Donor experience is not some fad nor is it a replacement buzzword for stewardship.  The donor experience is occurring in your organization every day.  It will continue every day forth and it has a massive impact on the donor’s decision to stay or go.  Your organization can elect to get a handle on it or not.

The reason to do so is clear and perhaps ironically, captured by the Applebee’s VP of learning and development who says, “We asked what can we do that will set us apart from the scrum, besides discounting and coupons.  Food is easy to copy, a building is easy to copy, but it’s not easy to copy our people.”

Donor experience is a way to differentiate your organization and deliver a repeatable, positive experience that results in stronger relationships and retained donors.  This is about money.  It is also about your brand and adding an element to it that is very hard to copy; think Nordstrom’s, their brand is inextricably linked to their customer service return policy.

To get this right however, you better understand your donors.  From that understanding you identify segments with different preferences and needs.

But how is any of this new?  Both donor experience and segmentation get talked about a lot.  Unfortunately, donor experience tends to be, if addressed at all, reduced down to less mail, more mail or maybe email only.  Yes, many groups maintain affinity codes but it rarely gets used in any way, much less to dictate treatment.  And donor segmentation is typically nothing more than who to mail and how much to ask for.  That is it.

Let’s return to the world of quick-service dining to really understand what it means to segment and act on it with customized experience to those segments.  Any non-profit who even comes close to Denny’s or T.G.I. Friday’s will be far ahead of the game on delivering long-term value to the file.

This from Bob Evans (courtesy of a Wall Street Journal article you can find here)

“We changed ‘suggestive selling’ to ‘situational selling,’ ” says Rene Zimmerman, senior director of training and development for Bob Evans Farms Inc., a family-style restaurant and food maker. Instead of offering every breakfast guest one additional item, say biscuits and gravy, waiters are taught to adjust their offer depending upon the guest. For a diner who places a lighter order, like a bagel and fruit, the waiter might suggest a cup of coffee or tea.

Does your non-profit have the equivalent of a “lighter order” triggered by signals from the donor indicating such a preference?

Another example from the world of quick dining…

Based on customer research the industry knows that not promptly settling the check is the number two killer on customer satisfaction behind only screwing up the food.

However, how the check is brought to the table depends partly on situational factors (i.e. in hurry or not) and segment preference.  Some simply feel rushed if a check is placed on the table before they ask and some want it without having to ask.  Admittedly, identifying these segments and preferences in the moment is more art than science, requiring some reading of the table by the wait staff.  However, many restaurants are training staff to do this reading of the tables in a process based way – meaning it can be trained and repeatable.  Applebee’s for one is also innovating with new check holders on the tables that say, ‘I’m ready to go!’ The new books are in about half of its 2,000 U.S. locations and customers are using them, says Wayne Vandewater of Applebee’s.

Does your nonprofit understand donor preference in this way – those who can feel pressed and hassled by your organization and those who are the” check at the meal” equivalent of not wanting to ask?  These things matter. They add up.  And they occur every day, whether you measure and manage it or not.  The experiences accrue to the positive or negative of the donor relationship and they will dictate, more than anything else, whether they stay or go.

The time is now to, believe it or not, be more like Applebee’s.