As you could tell from his article yesterday, Roger’s getting a bit older and crankier.
So he’s inspired today’s post from his much younger colleague, which is all about how marketers should communicate — or not communicate — with and about older people. And as we all know, most nonprofit donations come from older people. So we had better get our language and images right.
Thanks to Joanne Fritz at About.com for pointing us to this great communications guide from the International Council on Active Aging.
No one will ever accuse Roger of not aging actively! I suspect he’s a charter member of the Council.
Seriously Roger, speaking of retention, other than the ICAA, what organization have you donated to the longest, and for how long? And have they done anything special technique-wise to keep you opening your wallet?
Tom
P.S. The advice in the Guide is even useful for online fundraisers. E.g., at the reader’s choice, the copy in the Guide itself can be read easily in a larger size. After all, at least some of your donations already come from old fogies. [Hmmm ... what does the style guide say about that?!] And the proportion will increase.
P.P.S. Our retention survey and project is fully subscribed. Thanks to all those joining in. And we do appreciate that there are forgivable reasons for not participating, don’t we Roger?
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Roger has been cranky for decades. It’s just that now he has the excuse of age.
Thank you, Tom, for acknowledging Roger’s rant — a post which I found a little offensive and also oblivious to the realities of many small to medium fundraising shops.
I care very much about retention, but at this moment in time I am also buried in work — many of our donors are summer residents and we have a 10-12 week window of opportunity to see them face-to-face. I cannot take on one more thing – even if it takes five minutes — hence I am not joining Roger’s “project.” It doesn’t mean we have something to hide or don’t care about this important fundraising measure.
Many fundraising professionals that enjoy and learn from this blog don’t work for gigantic charities. We work for relatively small organizations (we have 22 staff members here) which are open to change and innovation but have limited capacity to add on new layers to already overloaded work plans. Or, for example in our case, we let go our database manager and have to struggle to get even the most rudimentary data out of our files. This situation is improving but it sucks up a lot of time.
So, keep the good information coming, but I for one would appreciate a few less self-righteouis rants from atop the high horse and more good, thought-provoking information about our work.
Tom,
Although I am older than most trees in my neighborhood, I truly don’t think age has much to do with it where consistent giving is concerned.
But, since you asked, for 25 years or more I’ve given to Nation magazine, Common Cause, the ACLU and the National Organization for Women.
The Council is not among ‘em.
I guess my longest, in terms of time, contributions have been to The Gettysburg Methodist Church, even though I haven’t darkened their door in 40+ years.
And, no Tom, none of these organizations has done anything. All of which goes to show they’re missing out. Big time!
Roger
Anne B,
First my apologies if I came of as oblivious to the problems most fundraisers face. I’m not.
Frankly, I could care less about the big nonprofits. They’ve demonstrated over and over again their inability to do anything cutting edge. One of the reasons why they’re declining. But, that’s another rant.
It really is important to me that everyone in our sector does the very best we can. I realize folks are underpaid and overworked. But, all the more reason to be creative and innovative. So much depends on what we do.
I’m using some July 4th (apologies to our non-colonist readers) time to catch up here and want to assure all those who’ve expressed the problems of 1) size 2) resources 3) overwork , that we’ll so our best to have you covered as we go forward with this study.
I really appreciate everyone’s comments and, contrary to Tom I’m not cranky [I am older] but I so depend for the good of the world on what you do. So, my standards are high, because the stakes are high.
Cheers,
Roger