If you aren’t going to lose your job or your sleep over flat performance or no growth, then you should simply continue with the simple and convenient status quo.

However, please understand there are other nonprofits that are going beyond the conventional, making changes in mindsets and methods and boosting results and growth. And they will eat your lunch.

In Part 3, we covered two important factors that are worth paying attention to and acting on — ‘Preference’ and ‘Intent’.

The ‘intent’ to keep giving. The ‘preference’ for more — or less — stuff (i.e., communications from the donor’s charity).

First, preference.

In response to our earlier post — Are You Abusing Your Donors? — we heard from David Krear of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare (The Committee) on his experience with ‘preference’.

The Committee coded those folks who requested less mail and sent them half as many appeals as those who stated no preference. The result? Donors who requested — and received — half as many contacts gave more than other groups who did not state a preference.

And consider this example …

A large UK charity, with two groups identical in every way, except one group was given a ‘do not contact’ flag. The charity found that the Lifetime Value (LTV) of the ‘do not contact’ group was twice that of the group that got all the stuff.

[We’d would appreciate hearing from other Agitator readers brave enough to have conducted similar tests.]

Then, add intent.

What would happen if we went beyond simply coding the donors in a ‘contact/less contact/no contact’ manner and developed a customized set of communications based on donors’ stated preference and intent?

For example, what if our communications not only took into account donors’ preferences, but also reminded them of their ‘intent’?

In his white paper (download here), our DonorVoice colleague Kevin Schulman cites a fascinating example. One client built a telemarking list containing nothing but folks who have indicated they will donate 1 time per year. When telephoned that one time per year, the conversion rate on this list of donors posted a whopping 83%.

Why so high? Because the main message is a reminder of the donor’s stated intent to give, and the phone call is their opportunity to do exactly what they intended.

I’ve written over and over again that ‘Consistency’ and ‘Reliability’ are the essential ingredients in building ‘Trust’ — the key pillar of all human relationships. All of us — donors included — look for consistency. So when a charity reminds donors of their preferences and intent it’s reinforcing trust with the fundamental element of consistency.

Why This Series and What Are the Alternatives?

My point in preparing this series is to spark discussion and further our collective study toward creating a more comprehensive theory on how to raise more money. Poking holes in the ‘ask more, make more’ truism and improving upon it helps move us along that road.

My feeling is that working toward a new theory and eventually a better formula is indeed worth the effort.

Sure, dealing with concepts like ‘feedback’ and ‘preference’ and ‘intent’ involve more work and thought. But given the hemorrhaging of donors and lousy growth in the sector, what are the alternatives?

In the course of wrapping this up I received a message from Melissa Wyers, a colleague from long-ago, who’s now with Breakthrough Strategies. She noted that the series would be incomplete if it didn’t deal with this key question: “What else do you do for donors besides send appeals? Surely, this also impacts what you net.”

Realistically, what other alternatives exist and how well do they work?

In addition to the ‘do nothing’ default, there are two elusive buzzwords that seem to encompass the other alternatives – ‘Engagement’ and ‘Donor-Centricity’.

Engagement. As best I can tell from examples I’ve seen, most ‘donor engagement’ boils down to sending more additional stuff than just appeals, but making sure it doesn’t ask for money. Clearly an admission that asking for money isn’t very engaging.

I asked the folks at our sister company DonorVoice, who’ve studied this issue with dozens of charities, and here is their answer:

“We know many charities in the US and the UK who have worked off this [engagement] premise and definition as the way to tackle their no-growth and high attrition realities. This results in even more stuff being sent. That stuff has cost and no off-setting revenue. In every instance we are aware of it hasn’t worked. In some cases it actually made the problem slightly worse.” [Emphasis mine ]

If sending donors more ‘stuff’, however labeled and however well-intentioned, isn’t the answer, what is?

How about becoming Donor-Centric?

Grandma Craver particularly despised a local minister and I’ll never forget her constant refrain each time his name came up. “Roger, just remember that everyone who talks about heaven ain’t goin’ there.”

Well everyone who talks about being donor-centric doesn’t really practice it. Sure, we can reflect it in our copy with YOU pronouns and a message lens that keeps the donor in focus, front and center. And we can get notes of genuine thanks and gratitude out in a timely manner. And indeed we should.

But that’s simply not enough.

We need to listen to the voice of the donor, and act on it … seek out and honor their preferences … and remind them of their expressed intent.

Only by tackling this difficult task and analyzing the data we gather from them with a willingness to challenge old truisms can we call ourselves ‘donor-centric’.

If we do, I firmly believe we can raise more and ask less.

Roger

P.S. My thanks to Kevin Schulman and the folks at DonorVoice who went beyond the call to provide some grist and grenades for this series … to those who entered Comments on the posts … those readers who shared their data … or emailed and called me privately to thank or berate … and to Tom who gave up his Agitator microphone the extra days required to run this series.