If you take nothing else from this post, take this:  there is an awful lot that is known about your donors.

Too often we think we know very little about our donors. Consequently, we believe tailoring messages to who they are is seemingly impossible.   Sadly, this means everyone gets the same thing.

Taxonomy is the science of naming, describing and classifying.  In most fundraising, the donor message taxonomy is something akin to the graphic below.  We put our respective versions of fundraising best practice into action against what’s known; usually only the brand and mission and programs of the organization.

Understanding this more in depth will make your donor message taxonomy fuller, richer and more reflective of humanity.  It will also form the cornerstone of better performance from more tailored, relevant messaging.

Here is the legend for the Donor Taxonomy described in the more detailed graphic that follows:

• Organizational brand: It matters and largely determines what donor Identities are on your file.  In this example, a Military Identity fits the brand.
• Identity:  A version of ourselves.  We each have lots of identities.  Our separate Identities have separate values and goals.  A big part of fundraising messaging is showing that supporting the charity is in keeping with those values.
• Personality. Not all people in a given Identity are the same.  Different personalities require different messaging if we care about showing em’ we know em’.
• Moral Lens:  A lot of charitable giving involves people making a moral judgement.  Is supporting this cause the right thing to do?  Different Personality types tend to use different moral lenses for different charities.
• Emotion:  “Make it emotional.”  This dictum isn’t very useful as a prescriptive.  Emotion is much more refined and shouldn’t be left to guesswork.  There are certain emotions that work better with certain moral frames.

You can follow the paint by numbers color coding to see how damn near every word was selected to match this unique donor messaging profile (the one highlighted in green).  To some fundraisers this might all seem too complicated.   I’d argue it simplifies.  It constrains choices by providing detailed guidance.

It is paint by numbers vs. a blank canvass.  The concern you should always have with the blank canvass approach is producing an abstract masterpiece and half your audience wanted realism in that bowl of fruit.

With this approach, you can paint your way to both versions.

Click to enlarge.

Moving from a one-size fits all donor message world to a highly tailored, dare we say it, donor-centric one requires three steps.

• Know the science behind human decision making.  This taxonomy provides it.
• Know that each, unique combination of messages creates a formula and detailed roadmap for messaging success.
• Know that in each of these unique message formula there is a set of 2nd party (e.g. Facebook data) or 3rd party data to use as proxy.  This means for mere pennies on the dollar you can use other people’s data to score up your house file or acquisition list.

Kevin