Subject. Verb. Object:

Who… does what… to whom?

More than 75% of the world’s languages start sentences with the subject, leading some anthropologists to believe we may be hardwired for this.

At the least, we are hardwired to think of ourselves as the subject of the sentence.  We are all our own protagonists.  And when other people treat us as the subject of the sentence, we like it.  So much of what we describe as “charming” is “this person made me feel like the subject; I enjoyed that.” (Or so I’m told by charming people.)

So when Roger’s overcoming barriers to growth talked about letting “donor needs dictate strategy,” it spoke to who the subject of our sentence is currently, and who it should be.

We “blast” emails. We “target” donors.  When we decide who will get a package, it is about how we extract the maximum possible value from them.  We are the subject; the donor is the object.

Worse, sometimes the donor is even the indirect object of the indirect object.  As in “We do awesome stuff by way of this gift, which happened to come from you.”

It’s natural that donors fight back, working to reclaim the coveted subject role.  In the battle between “I want to send you X pieces of mail” and “I want to receive Y pieces of mail from you”, the distance between subject and object can be qualified as X minus Y.  We see it in the move to restricted giving and direct donation programs like Kiva or DonorsChoose.  My gift, my impact: I make this difference.

What would happen if we put donors, and their needs, as the subjects of our strategy?

We must concede slightly to a mass marketing environment, but let’s group our donors by the needs they have from the organization based on their donor identity – their reason for giving.

That’s a first step forward in putting donors’ needs in the driver’s seat.  But even among those progressive enough to think this way, the next sentence is often “what of our existing communications is appropriate for this audience?”  You will have better fit, and better results, from this, but to use the mountain analogy from Roger’s post on Wednesday, we are still in the foothills of what great things that could be.

What could be?  A couple months ago, we talked about Scope, a UK-based disability equality charity.  Their target identity was mothers.  Rather than saying “what of our existing pieces work for mothers” or “what can we tweak in this copy to make it more mother-y”, they asked what mothers were looking for.  Turns out, they were looking a way to get their kids to be more thoughtful and mindful in a way that was fun and engaging.  Mindful Monsters, a set of family activity cards to address that need, was born.  For £7.5  monthly, you get additional cards to add to your pack.  These donors are retaining better and bringing in more revenue that traditionally acquired donors.

Notice this has almost nothing to do with disability equality.  It has everything to do with meeting the needs of the people they believed would be their best supporters.  If someone signed up with Mindful Monsters, Scope had a year of communications to build trust and affinity for their organization even if neither had existed at sign up.

Going this far out of your mission may be a non-starter for some organizations.  But we can start with the question “what is the job this person is trying to do with their support?” and bolster it. ( To put it another way, why is the donor hiring your organization? See Agitator’s post on Milkshake Mistakes )

One advocacy organization found that many donors were giving so they could have a sounding board and discussion partner for their most important issues.  They hired a person whose job it was to field those phone calls – to be the object of the sentence for their donor subjects.  It seemed expensive, but revenue per donor increased 70% among their most valuable donors who got this perk.

Would that tactic work for everyone?  Not hardly.  It takes the right organization and the right set of donors.  And that’s the point.  Each donor’s reason for giving exists where their personal identity intersects with the organization.

We’ve tried for so long to pull people into that Venn diagram intersection – now it’s time to do the things that makes them want to pull us into their identity.

Nick