After months of planning and preparation, your nonprofit’s latest charity gala is a resounding success. Your volunteers confidently filled their roles, attendees raved about your auction items, and you raised essential funds to advance your mission. But don’t let the momentum stop there!
Before you begin sketching plans for your next fundraising event, take the time to follow up with your auction guests. Doing so allows you to build stronger, lasting relationships with them and secure more revenue for your cause.
In this guide, we’ll discuss three essential post-auction strategies for your nonprofit:
- Thank Attendees Post-Auction.
- Promote Matching Gifts.
- Share Post-Auction Involvement Opportunities.
By continuing to interact with attendees after your auction, you’ll be able to deepen their engagement over time and cultivate a loyal community of supporters for your nonprofit.
1. Thank Attendees Post-Auction.
While a charity auction is a finite event, your nonprofit’s relationships with attendees should be ongoing. After all, your long-term success depends on retaining their support year after year. Inspire auction guests to continue showing up for your events by thanking them promptly and thoughtfully.
Depending on your nonprofit and your specific audience’s interests, you can express appreciation in various ways, such as:
- Sending personalized emails or text messages.
- Creating thank-you eCards.
- Posting a shoutout on social media.
- Producing an appreciation video.
Remember to keep attendees updated about your event’s impact, so they can better understand how their participation made a difference in your community. For example, an animal welfare nonprofit might share that, thanks to the funds raised during their auction, they could afford necessary vaccinations for all of the animals currently at their facility. To enhance this message, they could include photos of a few specific cats or dogs that benefitted.
An additional way to thank auction participants is by sending out a post-event survey to collect their feedback. Doing so demonstrates that your nonprofit is committed to providing the best experience possible for its supporters. Be sure to act on any commonly mentioned areas for improvement and communicate these changes to increase transparency and trust.
2. Promote Matching Gifts.
Considering all the resources you’ve invested into planning and executing your auction, wouldn’t it be great if you could double the amount of donations made at your event? With matching gifts, you can!
Matching gifts are a type of corporate giving program in which companies match the donations their employees make to nonprofits, typically at a 1:1 ratio. All donors have to do is check whether they’re eligible and submit a request to their employer.
Even though the process is simple, more than $4 - $7 billion in available matching gift funding goes unclaimed each year, according to 360MatchPro’s fundraising statistics. This is often due to donors not knowing that their employers offer these programs.
To tap into the full potential of matching gifts after your auction, use a variety of communication channels to promote these opportunities to attendees. Let’s explore a few channels:
Website
Your nonprofit’s website is a primary resource for supporters to learn more about your cause, ways to get involved, and how you improve the lives of those you serve. Create a section that explains matching gifts and how they work. Then, make it easy for donors to secure matching gifts for your nonprofit by leveraging a matching gift database.
For instance, Double the Donation’s matching gift database contains up-to-date guidelines and instructions on nearly 24,500 companies with matching gift programs. By embedding a company name search tool directly onto your website, you can allow each auction attendee to check their eligibility and find their employer’s instructions simply by inputting their company name.
Following your charity auction, send out emails tailored to each attendee. Include their preferred name and details about their specific gift to demonstrate that your nonprofit values them as an individual, rather than as a source of funding. Be genuine, but avoid asking for a second donation.
Instead, briefly promote matching gifts in your email and direct them to your website to learn more. If your nonprofit sends out a regular email newsletter, devote a specific section to increasing awareness of these opportunities.
Social Media
In today’s society, social media has become a popular way for people to stay connected and share information. After your auction, use these platforms to stay in touch with attendees and spread the word about matching gifts. Since social media enables two-way communication with your nonprofit’s supporters, you can respond to comments and answer specific questions about matching gifts.
Make your social media posts stand out by incorporating eye-catching images, or even consider creating a matching gift video that walks donors through the process.
Direct Mail
Depending on attendees’ communication preferences, direct mail can be an effective channel for reminding them that they might be able to double the impact of their donations to your nonprofit.
Send out postcards and letters that point to different matching gift resources for supporters. For instance, you could include a QR code that takes them to matching gift information on your website. Or, add a phone number or email address that they can use to contact your team for additional questions.
3. Share Post-Auction Involvement Opportunities.
Beyond matching gifts, there are numerous ways your nonprofit can continue engaging attendees post-auction. In your follow-up communications, encourage them to check out other opportunities to support your cause, such as:
- Volunteering with your nonprofit.
- Donating items for next year’s auction.
- Attending another event.
- Becoming a peer-to-peer fundraiser.
- Joining your monthly giving program.
Use these involvement opportunities to strengthen relationships with your supporters. Eventually, you may even be able to identify potential major donors among your auction attendees. Keep track of how your supporters continue engaging with your nonprofit, alongside data such as their giving history and wealth indicators, to start cultivating these important relationships.
Planning and hosting a charity auction is an intensive process. Make the most of your efforts by building on all the support you’ve earned at the event. As you implement these post-auction strategies, remember to measure progress and evaluate metrics such as the total number of matched gifts you receive. Over time, you’ll be able to secure more revenue and retain donors for the long term so that each year’s auction is more successful than the last.
Special thanks to Adam Weinger for the expert advice. Adam is the President of Double the Donation, the leading provider of tools to nonprofits to help them raise more money from corporate matching gift and volunteer grant programs.
Double the Donation's robust solution, 360MatchPro, provides nonprofits with automated tools to identify match-eligible donors, drive matches to completion, and gain actionable insights. 360MatchPro integrates directly into donation forms, CRMs, social fundraising software, and other nonprofit technology solutions to capture employment information and follow up appropriately with donors about matching gifts.