We advocate strongly for asking donor commitment, satisfaction, preference, and/or identity immediately after first donation.  One question we get is whether donors get turned off by these questions.  On the contrary, most donors prefer that you know them and act like you know them.

But we’ve all had someone ask for more personal information than we thought they should have.  How can you draw the line?

There was an interesting take on this in the book Factfulness by the Roslings.  He had been talking with gynecologists doing surveys in poor communities:

“I was interested to know whether some STDs were more common in some income groups, and so I asked them to include a question about income on their forms.  They looked at me and said, ‘What? You can’t ask people about their incomes.  That is an extremely private question.’ …

Some years later, I met the team at the World Bank who organized the global income surveys and I asked them to include questions about sexual activity in their survey. …  Their reaction was more or less the same.  They were happy to ask people all kinds of questions about their income, the blank market, and so on.  But sex?  Absolutely not.”

The authors draw about this as a lesson to be bold in questions.  I drew a different one: context matters in donor surveys.

We expect a gynecologist to ask about sex, not money.  We expect economists to ask about money, not sex.  We know approximately how each question is going to be used.

Likewise, it makes sense to answer what your favorite charity is for a charity, not for a magazine publisher.  But we can’t picture how the nonprofit would use or need to know to what magazines we subscribe.

Further, questions like commitment, satisfaction, identity, and preference all benefit the donor.

This will let them know their donation form is unusable?  Great!

You’ll know who I am, so I don’t have to read prose like “If you are or have ever been a hangnail sufferer” that sounds like it is detained at Gitmo?  Perfect!

I don’t have to get paper because I always give online?  Sign me up!

(Sign me up for the email newsletter, that is.  Not the mail.)

If you are asking questions that you need to customize donors’ experiences with you and can show that as a benefit, your response will be higher.  And even those who don’t answer won’t take offense that you asked.