Now Be Honest

December 9, 2008      Admin

Over the years, we’ve seen that most donors give on average to six or seven charities or causes. Maybe you fit this profile.

I’m going to presume that most of the nonprofits you personally support communicate regularly with you via email (assuming you’ve given them permission).

Now I ask you to be honest …

Do you really look forward to getting any of those emails? Do you ever worry anxiously … "When will my next message from Cause X arrive? Maybe they’ve dropped me off their list!" Do you ever say to yourself … "I can’t wait to get my next email (i.e., communication) from Charity Z!"

If there’s ANY charity or cause that has built this bond with you — keeping in mind such a relationship is by definition reciprocal — then they deserve a gigantic gold star!

And you should really reflect on that relationship. How have they maintained that "first love" level of urgency and anticipation? How do they make their communications so relevant and compelling to you? What are they doing tactically to hold your attention?

Once you figured out what they are doing right, turn it around … reverse engineer it. How can the communications of your organization provide that same experience for your donors and members?

If none of the charities you personally support has built this bond with you, why are you still giving? Are your donors this forgiving?!

Tom

 

One response to “Now Be Honest”

  1. Mal Warwick says:

    A telephone survey my company cosponsored about five years ago reached 500 direct mail donors in Canada and 500 in the USA. One of the questions we asked attempted to learn the number of charities each donor supported in a given year. To our astonishment, the average number in both countries was 14. Those were pretty big samples, and it can’t be a coincidence that the number was the same in both countries. So I tend to believe the findings — even though I, too, would have guessed the number would be six or seven, as your post suggests.