As spring comes to a close, your nonprofit is likely finalizing your plans for this year’s fundraising activities, programs, and more. While logistics like these are essential to your nonprofit’s growth and ability to serve its beneficiaries, it’s also the perfect time to revisit your marketing strategies and ensure your technology stack is working as hard as you are. A fresh approach now can set the stage for greater impact throughout the year.
In addition to conducting other important tasks (such as offering a variety of giving vehicles to supporters), this is a great time to make any changes necessary to your digital strategy. This will involve assessing the previous year’s data and determining which strategies worked well and which should be tweaked.
If you’ve identified areas of your digital strategy for improvement but aren’t sure where to start, this guide is for you. We’ll cover four areas you can focus on to increase your nonprofit’s reach and boost your digital results.
1.) Optimize your website for user experience.
Your website is the cornerstone of your nonprofit’s digital presence. When potential supporters want to learn more about your organization, that’s where they’ll go. It’s also where existing supporters will navigate to if they want to make a gift or sign up to volunteer.
To ensure all website visitors can access the information they need, optimize your website to improve the user experience. Here are a few elements to consider:
- Mobile responsiveness: Your website must be easy to use on smartphones and tablets, as over 60% of website traffic comes from mobile devices. Implement a mobile-responsive design, where website elements resize to fit on screens of all sizes.
- Navigation: The last thing you want is for eager donors to land on your website and be discouraged because they can’t find your donation form. Make it easy for visitors to find what they want by adding navigation headers and footers and implementing robust internal linking.
- Accessibility: To make your website accessible, it must be easy to use for users of all abilities and circumstances. Follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines to create an accessible web design that loads quickly and can be viewed and used by everyone.
- Calls to action (CTAs): CTAs are an opportunity for you to drive traffic toward key conversion pages on your website while providing a great navigational experience for web visitors. Ideally, your CTAs should be concise, eye-catching, and link to relevant action pages.
If you’re wary of making changes to your website that might damage the user experience, leverage A/B testing to test multiple versions of your web pages and determine which ones visitors prefer. With the data from these tests, you can fine-tune the web experience you deliver and boost your conversion rates.
2.) Invest in content marketing.
A recent study found that 54% of businesses planned to spend more on content marketing in 2024 compared to the previous year, and that the global marketing industry is projected to reach $1.95 trillion by 2032. These statistics underscore that though traditional marketing and paid marketing channels have their merits, content marketing is an increasingly popular and successful digital marketing strategy.
There are many different types of content you can create, such as:
- Blog posts
- Infographics
- Videos
- Social media posts
- Educational whitepapers
- Webinars and podcasts
For example, if you run a school, you might create the following types of content:
- Blog posts about your school’s approach to education, exciting new courses for students, and semester highlights
- Infographics about your student population, including their demographics and your student-to-teacher ratio
- Video interviews of happy students and families discussing what they love about your school
- Social media posts about upcoming events, such as fundraisers or sports games
When creating your content, be mindful of best practices for search engine optimization (SEO) to maximize organic traffic to your website. Additionally, embed multimedia elements such as images and videos to generate visual interest, encouraging visitors to spend more time viewing your content.
3.) Leverage your social media for visibility.
If your nonprofit is on the newer side, you may have just set up your website and are looking at creating your first social media profiles. For the greatest impact, focus your efforts on these platforms:
The right platforms will depend entirely on your nonprofit’s audience and capacity. For example, different generations have different social media preferences—Gen Z prefers to use Instagram, whereas millennials are more likely to use YouTube and Facebook.
In terms of nonprofit capacity, certain social media platforms may require more effort for content creation and management. In particular, Instagram mainly features images and short-form video content. For smaller nonprofits, creating numerous visuals and videos may take too much time and effort from staff members needed for other mission-critical tasks.
If you belong to a larger nonprofit with a dedicated social media team, create content focused on authenticity frequently and consistently. Here are a few examples of authentic content you might post to your social media pages:
- Behind-the-scenes content
- Success stories from beneficiaries
- Donor testimonials
- Volunteer spotlights
- Quick snippets from your annual impact report
According to the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer, 58% of people trust nonprofits, compared to 62% of people who trust businesses. Authentic content shows that you’re truly dedicated to your mission, helping you build genuine, lasting relationships with your community founded on trust.
You can also integrate social media content with your fundraising platforms and peer-to-peer forms to expand visibility. That way, potential donors who land on relevant fundraising pages can see proof of the engagement your nonprofit receives and your genuine desire to fulfill your mission, spurring them to make a donation of their own.
4.) Maximize the potential of email messages.
Email is an extremely powerful tool for nonprofits. On average, they bring in $36 for every $1 spent, a 3600% return. To improve your email marketing results, maximize the potential of each message by:
- Sending regular emails: Keep your nonprofit top-of-mind by sending regular emails to your supporters. You can also give supporters the opportunity to choose how often they’d like to hear from you, from weekly to monthly to quarterly.
- Segmenting your email lists: Group your supporters based on shared characteristics found in your nonprofit CRM data and send them emails related to their interests. For example, loyal volunteers will be excited to learn about new volunteer opportunities, whereas lapsed donors may benefit from a message about your recent activities to spark their interest again.
- Creating dedicated campaigns: Create specific campaigns that funnel your supporters toward a desired action. For example, a welcome campaign strengthens relationships with a new supporter and eventually leads them to donate to your nonprofit or get involved long-term.
Additionally, your nonprofit should leverage email tools with personalization and automation features that make nurturing supporters easier and more effective. Many solutions allow you to personalize subject lines with the recipient’s name, schedule outgoing emails, view key email marketing metrics, and more.
A key step in optimizing your nonprofit digital strategy is choosing the right solutions that support and streamline your processes. As you decide which new practices to adopt, research tools that will make those practices easier for your nonprofit’s staff members to manage. Ensure that any tools you purchase will fit your nonprofit’s unique needs while keeping your data secure for maximum efficiency.
Carl Diesing, Managing Director
DNL OmniMedia
Carl co-founded DNL OmniMedia in 2006 and has grown the team to accommodate clients with ongoing web development projects. Together DNL OmniMedia has worked with over 100 organizations to assist them with accomplishing their online goals. As Managing Director of DNL OmniMedia, Carl works with nonprofits and their technology to foster fundraising, create awareness, cure disease, and solve social issues. Carl lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife Sarah and their two children Charlie and Evelyn.
