What’s Working in Donor Fundraising?

Those of you who know me well are aware that I focus my word choices, blog posts, Twitter posts, training language and any communication I deliver from a positive lens. I choose to take a look from the perspective of “What is working here?” and “What will it take to get from here to where we want to go?” rather than “what’s wrong here?”

Last week I read a report from Lisa Sargent based on interviews with top U.S. nonprofit executives. The report outlines a number of things in answer to the question: “what’s working?” The full report has lots of great information in it. Be sure to download and read it.

Here is the Observations and Recommendations portion of Lisa Sargent’s report. These are a great guide as we head into the final and most busy quarter of the fundraising year:
1. The quality and consistency of your post-acquisition donor communications matters more than ever; and until this fact isn’t simply acknowledged – but acted upon – retention rates will likely suffer.

The major impediment here, noted an executive at one of the largest organizations, is simply that even today, quality communications are seen as “desirable, not a necessity”. . . and that most still “don’t value the importance of good communication.”

Of course, based on many of the findings in this report, it’s clear that follow-up donor communications – online and especially offline – hold the key to loyalty and retention. For example:

• Online donors, e-mail subscribers and social media followers are fragile, so your follow-up communications are critical for converting a SM audience to e mail subscribers and online donors, and for improved retention, to direct mail donor care communications.
• Donors now expect more (and thanks to channel proliferation they are marketed to ever-more frequently), so your message must be concise, clear, accessible and with a uniform voice across channels
• Steep nonprofit competition means that regular, relevant communications that resonate emotionally are key to staying top-of-mind with donors

2. Consider making story-based and relationship fundraising a bigger part of the donor communications mix.

At one organization, an executive noted that they have seen a 25% boost in gifts from existing donors, by shifting to a more story-oriented communications style. Overall, the number of communications that donors receive from this charity each year has actually increased; however, the mix now includes more newsletters and fewer direct mail appeals.

This leader remarked that there is far less transactional fundraising going on in these messages, saying it’s “all about personal impact” – an insight offered by a number of others in this survey – and “very little hard numbers.”
The strategy may be effective because it appears to capitalize on the changing donor mindset noted earlier in this report.

3. Find a way to eliminate creative silos when integrating campaigns and when using multi-channel communications.

As noted, the biggest challenge here is consistency: of voice, tone, image, etc.

At least one organization represented in this report is planning to bring its direct mail function in-house, two to three years down the road, in an effort to gain more control over uniformity of messaging.

Control and consistency are particularly important as more and more donors now view your work and your communications across multiple channels, and especially if these communications carry the signature of a single, high-level leader: a harmonious tone and style is vital.

What’s Working in Donor Fundraising and Development Today? Copyright © Lisa Sargent and Sargent Communications, published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.