In case you missed it in Fundraising Success, this advice on how to re-engage lapsed donors from consultant Pamela Barden is sound and practical.
I’m glad she’s not afraid to recommend telemarketing to these folks. And she’s right, predictive tools can help your ROI, especially with large files.
A couple of further points …
Re-soliciting lapsed donors can be viewed as last-stage donor retention. But when they start to get ‘out there’ on the dormant scale — 18 months and more — you might consider putting these names into your prospecting stream, instead of continuing with house appeals. Presumably your prospecting mail has more ‘sell’ of your cause or mission and the special role of your organization … longer lapsed donors respond to a bit more re-education.
With highest value lapsed donors, you might consider a strategically placed cultivation mailing or contact as part of your re-engagement stream. Make your ask secondary to the message of “given your past level of concern about … we wanted you to know that …” (include a reply envelope!).
Organizations that discard their lapsed donors without the effort that Pamela recommends are certainly leaving money on the table.
How much to invest in ‘re-activating’ lapsed donors? Start by looking at your present cost of acquiring a brand new donor!
Tom
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Wow, I’m surprised this has not gotten any comments yet. We are very aggressive about re-activating our lapsed donors. Glad to know that we do pretty much everything on this list as well as the things you mention in your post. We do use a modeling service to data-mine our entire lapsed file (starting at 24 months and going back 30 years) and include the most qualified names in our acquisition mailings. These names often make a profit in the initial acquisition mailing (even taking into account the additional cost of the modeling — which is still cheaper cost/M than renting an outside list), they come in at a higher average gift than totally new names, and they have better retention and longterm value than new names. So — it’s a win all around.
We also do both reinstatement (2-5 years) and deep lapsed (6-10 years) telemarketing campaigns; the names we bring back on via these campaigns also have much higher value than other names acquired via telemarketing.
I thought the article was a fantastic contribution. I’m always on the lookout for info about what others are doing to retain and renew lapsed donors and I found this enormously helpful. I’d love to about any other strategies or tactics that are working.
Tom, I agree with everything you, Pamela and Kristen had to say about recapturing lapsed donor and members. As a membership consultant, that is the first place we direct our clients when trying to build the member file or the revenue stream. Past members and donors get it with respect to who your organization is and why your work is so important. A one time “no” to a renewal request is not a permanent no, so you have to keep on asking. In fact, we suggest that clients go back to their recent lapsed members 4 to 6 to 8 times in the year after lapsing. And each of those contacts will continue to be profitable.
And telemarketing is alive an well and the perfect way to have a conversation with lapsed folks who may need a live update on what has been going on since their hiatus with your organization.
Thank you for sharing all of the information that you put out there. It reminds the rest of us of bits of information that we know but take for granted that everyone knows, but they don’t!!
Dana Hines, President, Membership Consultants
Advance Voice Messaging is a very inexpensive tool to renew lapsed donors when combined with direct mail. AVM is a 30-35 second pre-recorded call that is placed within 3-4 days of the arrival of the mail piece. Lift in response ranges from 25%-400%!