Throughout the year, we heard insights from our nonprofit and technology ecosystem partners that deepened our understanding of the social sector’s opportunities and challenges. We also conducted research, shared in our annual reports, including Why America Gives and The State of Modern Philanthropy. Now, as part of GoFundMe, we have the broadest view of the donor landscape to date that accounts for both giving to individuals and organizations. 

I’ve synthesized all of these inputs into five trends I believe nonprofits can use to create proactive strategies to raise more in 2023.

1. Fundraising Will Require Precision to Break Through the Noise 

Donors are often inundated with requests to give. Consider the requests that occur on an average day—donors round up a bill at the grocery store, receive a donation appeal through email or social media, and find a pamphlet about an organization in the mail. With so many methods of giving available to today’s donors, you will need to break through the noise with a clear message on the specific channels that reach your donors. 

Focus on data specific to your target cohort of donors to inform which interactions are most likely to result in donations. Understand your target donor’s daily interactions and influences, such as their demographics, careers, location, friends, and family. We’ll see advanced A/B testing capabilities, marketing analytics, and audience segmentation become a greater focus in the coming year as organizations hone in on their ideal audience. New opportunities will be unlocked when a nonprofit knows where to place an impactful message and what that message should contain to align with its donors.

2. Privacy Controls Will Promote High-Quality, Targeted Marketing

As privacy controls increase, creating valuable, relevant content that targets the right audience becomes even more critical. Generic marketing campaigns will lose their effectiveness in garnering donors and hinder your ability to reach and engage the right audience. We’re already seeing this in some of our marketing channels. Take email, for example. It’s becoming even easier to unsubscribe to emails as Apple and Google develop banners at the top of emails and prompts asking whether you’d like to unsubscribe. If your content is not customized toward the individual, you risk getting left behind.

Additionally, as more donors opt out of data sharing, the transparency of how and where you are using their data will become even more important. By increasing the trust in your organization and your data collection practices, you’ll make donors more likely to share their data willingly. 

3. Charitable Funding Will Further Diversify

We see the definition of giving evolving to include not only monetary donations to organizations but also donations given directly to individuals through platforms like GoFundMe, and non-monetary gifts such as volunteering time or the contribution of goods. 

As younger generations inherit wealth from Baby Boomers, the ways in which these younger generations give will continue to evolve the fundraising landscape. We see, for example, that Millennials and Gen Z prefer to be more hands-on with their investments, with 40% checking their investments daily. 

As these generations earn and inherit wealth, they are more likely to turn to investment-based giving such as stocks, Donor Advised Funds (DAFs), and cryptocurrency. Almost 60% of millennials own cryptocurrency or stock, and younger generations are twice as likely to give through structured vehicles, such as DAFs. As you look to diversify fundraising at your nonprofit, donations through DAFs and non-cash gifts will be particularly fruitful as those gift options are typically much larger than cash gifts from the same donor.

4. Nonprofits Will Trade Custom Platforms and All-in-One Solutions for Comprehensive, Specialized Partners

The time, development, and resources required to maintain and keep up with the latest technological advances will outweigh the benefits of a customized solution.

Similarly, while the concept of an all-in-one solution seems to promote ease of use and time-savings, in reality, it lacks the flexibility and agility to match the pace of technology. An all-in-one solution’s reliance on acquisitions means that its extensive list of products does not easily integrate and is not updated to keep up with the latest advancements.

In its place, nonprofits will lean on platforms that take the middle path between point solutions and all-in-one approaches. Organizations will prioritize platforms that balance breadth and focus to drive key efficiency gains. This balance will help avoid the complexity tax associated with managing disjointed solutions and donor frustrations bred from platforms trying to be everything at the cost of innovation and user interface.

5. Technology and Partnerships Will Drive Human Resource Priorities 

You might be one of the many nonprofits seeing heightened competition (and turnover) of employees with expertise in high-priority tools and systems. By leaning on technology and partnerships to automate tedious, day-to-day operations, employees will be more likely to stay on board. 

Instead of seeking out talent based on experience with the platform, we’ll see talent sought out for their expertise in a particular function, such as digital marketing, and their ability to learn quickly as systems innovate. Organizations will look for intuitive, easy-to-adopt technology to pair alongside strong digital partners that support scalability in areas such as SEO, paid advertising, email marketing, and A/B testing. 

Nonprofit Fundraising Trends and the Year to Come

I see so much opportunity ahead for the social sector. As a new generation of donors emerges to redirect fundraising efforts, as the pace of innovation quickens for fundraising technology, and as the way you build relationships with donors strengthens from precise, targeted marketing, 2023 holds a lot of promise. I hope these trends help you take on the new year with a critical lens to identify new ways to support your nonprofit and raise more for your mission.

I am proud to look around and see a company unparalleled in its combination of relentless obsession over customer success, its focus on exceptional product and engineering innovation and excellence, and its ambition to radically transform individual giving for the most important sector on earth.

We have spent several years working together to build a team of incredible technologists that are supported and celebrated for delivering ever-greater value for our customers. Just over a year ago, we began conversations with the leadership team at GoFundMe out of a collective view that we could bring even more attention and support to the incredible causes fundraising on our platform. 

Several months into this partnership with GoFundMe, I am more convinced than ever of the potential and promise of this combined company. As part of my extended responsibilities, I am assuming the position of Chief Operating Officer of GoFundMe. This dual role as President of Classy and COO of GoFundMe recognizes the important part nonprofits play in the combined organization’s strategic focus and orientation.

Partnering with me is Eric Pannese, who is being elevated to serve as our new Chief Product and Technology Officer, and Chris Silver, who is joining the Classy executive team as Senior Vice President of Marketing. Together, along with Chief Growth Officer Marc Ferris and SVP of Engineering Shantanu Bose, we will continue to serve this space and build the fundraising technology that we believe this sector deserves. 

During my years with Classy, I have been enormously proud of the technological and organizational milestones we have delivered for clients, including the acquisition and launch of Classy Live (formerly Fondi), our delivery of Classy Pay, the launch of new payment methods such as PayPal, Venmo, and cryptocurrency, and most importantly, supporting over $5 billion dollars processed through our platform. Our rapid innovation continues unabated with our embedded checkout experience, new revenue-driving features such as abandoned cart and recurring upsell nudges, and the development of robust, native integrations for data and analytics tools, including Google Analytics 4, Meta Conversion API, and Salesforce. 

Over the past several months, I’ve also gained a tremendous appreciation for the sophistication and care the GoFundMe team takes in helping people help each other. The two companies have collectively raised billions of dollars to help nonprofits and individuals raise more for good. 

Classy and GoFundMe are uniquely positioned to build more connection points with individuals passionate about a cause. We believe that no matter the cause, there are individuals and communities interested in supporting nonprofits, if only they were aware of the impact these organizations were having. Ultimately, we want to connect every citizen philanthropist with the causes and organizations they care about. 

Just last week, we launched a pilot program to connect passionate GoFundMe donors with incredible Classy nonprofit customers supporting similar causes. The learnings from this pilot will be used to build a more robust program where the community of 100+ million engaged individuals can be connected with nonprofits working on causes they care about at scale.

It is truly awe-inspiring to see the ambition, reach, and impact of our combined organizations. Together, Classy and GoFundMe are changing the giving landscape and becoming the most helpful place on earth. 

“Using our Google Ad Grant, we were able to raise over $174,563 in online revenue over the past year. This has a huge impact on our work with those struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury, and suicide.”

Is your organization fully optimizing its Google Ad Grant? Even if you are spending your Grant dollars, are you spending to get the most impact? Fewer than half of Ad Grant recipients take advantage of free bidding and analytics tools to maximize their ad grant success.

Google and Classy have now partnered to offer exclusive, powerful tools to help our customers make the most of their Ad Grants, just in time for the giving season:

Maximize your Ad Grants with conversion tracking: Your Ad Grant can drive 5,000+ visits per month, but are you effectively converting those visitors to donors? Simply link your Google Ad Grant account to Classy and turn on Classy’s best-in-breed Google Analytics integration to start improving conversions.

Get free 1:1 Google Ad Grants coaching: The first 100 Classy clients to turn on conversion tracking will get free, personalized support from a Google Specialist.

Turn on automated optimization to improve your bids: You may think you need deep marketing experience to expertly spend your Google dollars, or that you can’t do things like bid over $2 for expensive terms. Take advantage of our coaching sessions listed below on how to use Google’s free bidding tools to surpass these limitations and amplify your exposure.

Send grants traffic directly to your Classy donation pages: Usually, you can’t send Google Ad Grant traffic to any URL except your own, preventing nonprofits without masked URLs from collecting donations with Grant ads. Classy is now the FIRST and only approved external destination for Google Ad Grants. Your Classy campaigns just got more powerful!

Use this guide to learn how to implement conversion tracking.

Not yet set up with Google Ad Grants? Claim your $10,000 per month of free Google advertising now.

Have Questions?

Classy and Google-certified partner Community Boost Consulting is available to offer our nonprofit partners a step by step walkthrough of conversion value-tracking and implementation to ensure your team gets the most out of these tools. Email marketing@classy.org to get in touch with someone today.