Making Connections to Build Community

Our big announcement last week that we have opened a new Donorly office in Washington, D.C. was the culmination of a long journey and a lot of work—but at the same time, it is also just the beginning. We have loved getting to know the nonprofit landscape in D.C. as we’ve been getting set up locally, and we are looking forward to getting to know the community even better over the coming months and years.

Thinking about the work that we’re doing to build community with nonprofit professionals in D.C. reminds us of the advice that we give time and time again to our consulting clients—it’s all about authentic relationships. When it comes to relationships with prospective donors, it’s all about finding and leveraging your existing connections, and forming new ones that are based around your work.

Discovering the connections that you have with your prospects often comes through the process of conducting donor research; you might discover that a prospect sits on another Board with one of your trustees, or went to the same college as your Executive Director. These points of commonality will give you an opening to make an introduction and start a conversation to get to know your prospect better.

Through those conversations you’ll be able to do the work of building real, authentic relationships around your work. In this part of the process, you’ll make it your goal to learn everything you can about what makes your donor prospect tick, why they are interested in talking to you, how they make their philanthropic decisions, and what excites them about your work. With that information, and deepened connection, you’ll put structures in place to facilitate a community of prospects and donors that care about, and want to be involved in, the work that you are doing to make the world a better place.

Of course, it is the great work of making the world a better place that makes us excited to work with nonprofit organizations all over the country, and we are especially looking forward to getting to know all of you who are based in Washington D.C. If you’re interested in learning more about our work, we hope you’ll reach out at info@donorly.com.

For tips on donor research, see our post How To Do Prospect Research: The 3 Main Strategies, for ideas about how to build a donor community, see our post Building a Community of Donors.