After a first gift, most donors fall into two camps.

• The majority never give again.

• The next most common group gives exactly once a year, the Mode of 1.

But there’s a third group. Smaller, more valuable, and more complex. They’re the donors open to giving more than once a year and we call them Responsive Multiples.  These are the donors most fundraisers salivate over and they’re also the ones most often mishandled.

Jack and Jill, Redux

• Jill donates frequently and is more likely to donate today than Jack, who donates less often.

• But if Jill donates today, she’s less likely to donate tomorrow.

Both statements are true.  Traditional models do the first comparison: pit Jill against Jack, rank by recency and frequency (even if using fancy models), and flood Jill with appeals. The assumption: past response = future response.

But that’s only half the picture. Because Jill isn’t just a datapoint relative to Jack, she’s an individual whose behavior changes in response to your behavior. And if your “behavior” is an onslaught of asks, you’ll eventually turn Jill into Jack.

That’s the paradox of frequency, more contact drives some donations, but it also breeds irritation. Every donor eventually takes a break from the treadmill and the only question is whether that break is temporary or permanent.

The DonorVoice Approach: Personalized Pulsing

Our model takes a different tack and it’s conceptually simple and intuitively appealing.

We look at how each individual donor responds to the charity’s inputs — the actual solicitation history. Not just their gifts, but how their giving changes in response to being asked.

That means Jill’s cadence isn’t determined by comparing her to Jack. It’s determined by Jill’s own response pattern.

For Responsive Multiples, we use machine learning to predict the months we should and shouldn’t mail, for each person. The result is a personalized cadence:

• Engage donors when they’re most receptive.

• Hold off when contact is more likely to irritate than inspire.

• Reduce the total number of appeals while increasing net revenue.

Knowing when to ask, and just as importantly, when not to.

We’ll be showing what Responsive Multiples look like in practice — and how personalized pulsing works at scale — in our upcoming webinar:  Stop Asking, Start Aligning: How Donor Rhythms Beat Default Frequency

Kevin