Donor attitudes cause behavior; this is our constant refrain at DonorVoice.  And yet, very few nonprofits spend much time or energy understanding donor attitudes. Instead, loyalty gets defined as a pattern of desirous past behavior.  Surely, these folks must be loyal and surely this behavior based approach must be the most reliable way to identify said loyalty?  Right?  After all, aren’t people notorious for saying one thing and doing another?

The problem with this thinking is that it has led the sector as a whole to a state of dreadful retention rates, negative lifetime values and a general malaise in search of a cure.  Consider the following findings for the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) recently shared at the DMA conference.

(CLICK IMAGE TO SEE LARGER VERSION)

On the left is a graphic with results from our recent Donor Commitment Study showing Donor Commitment Scores for 50 large, well known charities.  These scores allowed for creation of a national index.  On the right are two columns, representing segments of good (USOC Core) and “bad” (USOC Outside Core) donors based on a Merkle lifetime value assessment.

For each universe of behaviorally defined donors – Core and Outside Core – we measured, via a survey, the strength of the donor relationship with USOC; we call this Commitment and it is 100% attitudinally defined.

When we look at the group, within USOC Core, with the highest Donor Commitment Scores – 85 is the average for this subset of High Commitment donors – we see the average gift is $48.21.  This is compared to an average gift of $43.75 for the average Core donor, defined only by past behavior.  This means we identified, using donor attitudes, a subset within Core who is MORE valuable than the overall Core segment.  This subset of High Commitment, Core donors can only be identified using attitudinal data.  On the flip side we also identified a subset of the Core donors we identify as “at-risk” based on their moderate to low Commitment scores.  This group has a weak relationship with USOC despite looking quite attractive from a behavior only standpoint.  (Sidebar: we also identified what USOC can do from a marketing, fundraising and donor service standpoint to impact these lower scores but this post is really about the targeting piece)

Within the USOC Outside Core we did the same analysis and found a subset of High Commitment donors giving $41.68 in average giving who are well worth USOC spend and focus.  In other words, this group belongs in Core despite having lower lifetime values.  Their relationship with USOC warrants treatment more similar to Core, not Outside Core.

At this point in the post many a seasoned direct marketer will be saying, “yea but how do I find these attitudinal segments on my file if we don’t have Donor Commitment Scores for everybody?”  Fair point, though there is a way to pull this off.

It turns out (which is often the case) there are demographic variables that are uniquely descriptive of the High Commitment USOC donors – specifically, household income and level of formal education. These two variables are easily appended to the file by any number of vendors at a low cost.  At which point, USOC can use them as proxy variables to target and select High Commitment donors who look different than Low Commitment on this basis.  Of course this is not a perfect method but still a reasonable approach that will positively impact ROI.