Mastering ‘retention’ requires hard work:  research, organization-wide involvement across departments, and a willingness to swim against the conventional currents in the Sea of Sameness that is drowning our sector.

Unlike ‘acquisition’, fundraisers can’t just sign a purchase order for lists, printing, copywriters and consultants then hope for the best.

To briefly recap my points so far:

• Part 1: Donor commitment or loyalty is NOT driven by fundraising appeal tactics – e.g. frequency of asking, monthly or no monthly program, color of envelope, teasers … High commitment or loyalty is attributable to the range of donor experiences the entire organization serves up.
  
  The actions an organization takes toward its donors affects the donors’ attitudes, positively or negatively. And, it is the donors’ attitudes that affect their behavior (giving, upgrading, renewing, etc.)

• Part 2: The existence of silos – departmental bins seeking ‘credit’ – leads to false attribution of what really matters when it comes to commitment and retention.
  
  The myopic tendency is to focus narrowly on performance of specific appeals rather than on the mix of equally or more important actions (thank you’s, extraordinary experiences for the donor, donor service and donor care) that lead to higher commitment.

• Part 3: Donors are made, not born. It is a mistake to believe there exists a pool of prospects pre-committed to your organization or to chase the mythical ‘new’ donor you don’t have, who you hope will be somehow simultaneously different and better than your current ones. You have to create that commitment through the donor experiences your organization provides.Special techniques and screens (models, co-op databases, etc) can improve the quality of lead generation (prospecting), but only you and your organization can build longer-term loyalty and commitment.

We now come to the key question:  What specific actions does your organization take toward the donor that help – or harm – donor commitment or loyalty?

First, it’s important to be aware that not everything you do matters – and that the actions that do matter do not matter equally. In fact, some actions you may assume are beneficial, instead produce negative attitudes in the donors.

For example, some fundraisers (and, of course the editor) assume their organization’s  glossy magazine is beloved by donors only to find out its existence makes absolutely no difference, or worse, depresses loyalty and commitment.

Others are absolutely convinced, perhaps because it’s the CEO’s favorite, that the annual report is critically important, only to discover that it doesn’t matter one whit to the donors.

The Agitator is blessed with readers who think, understand and act. Many, like Simone Joyaux, Tom Ahern, Lisa Sargent and Ken Burnett, to name but a few, share their knowledge of great donor experiences and relationship management freely, to their credit, in both the Comments section of The Agitator and in publications and workshops.

I raise this because with all the truly helpful advice floating around, I feel it important to be able to use it as effectively as possible. For me that means putting advice in a ‘framework’ or ‘context’ that makes it more useable.

All of these folks focus mainly on the experiences an organization can provide its donors. Lisa often deals with Thank you’s, Simone with extraordinary experiences, Tom with donor-centered communications, and Ken with a range of organizational behaviors that make a huge difference where loyalty or commitment is concerned.

As I talk with them or read their advice I tuck it away in my ‘key donor experiences’ folder, my personal ‘framework’ or ‘context’ for improving loyalty.

Isn’t this terribly ‘fuzzy’ or ‘subjective’ you ask? The answer would be ‘yes, absolutely’ if it weren’t for the work of folks like Kevin Schulman over at DonorVoice or Adrian Sargent. They’ve developed ways to measure which experiences matter and which experiences don’t.

Here’s a short summary of how you can put this knowledge to work today.

How to begin

Fortunately, because humans can’t process a million things in order to form an opinion or make a choice, the list of experiences you serve up that really matter is finite.

The essential first step is to arrive at a list of key experiences that really matter; then use them to build a retention roadmap of donor experiences.

It’s way beyond the space limitations of this post to detail how to arrive at this list. (I’ll do that later in the series of Retention Webinars we’ll be hosting for Agitator Subscribers.)

For now, based on three years of donor research involving 250+ organizations in the U.S. and U.K. by our sister organization DonorVoice, here is a ‘universal’ or ‘general’ set of the seven most important or key experiences offered by organizations – they call them ‘Key Drivers’. Experiences the organization offers or actions the organization takes that are essential for building high donor loyalty or commitment. Here are the Key Drivers, as seen by the donors:

7 Key Drivers of Donor Commitment

1.     Effectively trying to achieve mission.
 
2.     Knowing what to expect from the organization with each interaction.
 
3.     Timeliness of thank you’s.
 
4.     Providing opportunities to make views known.
 
5.     Provide feeling that I’m part of important cause.
 
6.     Provide feeling my involvement is appreciated.
 
7.     Send information showing who is being helped.

Of necessity this list of 7 Key Drivers is generalized from the studies of 250+ organizations. Nevertheless, absent a study focused specifically on your own organization your retention efforts will be well served by viewing the donor experiences you offer through the lens of these key drivers.

By the way, the 7 drivers are the highest ranking among a list of 32 donor experiences surveyed by DonorVoice. If you’re curious about the specific donor experiences surveyed you can download that list here.

To illustrate how informed, creative interpretation can be used to come up with a set of actionable recommendations using these 7 Key Drivers, DonorVoice recruited several prominent fundraising, marketing and donor gurus for this purpose.

Their assignment? Offer up specific and creative ideas on how an organization might go about delivering on each of the 7 Key Drivers.

You can download their thoughts and ideas on best practices for each of the 7 Key Drivers here.

Whether you’re a large or small organization, I urge you to gather a knowledgeable, organization-wide team together and, at the very least, dig in and understand the experiences you’re offering your donors. Agree on how to improve those experiences and set out a roadmap for doing so.

In our upcoming Retention Webinars for Agitator Subscribers we’ll deal with how to score and benchmark your file by level of donor commitment … and how to create a customized, organization-specific view of those donor experiences that matter most for your organization.

Meanwhile, I welcome examples of what ‘experiences’ or ‘drivers’ you’ve determined to be most important.

Roger