Monday and Tuesday we invited Agitator readers to sign up for a free survey and project on donor retention.
An inquisitive but tiny handful of pioneers have done so. Folks who care enough about the future of fundraising to jump in. Here’s the list after two days. Hooraay!!!
- The Humane Society of the United States
- The International Rescue Committee
- The Feminist Majority
- ActionAid in the UK
- Common Cause
- Long Center for the Performing Arts (Austin)
- Mothers Against Drunk Driving
- Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation
- PennFuture
- Metro United Way (Louisville)
- St. Joseph’s Indian School
To them we say, get ready to roll!
However, they represent an insignificant fraction of Agitator readers, suggesting that most of you could care less about donor retention. Or are simply dumbfounded! Responses included: “We’ll have to get back to you once the higher ups approve” … “What are the privacy issues?” … dah, dah, dah, dah. Paralysis.
Are we wrong?
Even more telling are the responses from the consultants, who had more excuses for not wanting their clients to participate than we have shirts. Too much work they say; or they’re not getting paid to figure this one out. “We have to vet this with our client.” … “What if…?” … “What if…?”
However, most of the consultants and agencies who subscribe to The Agitator didn’t respond at all. Their deafening silence is most puzzling. These are supposed to be the fundraising Sherpas. Alas, mostly lost in the snow.
Kudos then to Frey Associates, SCA, PEP Direct and MINDSETdirect who are bringing some clients to the project.
Folks, Rome is burning. We see the crippling retention problem clearly and regularly in the indexes and reports that cross our desk.
But it seems most folks, be they consultants or fundraising managers, don’t see any problem, or could care less, or are simply too perplexed about their historically low retention numbers. Amazing!
In our astonishment, we reached out directly to a number of nonprofit CEOs with the same invitation. Their answers were immediate: “Yes, count me in.” “Let’s go.” From the CEOs, 100% response and 100% agreement to participate.
What strikes and concerns Tom and me is how slow moving and bureaucratic the nonprofit world has become. Maybe too many fundraisers simply rank too low on the organizational totem pole to make a difference, even as donor retention falls through the floor.
Maybe we should have recognized all along that the buck stops at the top … it’s the CEOs and Executive Directors who are on the firing line when more and more donors defect and their support disappears. Boards can begrudgingly accept stalled growth (external factors and all that); but they have a real problem with losing their base.
Given our recent experience, the CEOs and EDs ‘get it’ and feel a need to respond, even as their fundraisers are in denial or paralyzed.
Are falling retention rates on your CEO’s radar? If not, get it there! Then get him or her to give me a call.
Roger
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Nope, not dumbfounded – and yes, we do care about retention. But we’re a tiny organisation with a grand total of 100 donors on our database, which wasn’t enough to participate…
Rochelle,
Fair enough. But with 100 donors to build relationships with, I hope you’re aiming for a 100% retention rate!
Tom
Hi guys – first off, can I say that I’m new to the world of fundraising consultancy, but I signed up for lots of blogs and yours is by far the best. I recommend it to all my clients. I just wish you had Twitter buttons to share your stuff on Twitter which is where I do most of my engagement.
I think your donor retention test opportunity is a fabulous idea, and I’m just trying to get one of my clients to take part (if I can track him down). Totally with you that we need to test our hypotheses and I for one am really interested in the outcomes. The current times are testing for fundraisers – but they are also rich in opportunity to improve and do things differently. The Institute of Fundraising ran a series of seminars in February to which several larger charities came. When asked ‘what’s the next big thing in fundraising?’ the conclusion was ‘to do what you’re doing, but do it better’. So – this test is going to show exactly what we need to do better. So who would turn down the opportunity?
For me, the only limiting factor is the need for 10,000 email addresses with donor giving history – email addresses lapse so fast, and given that it would just be a small handful of UK charities that would have 10,000 email addresses with giving history (only 1800 charities in England and Wales have an income of more than £5m and I reckon you’d need at least that to get 10,000 email addresses with giving history).
Do you want me to put a shout out on the UK Institute of Fundraising’s online forums? There is a major convention on next Monday to Wednesday, maybe the Convention could put a shout out on Twitter. Let me know if that’s of interest, or whether you’re more after US charities, or have enough people.
Warm regards from across the pond
Emma Ives
For the record, my colleagues and I have been overjoyed over your focus on donor churn. It is the first calculation that we develop for our clients, and we regularly see donor churn numbers since 2008 running 50-70% annually. In fact, this has become the norm rather than the exception. For us, we know through the last nine years that we make a meaningful impact at the bottom line for our clients when we accomplish 3 simple goals, those being:
1. Reduce donor churn by 20% in year 1. The result, found money flowing straight to the bottom line;
2. Increase the average gift by 20% in year 1.
3. Continue at no less than the growth pace that has allowed most organizations to “tread water” while they experienced donor flight.
If we do these three simple tasks, and we have met those goals in more than 90% of the more than 1,000 appeals we have run since 2003, then we see exponential growth for the client.
Kudos to you for this series of blogs…long overdue!
You might get more consultants engaged if you pre-wrote an email we could send to our clients with the details, value proposition, time commitment, etc. You’ve got a nice microsite, but if you could summarize that into a short email, you’d be making everyone’s life easier. Thanks!
I’m with Rochelle. We are too small (about 1200 donors, with about 300 of them current – I’m new here and it’s a long story…) to participate. I wonder how many of your readers are in the same small boat. That could be why your response rate is so low.
I’m with Leslie & Rochelle. I’d love to participate but we don’t have anywhere near 10,000 donors, especially with email addresses. I’m still learning the trade and can’t wait to see your results. Hopefully it will help me push for better practices here.
Thanks for your comments. We were and are very interested in your study. But, many of your viewers, like us, do not have 10,000 email contributors to appeals. Why? We do not run our appeals on the email, but do direct mail. Participants respond via mail. How do we participate? We have 70,000 contributors via direct mail. Though we may have 15,000 emails, we do not meet your electronic requirement. There are many in our situation. Thanks for your effort in helping all of us.
Donor retention and donor churn are high on my agency’s priorities, but like Janet, Leslie and Rochelle, the 10,000 donors eliminated us. And, I imagine, it eliminated a significant number of subscribers. While I applaud this study and can’t wait to see it, I would also be very interested in seeing whether what you learn from organizations with 10,000+ emails holds true for those with less than 1,000.
It’s summer now and school is out. People are on vacation or about to go on vacation. I think you’ll get more responses – but it will take a while.
Last July I realized that it would be very difficult for me to make headway on any new projects with clients — rather, it’s a time to recycle, plan, and strategize.
I read your daily emails with enthusiasm and incorporate many of your ideas into my small theater’s development conversations. There are two roadblocks that prevented us from participating – firstly, we don’t have 10,000 donors with email addresses and secondly, we just recently participated in another donor survey and don’t want to over-survey our patrons. Thank you for all the work you do and stimulating conversations you share and start!
Am checking with one client to see if they are interested; the others don’t meet the requirement threshhold.
Echoing responses from others – my organization falls well short of the minimum 10,000 donors with email addresses required for participation (we have around half that). I know I’m not alone in that retention is a huge problem for us – we pick up plenty of new members though acquisition mailing who then vanish when renewal notices are sent. While our membership ranks have grown incrementally over the past couple of years, overall donor attrition is a serious concern.
It’s a great idea for a study and I look forward to the results.
As a partially retired major gifts and capital campaign consultant and presently a master’s student studying organizational behavior and the role of philanthropy, I applaud you for your position on donor retention. How can organizations attract major gifts, if they don’t pay attention to retaining donors at the early (and sometimes not so early) stages of a donor’s relationship with an organization? How I could tell you stories!!
Go for it!
I sent your email to several charities that I’ve worked with and for – but your criteria was far too high for them (in terms of numbers).
That’s a pretty big list for charities in Canada – where more than 50% of our charities have less than 50K in revenues and only about 5% of charities have more than 5 million in revenues.
It was a generous offer – I even tweeted it hoping to find at least one Canadian charity that could meet the criteria and would be willing to jump in.
Can’t wait to hear about the results!
Thank you Laurie,
We really appreciate your efforts. The reason for the large number lies in the accuracy of the sample.
We’ll sure keep you posted and involved.
Much appreciated,
Roger