With her usual style, grace and sense of humor Margaret Battistelli Gardner, the Editor-in-Chief of Fundraising Success helpfully added to the growing chorus of concern over donor commitment and donor relationship management.
Margaret correctly notes “That lazy, ineffectual approach of talking at donors is so over that we need a new word for how over it is.“ She goes on to add, “The word ‘donor’ itself even seems one-dimensional these days because it simply doesn’t speak to the depth of the relationships supporters are looking to build with their organizations of choice.”
She observes that ‘donor engagement’ is the au courant topic among fundraisers and that at the recent Bridge Conference in D.C., speakers offered “tons of tips on how to build better donor relationships.”
Therein lies a problem. And an opportunity. You see, tons of tips and conjecture, while well-meaning, aren’t going to get us very far in dealing with the horrendous problem of donor retention that continues in free fall mode.
Of course retention is but one side of the ‘acquisition/retention coin’ and just about everyone acknowledges the problem of getting and keeping donors has created a real and urgent financial imperative to find solutions.
In short, why aren’t donors who give you one donation not motivated to give you a second.
Tom and I have long believed the answer lies in ‘commitment’ – the motive or intent to maintain the recently formed relationship with your organization. After all, everyone knows a committed donor generally makes a higher average gift and certainly has a higher lifetime value than the Un-Committed Donor.
What we believe — but don’t yet know for sure — is that it is possible to score donors on commitment; to establish a math-based linkage that identifies a FINITE number of activities organizations undertake that truly impact donor commitment.
In late June we issued a call for volunteer organizations to participate in a benchmark study of commitment and what key engagement activities an organization should use to positively impact commitment.
Clearly we struck a nerve. More than 20 organizations, large, small and representing all sectors came forward and are participating in The Agitator/DonorVoice Retention Lab. The process is detailed here.
In addition, many Agitator readers requested that we keep them posted on the progress of the Retention Lab and the findings that spring from it. As of today here’s the plan:
- Our National Benchmark Survey — which we’ll use to validate the Commitment Model, produce (and publish) Donor Commitment Scores for 50 large charities, AND most importantly, to identify the activities any organization must undertake to impact Commitment and by extension, donor behavior — has just come out of the field and is being analyzed as I write;
- 21 organizations participating in the Lab have provided email addresses and the transaction history behind them so that specific engagement practices can be tied back to actual giving. These studies will be in the field in a week or so with analysis beginning immediately thereafter.
- As soon as we complete the analysis we will hold a series of briefings with participants and our panel of loyalty/engagement experts on the National Benchmark and privately review the results, findings and our evaluation with each participating organization. We anticipate these briefings will get underway the first week in September and conclude by the end of the month.
- Working with DonorVoice and a group of communications, loyalty and tech experts we’ve also designed two automated, online engagement tools to help organizations quickly and inexpensively start getting more engagement and greater commitment from their website and Facebook visitors.
- We anticipate being able to share some early findings with you, other Agitator readers and the nonprofit community by mid-September.
Meanwhile, if you’d like to be kept updated on the progress of the Retention Project and Lab just shoot a quick email to Kevin Schulman, project lead and CEO of DonorVoice, and we’ll keep you posted.
Roger
This article was posted in: database marketing, direct marketing, Don't Miss these Posts, donor retention, DonorTrends, Hot Research, loyalty, marketing metrics, nonprofit management, nonprofits.
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Thank you so much for the shout and kind words, Roger! It’s sadly ironic that at a time when technology gives us so many ways to “meet” people (whether you’re talking about donors, friends or potential partners), we’ve gotten so content with superficial connections and prefer quantity over quality. As they say, acknowledging the problem is the first step. Here’s to moving ahead and figuring out concrete, workable solutions to the speed-dating approach to donor relationships. This is fascinating and challenging stuff you’ve got going. Looking forward to learning more about it.
I agree, tracking donor “commitment” could just be the most relevant measurement/benchmark idea yet.
And I love the idea of developing an online tool to encourage and donor engagement and donor commitment on facebook and websites. Way to go Roger! I’ve been a fan of yours since the early 80′s.
Margaret hit this right on the head when she says that even the word, “donor” seems one-dimensional. I’ll go even further and suggest that, in a world where people routinely have open dialogues with brand proxies on social media channels, and companies from cereal makers to cable providers are finding ways to form “relationships” with consumers, non profits who view donors as funding pipelines instead of mission partners are going to face increasing difficulties.
The word “donor” doesn’t just seem one-dimensional, it’s an impersonal and trivializing identifier for the people who keep nonprofits operating. It reduces the money they give to the status of “handout,” when in reality, that money is an investment. The folk we call donors are, in a very real way, investors or shareholders. Understanding them in that context is the beginning of restructuring the nature of our relationship with them.
As a Director of a very small nonprofit I have little time for seminars and trainings, but I know that I have learned more from the Agitator than from pretty much anything else I might have done regarding fund development. This work to figure out the science behind donor retention is amazing and I wanted to say THANK YOU. I’m also eager to see what the tools are that help us get more out of our websites and facebook pages – we have started to attract a small group of younger members and I think staying current with our (now pretty lame) facebook page will help make sure they stick with us…(or maybe not! Maybe these studies will say something to the contrary…but I doubt it!).
I appreciate what Linda said about “donors”…I use the word investment all the time when talking about the value of membership in our organization. I truly believe their contribution to us (and mine to other groups that I support) is an investment in a better community. I can’t go out and fix it all myself, so I invest in the organized efforts of those who are.