The death of average in nonprofit marketing

May 11, 2017      Kevin Schulman, Founder, DonorVoice and DVCanvass

There once was a time where good enough was good enough.  The difference between a top 20% medieval serf and a bottom 20% one, for example, was likely almost unnoticeable.

This is not that time.  And last month’s Fundraising Effectiveness Report shows us why.  Here is the year-over-year gain versus loss of gifts from 2015 to 2016:

Average non-profits gained only 2.2% last year in gifts

As you can see, the difference between a top 20% nonprofit and a bottom 20% one is the difference between doubling gifts and almost halving them.

But we should also take no comfort in the middle. The average nonprofit increased their giving by 2.2%. And the latest US inflation rate was 2.4%.

Average is treading water.  Even just the difference between average and above average (the 60-80% tier) is the difference between doubling your giving in 3-4 years and doubling your giving by your retirement party.

That means it’s time to shrug off good enough and “best practices” that actually are doing by everyone, including the average.

We would ask you to look at every contact you have with a potential donor and ask if there’s one thing you can do to improve:

  • The tie to a donor’s identity — who they are
  • The tie to why the donor gives to you — their commitment to your organization
  • The donor experience — making the donor happier for having talked with you

These sound like small steps, but they are still enough to move an organization above average:

  • An organization that asked two identity questions at the beginning of a telemarketing script, then played those back to the person at the end increased their giving by 15%
  • Another organization that segmented its donors by their commitment to the organization has had three five-figure gifts from donors who had been raising their hands in the past but were called on because transactional data alone hadn’t identified them as targets.
  • A third organization measured their donors’ experience on their website and, with a few tweaks, increased their donation form fulfillment from 12% to 32% in one month.

Simple steps.  But these simple steps can take you out of the average trap and start making things outstanding, for you and your donors.

2 responses to “The death of average in nonprofit marketing”

  1. Jono Smith says:
    May 12, 2017 at 11:20 am

    Can you expand on this? “A third organization measured their donors’ experience on their website and, with a few tweaks, increased their donation form fulfillment from 12% to 32% in one month.”

  2. Nick Ellinger says:
    May 12, 2017 at 12:06 pm

    Sure! I’ll confess it was one of the more dramatic turnarounds I’ve seen — organizations generally have a bump in both satisfaction and donation rate when they incorporate feedback, but 12 to 32% was one of the biggest.

    This organization implemented a post-donation survey and a donation form abandonment survey online, so they were getting feedback from those who donated and those who didn’t. All in all, their form had 50-60% of people saying it was “very difficult” to use. Text analysis of the free responses that people had gave us a few culprits:
    – Their email and web confirmation pages were four pages long to print
    – Their form wasn’t mobile friendly
    – They had a huge image on the top of the page that made it load slowly
    – Instead of simple $50 buttons, you had to read through multiplier copy that read “$50.00 to send $10,500 of X”
    – They hadn’t incorporated PayPal

    So over the period of a month, they started knocking these out one at a time to the point they were all fixed. Conversion went from 12% to 32% and the people who said the form was “very difficult” went from 50-60% to less than 1%.

    Does that explain better?

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