New Automated Fundraising Tool. Free. Forever.
Today were adding a valuable, new tool to The Agitator Toolbox.
The Donor Commitment Feedback Widget for Nonprofits has been designed, tested and proven by the folks at our sister company DonorVoice and is being given to Agitator readers for:
$30/month
$0 (Free).
That’s right. FREE. And how long will this price last? Forever. Hard to beat.
How much time will it take? It’s very simple to setup (Tom and I both did quickly and we don’t write code for a living) – literally 5 minutes – and requires zero staff time or labor as the whole feedback process is 100% automated.
But what about the value? Good question.
- How about 15 to 30 percent lift in retention?
- Or finding out that every tenth donor making an online contribution has a complaint that almost certainly prevents a future gift. Better yet, a positive comment that if acted on will almost guarantee a second gift?
- Or that the donation form that you spent endless hours debating and crafting internally doesn’t work well for donors?
- Or that your ‘In memoriam’ process – that you again spent endless hours debating internally – is lousy from the donor’s perspective?
If you don’t assign value to this information and don’t realize the seemingly obvious point that asking the donor is best way to get this actionable information then, well … you should probably just buy a map from The Flat Earth Society.
How does it work? The Feedback Widget enables you to not only capture visitor feedback, but also immediately and automatically fix any bad visitor experiences and take advantage of positive ones on your site when they happen. Most important of all, it increases Donor Commitment — the #1 proven metric of loyalty and retention.
The Widget is completely automated. It takes just minutes to setup … and it should take you even less time to make the decision to move forward and try it. And of course the copywriter in me already mentioned it’s forever free.
In the Agitator Toolbox find a full explanation of how it works, including a ‘how to’ video, plus a video explanation by Kevin Schulman of DonorVoice on why seeking donor feedback is both critical and valuable.
I’ve always thought it strange that the commercial world spends billions on customer feedback and our nonprofit community only a pitiful amount. Why is it that the International House of Pancakes (IHOP) seems to care more about its customers than most nonprofits do about their donors?
For example each IHOP asks its customers for feedback tied to key interactions with them — interactions like buying breakfast. Most nonprofits don’t bother. Why in the world should we fundraisers be less attentive than IHOP?
Some Agitator readers have already put the Feedback Widget to work and we’ll be reporting some case histories of their experiences in the weeks ahead.
Frankly, installing this (free, forever) widget on your website (somewhere or everywhere) is the safe choice. Pretending like the complaints and compliments and opportunities to delight your donors don’t exist — i.e. the status quo — is the huge risk. However, apparently the sector, unlike IHOP, hasn’t changed its mindset enough to see it this way.
But here is your low risk, simple, low effort opportunity to make the shift.
So, as soon as you’ve finished breakfast at IHOP or wherever, spend a few minutes to see what the Donor Commitment Feedback Widget for Nonprofits can do for you and your organization.
Roger
P.S. Agitator raises go to the DonorVoice Team for designing, testing and making the Widget available free and forever.
P.P.S. WARNING: You won’t find the Toolbox in your daily email feed, rather it’s a feature that appears the homepage of The Agitator’s website, along with other features we hope prove helpful. Features like our Jobs section … an Archive now Searchable by Categories … and some older favorites like Comments, a representative listing of The Agitator Community, and our popular Blogroll.
We hope you’ll pass along any discoveries involving tools, applications and processes you think are innovative and helpful.
Together we can explore a fundraising world that’s filled with opportunity.
9 responses to “New Automated Fundraising Tool. Free. Forever.”
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Brilliant. Thank you!
Looks like a great tool–thank you! My only hesitation is that once we install something like this, we set up certain expectations that we will address users’ feedback. My organization can’t be alone in simply not having the resources to promptly address the feedback we’d given. And yes, we do realize what a problem that is.
This is great! Thank you!
Thanks Donor Voice! That’s a great tool but I have one caveat.
You need to know what % of your donations come through your website and you need to know how the profile of your online donors compares to the rest of your donor file.
Online feedback is a measure of your online donors. Don’t extrapolate your findings to the rest of your database without doing some comparative research between your online donors and your offline donors.
I know Donor Voice also has great tools for getting feedback from your offline donors.
We’ve been using the widget for the last several months and found it to be easy to use. We’re a very small organization, but have been pleased with how much feedback we’ve been getting back regarding our webpage and our donation process. And the best part is that it is incidental, immediate feedback that is otherwise hard to come by. The commitment by staff is minimal, and is usually just a quick email when a supporter encounters a problem on the website or is otherwise upset about something.
Anon,
Thought I’d offer up a few observations that may alleviate your concerns. It is certainly fair to suggest the act of asking for feedback raises or otherwise changes expectations – namely that you’ll act on that feedback. Few counterpoints for consideration,
1) I don’t mean to be (overly) flippant but the tree that falls in the forest does make a noise, even if nobody is there to hear it. This is about turning up the volume on thoughts and perceptions about your organization that exist whether you ask or not.
2) there is evidence – a lot of it – that the mere act of asking for feedback provides lift in subsequent behavior. This is free lift (using this free tool and zero staff time) in this case and therefore is as close to a silver bullet as one can get in this world. This free lift is with doing nothing to respond to the feedback.
3) the widget provides an automated, first line of defense with emails pushed out that are responsive to the feedback. In short, the tool does some of the meeting of potentially raised expectations for you (and increases lift upside)
4) it is categorically true that one can get even more lift – again, plenty of data to support this – by creating a 2nd line of defense that is going to involve staff time. However, as Isaac noted (and as a user of the widget already) the time is pretty minimal.
5) Again, trying to avoid being (overly) flippant here but there is no such thing as a shortage of time, merely a shortage of properly prioritizing where time should be spent. The cliche is well worn, equally true and almost equally ignored but it costs far less to keep an existing donor than to get a new one. The amount of spend put against trying to retain an existing donor pales in comparison to the cost of acquiring a new one. This reality means the best ROI for the next, incremental marketing dollar or the next available staff minute is always better spent against the house file than acquisition.
6) the customer service function is the next great frontier for the handful of leading edge charities who elect to go there. In a non-profit world of highly commoditized brands, selling the exact same thing to the exact same people with near zero barrier to entry it is very hard to stand out from the crowd on mission, positioning, message, creative, etc… All of those can also be easily copied and stolen (which happens every day). A race to the middle has been in place for a long time and all the industry metrics support this assertion.
7) great customer service is more about mindset than process and $. It can be a significant profit center, not a cost center. The “everyone is a fundraiser mantra” (particularly popular in the UK) to suggest the entire organization is responsible for raising money could be equally applied to “everyone is in the donor service” business. Upsell, cross-sell, higher retention. Massive money and a hell of a lot of growth, especially for the first movers…Not to mention the cost is a fraction of what it costs to try and grow by acquiring more folks. Growth being defined here as net revenue (not topline donor count or dollars in door).
I will try it and get back to you. Thank you!
Looks like a great tool. I am curious as to what happens with all of our donor information that you collect and give back to us.
John,
The donor information is on the feedback tool’s platform but is yours alone. We don’t aggregate, analyze, or do anything with it except pass it back to you.