So we’ve talked a good game about Give-to-Get this week.

Monday, Nick noted the trend that asking people who donate to other organizations to care about yours is declining and the opportunity is to ask people who care to donate.  Wednesday, Kevin outlined how you can create a content-based reason to join, donate, and retain.

But does Give-to-Get work?

It’s a sound plan, but in the words of Mike Tyson “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

So let’s talk about some organizations that are acquiring and retaining by giving identity-specific content.

Norwegian Cancer Society.  We encourage those interested in fitting content to identity to flip through their Institute of Fundraising presentation here.

But for those who want the not-140-slide version, let’s recap the story so far.  In assessing their constituents needs, they found that informational content those who have cancer, care about someone with cancer, or want to prevent cancer were at the top of the list.

Rather than pay lip service to serving their constituents, they reorganized around these identities, creating content these folks wanted and making it the primary focus of their website.  The homepage didn’t have hero images or donation takeovers or shadowboxes (for most of the time – these are probably OK at end of year, the only time of the year people are coming to your site specifically to donate).  Instead, it helped people find the content they wanted.

The site was not bereft of asks, however.  They just put that after what people came to do.  So an article on using nanotechnology and microbubbles to deliver more targeted chemotherapy ends with an ask:

“There is a real and every stronger hope that the nano-technologist can give us a better cancer treatment.  Can we count on your support in the future?

Give a gift today – every krone helps in the fight against cancer”

Content-specific, identity specific, and using good behavioral science (did you notice the permission for small gifts implicit in “every krone helps”?): a strong trifecta.

So it’s not surprising that this new site improved results even as so many redesigns fail on this count.  What’s surprising is how much:

• 198% increase in one-time donations
• 288% increase in recurring donations
• 107% increase in memberships

American Diabetes Association has volumes of content for those who have been diagnosed with Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes, as well as preventative measures.  As a content proof of concept, they created an ad that asked people to take their free one-minute screening quiz for Type 2 diabetes.  The ad was sufficiently well targeted that they were able to bring in visitors at $.42 per visitor.  Considering that M+R Benchmarking indicates that the average site visitor brings in $.91, this was a net win.  Beyond that, this identity – people who are concerned about their diabetes status – is a valuable one for them, as they have a desire to reduce their negative emotions of concern and worry.

SCOPE faced many of the challenges we talked about on Monday, plus a significant loss of donor file with GPDR.  They identified mothers as their key donor identity.  But rather than asking them for donations over and over, they created something of value for those mums: Mindful Monster cards.

These are family activity cards that help kids get the benefits of mindfulness training.  Each month, the mothers would get a park of seven activity cards with playful monsters on them for kids.  This is available for a £7.5  monthly donation – a true give-to-get proposition.

They are finding that donors who come in through Mindful Monsters retain nine times better and break-even in half the time.  Ninety-five percent of their supporter base is new in the past 15 months since the launch.   More about the how is available here.

The National Catholic Register added an end-of-article call-to-action, asking readers to support this reader-funded news site, similar to Norwegian Cancer Society.  Conversions from the site increased 800%.  Granted, this was from .00% to .02% conversion, but that increase means a five-figure revenue increase per year.

Hopefully, this gives you some ideas on how to tailor content to your constituent identities and use it to acquire, convert, and retain.  We’d also love to hear your stories in the comments!

Kevin and Nick