Get the Report Ken Burnett Called Breakthrough and start increasing retention.
The DonorVoice point of view is quite simple; until non-profits focus as much on donor attitudes as they do behaviors, they will never fix the retention problem. And until retention is addressed, non-profits will forever be dealing with a leakier bucket, one that cannot be re-filled fast enough.
Why attitudes?
- Donor attitudes dictate why donors behave as they do.
- You cannot understand the “why” by looking at RFM segments or other behavior markers.
- The only way to strengthen the donor relationship and retention is by focusing on the “why”.
DonorVoice set out to,
Goal One: Prove the link between donor attitude and behavior and,
Goal Two: Identify what non-profits can do to strengthen donor relationships
We conducted an online, nationally (US) representative survey among 1200 recent (last 12 months), frequent (more than 2 gifts to cause based charities) donors.
The survey responses were collected between July 6th and 15th. The fielding process adhered to best practices to assure maximum coverage across all days of the week and times of day.
The Executive Summary of this report, which goes into great detail on the “proof” side (Goal One) can be found here, [download id=”7″].
This new report focuses on Goal Two where we identified seven (out of 32 possibilities) key fundraising, marketing, communication and operational activities a non-profit should engage in to increase donor retention. It answers the question of “now what do we do?” that invariably arises when looking at the seven drivers, by providing a myriad of ideas, tactics and just good fundraising know-how for each of the seven.
As Ken Burnett points out in the Foreword, for those who might suggest this is all common sense we would only point out that it is common knowledge the value of a retained donor is ten times that of a newly acquired one and yet, the retention rates for the non-profit sector have only worsened. It would seem a little more common sense is in order.
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One response to “Get the Report Ken Burnett Called Breakthrough and start increasing retention.”
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Thanks for this Ken. Great advice. Common sense is just the thing!