Face-to-Face fundraising in the United States holds great promise if for no other reason than it isn’t a grossly oversaturated channel and we’re a big, populous country.

This likely explains the Paul Revere feeling some have as the Brits (and Canadians and Australians) “invade” to setup shop on U.S. shores.  Why?  Because in those countries F2F is their direct mail equivalent– grossly oversaturated with declining yields, increasing costs, media scrutiny and regulatory burden.  By comparison the US market, is the F2F wild west, the opportunity to plant your flag and claim territory.

The Agitator is weighing in as a canary in the coal mine on F2F because if history is any guide we’ll surely kill this golden goose with the same misguided and misinformed culture of acquisition, hell-bent on volume with little or no regard to the donor.

We’ve seen it over and over.  To those driven by acquisition volume if donor count is their hammer then every technique, every channel looks like a nail.   So once again we are in danger of repeating the same approach:  acquisition, separated from serious attention to retention is another fool’s errand, the same lazy, myopic mindset on repeat.

Direct mail used to be a driving force of nonprofit growth.  Fifteen years ago a medium-sized, obscure brand charity could mail 25 million acquisition pieces a year and make money.  Today, those same organizations are struggling to break even in 18 months on 5 million pieces.

What happened?  Once again a mindset focused on volume bred a culture and process that proved destructive. Direct mail fell prey to copy-cat techniques, burn-and-churn strategies, and the growth of incestuous list-sharing coops:  all devised in the name of –and with great financial incentive for consultants, printers, list brokers and full-service agencies –volume.  The failed mindset of “Mail more, make more”…  until you don’t.

Same with telemarketing.  There the power of personal communication also fell victim to the same copy-cat, volume-driven mindset.  Within a few years the magic of telemarketing was transformed into an abusive, commodity-like curse little understood by a growing crowd of inexperienced ‘fundraisers’ all too ready to sign purchase orders for the next campaign. Until their collective wisdom built on non-understanding and myth concluded that telemarketing, like its cousin direct mail, was “dead”.

The same life cycle now appears to be playing out with digital. After a hyperbolic runup as the vogue technique –spurred on by those who provide the technology—digital fundraising has hit a plateau.   M+R, the firm that benchmarks the nonprofit world of digital, reports that for the first-time digital fundraising is flat to declining. Or as M+R put it “email fundraising is important, but it is also hard, and getting harder.”

Last year, email lists grew five percent.  Nonprofits sent four percent more fundraising emails.  And email revenue went down eight percent. Clearly, the digirati have not learned the same lesson direct mailers and telemarketers also failed to learn. More isn’t the answer. Better is.

So, what about Face-To-Face?

In this first of a series on the future of Face-To-Face fundraising my goal is to sound the alarm about the short-termism breeding misguided “best practice” before millions and millions are wasted because of misplaced expectations and mismanagement born of ignorance; ignorance of why people do what they do – in this case sign up and, equally important, quit.

You see, like direct mail, telemarketing, and digital, the success of F2F can only be assured by understanding human behavior, motivation and the theory-bound evidence of relationship building.  Then and only then does a process emerge that breeds real best-practice.

Until that day arrives, we continue to churn out programs that are more elementary than they should be by believing the giving equation is as simple as people giving because we ask.  And so we ask,  and we ask,  and we ask, and we ask. We think retention is solved with operations and back end processes and while those pieces are necessary, they are far from sufficient – mere table stakes, the price of entry to be deemed even remotely competent. If they were we would be seeing far better retention rates and improved donor value.

For organizations with financial means an attractive alternative has appeared in the form of F2F where more and more nonprofits blindly commit huge sums of money in hopes that the latest vendor’s Excel sheet with lofty conversion and understated attrition pan out.

Early Stage, Early Warning

Here in the U.S. F2F is moving from its infancy to adolescence.  Why? Because a small number of organizations with large cash to spend have decided that F2F is the pathway to Acquisition Nirvana.

Having failed or run into acquisition hard scrabble with mail, telemarketing and digital they look at the early successes of Greenpeace here in the States and a dozen others in the U.K., Europe and Australia and say why not?

On the surface it all looks so perfect and simple.  Direct, personal contact with a donor in return for a monthly commitment. No more waiting for ink to dry and mail to be delivered.  No more of those annoying phone calls that anger our donors. No more Direct TV with huge cash outlays in production and airtime before the first donor is ever signed up.  Just look ‘em in the eye, tell the potential donor of your good works, and please pass the credit card.

You don’t have to get too far below that perfect and simple surface to discover the nether world of high up-front costs, maverick solicitors, fee schedules understandable only by graduate mathematicians or palm readers, and terms like “bad pay” and “claw backs.”

It doesn’t have to be this way.  But until those who engage in F2F have a far better understanding of the why people give and why they stop and build process around this understanding – and actually put that process into practice—the promise of F2F will go the tricked and trampled way of direct mail, telemarketing and digital.

Maybe not tomorrow or the next day but it will happen and the real tragedy of this commons is that it needn’t be that way.  Maybe we are titling at windmills in thinking we can stem the tide of cheap, easy money and signing of purchase orders for the latest land grab.

But, we feel an obligation to the sector that supersedes the immediate and the popular. Just as important, we have an alternative approach to recommend.  It will fall on many a deaf ear but for those that listen, first-mover advantage awaits.

What This Series Will Cover.

Despite the length of the posts in this series obviously we can’t cover everything in what is a complex process with lots of moving parts.  So, in addition to these posts my colleagues at DonorVoice are hosting a special F2F Session called, appropriately enough, F2F Acquisition: Oasis or Mirage.  It’s scheduled to make it convenient for those attending The Bridge Conference: July 10th 2-5 PM.

The DonorVoice session will feature insights and experiences from organizations currently engaged in F2F for those interested in the channel, dig into more of the details and answer questions on subjects contained in this Agitator series.

This is not for everyone.  Attendance is suggested only for organizations with $10 million or more in revenue and already involved with F2F or contemplating the launch of a F2F program.

You can reserve your place with Nick at nellinger@thedonorvoice.com.

Meanwhile, here are the topics that will be covered in the next posts in this series and in more detail in the DonorVoice session:

• F2F: Far More Than Mere Acquisition.  We’ll start with Mistake #1—the belief that F-2-F is just a high-priced donor acquisition technique.  And the cliché of retention starting at acquisition is far more than a few operational to-do’s (e.g. credit card updater) and simple business rules (e.g. age quotas)

• F2F: De-Mystifying the Process.  We routinely hear that charities need to get their house in order before they can take us up on recommendations for better practice and process.  These are often charities that have been in operation for 50, 75, 100 years.  To that I say if you haven’t gotten the spring cleaning done by now it ain’t ever gonna happen.  What this really is masking is aversion to change and a limited view of the possible. Fortunately, F2F is new enough that very few have ingrained muscle memory.  The time is now to do it better and fortunately it isn’t harder or more expensive.
• F-2-F: Point of Solicitation and Proper Onboarding. If there’s any ‘magic’ at all in F2F it occurs right at the point of sale.  It’s there you can know motivation, who’s likely to stay…who will be “bad pay”…how effective a job the solicitor did…and steps you have to take to RETAIN that donor. Remember “retention”?  That’s the heart and soul of F-2-F.

But why does retention as a topic in so much of F2F seemingly start and stop with targeting prospects using age quotas? (“We can only recruit X% of young people because they cancel too quickly.”)

Age is an incredibly crude proxy for quality.  Plenty of young people don’t quit and plenty of older people do.  Age tells you absolutely nothing about who they are and why they support and therefore has zero value in the retention effort.  It is an artificially sharp dividing line for passively managing the business and watching reports roll in that show young people quitting at a higher rate than older people.

It begs the question, now what?

The median, 13-month retention rate – per Blackbaud’s Target Analytics –for street-acquired sustainers is 33%.   That ain’t gonna cut it.  Time to dig deeper.

By the time we’re finished with this series we’ll hopefully have pissed off many in the trade, but improved your results, saved you lots of wasted time and money, and helped you attract donors who adore you and will stick with you.

Roger