The wish list is an appealing option for other organizations, too. Places like the Chattanooga Zoo achieved their fundraising goals by encouraging selective puchasing.  Spread over 13 acres just two miles from downtown, the Chattanooga Zoo is a crown jewel for Tennessee animal lovers, educators, kids, and parents alike. Its outreach programs are the lifeblood of its development plans and important opportunities to build goodwill in the community. Leading up to 2022, administrators knew they were approaching the zoo’s 85th anniversary. Still, the pandemic had sidelined a lot of in-person fundraising activities—robbing them of the opportunity to capitalize on that milestone.

In September 2021, they got creative by publishing an animal wish list, powered by Amazon Business’s Donation Driver, asking for things from artificial turf, toys, harnesses, and brain games for their 200 species of animals.

Donors (and animal lovers) didn’t have to drive to pick up items and then drop them off at the zoo’s front gates. Instead, they could flex their generosity from home—and the much-needed items would be delivered. It made giving easier, and it certainly made the zoo’s work on behalf of their furry (and scaly) residents a lot easier, too. That includes post-donation correspondence, too.

“Donation Driver has also helped us track our gifts and share our appreciation to our donors by automating thank you notes directly from the zoo, all while maintaining donor and recipient privacy,” says Smallwood.

Creating a curated selection via a wish list also provides your organization or charity with additional opportunities. One of them is the ability only to include wish list items with sustainability certifications such as Fairtrade International, whose products are produced in line with ethical and environmental standards, or Blue Angel, which guarantees that a product meets high environmental standards, including protecting consumers health. Another opportunity is only to include wish list items that are locally sourced, allowing you to support local workers. Creating parameters such as these for selective purchases among your donors positively affects the community at large. Implementing socially responsible purchasing can also increase supplier diversity—empowering small and diverse sellers, too.

Global philanthropy is changing as our digitized world offers more immediate and direct contributions by generous donors. Contactless payments worldwide skyrocketed during the pandemic, and it’s easy to find the “tap” feature everywhere, including subway kiosks, grocery store checkout terminals, and even ice cream trucks. On the investment side, so-called donor-advised funds are gaining popularity in Canada, China, and South Africa as ways for donors to contribute to charities by donating capital for them to invest (with the added benefit of an immediate tax deduction for the giver).

There are literally dozens of fundraising apps, too, that have closed the gap between the cause of a charity (or nonprofit) and the willingness or capabilities of donors. That’s not exclusively a pandemic-era trend, as we so often like to see things, and it’s tied more broadly to the rise in mobile devices and a shift in consumer habits. If you consider that not all consumers are donors, but all donors are consumers, it’s easy to see why mobile giving donations have increased by more than 200% in the past year, according to several sources.

It's also easy to see why the future of giving is, indeed, “hybrid,” as several philanthropy commentators have noted. It’s more important than ever to make it as easy as possible for donors to digitally contribute and even increase their contributions (allowing you to stretch gifts further).

There’s another reason why a digital-first approach to fundraising makes a lot of sense for your development campaigns: data. Records of past donors have always been hugely important to nonprofits, charities, and organizations hoping to develop long-term relationships. Digital tools like Amazon Business’s Donation Driver make it easy to see past data and leverage it for future decision-making.

 Data and analytics associated with digital giving help you understand donor behavior clearly. December’s end-of-year tax cutoff has been a traditional donor driver. Still, maybe your donors peak inApril after their tax refunds appear, or in October when quarterly bonuses hit their accounts. Data and analytics also help you track your  performance against prior years, alerting you to a year-over-year dip that might be cause for concern or alerting you to a windfall that might be the important boost to one of your program’s needs. Measuring key performance indicators (KPIs) such as donations-per-donor or cost-per-donation to assess fundraising performance also offers important internal metrics of a donation campaign for you, your team, and your organization.

During your fundraising campaign, which might last three months, the data and analysis you glean from a digital-first tool can give you the transparency you need to track the orders your donors have placed, manage the inventory of, say, your wish list (and its fulfillment), and report back to your board of directors in real time about what’s happening.

But what happens after the campaign ends? That’s the relationship-maintenance phase—and that’s when you and your team lay tracks for the future. Most nonprofits, charities, or associations have a range of donors that can be as big as a multinational corporation that wants to associate its mission with yours and as small as an individual who lives around the corner and has a personal connection to your mission.

However, all donors along this spectrum are important. Still, digitized giving through wish lists or sponsorships targets the community’s individuals who represent one big reality: money and time are equally valuable. Suppose their last interaction with you was an intuitive giving experience (similar to the online shopping they do all the time). In that case, they will remember—at the very least—that it not only feels good to give to your cause also incredibly easy. Data and analytics are an easy way to segment these donors, send tailored thank-you notes to them that reflect their particular set of interests or habits, and re-engage with them in specific ways at specific times of the year—depending on their donation patterns.

Giving is a year-round opportunity for nonprofits. However, if November’s “Giving Tuesday” is in your crosshairs, consider supplementing your in-person fundraising with digitized giving tools like Amazon Business’s Donation Driver. You can engage new donor segments you never knew existed and target ones you’ve been trying to flag down for years by making it easier than ever to contribute to your cause.