If your donors aren’t ready to give, why are you asking?
Feb 26th, 2009 by Amy Southerland
Many nonprofits are losing out on the opportunity to increase both donations and loyalty because they approach their donor base as a monolith: they treat everyone the same and then wonder why they don’t get better results.
You can debate the mailing date of your annual fundraising letter until your faces turn blue, but trying to fine-tune a mass mailing date isn’t going to significantly improve your response rate. The truth is, people respond to a call to action when they are ready to, not on 6-month schedules.
Readiness is all
An important part of successful fundraising is knowing how to lead donors to a point of readiness, where they are truly receptive to the next request. To paraphrase Penelope Burk from Donor Centered Fundraising: If you want your next “ask” to resonate, you need to engage in a full cycle of communication that reinforces each donor’s decision to support your cause and lays the groundwork for future support. That cycle has three important stages:
- Provide prompt, meaningful acknowledgment of each gift.
- Reassure the donor that their gift was directed as intended.
- Communicate the results of each gift in a specific manner.
What this looks like in practice will depend on many variables - but all three steps need to be customized to the donor and the donation. Once you have completed these three steps - and only when you’ve completed all three steps - you are poised to ask for another contribution. And then you need to go through the same cycle again - for every donor, every donation.
Taking donor cultivation to scale
You’re probably already working this way for your “high dollar” donors. When someone makes a major gift, you don’t ask for another until you’ve tended to the relationship. You orchestrate every move to ensure that the donor is confident that the gift was effective and appreciated.
Meanwhile, all your “regular” donors are herded along pre-determined timelines for giving that leaves many of them feeling like they get too little, too late (both appreciation and information) - and then feel like they are always being asked for too much, too soon. If they don’t quit giving altogether after a year or two of impersonal, mistimed solicitations, they certainly won’t start giving more. Why would they?
Ten years ago, you were somewhat stuck with this model - staff and resources limited how much you could customize the experience of every donor. But now you can use social media and integrated 1:1 marketing to take what you already know about donor cultivation and apply it to every donor.
You can do this by capturing the data (demographic and behavioral) required to customize the content and timing of every interaction. In fact, there’s a good chance you already have the data you need but just aren’t using it. Then, with the right technology and systems in place - all of which is readily available - you can use this data to take the donation-recognition cycle to scale.
What would happen if every donor felt like a VIP?
Instead of unleashing a flood of ask letters to your entire donor base on the same day and crossing your fingers, imagine generating a steady, automated stream of personalized donor communications across multiple channels, based on individual preferences and giving patterns.
Imagine injecting personal relevance into every point of contact with every donor (whether it’s electronic, in print, or face-to-face). Imagine more donors saying “yes” because you haven’t given them any reason to say “no.”
Customizing the donor-recognition cycle won’t just increase donations - it will also provide lasting return on the dollars you put into fundraising. The cost of churn in your donor list is probably one of your largest fundraising expenses. Given the data and tools available today there is no reason to accept last century’s churn rates. Being donor centric means that you ask according to the donor’s schedule, not yours. Are your donors ready for your next ask?
