We often talk about donor identities that make someone more valuable or easier to acquire, whether it’s direct connection to a disease organization, medical professionals to organizations that help sick kids, those who receive services, or many others.

But what about the donor identities that make someone less valuable?  Yes, they exist.  And they are valuable to know both to avoid these donors in acquisition and to craft the donor journeys that will improve their retention odds.

One of the most famous of these donor identities is disaster donors.  These donors will want to do something when an immediate and urgent problem makes the evening news, which is great.  But those who are there only for disasters are notoriously difficult to retain or refocus on systemic fixes.

You may not have disaster donors.  But you likely have donors who come to your organization for a different, and less valuable, reason than your average donor.

An academic study reminded me of this fact.  In it, the authors analyze donor retention for DonorsChoose.org.  (For those not familiar, DonorsChoose.org is a crowdfunding site for classroom projects across the United States.)

If you want a more full discussion of the results from the study, you can find them on today’s Agitator post.  Here, I want to focus on those who come to the site from a project URL given out by a teacher (what they call teacher-referred).  As the authors say:

“We split first-time donors into two groups: teacher-referred donors and site donors. These two groups of donors are arguably quite different. While donors of the first group presumably entered the community to support a specific teacher, the donors of the second one could have joined the community because they wanted to support the cause of improving public education and/or the community as a whole.”

Different donor identities, different reasons for coming to the site and donating.  How did these two groups compare to each other?

Lower average gift and lower retention rate – a brutal combination.  Of course, in this case, if you are DonorChoose.org, you are still going to acquire these teacher-referred donors happily.  You want teachers using their networks to introduce potential donors to the site.

But if you are planning a remarketing or cotargeting campaign to reacquire lapsed donors, where would you best invest?

Likewise, this opens up messaging opportunities.  If someone comes in through a teacher, they likely are going to be more interested in that teacher’s (and school’s) opportunities, versus site donors who are likely more agnostic.

These lower-value identities will vary greatly.  Maybe your organization’s advocates sign petitions, not checks.  Maybe people who are attracted to a particular exhibit, activity, or performance won’t retain as well (e.g., if you don’t think Kennedy Center memberships will rise this year and fall in 2019 as Hamilton comes, then leaves, you are crazy).  For these types of donors, it’s about understanding their motivation so you 1) don’t waste your breath and 2) use that breath for the few things that may turn them into more loyal donors.