Ingredients of Retention Success

October 14, 2013      Admin

Last week, Roger and I asked for retention superstars to tell us their stories. We loosely set the superstar benchmark at an overall 70% retention rate. Given that we have thousands of readers, who generally respond with enthusiasm, we hoped to have dozens of retention success stories to share with you.

But no such luck with retention.

We got one response … from Jim East at Colorado Public Radio. I’m going to republish Jim’s account of CPR’s retention program, because it includes a mindset and some ingredients that should be instructive to us all …

“Here at Colorado Public Radio, we’re enjoying a 70% retention rate over the last two years (it’s been climbing up from 65% prior to that).  Of course, public radio has the privilege of reaching our donors in their homes, cars, offices, etc.  But, we also know that if donors don’t feel engaged and connected to the organization, that next year their donation may go elsewhere.  We’ve started using volunteers to call every donor to thank them for their gift.  We’re regularly looking for ways to engage donors through events, valuable emails (whose goals are not solicitations) and making sure that every personal contact is a good one (or ends well).

Our Sustainer program (We call them Evergreen Partners) is a huge part of our success at retaining donors.  With more than 10,000 Evergreen Partners giving monthly via EFT until they make a change, we have over a fourth of our current membership that will automatically renew next year, without having to be asked.  (We will ask them for additional gifts and for an upgrade).

And, yes…that doesn’t mean we can neglect acquisition efforts. We’re still mailing huge volumes of mail to attract new donors, all the time.

Finally, we’re also putting a lot of effort into bringing lapsed donors back.  While we like to ask donors for a gift at least once a year, many donors don’t think that way.  They are a supporter/ member….until they think “it’s been a while since I gave, I should give again.”  So, we’re very aggressively reaching out to those lapsed donors (mail, email, telemarketing) to bring them back…with some significant results.

The point to all of this is that if a non-profit thinks that it can focus on just acquisition or just retention or just one avenue of revenue they’re not shooting themselves in the foot.  They’re shooting themselves in the head.”

Key ingredients …

  • Get donors into sustainer program — obviously that establishes a robust base of continuity.
  • Make thank you calls.
  • Use volunteers to make thank you calls.
  • Engage via events.
  • Send communications that are not solicitations.
  • Reach out to lapsed donors, using mail, email, telemarketing.

And perhaps most nebulous, but most important … have the right attitude!

“Making sure every contact is a good one (or ends well)” — boy, that says it all in terms of a genuine commitment to donors.

Jim, you and your crew at Colorado Public Radio deserve an Agitator raise!

Admittedly, CPR is in front of its prospective donor base with great frequency. Still, we can all do this stuff, can’t we? Wouldn’t you like to have CPR’s 70% retention rate?

Tom

P.S. Tomorrow, retention help is on the way.

4 responses to “Ingredients of Retention Success”

  1. Jonathon Grapsas says:
    October 14, 2013 at 4:53 am

    Hi Guys

    Thought I’d share some stuff we’ve been working on. Like many developed fundraising countries, face-to-face recruitment of donors is huge in Australia. Generates hundreds of thousands of new monthly donors to the sector each year. No other channel comes close in terms of volume.

    Average year 1 attrition of F2F supporters in Oz is around 45%.

    We’re working with 10 organisations in Oz and Canada tackling the issue of attrition of supporters recruited on the street. Our clients have managed to reduce the annual attrition by around a quarter on average. Here’s an example and a little about how.

    http://www.sofii.org/node/1259

    In short by understanding who these supporters are: younger, more transient, mobile enabled/focused individuals. The mantra we live and breathe is when we think F2F: we think mobile.

    Rich, regular, mobile driven, triggered content. 100% focused on supporter care/advocacy (no asking). We’ve had clients breakeven in 3-4 months on these programs (remember, no asking – purely donor care). That’s how significant a reduction in attrition levels is on their bottom line, given the volume of RG’s many org’s are recruiting in Australia (some in the 10’s of thousands annually).

    Thought you might enjoy this.

    Keep up the great work.

    Jonathon

  2. Mazarine says:
    October 14, 2013 at 1:55 pm

    Let me preface this by saying,

    I think that donor retention rate is important. I really do.

    Has the Agitator ever looked at nonprofit fundraising professional retention rate as a function of donor retention rate?

    In other words, have we ever stopped to think, “Huh, how long do our fundraising professionals stay? Could we train them more, help them feel more joy in their jobs, more valued as employees, so they in turn retain our donors better by staying in their jobs longer?”

    Look, I am a fundraising empowerment champion. Because I believe (and Penelope Burk backs me up on this) that when we treat our fundraising professionals well, and help them stay, then we retain more donors.

    If you look at job postings these days, it’s all at-will and the jobs of 4 people are wrapped up into one person. So we have to change how we structure jobs, and how we hire people.

    if you look at nonprofits and how long they typically keep fundraising professionals, the stats are abysmal. It’s 18-24 months, in general. So we have to change how we retain people.

    And if you look at the typical fundraiser’s complaints, it’s “I don’t get enough support” “there’s no place to go here” and “I am not making enough money to save” (from the YNPN 2010 report). So we have to change how we promote and compensate people.

    I think for all of this talk about donor retention, the REASON it’s so low is because we don’t care for the people who care for the donors.

    But I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

    Peace,

    Mazarine
    http://wildwomanfundraising.com

  3. Anne Ibach says:
    October 14, 2013 at 2:09 pm

    Oregon Public Broadcasting is currently enjoying an overall retention rate of 71%… up from 69% last year — and all of this with a solid acquisition program.

    I agree with everything Jonathon Grapsas from Colorado Public Radio said, but have a couple of things to add that I think are key:

    We’ve put a lot of effort into making sure our donors have the best member experience possible, and have re-vamped and tweaked every aspect of our processing to make sure that happens.

    We’ve made a lot of changes, creating efficiencies wherever possible, in order to upload and acknowledge gifts quickly and accurately — cutting the upload time (call center, online form, telemarketing, etc…) from 2-weeks to several days (with a goal of next-day uploads). We’ve moved our acknowledgments from every two weeks to a weekly run. We’ve changed our direct mail gifts from manual entry to an upload process. We’ve decreased the delivery time for premiums from several weeks to one week. We’re looking for opportunities to be more proactive and communicate with donors about issues before the donor feels the need to contact us (premium delivery issues, TV and Radio reception issues, etc…). With all of this we freed up our customer service staff so they can spend more time serving our members… we wanted to make the machines do what they can in order to free up the people to do what only people can do.

    I love all the ideas for cultivating donors to increase retention, but if your back end processing isn’t working, it’s all for naught.

  4. Anne Ibach says:
    October 14, 2013 at 2:12 pm

    oops… posted the wrong name for CPR.

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