In Fundraisers I Fear Part 1 and Part 2 I noted that two of the great handicaps facing many fundraisers is their inability to seek and determine reality while safely snuggled in a cocoon of self-belief and their ignorance of basic facts.

The Third Fear, to complete this trilogy of traits that scare the hell out of me, is the unwillingness of many fundraisers to even bother learning what their donors think and what problems they confront when dealing with the organization.

This willingness (sloth, apathy, contempt—you pick the noun) to ignore donors other than cashing their checks and posting their transactions is a gross omission or act of malfeasance I simply don’t understand.

Perhaps the reason for this failure is that fundraisers fall in love with their organization and are so convinced of its righteous purpose that they ignore the positive and negative feedback from donors.  And so they expend their efforts based on visions and navel-gazing beliefs created in meetings and myth created inside the organization.  Beliefs and practices that donors may not share.

Another reason may lie in this explanation one senior fundraiser offered: “We afraid to hear what our donors are going to say.”

Or perhaps fundraisers too often look for feedback from trusted colleagues (and the spouse of the Board chair) and others they trust. This feels logical, but it’s actually a major fault because they’ve confused their work circle with their donor base.   Far too often, bad ideas that sound good are encouraged by our intelligent but well-meaning boards often encourage unqualified colleagues and terrible ideas.

This internally fueled confirmation bias can be deadly to nonprofits and blocks honest learning.  The bias makes it difficult for fundraisers to really understand their donors because they either hear what they want to hear, discount contrary feedback as irrelevant, or never look into the dark for what they may not be seeing.

This is why so many nonprofits have no idea why they’re losing donors.  Is it because their donation pages suck? Or that the expensive magazine or annual report so celebrated by the CEO is actually driving donors away? Or is because of ??? … or ????… or ????.  They’ll never know the real reasons if they only listen to themselves or to friends and colleagues.  Almost always they guess wrong.

Take a look at the chart depicting staff beliefs on what donors prefer vs. what the donors themselves prefer. In short, all too often those of us on the inside are simply guessing –and often guessing wrong.

The inability to seek, listen to and act on positive and negative concerns of our donors is like flying a 747 though a mountain pass in a snowstorm without radar.

However, there is a solution—seeking donor feedback. What is donor feedback? Simply put, it is individual level supporter feedback about experiences with your organization.

And it’s such a simple, inexpensive solution for brightening an organization’s future that I’m constantly surprised so few organizations even bother to take this simple step.

There’s little mystery to seeking feedback and The Agitatorhas covered this over and over.

For three important and recent posts I commend Nick’s posts on the three levels of feedback and how you can put them to work to benefit your organization:

• Level One using feedback fixing individual problems.  This shows what study after study confirms: people who have a complaint quickly resolved are more likely to retain than those who had no complaint to begin with. Donor services is a retention machine.

• Level Twousing feedback to fix your systems. The organization thatused feedback to get their donation page from 12% to 32% conversion in a month.

• Level Three– using feedback to model future actions in, for example, acquisition..

The hard work of making the feedback process as accurate, inexpensive and easy to put to work has already been done for you.  DonorVoice has created the Donor Feedback Platforma combination of technology, scripts and business rules through which your non-profit can automatically collect and act on feedback across channels and touch-points by fixing bad experiences and building on positive ones.

One donor feedback example every nonprofit is familiar with is money. It has obvious value. The organization only received it because it asked . The chances of getting even more money dramatically increase if we reciprocate the donor’s giving by showing appreciation.

So, why isn’t the donor’s opinion not treated the same way?  After all, feedback represents the donor taking time to again give you something they consider valuable.

Why is donor feedback in the sector relegated to a banal direct response tactic with a survey on the reply form or forcing the donor to write a handwritten note on the same reply form and have it summarily dismissed by those of us inside the organization who don’t want to be bothered or “know better.”

Feedback is the donor taking time to give you something they consider valuable.

One donor feedback example every nonprofit is familiar with is money. It has obvious value. The organization only got it because it asked. The chances of getting more dramatically increase if we reciprocate the donor’s giving by showing appreciation.

Why is the donor’s opinion not treated the same way?

Why is donor feedback in the sector so often relegated to a banal direct response tactic with a survey on the reply form or forcing the donor to write a handwritten note on the same reply form and have it summarily dismissed?

The nonprofit that gets into the donor feedback game is the one who can distance itself from the competitive set and make a meaningful dent in the retention problem.

Isn’t it time all of us start taking care of the real retention killer – unregistered complaints, bad experiences and a general sense you are running volume oriented assembly line for getting out as many appeals as possible instead of a human enterprise building relationships with supporters who matter?

Roger