In my inbox this morning – the latest from Mr Tom Ahern. His messaging is about the one size fits all of most crappy charity communications and fundraising. I hate to use the word crappy, but it’s true.
His message is perfect as always.
He ended his post with two thoughts:
Thought for today: Do young fundraisers need more training to talk profitably to average (i.e., older) donors?
I started to email him back (but I’ll just send him this post instead) with my thoughts – a few that keep circling around my brain.
First thought: Why do charities waste so much time trying to attract the donors they don’t have rather than loving the ones that they do? Seriously. Why are you doing face to face to find 10,000 new donors when the 20,000 you do have – you talk AT and not TO? Or not at all?
My other thought (and based on zero science) is it safe to say and maybe think that as we age, our propensity and ability to give -changes? Increases? If charities spend more time focusing on the needs of a 40 something, donor or not, and gave them what they need as emotional beings rather than trying to force them to give to a crappy direct mail piece – what a different world this would be. I’m sure Sean Triner or Jonathon Grapsas could shed some real light on this non-scientific belief.
Anyhow, thanks Tom as always for getting my brain ticking.
Love, John!
A few thoughts, given you asked JL..
We should spend more time trying to find more older donors. Why? Because they give more. Backed and grounded in data, which shows that not only are they more likely to stick around but as a consequence give more over their lifetime.
Yes, we should absolutely spend more time trying to look over those we have. As you know JL (as you’ve worked on it with me), the time and effort to retain monthly donors is worth the effort and investment. We’ve proven this with a recent example, where we’ve reduced annual attrition on monthly donors recruited on the street from 45% to around 32%. When you take into account this org recruits around 5k new monthly donors annually, do the math. We’re talking around a $200k return (just from those donors ‘retained’ this year, not taking into account what that means in years 2, 3, 4 and so on..) for a $50k investment. More on this case study here http://101fundraising.org/wp-content/w3tc/pgcache/2012/09/think-face-to-face-think-mobile/_index.html_gzip
But, to your point about doing f2f versus caring for existing donors. They can peacefully co-exist. You should be doing both (like the example above). Can’t just be about the leaky bucket if you’re after long term strategic (net) growth. Much like a donor renewal pool. If we’re just trying to keep those we have, the incremental improvements we can make on the current program will be balanced by the number of donors we lose through natural attrition. It really must be a balance of both: finding them and keeping them.
Good post JL.
Jono
Good thoughts! Isn’t this part of “the grass is always greener” and the idea that there is “scarcity” in the donor pool?