Tom’s piece on Donor Loyalty should remind us all of how little information we really have when it comes to understanding the commitment and loyalty of individual donors.

As a result most fundraisers rely on conjecture and so-called ‘best practices’. We look at brand surveys, surveys of general donor populations and organization-specific donors hoping to gain insight. But applying those ‘insights’ in any targeted and practical way is hit and miss at best.

And reliance on transactional data — think RFM — is equally unhelpful or even misplaced. Recency, frequency and monetary value may give you some inklings, but it sure ain’t predictive.

In short, until now there’s been no inexpensive empirical way to identify those individual donors likely to leave and the reasons for their exit so we can take remedial action. The converse holds true, especially with large groups of donors, to accurately determine who among the masses are the most loyal — and why — and invest more heavily in them

So I was delighted when I read the 101 Fundraising post by Charlie Hulme, the Managing Director of our sister company DonorVoice in the UK. Charlie outlines the use of a new, patented process for identifying donors who are likely to split and the reasons why.

That’s right. For the first time, as far as I know, it’s now possible to quickly identify those donors who will be hitting the exits even before they leave.

Charlie cites a Face-to-Face fundraising case using this new DonorVoice methodology that pinpoints the most likely defectors and the reasons for their defection.

I happen to be in Australia this week for the annual conference of the Fundraising Institute of Australia and for meetings with the Red Cross and Oxfam. This is a market that depends heavily on Regular Giving (sustainers or monthly giving in the US and Canada) and on Face-to-Face techniques.

And like so much of the F-2-F channel elsewhere in the world, Australian fundraisers are faced with dealing with rising costs, increased cancellation rates and a more competitive market.

I would think in a situation like this the ability to determine who specifically among newly recruited Regular Givers is most likely to cancel — and why — should be a remarkably helpful tool.

Whether used for F-2-F or any of a hundred applications and channels, at the heart of this methodology lies the essential importance of gaining actionable information from the individual in order to determine the degree of his/her commitment/loyalty to the organization and why they plan on staying or leaving.

This information is gathered directly from the donor in a feedback process

For the last several years Tom and I have beat the drum over and over on the importance of gathering donor feedback as a fundamental, essential, you’re-simply-irresponsible-if-you-don’t-do-it task for every organization.

We’ve even offered a Free Forever Automated Feedback Widget to make it as easy as possible to get on board with the essential task of really understanding what your donors like and don’t like. And identifying which of the experiences you offer them are terrific and which are horrific.

If you care about retention … if you care about losing new donors … if you care about losing longer-term donors, I really urge you to understand the IMPORTANCE OF DONOR FEEDBACK when it comes to building donor loyalty.

Please share what you’re doing to offer your donors feedback opportunities and what you’re doing with the results.

Roger