You’re a ‘Donor Loser’ … Explain Why To Your Boss!
In this excellent post, Angie Moore reminds us of the frightening statistics from the latest 2015 Fundraising Effectiveness Survey Report. Angie calls these findings “scary”.
Roger warned us about these numbers as well when they first came out … he called the findings “depressing” … “read them and weep” he said.
Here are the basic two stats (but the full 2015 report, which covers 2014 giving, is ‘must read’) …
- Every 100 donors gained in 2014 was offset by 103 in lost donors through attrition.
- Every $100 gained in 2014 was offset by $95 in losses through gift attrition.
Of course, these are aggregate stats.
Hopefully your nonprofit or charity bucked the average. And maybe the report on 2015 results will be brighter. I’m not counting on that.
Hopefully you are one of the fundraisers who gained more donors than you lost in 2015. If you are, please share your ‘secret sauce’ with your fellow Agitator readers!
But if you’re a ‘donor loser’, how did that happen? And how did you explain that state of affairs to your boss? I suspect those might be two different sets of answers!
Did you explain it away by citing ‘exogenous’ factors — e.g., not ‘enough’ disasters this year. Or, the presidential campaigns were already sucking up the money. Or, the stock market made donors jittery. Or, everyone in our space did poorly?
Or did you fess up to mistakes (not necessarily yours, or yours alone) of fundraising strategy or execution — e.g., your acquisition budget was irrationally cut, you failed to move quickly or aggressively enough on a fundraising opportunity, your creative sucked, you paid too little attention to donor retention, you wasted money and attention on the latest ‘new thing’, staff/agency turnover slowed your pace of activity?
If you were a ‘donor loser’ in 2015, I do hope you’ve sized up your situation honestly (and if that means challenging the boss, so be it) and mapped out the concrete steps you’ll be taking to become a ‘donor winner’ in 2016.
After all, how many ‘donor loser’ years can your organization withstand?
Tom
2 responses to “You’re a ‘Donor Loser’ … Explain Why To Your Boss!”
Behavioral Science Q & A
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Based on what we know from existing data, those renewal notices can actually be pretty effective in getting people to donate. They tap into our psychology – creating a sense of urgency, reminding us of past support, and using personalization to make the message hit home. They’re playing on our natural tendencies to feel obligated […]
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I’m not an expert in this but a quick search surfaced this article on the effect of tax reforms on 2019’s charitable giving. The researchers didn’t find a reduction. Actually, they observed an “increase in charitable contributions in 2019, even with the lower tax rates and the dramatically smaller number of taxpayers who itemize their […]
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Tom,
You may have created a new title for the nonprofit sector-Donor Loser. I hope not!
Oh man, reading the excuse list was like reading the verbatim narrative from our departing executive director! (In lemming-like fashion, many staff began to parrot and mimic his narrative). And reading the ‘likely error’ list was like reading an exact match to what actually happened with us – and many of the items (wasting money on the latest ‘new’ thing) were started by the departing disaster-man.
Thanks Tom! Glad to have found your work!