3 Nonprofit Fundraising Ideas That Make the Most of Sales Navigator

The key to finding the right corporate donors for your nonprofit is to find organizations that are the right fit for your cause and form a lasting connection with them. This is why the most effective nonprofit fundraising ideas focus on building relationships.

Building and growing relationships in the digital space is exactly what LinkedIn Sales Navigator was designed to facilitate. With the help of exclusive features, you can find your ideal donor, get a deeper understanding of their needs and interests, and make the most compelling case possible for why partnering with your organization will help them achieve their philanthropic goals.

These three nonprofit fundraising ideas can help you get started and get the most out of Sales Navigator: 

1. Use advanced search features to perfect your Ideal Donor Profile

Sales Navigator users gain access to more than 40 advanced search filters, allowing you to quickly pinpoint LinkedIn members with specific interests, connections, experiences, work histories, and more. 

You can also use these filters to search for organizations that match certain criteria, such as having experienced recent leadership changes, headcount growth, or leads that already follow your nonprofit on LinkedIn.

Once you find search parameters that yield good results, you can save that search and even have Sales Navigator re-run it for you once per week. As you reach out to these prospects, keep track of whom you experience the most and least success with. Use these findings to adjust your Ideal Donor Profile over time, then use this new Profile to refine your future searches even further.

2. Leverage connections you already have to find your “champions”

When you’re trying to establish a relationship with a potential corporate donor, the best path may not be the obvious one. The TeamLinks and Relationship Explorer features in Sales Navigator can help you identify unexpected “champions” — people who may be willing to advocate for your organization internally — by highlighting leads that are already connected to your colleagues. These features can even help you determine which of these connections may be most helpful.

With TeamLink, you’ll instantly see if any of your coworkers are connected to potential leads at your target organizations. This is especially useful if you already have a lead in mind and want to find a warm introduction.

If you’re not sure who to reach out to, Relationship Explorer will automatically find up to eight likely contacts within the organization you’re interested in by looking for ways they’ve interacted with your organization or colleagues in the past. Relationship Explorer can show you if these potential leads follow your nonprofit’s LinkedIn Page, were recently promoted or hired, have connections in common with your colleagues, and more. 

When you’re ready to reach out, use your pre-existing connections, along with what you’ve learned, to send a personalized InMail message asking if you can talk to them about ways they can support your nonprofit. 

3. Set custom alerts to find and seize opportunities

When you find potential donors and champions, be sure to save them as “Accounts” (for organizations) or “Leads” (for individuals) in Sales Navigator. Then, set up custom alerts to help you track your prospects’ activity, so you can identify the optimal moment to reach out.

These alerts will send your fundraising team notifications when a saved account or a lead within that account takes relevant action. This could include interacting with your nonprofit’s content, following your Page, being promoted, changing jobs, making a new connection with someone you know, or simply posting an update.

Keep an eye on your alerts dashboard to find opportunities to engage with the prospects’ content or reach out in a contextually relevant way. For example, if a lead within your target organization is promoted, they may be looking to make an impact in their new role, making them more likely to be receptive to your outreach. Or, if they share a piece of content relevant to your cause, you could comment on it with some added insight. You could then follow up with them via InMail to thank them for supporting the cause and see if they’re interested in getting more involved. 

The more effectively you can identify top leads, understand their interests, and help them see how their values align with your organization’s work, the more likely you’ll be to secure a new partnership that pays off for years to come. Sales Navigator gives you everything you need to find and get to know your champions — and prove that you’ll make a bigger difference together.

To start building and nurturing relationships with the right organizations today, speak to our sales team about LinkedIn Sales Navigator.