A common and dangerous misperception of F2F is that it’s seen as a powerful acquisition channel for securing monthly donors.   As a result, most current F2F programs—just like their direct mail forebears– focus on acquisition volume while ignoring any serious attention to retention.

And, just as in the case of direct mail, F2F will face the same fate — rising costs, declining value, dashed expectations.  Look no further than other countries like Australia, Canada or the UK where F2F has been the predominant method of acquisition.  Those markets provide a crystal ball into the future.

UNLESS…we take steps early in this “gold rush” to avoid the sins of the past.  This means challenging and improving current acquisition practices and taking steps to ensure better retention rates and improved long-term donor value.

The Current Problem/Challenge.

In the U.S. it costs anywhere from $240 to $340 depending mostly on ask amount/average monthly gift (as the price is largely set by multiplying ask by 12ish) and secondarily, vendor particulars. Assuming this new donor faithfully — month-after-month — pays her pledge, it will take the organization around 12 -14 months to recoup the initial investment before any return on that investment is realized.

Of course, not every new F2F donor faithfully pays.  According to semi-recent Target Analytics’ data, 13-month median retention for street acquired donors is 33%.

[ As an aside:  Donors acquired at the door have a median retention rate of 55%, but currently the vast majority of F2F acquisition occurs on the street. So why doesn’t more F2F activity take place at the door?  You guessed it: if slightly higher conversion rates and volume is your master then street it is.]

Consequently, instead of recapturing the investment in 12-14 months, the organization will have to wait two to three years minimum before realizing any return on that acquisition investment.  Not surprisingly perhaps, this break-even rate rarely matches the rose-colored projections of the vendor, though this isn’t unique to F2F.

To improve on break-even the “bad pay” problem is dealt with in a running-to-stand-still way with “Clawback” as the in-vogue method.  Through “clawback”  the vendor refunds part of the fee if the projected monthly payment rate is not met.   Often this amounts to a 100% refund if the donor doesn’t make the first payment and perhaps a 50% refund if payment stops after the second month.

Although “clawback” may serve some short-term financial objective, it sure doesn’t meet the ultimate business need of the charity—the ultimate business need being donors making regular monthly payments.  Passing money back and forth through clawback to achieve a net zero effect is progress, but barely.

The prevalent use of “clawback” is prima facie evidence that little has been done in F2F to fix the massive retention problem.   Rather, through this myopic approach we’ve pushed the entire failure back to the supplier, which will only come back to the charity in future fees. [ See Agitator’s Beware the Mismatched Incentives Between You and Your Canvassing Firm.}

This sort of financial camouflage amounts to little more than putting lipstick on the F2F retention pig. The biggest sin in all of this is thinking or believing that we’ve somehow magically changed the retention rate by willfully ignoring all these ‘bad pay’ folks in calculating a “net retention” rate that leaves them out of the denominator just because we got a refund.

Of course, I do understand why many F2F managers have to play the game that senior management requires.  If he/she shines a bright light on the problem then budgets may not get approved.

But, the Agitator owes our readers a look at reality beyond the short-term financial camouflage and vendor smokescreens.

So,  once again, just as in most direct mail acquisition, the current focus is on volume –getting the most donors for the least cost.

You’ll note that so far I haven’t mentioned one word about the qualities and attitudes of the donor or the donor’s experience.  Nothing about those ‘bad-pay’ donors that you got vendor clawback money for.  Nothing about those who quit after the clawback expired.  BUT…  they are real human beings who had an experience with the organization’s brand that simply wasn’t good enough to motivate them to stick around.

This maximum-volume-at-lowest-cost mindset will produce a weak future.   As more and more charities get into the F2F channel that pool of humans that we so lovingly refer to as “lapsed” donors will get bigger and bigger—growing at a rate that far exceeds the ‘active’ regular paying donors.  This will become the tragedy of this commons and it mirrors precisely what happened in direct mail and digital (and F2F in other countries).

Is There a Better Way?

Of course there is.  It starts with running a canvass operation whose culture, training and incentive structure is not tied exclusively or mainly to volume.

But how?  Here are some key questions that deserve serious thought and attention if we’re to move in a more sustainable direction:

• What would solicitor training, audience targeting and solicitation messaging look like if quality not volume of donors were the goal?  By “quality” I mean signing up folks who are disproportionately likely to stick around. 

Currently, the weak-tea tactic most used by street canvassers to drive quality seems to be age quotas. “Let’s not enlist more than X% of donors under age Y.”  Why?  Because the data are clear:   young people “lapse” at a higher rate than older people.  But, is age really the causal ingredient of higher quality,  or is it more likely to be income/available discretionary dollars that does indeed correlate with age?  Using age quotas to drive quality is somewhat akin to using a chainsaw for surgery.

This is not to say “age” isn’t important. It is, but mainly in understanding how the age of the solicitor not the donor affects quality.   For starters, the vast majority of canvassers are young people.  If the canvasser is 23 years old standing on a street corner in midtown Manhattan, who’s he going to feel more comfortable stopping in the street? The 50 year old who, on appearance alone, looks nothing like the canvasser or a 25-year-old prospect coming down the street?  You guessed it; the 25-year-old.  This isn’t conjecture, it is social science fact.

And remember, that canvasser has been assigned to solicit in the street versus at doors in a neighborhood because the conversion rate per shift is, on average,  slightly higher on the street. This is what happens when volume is a singular and nearly sole obsession.

At the door in a neighborhood the young canvasser is forced to interact with whoever is behind the knocked door (or, better, a moderately curated list of doors); hence, door-acquired donors are much older on average (and door-acquired donors have a better retention rate).

What else should be looked at that is a consequence of the volume mindset?

• What if longer conversations (of course this also means fewer conversations per solicitor shift) were structured and built around active listening? Would this produce a higher Lifetime Value for the charity, but at the expense of slightly fewer bodies through the initial turnstile?

One study showed that a 10-12 minute face-to-face conversation was successful in getting people to reconsider firmly held, negative views about homosexuality and transgender rights (study here).  Those firmly held views were at least partly undone with conversation, active listening, and reciprocity.  This isn’t just about conversation length, the point here is that if someone can (at least partially) change personal, emotional belief structure through a face-to-face, 1 on 1, dialogue then surely we can do a better job of qualifying people in the monthly donor sign up process.

• And what about the script?   

Setting aside the length of the script,  a common refrain from agencies is to let their canvassers freelance on specific topics within the organization’s overall mission.  Let the solicitor find his/her own passion point or what interests him/her about Charity X, Y or Z,  and then sell that.  The thinking is that the solicitor’s passion will be contagious and help close deals. Further, it may also provide ongoing, internal motivation in the face of an unavoidable amount of rejection in what is a truly difficult job.

Sure, internal motivation matters, a lot.  But, there are other ways to provide internal motivation short of turning the acquisition process into a free-for-all that is so heavily ‘canvasser-led’.   If “Donor-centric” is all the rage,  but the starting point is the canvassers’ passion, we’ve moved in the opposite direction.

Fortunately, science is clear here too.  The giving decision is highly personal and almost always autobiographical.  Said differently, it is all about the donor and the donor choosing to give to reinforce their innate, values and goals. The canvasser-led, sell your passion approach is akin to a shoe salesman who only has a size 10, men’s black dress shoe that he loves.  He will find a few buyers to be sure but it doesn’t fit the need for the vast majority.

The other dynamic at play is that sales in a Canvasser-led environment can lead to increased buyer’s remorse as the passion around Issue X from Canvasser Y fades when the canvasser is no long present. So too does the donor’s reason for sticking around.

The better alternative is building a script — accompanied by a proper training and incentive structure — based not on a canvasser’s whim, but on why and how donors actually make choices.

This is not turning canvassers into scripted robots, which is the other extreme that is common in telemarketing.  This is a happy medium, an outline of sorts with structure and purpose that codifies and systematizes what the better canvassers – those instinctively already delivering quantity and quality – are doing every day.

Up Next…

Critical donor data that is captured as part of a better scripting process is the lynchpin to retention of new F2F donors.  The next post will cover what data needs to be captured and how to put it to work to improve retention.

Roger

P.S. If you would like to learn more about this, DonorVoice and others are hosting F2F Acquisition: Oasis or Mirage on July 10th, 2-5 PM, in Washington’s National Harbor (right before the Bridge conference).  It’s for those thinking about F2F to hear from those who have entered the channel and know the details.  Speakers include Shira Mitchell from Special Olympics, Jill Miller from The Nature Conservancy, and sustaining giving gurus from One + All.  If you are interested, please reserve your place with Nick at nellinger@thedonorvoice.com.