Why do donors give?  Seems like a question worth knowing the answer to if you are in the business of trying to affect that giving behavior.

One of the main reasons they give has nothing to do with your specific charitable brand but rather, their using your charitable brand to deliver on or otherwise reinforce their innate sense of self.  Said another way, this is what they “bring to the party” having nothing to do with your marketing or fundraising efforts per se.

Seem soft and fuzzy?

Or maybe you think you are already doing this by using “you” pronouns instead of 2^nd person “we” or because you work hard to make the donor the hero and show how their gift is having an impact?   While all marginally on target and marginally useful, this is, at best, pretty weak tea and lowest common denominator type activity.

Or maybe you’ve done a lovely attitudinal segmentation and identified six (or 4 or 5…) segments who have very different profiles and maybe even differences in what might pass for “motivation” to give.

And maybe you have even managed to link this segmentation to your database and discovered that low and behold these segments seem to behave differently when you look in the rearview mirror.

Don’t mistake effort, time and complexity for progress. We’ve seen many of these efforts that mistake correlation for causation (i.e. seeing some differences in behavior by segments) because they start from a flawed, attitudinal segmentation that has no theoretical basis and as a result, is random.

Random never works except randomly…

But, let’s be generous and assume you do have some groups on your file that differ based on their motivation or reason to give.  Now what?  What is the experience you are going to serve up for these segments?  Is it changing a few marketing messages to be more in concert with their motivation for giving?  What else?

Still pushing out fundraising ask after fundraising ask in as many channels as possible?  The end result is likely still lousy retention because even if you got the identity/motivation right, you missed on translating that starting point into an ending point of a very different donor experience.

What is the alternative?  Let’s start with an intuitive and illustrative definition of ‘identity’.

People have an identity for each distinct network (social, professional) in which they ‘participate’.  A person has multiple identities and can consider themselves a parent, a Cowboys fan, an American, a Southwest Airlines employee, a golfer and a person with Type 1 Diabetes.

We all have multiple identities but they are only relevant in certain contexts.  A person’s sports fandom is totally irrelevant to their charitable giving.  Make no mistake however, the identity that is relevant is a major, causal driver of behavior (and attitudes).  And knowing which identity they are bringing to the party when interacting with your charity should dictate a lot more than copy changes that attempt to sing the right notes.

By way of specific example, consider health charities and those donors who are also current or potential beneficiaries of the charity.  In short, they either have the disease/ailment/handicap your charity is fighting or are a care-giver for someone who does.

This is the relevant identity. It is, without exception, the number one reason they support you.  Seems so obvious doesn’t it?  But here comes the provocative part – there isn’t a single health charity we know of (they may exist but we’ve yet to come across them in our work in the US or UK) that has a meaningfully different experience for those with a direct connection versus indirect.

But make no mistake, the needs and preferences of these “direct connection” supporters are very different from the indirect connection folks.  And yet, the marketing and fundraising communications and touchpoints look more identical than not.

What is required to successfully match the identity and associated needs and preferences is simultaneously;

• Knowable
• No more difficult to deliver on and yet,
• Requiring such a mental sea change in approach that most will dismiss it out of hand.

The sea change to successfully raise money from those with a direct connection to a health charity can be boiled down to two, complementary statements:

• The number one reason they donate is because of the services side of the business.
• The number one way to raise more money is…here comes the mindset shift…for the fundraising/marketing team to deliver services (i.e. information, access, promotion of service outlets).

But we are marketing/fundraising, we don’t do services?  No, you don’t.  But you do attempt to deliver relevant information designed to elicit giving behavior.  Generic appeals attempting to invoke emotion and inspire action and support are not winning the day.

What these people need to match their identity is significant, consistent and without exception, recognition of who they are. This results in very different copy to be sure.  But, as importantly, it requires pulling the content not from the Fundraising 101 best practices handbook but instead, the services side of the business.

In short, market the informational hotline, not the sad story of a victim who they can help.  Read the latter version (just review any health charity appeal for Exhibit A) from the perspective of someone who actually has a direct connection and it instantly seems insensitive, even offensive.

Meet their needs.  They will meet yours.  In some ways it is that simple and tough all at the same time.

Identity matters.  Don’t make the mistake of thinking some random group of attitudinal clusters is identity that translates into donor motivation, needs and preferences.  And even if you have that part nailed, the next question of how you treat these folks and what you do – beyond copy tweaks – is the difference between delivering a great donor experience and a crappy one.