Building and Maintaining a solid base of Fundraisers and Donors

To build and maintain a large network of donors and fundraisers, there are a few things to take into considerations and the work generally involves patience, hard work, persistence, perseverance, and tactics.  Just like it is tricky to work with a large body of people, playing to their tastes and managing their differences physically, so also it is to build an online database or network of supporters and for the purposes of fundraising. Since online fundraising or if you would call it crowdfunding and its success largely depends on two sets of users on your platform namely donors and fundraisers, there are double and different approaches here in dealing with both and staying up to date. Here we will highlight some of the steps to take in order to maintain your users and attract more, with constant improvements, innovations, and updates.

Keep your crowdfunding platform engaged

An engaging crowdfunding platform is a platform where users both donors and fundraisers have the ability and tools to communicate with one another. These could be the following, campaign or project updates, commenting, suggestions, messaging, reporting, and possibly chatting.  When there is an avenue for people to communicate willingly and express their feelings privately within your platform, it creates an engaging sense of interaction. Users tend to come back, again and again, to continue from leftover discussions, share, distribute, and talk more about issues concerning their interest, thereby keeping your platform busy and inviting. If both donors and fundraisers have the opportunities to interact with one another, the trend can go deeper. 

Create Means for Users to Air Their Opinions

For you to measure your progress, track bugs, work with your customers in mind, and for the sole purpose of satisfying them, you have to create a means for them to express their opinions. For example: If a donor experiences difficulty in processing a payment or making a donation to a particular project or campaign, they need to express this or they will simply walk away. by providing a means you are giving them the opportunity to wait on you to make changes and improvements. Also if an updates go wrong for a fundraiser and there a means to report the issue to you, it is an added advantage, it gives them the confidence and assurance that you are committed to improving and therefore it makes it easier to stick around and see that their challenge is fixed. Making yourself or support team available handy and could be good planning and could encourage users to talk more about your services thereby creating the chances of gaining more customers from the recommendations you may get from the existing customers.

keep Improving and Innovating

The best way to grow and make your fundraising or crowdfunding platform maintainer and evergrowing is by improving on existing technologies. Things change every day and the world of the internet is an ever-improving one. What looks good and top-notch today may mysteriously become obsolete tomorrow; this is because people are constantly on a lookout for innovation and improvement. The crowdfunding industry is growing faster and there is more to see and improve from on a daily basis. Bringing in new improvement from other platforms can help keep your existing users and bring in more. Don't be left out, don't be stagnant. Just because you have built a beautiful and workable platform does not mean it should work by itself. You have to take a great deal of time improving and innovating, based on current trends and direction through which the industry is headed.

Update frequently

One of the major drawbacks and customers' withdrawal from your platform lies largely on those things you least expect, those things you are not even aware are happening.  Some of these include broken codes, outdated plugins, improper logic, delayed updates, slow processing, and a host of others. Since there are device differences and many manufacturers with different features and system architectures, things are bound to break on your platform at one point or the other. How and when you handle and respond to these issues will determine if your customers stay or not. On a regular basis, take your time to check out your platform and make sure scripts are working properly and that the platform is tested across several devices. in that case, whenever something goes wrong, you are likely to detect it before your customers or potential ones find out.

Contact them via different channels

Thanks to the different means we have today of contacting and doing business with others (emails, social networking, verbal, chatting applications, phone calls, and text messaging). Now more than ever, we have the opportunity to communicate with people in businesses at different levels using different means. On your platform, since you are likely to keep some contact information of donors and fundraisers, there is an advantage you can take of this information. You can use it to reach out to them directly from time to time.  send them reminders, promotional offers, bonuses, and even personal invitations. Make your customers (donors and fundraisers) your great friends by engaging with them and reaching out to help the best way you can. This can create a sense of belonging and being appreciated and recognized thereby turning them into a religious network of customers.

Focus on unhappy customers

One of the greatest businessmen and richest men of our generations Bill Gates once said that "the unhappy customers should be of the greatest concern". It is always true that unhappy customers are the once to tell your story, dissuade others from joining your network, or patronizing your business. Their opinion is based on a certain discomfort or live experience with your product or service, and it accounts for the negative part of your business, service, or product you may not have seen. By positively absorbing their opinions and working on helping to get them committed, you are almost half-way through to sustaining your product, business, or service.  When users (disgruntled ones), express their opinions about your crowdfunding platform, take it with a positive attitude, and work quickly on having the issue resolved. Never neglect disgruntled customers on your crowdfunding platform.

Never stop expanding

Don't settle for little success or temporary failure. In anyways keep moving and expanding. The more you have sufficient content, share connect, and expand your network the more and better your platform becomes. The idea of constant expansion is that people tend to commit more to causes, movements, or businesses where others are trading too. by expanding endlessly, you give the impression that you have no desire to stoping, and your existing users don't feel alone. Set milestones for your crowdfunding platform and work tirelessly on achieving them.

Encourage invitation

Finally, find a way of making your customers (fundraisers and donors) alike share and talk about your platform with others outside the platform. Do this using your social media handles and by providing tools on your platform that could help them do so with ease. Encourage them to invite others through affiliate programs or certain partnership rights.

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