Instilling confidence and controls to measure donor impact

For nonprofits, building relationships with donors is a priority, as they power their mission. The 2024 Fundraising Outlook Report cites donor fatigue and donor engagement as the top two fundraising challenges, both hovering above 85%. The underlying reasons behind this can be a combination of over-soliciting, absence of personal touch, and lack of transparency into impact.

Nonprofits need to gain their donor’s trust. Donors want to see credible evidence, whether quantitative or qualitative, that their donation has a direct, measurable impact, and how their gift makes a difference. As a purchasing administrator or procurement director, you have an important role to play in earning that trust. A good first step is to start evaluating your current spend tracking tools in place. Questions you may ask your organization:

• How are donation dollars and grants tracked?
• How are spending categories broken down to identify gaps in funding?
• How are donors informed of their impact?

Smart business buying tools can provide you with the answers you need, giving you the confidence and control in your buying process. Here’s how:

Analytics-driven insights

Nearly two-thirds of donors claim that they choose which nonprofits to give to based on how well the organization uses their money. With Amazon Business Analytics, you’re able to track all purchases in detail with easy-to-use dashboards. You’ll have insight into your spending patterns based on selected time periods, such as total spending, savings, orders, and your top shopping categories. You can also dive into details of your latest orders to track arrival status, purchaser for the order, and the amount spent. These details help you determine which product categories are of high-value to your mission and where you may need additional donor funding. It can also help shape your story for donors, reaching out with a specific purpose.

Find out how to access your Business Analytics dashboard:

Approvals

It is important to have an overview or grasp over what your buyers are spending their budget on. With Approval Workflows, you have complete financial control to assess if the purchase is needed, gauge how your clients might benefit from the order, and determine whether the appropriate fund is being used. It provides the right balance between having oversight and autonomy. Moreover, it helps avoid bottlenecks within the process as you will be notified of pending orders and can approve multiple workflows at once, enabling you to get your buyers what they need, when they need it.

Learn how to approve your organization's orders and optimize workflows:

Guided Buying

In the United States, there are more than 1.8 million nonprofits, all vying for donor dollars. This presents an opportunity for your organization to differentiate your mission and principles from other organizations. Guided Buying can serve as a catalyst to help. With this tool, which is available with Business Prime, you can create internal buying policies, guiding purchases towards your preferred products and suppliers. You can prefer local sellers, small and diverse vendors, products with sustainability certifications, and much more. By sourcing from brands who share similar values and ethics with you and your benefactors, this can help attract and retain donors to continue contributing to your mission.

See how to source from local sellers to support your community:

Donation Driver

A 2024 recent study from the Journal of Philanthropy and Marketing found that younger generations, such as Gen Z donors, felt their small donations do not make a difference. Whether they are a legacy, corporate, or individual donor, every donation counts and makes an impact. Nonprofits can provide transparency into their donation process to strengthen their relationship with donors. Donation Driver can help you engage donors in a personalized way to meet specific, local needs. You’re able to curate a list of items to be displayed on your website for donors to select and purchase. Because of this, donors have the flexibility to choose how they want to participate in your mission. They can easily identify the items your organizational needs and complete the donation process all from one place. Once orders are placed, you can track, thank and report on donation activity, while maintaining both donor and recipient privacy.

By integrating these tools into your nonprofit’s current buying process, your donors will be able to realize their impact on your mission.