Anyone with experience in fundraising is familiar with the concept of storytelling. Almost every interaction with a donor is designed to tell the story of your organization and to familiarize them with the impact of your work. I spent much of the last 10 years as a fundraiser for various political or social justice organizations, devoting hours of my time to telling the story of impact to a wide-range of institutions and major donors. Whether I was selling community organizing, political investment, or a voter registration drive, the keys to success are always the same. Your donor wants to see the following:

1. Strategy: The foundational evidence that drives your strategy - research and statistics that demonstrate the care with which you have developed your program.

2. Impact: The proof of concept - individual stories that prove the power of your work. In the political sense, the impact is often shown through polling or progress toward a goal.

While most people see Empower Engine as a tool used to better understand your campaign data, I can’t help but think of it as a tool to enhance fundraising.

Imagine that you’re 15 minutes from an unexpected meeting with a high-dollar donor who is considering making a large investment in your campaign. This is where you need Empower Engine.

In just a few clicks, you can produce detailed maps of your campaign data that demonstrate your understanding of your target district and the voters with whom your interacting. These maps demonstrate the evidence behind your strategy. For example, as the map below shows, you can visualize where the spanish speakers live in your district, demonstrating the need for bilingual campaign literature.

Spanish-speakers in the city of Denver by census block

Even more important than showing a map based on static data, you can show the potential donor a map of the work that took place in the last week, even personalizing the visual to focus on the neighborhood in which the donor lives. With Empower Engine, you can create visualizations based on your data that update every week. You can impress the donor with the work that’s already being done, while painting the picture of how much more can be achieved with their help.

When I think back to my days as a fundraiser, scouring old interim grant reports for real-world examples of impact, I can’t imagine how helpful it would have been to have access to Empower Engine.

Raising Money for your Campaign? You Need Empower Engine