet, Neeman Foundation, or any other "Friends Of" or fiscal sponsor: https://www.causematch.com/shutafdonate​

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IV. Summary of Recommendation:

Given that Gvahim is well-positioned to do a significant amount of digital fundraising and has a clear need for an upgraded donate page, we think that a Premium Membership will be the most affordable and best fit. From your 24-hour crowdfunding campaign, it will already save you money over the Pay-As-You-Go model in terms of saved platform fees. Secondly, the Premium Membership (not Pro) comes with a FREE donate page — no fees whatsoever.   

 

Alternatively, since your online fundraising is so nascent, you could start with the Pay-As-You-Go pricing and then make a decision about membership after your campaign. 
 

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