In talking about donor identities,  people will often say they’ve tried personas and they haven’t worked like they thought they would.  Therefore, they aren’t going to invest more in seeking donor identities.

HOWEVER…just as with donor commitment and engagement that I covered yesterday, donor identities and personas are fundamentally different.  Personas are usually created from cluster analysis of demographic and transactional factors with psychological and attitudinal constructs mapped on top.

So, as a result, you may end up with:

“Anna and Ben are 32-year-old Millennials who are drawn to the advocacy portion of your mission. They live in a growing urban area (Seattle? Portland? Nashville? Austin?) and volunteer locally.  They try to shop at local stores and are more likely to buy from companies that are socially responsible.  When they give, they want to see a concrete impact from their gift.  They want their giving to be easy, likely online, and their nonprofit activities to be fun.”

The nice part of this is that you get a picture of Anna and Ben (and Ethel and James and the other eight personas you were given).  They help you remember that you are not the donor and help you put yourself in another person’s shoes.

For those readers who’ve worked with personas this profile probably sounds a bit familiar.  If that’s the case, know that I generated this by taking one demographic variable (young) and extrapolating things that Millennials are more likely to do as shown in survey data and some from just a pure stereotype.

In other words, I completely made up this persona in two minutes while sitting on a park bench in Washington DC waiting for a meeting.  If you have a persona that looks like this, the person who gave it to you made it up too.  They may or may not have been sitting on a park bench while doing so. And they probably took three minutes; I write fast.

And that’s the downside of personas.  You are given a name and a cluster, but the data is all demographic and transactional. Those can tell you “what” and a bit about “who”.  They can’t tell you why.

That’s where donor identities come in.  The major differences between this and personas are:

Identity is based on first-party data (what the donor tells you). Personas are based on second- or third-party data.  Because of this, identity is more certain.  Ninety-nine percent of the people who say they are interested in advocacy are interested in advocacy (I’m assuming 1% user error).  However, if you get someone who looks demographically like an Anna above, the persona will tell you she is more likely to be interested in advocacy.  But that could mean if 20% of your file is interested in advocacy, she has a 25% chance of being interested.  “More likely” doesn’t mean “is” like a persona would have you believe.

Identity is tied to a reason they give to you.  Personas describe a person absent their reason for giving.  If you work for a disease charity, a persona will tell you many things, but it won’t disclose the most important thing – whether the donor has the disease or cares about someone who does.  That’s the single greatest predictor of giving – that’s donor identity.  And without it, the persona doesn’t hep you address this person.

Likewise, a persona won’t tell:

• A hospital about whether someone was a patient
• A museum about whether the person had visited
• An animal charity about whether they had adopted a shelter pet or whether they prefer cats or dogs
• A relief organization whether the person prefers to give internationally or domestically

And on and on. Because personas are built from external data, they can only guess at the “why”.  That means:

Identity allows for specific messaging.  Personas don’t.  Take another look at the persona above.  What would you do differently for this person?  Perhaps make sure they get advocacy alerts (which you could determine more accurately by asking).  Perhaps get their email address and correspond with them online (which you can determine more accurately by asking).  Perhaps show them the impact of their gift (which you should do anyway).

Whereas when you have different identities and reasons for giving, you soon wonder what you can get away with not customizing, because the differences are so stark.  Do I always have to have different messaging for those who suffer from a disease and those who don’t?  No, there are likely some things in common (usually striving for a cure). Everything else, though, is specific to the type of person receiving it.

Put more simply, the most common objection to personas is they offer little or no guidance in changing messaging.  The most common objection to identities is having too much messaging to change.  The latter is useful if have time or resources to devote to it.  The former isn’t.

Nick