Posts tagged as:

donations

Exploding One of the Great Myths About Donors

January 03, 2011 • TrueSense Marketing > Jeff Nickel > TrueSense Marketing > Uncategorized

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Lots of fundraisers become wary of contacting donors too often   They see falling response as proof of so-called donor fatigue. So they scale back, assuming that less communication is somehow better. They’ve bought into the myth that fundraising is an intrusion into donors’ lives.

That’s just plain wrong. Fact is, people who feel passionately about a cause want to hear from nonprofits.

The real issue isn’t the number of contacts but whether the nonprofit has created a meaningful dialogue with donors — the kind of dialogue that offers donors choice and control in how they interact with the charity.

With one group of clients, we’ve been offering donors choice and control for 10 years, asking them how much and how often they want to give and then honoring their preferences.

Testing with more than 100,000 donors engaged in this new way of giving shows the wisdom of this approach. Annual giving rose from $141 per donor to $169 — an increase of 20%. What’s more, donor retention held steady at 92% — which is amazing, considering that retention for multi-year donors is 75%. But even more significant, the number of donors in the program has steadily increased as more donors came to prefer this new way of giving.

But dialoguing with donors doesn’t always mean asking for a gift. For the past four years, TrueSense has run a department of 30 team members dedicated to calling donors and sending handwritten notes to thank them for their generosity. The payback has been incredible. Donors have told us, “No one has ever called before to say thank you!”

Even better, long-term research has shown that personally contacting these middle- and high-level donors increased annual donor value by an amazing 12% — and the only change to the donor marketing plan was adding personal calls and handwritten notes!

Results come from listening to donors and engaging them in what matters to them. The research proves it. Yes, fundraising is driven by metrics and analytics. But in the end it’s really about listening to donors, treating them with respect, and honoring their generosity. When you do that, the numbers take care of themselves.

With more than 30 years of experience in the nonprofit sector, Jeff Nickel, Vice President, National Accounts, TrueSense Marketing, is a passionate advocate for fundraising and the causes it makes possible. He combines a rigorous and studied approach to fundraising with the heart-to-heart emotional connection that informs the very best donor marketing and communication. TrueSense Marketing is an award-winning, full-service direct-response agency with idea centers in Pittsburgh, Pasadena, and Seattle. TrueSense provides exclusive donor-preference strategies, personal donor communications, convincing creative, multichannel integration, analysis and growth planning, database management, and cost-saving end-to-end production — all in support of its innovative donor-focused philosophy of direct response fundraising.

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Direct Response: The 90 Day Plan

October 20, 2010 • Phil Cooke

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I’ve had numerous conversations with direct marketer and donor development expert Mary Hutchison about what happens right after a person sends your church, ministry, or non-profit organization their first donation. Like most things in life, first steps matter. Mary responded with what she calls “The First 90 Days” – it’s an interesting look at how important your follow up really is. If you have a humanitarian or non-profit organization, pass this around to your team and discuss. Here’s Mary’s thoughts:

If you need your audience to help underwrite your organization or project, the first 90 days from when a first-time donor gives a gift will determine if they will stay and support you, or move on to the next cause.

We have seen many donor files where 70% or more of the income is coming from these first timers. In one organization, the number was a staggering 97%!

The end result is the entire burden is on the program – the TV “talent” and the producers - to work harder and harder and bring in new donors. But they still never grow because people are leaving at a faster pace than they can be replaced. It is discouraging, demoralizing, and totally preventable.

Here is what you need to do:

It is a fact across donor files that unless a person gives a second gift within 90 days of the first one, there is less than a 10% chance they ever will. You need to call your IT guy and ask for a report that shows what percent of donors are actually making a second gift in those first 90 days. Do not accept a middle manager’s guess. See the black and white numbers and know what you are dealing with.

If you find you are converting about 20%, consider yourself about average for organizations who never really looked at this window. Now you can start to fix it.

Send a gift in yourself under a different name. Document every touch point for 90 days.

With this information, look for things that can prevent that second gift:

Were you thanked within two weeks? Was the letter warm and affirming? Did it make it easy for a donor to give again?

Was the second communication close in call to action to what you responded to in the first place (i.e. If you gave to missions, was it a missions appeal vs. if you gave to get a product?)

If you did order a product, did it come within two weeks. (The statement “allow 6 – 8 weeks for shipping and handling does not fly in this Amazon/Ebay world).

The ministries that are seeing better than a 30% conversion rate in that first 90 days have invested in a well tooled strategy that goes out like clock work, building the relationship, meeting the donor’s needs and desires. The result:

Moving from a 20% to a 30% conversion rate will do this to your bottom line; for every 1000 new donors that you are bringing on at $100:

–There is an increase in Year One in Gross Income of $19,500
–There is an increase in Year Two in Gross Income of $13,000

And that is just the beginning of the pay-off.

Let me challenge you today to look and see what percent of new donors you are converting in the first 90 days.

The guys on TV and producing it work way too hard to make the phone ring and the website ding. So don’t lose them on the back-end…

Be ready with the right 90 Day Plan.

As a producer and media strategist, Phil Cooke leads a team that advises many of the largest and most effective non-profit and faith-based social media organizations in the world. Phil enjoys educating others with the power of niche media and speaking nationally and internationally at workshops, seminars, and conferences.

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“They Are All Dying…And We’ll Be Next.”

August 18, 2010 • DPC&S Inc. > Doug Preudhomme

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It was thirty years ago that I first heard the rumor:

“Our donors, they are all dying. Soon there will be none left and we’ll be out of business.”

Panic soon spread. Plans were outlined, budgets allocated…The mandate came down:

            “We HAVE to attract younger people.”

But it turned out to be VERY tough to motivate younger people to give.  For some reason, they seemed to have other priorities:  finding mates, buying homes, raising kids, buying the fastest car… (Not necessarily in that order.)

It turned out the rumors were right:  The prototypical donor of the day, “Ruby” as I’ve come to name her, DID die…

But something curious happened…We found out that Ruby had a daughter, and once her kids were out of the house, something even more curious happened, Ruby’s daughter morphed into Ruby! 

Before our very eyes, the next generation of donors was born!

We’ve all noticed it with varying degrees of horror: You and I ARE morphing into our parents.  We now go to antique shops.  Yes, we enjoy sushi – but sometimes still return to mac and cheese.  WE understand technology.  WE demand more accountability than did our parents.  WE buy stuff on the web.  AND now we find we have the inclination (and the money) to support our favorite charities.

So if you are to communicate with the new generation of donor you are going to have to adjust but PLEASE don’t panic. We haven’t yet seen the last donor!

Yes, we were right to look for new donors.  Any organization that does not have an effective new name acquisition strategy in place is doomed to disappear!  BUT don’t panic:  There are still people who have needs and there are still other generous people who are prepared to give to help meet those needs.  

But stop the press! 

Yesterday, I heard a rumor that this generation of donors is dying…

Is this “déjà vu” or what?

Doug Preudhomme is President of DPC&S Inc. – a donor development company based in Phoenix, Arizona.

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