You may think you don’t have an over-solicitation problem, but your donors think otherwise.

That’s the premise The Agitator and DonorVoice will explore at Noon EST today in the 2nd of our behavioral science webinars titled, Capitalizing on Donor Intent:  Increasiing the Number of Donor Gifts Per Year.  Agitator readers can register here and attend free.

Tom and I wanted to host this session because we’ve long been interested – and written a number of posts  – on the pros and cons of whether you can raise more money by asking more frequently or less frequently.

You can read more on our series or Raise More, Ask Less posts here, here, here and here.

Fortunately, the team over at our sister company DonorVoice has been conducting a series of pilot projects on this very subject and their exploration forms the basis of today’s webinar.

The subject matter is timely. Both in the commercial and nonprofit worlds the debate on ‘how much is too much’ is growing over the damage (or benefit) done to customers/donors given the increased volume contact; or some would say too much clutter.

Seth Godin warns: “The ironic thing is that marketers have responded to this problem [accosting folks with too many media interruptions ] with the single worst cure possible. To deal with the clutter and the diminished effectiveness of Interruption Marketing, they’re interrupting us even more!”

In the nonprofit world, researcher Penelope Burk notes that: “Over our twenty years of research, donors have evolved from considerately pointing out the problem to saying, “The more you ask, the less I give.

“Over-solicitation is by far the number one reason why donors stop giving and why fundraising profit is held back.
[My emphasis.]

“Donors have so many ways to give now that do not require them to cooperate with fundraising at all. Are you making it easy for them to shut you out?”

Here are some ‘on average’ stats that the DonorVoice team has gathered:

• Across channels, a donor receives 40-50 requests for money per year;

• The average donor donates to six nonprofits per year;

• Thus, there are about 250 asks per year — plus all of the asks from nonprofits trying to be charity #7!

Is there a better way to achieve our fundraising goals without carpet bombing the donors?

Noting that the polar positions on the ‘frequency/volume’ dial seem to be requests for single gifts contrasted with sustainer giving of 12 gifts per year, the Direct Creative Group in a thoughtful piece asks a key question: Is there a middle ground?

They believe so, and in fact, the folks at DonorVoice set out to prove just that. So, today we’ll explore how to best avoid treating donors as ‘by-catch’ in the chase for contributions.

The goal, to illustrate there is indeed a middle ground and a way, using behavioral science findings, to secure multiple-gifts in a single effort — and at the same time increase response rate and average gift size.

219 folks have already signed up for this session, but we holding seats for Agitator readers if you’d like to attend. Just register free here.

Here’s what Josh Whichard, a DonorVoice Partner and 15+ year direct response veteran and I will cover:

• The challenge of retention and how we are making it worse with the volume model;

• The Volume Model … from the donors’ perspective;

• How donor feedback has led to the discovery of a new giving vehicle to fill the massive void between single and monthly donors;

• How behavioral science techniques are being used to increase gift frequency and ROI.

This is a story of discovering and exploring new approaches to constructively deal with the issue of volume/frequency/over-solicitation.

The story is far from finished, but I think you’ll benefit from learning what’s been discovered so far.

Roger