‘Mid-level giving’ is an essential element in any fundraising program.

Sadly, in practice it’s one of those buzzwords lots of fundraisers talk about, few understand and even fewer know how or where to begin.

This is why a new study, The Missing: Neglecting Middle Donors Is Costing You Millions, released Sunday at the AFP is both welcome and long overdue. You can download the e-book free of charge by clicking here.

The work of Mark Rovner and Alia McKee, the principals at Sea Change Strategies, reflects a 12 month probe into the current state of mid-level giving. It surveys dozens of fundraisers, reviews the literature (“scant”) in the field and sets forth a “best practices rule book” with case examples.

What this study reveals is both jarring and illuminating.

• Despite the fact that fundraisers universally agree that mid-level donors are exceptionally valuable, most organizations lack the discipline and investment “to make the most of this immense opportunity”.

• There really is no best practices rulebook. Practices vary wildly from organization to organization.

• Most respondents to the Sea Change study believe that neglect of middle donors is helping fuel the retention crisis.

Mark and Alia decided to undertake this latest study as far back as 2007 while researching their classic benchmark study of online giving, The Wired Wealthy, commissioned by Convio/Blackbaud.

Among the groups participating in that study, donors at the $1,000 to $10,000 levels (annual giving via all channels) represented roughly one percent of the donor population, but were giving more than a third of the dollars.

In the years since 2007 they’ve found that, “like middle children, middle donors are prone to neglect. At organization after organization, they appear lost in an institutional chasm between two distinct fundraising cultures — major gifts and direct marketing.”

The organizational silo is indeed a huge problem when it comes to mid-level giving. When Mark and Alia interviewed me for their study, I pointed out that “the most productive part of the donor base lies in a desert, a distressing “No Man’s Land of Neglect”.

“Direct response focuses on watering the alfalfa. Major gifts focuses on buying the nursery. Meanwhile, the orchard (mid-level givers) lies in drought.”

As the study points out, so much of the success of a mid-level giving program depends on the support of an organization’s top leadership. Not an easy task, since it’s “not as intuitive as new donor acquisition”… nor “as exciting as a million dollar gift prospect”.

For this reason I urge you to download the free Missing Middle e-book and give it to your CEO and CFO.

Then take a look at the key sections of the report:

• The 8 Habits of Highly Effective Mid-Level Donor Programs

• Profiles of Success featuring case histories from the Human Rights Campaign

• A 30 Day Plan for Jump Starting Your Mid-Level Program

• A Sampling of Mid-Level Donor Programs

When it comes to building a base of committed donors and a sustainable, growing stream of long-term income, a well thought-out and well run mid-level donor program is the best investment an organization can make.

An Agitator raise for Mark and Alia.

What are you doing about mid-level donor programs?

Roger