Four charts that tell the story the sector doesn't want to hear.
The boardroom favorite.
Year-over-year retention climbs from 30% to 92% — a beautiful trendline that hides the fact that we're measuring an ever-shrinking, self-selected group of loyalists.
The uncomfortable truth.
Same data, different framing. By Year 4, we've lost 85% of the original cohort. The red isn't a bug — it's the business model.
Correlation ≈ 0.90.
Donors who stay longer receive more total communications — but that's because staying causes more mail, not the other way around. The sector reads this chart backwards.
Correlation ≈ −0.33.
In any given year, more communications correlate with a lower likelihood of the donor sticking around. Volume doesn't retain — it irritates.