What’s hiding behind your petition? Finding donors through advocacy

Session 7 | 3:00pm - 3:45pm

Presented by Sheetal Persaud, HJC, Nina Tu, HJC and Douglas Tanton, Greenpeace International

Your advocates are super warm leads just waiting to be converted into donors – and in this session we’ll tell you the how, why and when of doing just that. 

The Session

When there are increasing limits on budgets and staff time – how do you make the case for another advocacy campaign at your organization? After all, short of full policy reversals, it’s notoriously difficult to show the ROI of advocacy to senior management and other departments. Or is it?  

Advocates are about the warmest lead your organization has, making them great potential donors. But most of the time this potential is never realized. In this session, we’ll discuss how you can tap the hidden value of your advocates. Bringing rapid email conversion, telemarketing and direct mail together, you could see conversion rates from advocates to donors as high as 20%. What better case for advocacy? We’ll give you some takeaways to help you sell advocacy to your organization – by showing you what is hiding behind your petition.

Speaker Biography

Sheetal Persaud 
Fundraising Innovation Consultant

Sheetal graduated from Oxford University, England with a B.A. in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. She has a keen interest in international development and healthcare which she is now applying to her clients at HJC including Plan Canada, Greenpeace Canada, New York Public Library and BRAC. Sheetal is currently taking a course in non-profit and volunteer management at Ryerson University and volunteers some of her free time at a small health based NGO, Health by Empowerment. Sheetal is an authorized Convio Consultant, meaning that she has received formal training on implementing and advising on strategy around Convio products.

Nina Tu 
Fundraising Innovation Consultant

Nina serves a diverse client base – running mail, phone, legacy, and online campaigns in combination. She currently serves Humane Society International, SickKids Foundation, Canadian Red Cross Society and many other organizations. She led HJC’s alternative gift holiday campaigns in 2007 and continues to grow these campaigns year to year. She brings an attention to detail and tenacious desire to bring both innovation and on-time delivery to clients. In addition to her Honours Bachelor of Environmental Studies from the University of Waterloo, she has completed the Humber College post-graduate certificate in Fundraising and Volunteer Management under the direction of Ken Wyman.

Douglas Tanton 
HJC senior global fundraising advisor, former International Fundraising Director of Greenpeace

Douglas has 20 years of experience in senior positions and consulting roles in development, innovation fundraising and philanthropy. Douglas is an experienced global leader and recognized global innovation ground breaker. His tenure as International Fundraising Director of Greenpeace for 7 years (from 2002 through 2009) saw the expansion of successful fundraising around the world. He has on-the-ground ability to build, and execute, monthly giving acquisition through street, DRTV, mail, phone, and other channels. For any organization that wants to grow its donor file in over 100 countries, Douglas will have the experience to help online and offline.