Jeff Brooks recently posted his 5^th Law of Fundraising, which is “The more effective the fundraising campaign, the more complaints it will generate.”

If this dictum were the law of gravity, I would have floated away.  Some of my most effective campaigns have come in with donor notes that complimented the communication – a rarity.  And some of my least effective campaigns have came with notes that included the scatological, the blasphemous, and the anatomically implausible.

I would agree with Jeff that having effective fundraising that also generates complaints is possible, but it’s certainly not required and may not be desirable.

More interesting, however, was a posited corollary from Jeff: “The length and passion of a donor complaint message is inversely proportional to the financial value of that donor.” (full post is here)

This brings up an interesting point.  Some donors are worth more than others.  Therefore, some donor comments are worth more than others.

Some of our processes take this into account intuitively.  If a $10 donor wants to restrict her donation, it’s unlikely.  If a $10 million donor wants to restrict her donation, we’ll do it and name the building after her.

But it’s not a question we often ask.  That’s why I was surprised – even delighted – when a client asked this next-level question.  They were getting complaints about the images on their donation pages.  They asked “are these our committed donors who are saying this or is it just Joe off the street?”

It turned out that people who made that complaint were above average in their commitment to the organization.  And the organization took the complaint seriously, resulting in a more effective and less complaint-generating donation page.  (Another counterexample to Jeff’s  5^th Law!)

Imagine the alternative: what if they were getting complaints about an image from people who were never going to donate, but that image helped their most committed supporters?  In that case, you would likely want to keep the effective donation page despite the rumblings from the unwashed masses.

This doesn’t have to exist as a one-off process.  You can build systems around this.  Consider four different journeys for four different types of newly acquired donors:

1. High commitment, high satisfaction: This is what you love to have. Keep them and upgrade them. Listen to their feedback to keep them from getting dissatisfied.
2. Low commitment, low satisfaction: Congrats on getting these folks to give a first gift, I guess? They don’t particularly like you or the experience they had with you. These people are unlikely to be good long-term donors.
3. Low commitment, high satisfaction: They liked your acquisition method, but don’t know that much about you. These are the “persuadables,” ready to hear your messaging and be convinced.
4. High commitment, low satisfaction: Red alert! These are people who love you, but didn’t have a great experience. Fix these immediately; you can get back hundreds of dollars of lifetime value for the price of a phone call.

Sound great, you say.  I’m ready to start listening to my good donors and stop listening to my bad ones.  But how?

This requires three things:

• Even if you think your better campaigns will bring in more complaints than your bad ones, you still need to hear as much as people will tell you.  That means actively asking for feedback at every possible point.
• Asking about commitment and satisfaction. There’s more than just these – a full list can be found here – but these two will allow you to do the segmentation described above.
• Fix your processes. This means automating your responses (the ones that can be automated), getting your vendors in line, and doing the heavy lifting of changing your processes as recommended by your best and most committed donors.

I’m not ready to elevate these recommendations to the level of a law yet, but I’d still wager this will more than  pay for itself with your resultant retention increase.

Nick