Donor-Centric or Faux Donor-Centric? Check the Plumbing.
When it comes to donor-centricity/obsession/love/devotion/passion I fear many fundraisers talk a good game while ignoring the fundamental and routine practices that should exist in any organization that truly cares about its donors.
Tom’s and my mentor John Gardner, in his book Excellence defined the issue perfectly:
“An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.”
Here at The Agitator we’re far from blameless when it comes to ignoring or undervaluing the plumbing in the house of donor care. We “exalt” the “philosophers” by reviewing books on how best to communicate with donors…we attempt to cover the latest research on donor motivation…we deal with important issues like donor identity and preference.
Every once in a while we need to step back from the high falutin (the philosophy) and deal with basics (the plumbing).
Yesterday I summarized the characteristics of a donor-obsessed organization – humility, agility, simplicity—noting that many of the very organizations that call themselves “donor-centric” focus mainly on the needs, egos and whims of their top executives while paying little more than lip service to importance of the donor.
Here’s a checklist that I hope will help you determine whether your organization is Donor-Centric or Faux Donor-Centric.
- Do staff and consultant performance reviews include contributions made to advancing donor satisfaction, retention and responsiveness?
- Are donor service personnel properly trained, recognized and compensated within the organization?
- Do donor-facing personnel participate in discussions around creating donor experiences, appropriate ways to meet donors’ concerns, and regularly conducting an organization-wide review of donor concerns and compliments?
- Are all departments aware of and focused on the same donor retention, commitment and satisfaction goals?
- Do the board and CEO routinely participate in reviews of donor retention and commitment rates…in reviews of donor complaints, suggestions and feedback?
- Does leadership place more emphasis and importance on current donors than potential donors?
- Do the organization have methods for seeking donor feedback, responding quickly to donor concerns and sharing these concerns across departments and with leadership?
- Is the organization willing to change or adapt processes to meet donor concerns based on feedback?
- Does the organization have a true focus on donor needs and a process for meeting those needs?
- Does the organization follow basic practices to maintain and update donor addresses and remove deceased donors’ names and addresses?
- A leadership and management culture willing to have its own assumptions challenged and tested through input and feedback from donors?
- Investing more in making functions work more simply and easily for the donor as opposed to working for the convenience of the organization?
- Providing easy-to-find contact information and feedback channels that are responsive and easy to use by the donor?
What would you add to this checklist?
Roger
12 responses to “Donor-Centric or Faux Donor-Centric? Check the Plumbing.”
Behavioral Science Q & A
Integrating an individual giving appeal with other communications from a charity can have both positive and negative effects, and the outcome largely depends on how it’s executed. Advantages of Integration Brand Consistency: Maintaining a consistent appearance and messaging across all communications can reinforce the org’s brand identity and strengthen brand recognition and trust among your […]
Read Full Answer
I’m not aware of any in-market tests specifically comparing recurring vs. gift frequency language. I suspect the answer might not be the same with all gift frequencies, nor with all people. It sounds like a great opportunity for you to test and find out what works for your audience. Based on the literature, here’s a couple […]
Read Full Answer
Based on what we know from existing data, those renewal notices can actually be pretty effective in getting people to donate. They tap into our psychology – creating a sense of urgency, reminding us of past support, and using personalization to make the message hit home. They’re playing on our natural tendencies to feel obligated […]
Read Full Answer
Interesting question. I had a quick look at the testing done on this topic. On the positive side, in all cases, over half of donors decide to cover the fee. In some cases, it goes as high as 65%. Not a negligible percentage at all. Here’s another test from iRaiser showing consistent results (see point […]
Read Full Answer
There’s just one thing to consider when designing a supporter journey: the supporter. More specifically, you need to take into account: Who the supporter is i.e. their identity, which is the reason they support this cause, and their personality, which describes the way they “see” and process the world. These will determine the kind of […]
Read Full Answer
I’m not an expert in this but a quick search surfaced this article on the effect of tax reforms on 2019’s charitable giving. The researchers didn’t find a reduction. Actually, they observed an “increase in charitable contributions in 2019, even with the lower tax rates and the dramatically smaller number of taxpayers who itemize their […]
Read Full Answer
Great criteria. I’d love to see examples of your favorite donor centric websites that show a culture of philanthropy.
Ah John Gardner. I love his leadership book. And his monograph for the Independent Sector — BUILDING COMMUNITY — is one of the best things ever. And he resigned from fed government due to Viet Nam War as I recall. Nam was my war.
Okay. Back to your point, Roger. Faux donor centrism. YES YES. Perhaps not as bad as Alternative Facts. But full of such thinking as: “Yes yes, donor centricity is so important. But damn… I just don’t have time today.” “Of course, #donorlove. But the budget just isn’t big enough to do it as well as we deeply believe is the right thing to do.” “Oh really. Just some surface actions because donors don’t really care.”
And on and on. Oh dear. Am I crabby today? No. I’m not. Don’t be silly.
Well, Simone, you sure captured in a nutshell the mountain of excuses put forward to avoid the pedestrian, but essential work involved in getting to the peak of Mt. Donor Centrism.
And, Chuck, rather than choose one website over another, let me recommend an Agitator post on a terrific process for creating a donor and user-centered website –“How to Make Your Website a Fundraising Winner” ( http://www.theagitator.net/media-usage/how-to-make-your-website-a-fundraising-winner/ )
Thank you both for your comments.
Fabulous, Roger! This looks like “fundraising utopia” – does this true culture of philanthropy even exist anywhere?
Where do we find such an organization with enlightened leadership, thoughtful fundraising staffers, and honored donor service staffers?
Thank you, Roger. (And Ken Burnett, Adrian Sargeant, Jen Shang, Penny Burk, Simone J., Agents of Good, Sean Triner, Lisa Sargent, Denisa Casement, Beth-Ann Locke, Shanon Doolittle, Marc Pitman, Damian O’Broin, John Haydon, Pam Grow, Bloomerang, Claire Axelrad, Jeff Brooks … and I’ll stop there because I could go on and on and I’d still leave important people out whom I know and admire. There are lots of raised pitchforks and torches in this unruly mob of industry-changers.)
Thanks to you and these others, I now see that “donor-centricity” is a journey of countless steps, starting with the easy-enough (exchanging your corporate WE for a far more personal YOU) and moving into sophisticated commitment-measuring methods like DonorVoice’s … and who knows what’s to come, once we have chips embedded in our brains. (Zombie Donor Apocalypse?)
The (still lurching, but getting there) embrace of donor-centricity is, in my keyhole view, a sign that fundraising, as a “professional” pursuit, is coming of age. One researcher famously said, “The nonprofit world is 50 years behind the commercial world in its understanding and treatment of customers.” And who are fundraising’s ‘customers’? Why, donors, of course. But the gap is closing … thanks in part to a deeper and deeper understanding of the true scope of donor-centricity … thanks in part to The Agitator’s drum-beating.
To Chuck S.’s request for “great” donor-centered sites, well…. I evaluate nonprofit websites almost daily, looking for donor-centricity among other things.
But moving from the commercial world to the nonprofit world is like stepping through the looking glass. In the commercial world, I’m constantly delighted by my experiences. “They cared!” In the nonprofit world, I’m usually dismayed by my experiences. “Boring. And emotionally bare.” So, as they say, plenty of opportunity.
I have a question regarding this point:
“Investing more in making functions work more simply and easily for the donor as opposed to working for the convenience of the organization?”
I would say an issue with the organization where I recently started working is that putting the donors’ needs first was kind of a crutch for avoiding asking people for money directly – treating the donor obsequiously in the hopes that they would like us enough to start making a monetary gift. Imagine: “Sure, we’ll take your donation of 19-year-old used golf clubs and meet you on Sunday morning at 5:30am to give you a six hour tour, and we won’t ask you for your email address but here’s our card so please remember us in your prayers.”
It was an effective but kind of misguided way to secure donors. I feel like “putting donors first” became “letting donors walk all over us”, and now I’m in a position where I have to walk back some of our donors’ expectations while still keeping the focus on them, and I wondered if anyone has advice/feedback/commiseration on this point?
Seth G. You make a good point. If done correctly, I would say the most donor-centric thing a fundraiser can do is ask a donor for a gift. Why? Because you are allowing the donor to change the world. You can’t get more donor-centric than that.
Now, all the good stuff that Roger wrote about in his blog is absolutely essential and on point…but you are right….you can do all that great stuff and still not ask a donor for a gift and just expect that it will just happen. But we know that if you don’t ask, you don’t get. Donors want to give, but they want to be inspired to give.
By not asking you are ALLOWING donors to walk all over you. You’re training them to do it. Ask boldly.
Becoming a truly donor-centered organization is such a process. One that requires, in my mind, constant vigilance. What kind of systems do you have in place to ensure that everyone is on board – that everyone “gets” it?
I would just add that by not asking people to give you’re short-changing them. It’s not so much that you’re allowing them to walk all over you, but that you’re giving them the wrong idea of what philanthropy is all about. It’s about love, not money. Money follows naturally once the love is established.
But you’ve got to call a spade a spade. Love can’t remain unspoken. You have to say “I love this organization. I love you. You love what we do. Let’s get together!”
This type of conversation is not to be feared; rather, it’s to be embraced. Through philanthropy (“love of humankind”) people can attain their highest level of meaning. Philanthropy gives people purpose. And purpose gives people joy. Philanthropy facilitators are, as my teacher Hank Rosso said, the fundraisers who “teach the gentle joy of giving.”
Thanks for the great article (and for the shout out Tom A.) 😉
Well, Cindy, I have strong credentials as a crotchety old man. In general, I agree with your concern for “best possible use of my gift. But I have an equally great concern for how I am treated as a donor. If I am treated poorly or “merely indifferently, then I assume (safely I think) other donors are treated that way too. And if that is the case, then the organization is losing donors unnecessarily and has squandered the resources spent on attracting those donors. And that is most certainly NOT, the “best possible use of my gift.
While I agree with the first point of:
‘Do staff and consultant performance reviews include contributions made to advancing donor satisfaction, retention and responsiveness?’ surely a truly donor-centric approach would be to ask donors and supporters give feedback about staff and consultants as part of their performance reviews. I worked for a large NGO and as part of my annual appraisal I’d get 360 feedback from my line manager, line report, colleagues (in my team and across the org) and always from supporters (one randomly selected, and another I’d recommended because of working with closely).
As Tom says above, the Corporate sector is so far ahead on this. I had dinner last week, and was asked to fill in an anonymous feedback form about the quality of my service, and after calling my gas supplier customer support line, I received an SMS survey on my experience making a complaint.
How much more valuable would that feedback be about a fundraiser who has supported someone through an activity over many months, or answered their query about their donation? We collect donor feedback when we’re writing an evaluation on reviewing a product but the sector as a whole has failed to embed donor voice in its ongoing work or its performance management.
Excellent point, Isabelle. One of the things we talk about is that you can tell the quality of a telemarketing or face-to-face firm by how they embrace donor feedback. If they welcome it, they are the type of partner that is dedicated to donor experience. If they don’t, it’s a red flag.