5 Nonprofit Donor Retention Trends for 2015

To get a handle on what’s in store for 2015, NonProfit PRO rounded up some of the nonprofit industry’s finest, who were kind enough to share their nonprofit trends for 2015. Here are five trends on donor retention.

DONOR RETENTION
Richard Perry, founding partner, and Jeff Schreifels, senior partner, Veritus Group
1. As the cost and complexity of donor acquisition increases there is a higher focus on donor retention, especially increasing efforts in major and midlevel giving programs to retain and upgrade donors.

Rich Dietz, senior product manager of digital fundraising, Abila
2. Conversion optimization: Organizations will begin to think about how to better convert existing website visitors versus simply attracting new visitors. This is a business practice that many small businesses have adopted recently and will work well for nonprofit organizations. Conversion optimization revolves around measuring, testing and optimizing the donation flow to raise more money.

Rachel Armbruster, CEO, Armbruster Consulting Group
3. There has been a renewed focus on retention efforts that cut across all areas of development. Chapters especially are looking to national offices to provide best practices, strategies and tools.

Jay Love, co-founder and CEO, Bloomerang
4. The early months of the new year are a great time to revise your acknowledgment letters, especially if you haven’t updated them in quite a while. Consider also creating multiple acknowledgment templates that fit different segments of your database. For example, you wouldn’t want to send the same “thank you” letter to two donors who give wildly different amounts or who gave through different channels (an event vs online). Be personal! Treat all of your donors like the unique flowers that they are.

Kivi Leroux Miller, president, Nonprofit Marketing Guide
5. Donor retention is finally a priority. For the first time in five years, donor retention has jumped ahead of donor acquisition as a major communications goal. It seems as though everyone has been talking about the importance of donor retention for years now, but we did not see that reflected in the priority communications goals for nonprofits — until this year.