We’ve been talking here on the blog about the power of matching grants in fundraising … how they matches are good at activating donors because they are such a good deal.

Here’s something worth knowing: There’s a whole other way of turning a fundraising offer into a “bargain” – and it may be available to you.

It’s leverage. Where a donor’s gift covers part of the cost of something needed and in essence unlocks additional dollars.

You can express it like this: Every dollar you give will put $10 worth of help into action. You multiply the impact of your giving 10 times.

It’s like a match, but it’s not money coming from another donor. It’s something that’s built into the way your work is done.

This may not apply to you, because you might not have anything like this happening in your work. But it’s worth exploring, because you may find a powerful offer that can boost your fundraising in a big way.

Here are two examples of leverage offers that I’ve seen work wonders many times:

Shipping

The donor helps cover the cost of shipping supplies to where they are needed.

It is typically expressed something like this: Every dollar you give will ship $30 worth of life-saving supplies to people struggling to survive.

This offer is commonly used by international relief organizations. It’s easy for donors to understand: The organization has gifts-in-kind on hand — medical, agricultural, or other supplies — and they must raise the funds to ship them to the field.

The multiplying figure comes from dividing the value of the donated goods by the cost to ship them where they are going.

It’s great impact for the donor, because the multiplier is typically quite high, ranging from One dollar will ship $10 worth of supplies and on up.

I once had a client that received a large donation of vaccines for use in medically marginalized areas. The potential for saving lives was huge.

The value of the vaccines was high. And the cost to ship them was low – vaccines are quite small. So the multiplier was more than 1,000 times: A donation of a dollar would put $1,020 worth of vaccines to work.

I was afraid this ratio was so high it wouldn’t be believable and might not work in fundraising. I mean, we had gift asks that looked like this: Your donation of $30 will send $30,600 worth of life-saving vaccines.

Boy, was I worried over nothing. That appeal did better than anything we’d ever sent before. Then, some months later, they got a new batch of vaccines that were valued at nearly twice as much. That meant a $30 donation was enough to ship around $60,000 worth of vaccines.

I bet you can guess what happened: Yep. That offer did even better.

Those have not been typical shipping multipliers in my experience. But it showed me that we shouldn’t worry too much about the value of the gifts-in-kind. It can be very high, and that just motivates donors more.

Food Bank Leverage

The way most food banks work is this: They contact food producers, shippers, and retailers to request food donations. (Those food drives you may have participated in, where people bring in canned good for the food bank provide a very small percentage of the food banks’ supplies.)

The food bank mainly needs to raise money to source the food, store it, and distribute it. That creates a great leverage offer: Every dollar you give provides $8 worth of food for hungry people.

As with the shipping offer, the multiplier comes from that value of the donated food divided by the cost it takes to put it to work.

This offer takes the boring process of sourcing and administering food and shows donors the end result: Food for hungry people. And it gives donors a good deal.

You’d be hard-pressed to raise funds to pay the salaries of food-sourcing professionals who sit in offices making phone calls. But you can get a lot of donors behind multiplying their giving to feed eight times as many hungry people.

I’ve worked with shipping offers and food bank leverage for many years, and it always works wonders.

Your organization may or may not have situations like that.

But it’s worth exploring.

Do you receive gifts in kind?

Do you use volunteer labor?

Both of those things have tangible and measurable value. You likely already know how much that is.

And both of those things need support from cash donations. Donors “unlock” those sources of value with their gifts.

Look for ways this is true for your organization. You may find that next great fundraising offer that will thrill your donors into giving more than ever.

Not all attempts at creating these leverage offers work. Sometimes they are just too complicated or not tangible enough. But it’s worth looking into.

Your critical year-end fundraising is just around the corner. How’d you like to DOUBLE your income from that campaign? Find out how at our all-new webinar, Double Your Year-End Donations Without Spending More. Sean Triner will lay out the complete plan that can dramatically boost your income this year!

Please share your experience by leaving your reply below. We’d love to learn from your experience.

Related Blog Posts:

• Action: Your Magic Ingredient for Successful Fundraising
• A Great Way to Boost Donations in Your Next Appeal…
• VIDEO: 6 Big Tips for Big Campaigns