At NextGen, we know that most nonprofit teams are stretched thin and operating on tight deadlines. We also understand that many organizations struggle to evolve beyond a siloed approach that inevitably fragments branding, messaging, and donor conversion.

How do we know? Because we’ve been there.

NextGen staff have decades of experience working in nonprofits: balancing budgets and priorities; translating big-picture strategic plans into day-to-day actionable tasks; and, perhaps most importantly, building bridges across teams and internal stakeholders.

The insights we’ve gained from working “in-house” along with our account manager’s perspective across markets and verticals guides our work with clients and helps identify opportunities to collaborate across internal departments to build full-funnel engagement strategies.

In the context of the donor conversion funnel, marketing and communications department responsibilities often include brand management and affinity, engagement, and cultivation. This puts a prospective donor about midway through the funnel, so, at some point, the development department must take over the donor journey to encourage conversion.

This is more challenging than ever because new channels and technologies allow for more communication, but the oversight of those channels and technologies is often siloed within an organization.

Audiences are more fragmented than ever, so investing in modeling and analytics to better understand donor demographics and psychographics helps optimize communications across channels. This is especially important for organizations looking to build more diverse and inclusive donor bases.

We understand how imperative it is that marketing and fundraising teams collaborate on the use of tools, understanding of KPIs, and an overarching singular goal toward stewarding a prospect to conversion. Typically, the more seamless this donor journey is, the better the conversion and retention rates will be.