Mayflies wait an entire year waiting to be born.  On the day of their birth, they fly off, find a mate, lay eggs, and die.  All in one day.

This feels like the modern marketing landscape.  Our windows of relevance in the media and of opportunity with donors seem so fleeting.

I have bad news: this isn’t just a feeling.  Three studies show that we have mere moments to act. (There’s also good news that I’ll get to at the end.)

Study #1: empathy decay. DonorVoice’s behavioral scientist Dr. Kiki Koutmeridou talks the identifiable victim effect.  There are volumes of research showing that a single identifiable victim is more powerful than large statistics.  We can’t process large numbers nor do we feel powerful enough to make a change in systemic problems.

Now, there’s research that shows that even the effect of a single victim does not last for long.  In a study called “Iconic photographs and the ebb and flow of empathic response to humanitarian disasters,” researchers looked at the specific case of the photo of Aylan Kurdi.  You likely remember this photo: he is a Syrian boy lying face-down on a beach in Turkey.  For a moment, the world looked at the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria.

For a moment.

Here are the Google Trends for Syria, refugees, and the boy’s name.  Within one month, they are back to almost baseline.

And here are the donations to the Swedish Red Cross over that time.  (Overall donations – the graph for just donations to Syria is even more stark).

Donations returned to baseline after six weeks.  As the authors state “this form of empathy quickly faded and donations subsided, even though the number of Syrian refugees seeking asylum in Sweden was relatively high and consistent throughout the period that we sampled (36,000–40,000 per month).”

You can see the speed this issue went from irrelevant to where-do-I-donate to relevant to irrelevant again.  (In the minds of these donors of course – the suffering of our fellow person is always relevant.) From a fundraising perspective, any thought that you can wait until next week is gone.  It’s questionable whether you can wait until the next hour.

Study #2: gratitude decay.  A nonprofit hospital batched its asks to former patients every 2-4 months.  This created a natural experiment in timing – did you get your ask right after your hospital stay or months later?  Should you give someone time to process or ask immediately?

The answer, as you can see, is to ask immediately:

Every month they delayed asking after a patient’s final visit cut response rates in half.  This is a clear imperative to strike while the iron is hot.  And it’s not just hospital patients.  This likely applies to pet adopters, museum/park/library visitors, event attendees (for a good event), content consumers, etc.  You must follow up on gratitude immediately.

Study #3: the impact of customer service delay. I talk about this in today’s Agitator post called “(Lack of) Speed Kills.”  You can make big jumps in retention moving from “didn’t hear the complaint” to “heard the complaint.”  And from “heard the complaint” to “fixed the complaint.”

But the biggest jump you can make in donor retention is from “fixed the complaint” to “fixed the complaint quickly.”

So, all three cases preach the need for speed.  And as Kevin talked about in his “Teaching your elephant to dance” post, that’s not always what we are good at.  In larger organizations especially, we get good at incremental improvement and efficiency.  That’s great – it’s predictable, it saves money, it’s safe – but what it isn’t is fast.

At the beginning, I promised some good news, so here goes: fast is a muscle you can strength.  Part of that is process-improvement.  You need to cut unnecessary layers of bureaucracy and speed the necessary layers.

But another part is knowing your donors.  For customer services, it’s knowing which donors are committed to your organization, but dissatisfied (and thus can be saved) and which are not.  For acting after a thing for which someone would be grateful, it’s knowing how the person felt that experience.  If a person gushed about the traveling impressionist exhibit, s/he will be more willing to donate to bring more exhibits like that to your institution.  But if they were most interested in the school tours and seeing young faces light up, that’s the ask for them.

Most importantly, knowing your donors allows you to ask when your issue is in the spotlight.  I have seen many a rapid response idea killed because some donors won’t like it.  That’s right – some won’t.  And that’s wrong, because if you know your donors ahead of time, you can address your response to just the ones who want this information.

Should you send an emergency appeal to your monthly donors?  It’s easy if you have collected preferences for “no asks EXCEPT EMERGENCIES” separate from your “no ask” flag.  Similarly, if you have an advocate donor identity, these are the people who will not mind if you engage in policy advocacy around your mission.  They will, in fact, applaud it.  But that’s not everyone, and it doesn’t have to be.

There’s an old saying: forewarned is forearmed.  If you know your donors – their levels of commitment, their preferences, their identities – you are now well equipped to act, and react, quickly now when it’s more important than ever before.  That’s how you survive and thrive in your mayfly moments in the sun.