Who Better To Talk To?
If you are seriously interested in arresting your nonprofit’s declining retention rate, there are several approaches you can take — tactical improvements to your cultivation and renewal streams, improving ‘customer service’ aspects of your operations, telling a more compelling story (delivering both emotion and results).
Of course these are not mutually exclusive approaches … probably all are needed.
But where’s the best place to go to figure out why donors are losing their commitment to your organization, or why your communications and interactions are failing to get the job done?
It seems to me two bits of research might be useful, directed at the two different ends of your donor spectrum.
On the one hand, you should talk to your lapsed donors. Why did they not fall in love with your work? Why did they fall out of love? This is inquiring into your failure … your failure, not theirs.
On the other hand, you should talk to your most committed active donors as well (perhaps a sampling of your best multi-year donors). Why have they stayed in love? What are you doing right by them? What do they still see in you that isn’t getting through to those lapsed donors? This is inquiring into your success.
Between these two ‘conversations’ you should be able to glean all you need to know about how to better relate to your donors and retain their commitment.
Tom
P.S. This post is triggered by this study from EngageSciences reported on Technorati, which finds that less than 5% of a brand’s fan base generate 100% of its referrals. Says EngagedSciences: “The problem is most brands don’t know who those 4.7 percent are and don’t have programs in place to work with this elite group of advocates … Do the math, brands! It’s time brands focused on building the brand army. Not all fans are equal. Its time to start focusing some budget on working better with the organic influencers you have within your own social media following.”
EngagedSciences is talking about social media fans. Personally, I’d still talk first to my best givers … at some point I’d look into my best fans.
Tom, I could not agree with you more but then the old adage that not all your donors – regardless of which end of the spectrum they fall in, are cut from the same cloth – hence not deserving of the same message. The research has been done on which groups respond to which values – and matching the research based message to the right group does work. So again, you’re right!
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