Given the unique opportunity to capture information directly from the donor that is essential for assuring higher retention and donor value, it is ironic that most F2F operations simply ignore this bonanza.

In fact, it’s more than ironic.  It’s downright wasteful and irresponsible.

I call it the “The F2F Paradox”.

… On the one hand, the canvasser is presented with the opportunity to gather terrific, important and useful details about the supporter;

…On the other hand, the organization turns its back on the opportunity by failing to capture and act on this information, thus crippling its own retention efforts and condemning the long-term effectiveness of the program.

Over and over we’ve preached about the high-yield importance of “donor identity” (here,  here, here, here, and many other places)—understanding the specific motivation of an individual donor; ‘why’ that donor gives to you.

What better time than at the point-of-solicitation to find out “why” a supporter signed on?  To find out what parts of the organization’s mission most interests the supporter?  To discover the array of information that will help us craft donor experiences that ensure maximum retention and loyalty?

Yet sadly, most canvass operations know very little, if anything,  other than name, age, address and credit card number, about who they sign up. Of course, this reality is hardly unique to F2F; it’s the norm in the nonprofit sector whether the solicitation is being conducted by mail, phone or online.

None of these other channels present the direct, personal opportunity to gather data and information about the individual donor right on the spot, then employ that information to meet the donor’s needs and better assure retention.

Seize the Moment

The great tragedy is that the best canvassers are already gathering this information, save for the data capture part.  The best canvassers have an innate ability to get prospective donors to share germane, personal details about themselves. Details that explain why they might support your organization.  These same canvassers use those details to craft their response – in any other scenario, this would be called “having a conversation.”  You share something about yourself and I say something that is responsive to it.

What should be required is:

• Transforming this approach into a semi-scripted conversation so that training can be conducted and to standardize the Identity data (i.e. the donor’s innate motivation to support the organization) then….
• Recording this information in the recruitment software.

The script would begin with understanding the possible motivators specific to the cause (this requires subject matter expertise on the topic, not just guessing), asking donors to share in a conversational way,  and then framing the discussion with organization-specific messaging.

Let’s take an organization focused on refugee or immigrant rights for examples of what donor identity might include:

• Working overseas in one of the countries where the organization operates (Place-based Identity)
• Immigrant relating to those whom the organization’s work affects (Immigrant Identity)
• Someone who believes in the need to help those less fortunate than themselves (Helper Identity)
• Someone who believes the world is interconnected. (Globalist Identity)

These illustrations of identity share one thing in common.  Each is personal to the donor and represents an innate sense of self.  Although each person has lots of identities (e.g., gender, religion, party affiliation, occupation, parent, etc.) identities like those listed above are only relevant and ‘activated’ based on a specific situation or context.

What’s important to note is that when an identity is activated it also triggers a set of specific values and goals that dictate the donor’s behavior as she/he subconsciously seeks to act in a way that reinforces those values and goals.

All this boils down to one inexorable fact; the most important message for driving behaviors ( In F2F the desired behaviors are (1) to sign up and (2) stick around) is the one that makes it clear that supporting this charity will be in keeping with the donor’s Identity-based values and goals. 

Selling this way can be done with the proper scripting, training and incentive structure.

Now, juxtapose this approach with the far more typical or conventional approach I highlighted in the last post. In that typical approach, the canvasser is also highly motivated by the work of the organization.  BUT…the canvasser’s personal hot button is his/her own focus on misbehavior by immigration officers or any number of other, discrete sub-areas of the organization’s program and not the donor’s.

In this example, the canvasser is out there passionately selling his/her own hot button and working hard to hit quota.  He/she does.  But the donors who signed up had to mentally work very hard to see how this passionately presented issue tied in with who they are.  In short, a failure to create motivation with staying power.

The far more likely outcome (borne out by the lousy retention data) is that this donor signed up not because she/he understood how it helped or benefited them and reinforced their goals/values,  but because the canvasser was energetic, smart and passionate and it felt good.  The “feeling good” was a bit infectious and signing up was a way to keep the feeling going…but only for a very short period of time.

The road to Retention Hell is paved with good intentions; and there’s no question that most canvassers and their agencies possess good intentions in spades.  Sadly, that’s not enough. What they need is training and direction that properly reflects the psychology of decision making.

Merely having a better script that helps qualify people and increases the likelihood that we’ve made a solid, lasting connection at the point-of-sale is simply not enough.

And that’s why understanding the “F2F Paradox” is so important.  If key data like donor identity is lost, never captured and therefore never passed back to the charity then the organization is setting itself up for suboptimum experiences post acquisition at best, and failure at worst.

The only thing worse than a newly recruited donor quitting in the first 30 days is the newly recruited donor who would not have quit if only the organization had the data and process to build on the positive recruitment interaction.

With those data, the organization could have delivered relevant Identity-reinforcing content.

Donor Voice has clients that have reduced month 2 attrition by 20 percent simply by versioning the month 1 stewardship emails.   The illustration below highlights what versioning – in this case, a Parent vs. Non-Parent welcome letter – can look like.  This isn’t a big or difficult lift and yet barriers to implementing this seem to abound.

If we are to get serious about retention and not repeat the sins of the past, then we need to commit to these principles.

• Understand the psychology of giving. It is all about the donor and their needs.  The organization is merely a conduit.
• Just intellectually knowing about donorcentricity is not enough.
• You must understand this well enough (or have an agency that does) to put process in place from training, to Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), to incentive structures—all designed around “why” people give.
• Putting principles 1 thru 3 gets you half-way there– optimizing the acquisition side of the two-sided coin.
• To deliver on retention improvements you must also get past the one-size fits nobody donor journey.

Frankly, if your F2F retention plan starts and stops with age quotas, or a one-size-fits-nobody journey even if it’s ‘tailored’ to F2F with some back-end systems and a clawback from your agency then you should expect nothing more than a 33% (street), year one retention rate.

All you’ll end up with is a payback period (depending on vendor pricing) that is almost impossible to justify.

Roger

P.S. Next up? An interview with Richard Duke, National Canvass Director of DVCanvass, who for 10 years prior was a part of Greenpeace USA’s in-house canvass operation, most recently serving as National Training Director.