So far, we’ve covered the #1, #2, #3, #5, #9, #11 and #12 comments donors have in general feedback.  What do the rest of the comments have in common?

Well, they’ll all be covered in this post; other than that, it’s potpourri.  At the very end we’ll cover  the most important comments every organization receives.  

“Don’t you know who I am?” This isn’t just what D-list celebrities say when they are arrested.* It’s what your donors think when they feel as though you’ve treated them like a wallet instead of the generous force through whom you can accomplish your mission.

Many of these issues arise from what the nonprofit would refer to as “database issues” – duplicates in the database and incorrect names, addresses, titles, genders, and phone numbers.  But to donors these are signs you don’t know who they are and what their name, gender, and/or current breathing status is.

This can be fatal. In Dr. Adrian Sargeant’s research, he finds that 5.6% of people stop supporting a charity because “X no longer needs my support” and 3.8% because “I found X’s communications inappropriate.”  These can be easily triggered by having the wrong name, title, or address.

Other items could impact trust in an organization.

• If a donor is promised a premium for donating and they don’t get it, it’s a breach of trust in their mind.

• If you promise you won’t solicit your monthly donors for additional donations (or imply this) and you do, it’s a breach of trust in their mind.

• In your mind, however, these may simply been more than a mail issue or an emergency appeal or a database error.  That said, it’s the donors’ opinion that matters and determines whether they will donate again.

“Where is my gift going?” About 3.6% of all comments were that the person wanted to be able to designate their gift to a specific area, activity, or person.  This makes it the fourth most popular comment of all (behind fewer mailings, no mail, and “I want to talk to a person”).  While most people are content with having their gift going where it is needed most, there is a sizable minority who want to fund a specific initiative (most often after a campaign for that specific initiative).

Restricted gifts are a challenge for many nonprofits, but as the cost of most initiatives exceeds the amount given to them online, you should (in theory) be able to accommodate a checkbox that restricts the gift by campaign.  However, this is a non-starter with many finance departments.  Feel free to arm yourself with the fact that this is the most common requests among donors generally (and even better if you can validate this for your own donors).  Also, we have a specific blog post on this called “Getting your finance department to sign off on restricted giving” that I recommend.

The other “where’s my gift going” questions are informational.  A bit over 1.1% of commenters wanted more information on the impact that their gift has had; .67% of commenters wanted to know what percent of their donations was to go to programs.  Thankfully, more donors want to have a significant impact than engage in the myth that lower overhead percentage automatically means more impact, but the gap is closer than one would like.

 “I want to talk to a person!” Four percent of people wanted to talk to a person.  While this is the third most common response, it is heartening to know that 96% of respondents who wanted to make a substantive comment were willing to leave it in a survey or on a voice mail.

While donor relations staff certainly reached out to assist donors personally after their feedback in many cases (especially for highly committed, high-value donors), this illustrates how an automated feedback system can provide an important triage function for comments, allowing donor relations staff to communicate directly with only a percentage of donors personally and often using a faster medium than the traditional phone call.

For example, an email from the organization that says “I’m sorry you didn’t want all this mail.  I’ve made it so that you will only receive two mail pieces per year.  Thank you for letting us know.” takes far less time to craft and send than the phone call that normally ensues in this case.

The fact that this many donors express this complaint indicates there will always be a need for skilled, sympathetic donor relations professionals.  A strong feedback system allows them to provide the best care to the best donors.

“Your membership program is a mess!”  About 3.6% of commenters had issues with membership programs.  A sample quote: “I’m definitely supportive of [organization name]. I have about three cards. And I don’t know where and when in the world my membership begins and ends. And it would be wonderful if someone called me.”

The most common of these complaints involves continuing to receive mailings asking for membership renewal after the donor has already renewed.  However, membership also generated some of the most idiosyncratic responses and the most confusion.

Actions charities can take to help clarify their membership programs:

• Specify whether membership is rolling or annual. That is, if someone makes their membership gift in May, are they paid through December 31^st or next May?
• Let them know that their gift to a non-membership appeal will count to renew their membership if this is the case.
• Let them know what their membership number is. If there is a member card, there is often a member number and this number should be consistent from year to year or people will express their (sometimes extreme) displeasure.
• Allow them to put their member number in on the website so they know that their online gift will renew their membership.
• Allow your donor relations staff to look up donors/members  by their member number. This is a number that many donors take very seriously (whether you do or not) and this should be accommodated (but not required).
• Use language like “if our letters crossed in the mail, I apologize” to let those who just renewed know that you are not dunning them immediately after they just made a gift.
• Get your databases to talk to each other. Donors want to be able to renew their membership through mail, phone, online, etc.  We have not yet had a request to renew membership via carrier pigeon, but it’s only a matter of time.

“Is that really how you acknowledge my gift?” The diagram at right covers only responses that received more than two votes.  As you can see, the most common complaint is not receiving any acknowledgment at all.  Beyond this, people want to make sure their acknowledgments – offline or online – include all the information they will need for their taxes.

There are also some specialty requests.  It appears that too often donations made to match campaigns don’t have any evidence of the match on the acknowledgment.  This oversight can lead to confusion and calls to donor relations to make sure their gift was, in fact, matched (like how lack of a membership statement can generate calls).  Honor/memorial donations also appear to have some problems getting the acknowledgment to the intended recipient.

Finally, the most important comment every organization gets?  It depends: every organization for whom we set up listening posts has their own unique piece of feedback that 1) they didn’t know about and 2) we hadn’t seen with any other organization.  Some examples:

• A temporary glitch where all donations, big or small, were acknowledged as $40 gifts. Because this organization had feedback in place with text analysis done for their free-responses, they found this problem, diagnosed it, and fixed it in less than two days – something that could have lingered for two weeks or two months without it.
• A confirmation email that had last name with no title, so it would say (for example) “Dear Ellinger,”. Wiener was particularly displeased about this bug.
• When a scandal breaks or a CEO leaves or the like, donor feedback stays on the pulse of your constituents, learning the breadth and depth of their feelings on an issue and guiding the organizational response.

All these pieces of feedback speak to the screaming need not only to set up feedback listening posts, but also to:

• Do text analysis on your free response items. Everything you’ve seen for the past three days has been the result of looking at free response comments.
• Triage your donor responses. Ideally, you will get to the point that you can not respond to all donor feedback individually.  That said, you want to reach out to your best $10,000+ repeat donor even if s/he says “love you guys; keep up the good work.”  Using commitment scores and marrying your feedback with transactional information will help you focus on those donors who love you most and have the capacity and desire to make transformative gifts.
• Use these free responses to fix/improve your existing systems. As ever, fixing a negative experience a donor had is good; making it so that no one else has that negative experience is better.

How has feedback worked for your organization?

Nick

* Two great stories on this.  1. British philosopher AJ Ayer found Mike Tyson attempting to assault Naomi Campbell.  Ayer asked Mike Tyson to stop.  Tyson replied “Do you know who the [expletive] I am?  I’m the heavyweight champion of the world.”  Ayer replied “And I am the former Wykeham Professor of Logic.  We are both pre-eminent in our field; I suggest that we talk about this like rational man.”  The two began to talk and Naomi Campbell slipped out.  (According to A.J. Ayer: A Life)

2. Buddy Valastro, the “Cake Boss” on TLC, when arrested for drunk driving by the NYPD actually said “You can’t arrest me! I’m the Cake Boss!” It turns out that being Cake Boss (thankfully) did not shield him from prosecution. (Source)