Retention

Lisa Van Giesen from Billhighway shares 10 low-cost donor engagement strategies and five peer-to-peer fundraising tips she gleaned from the second annual Engage Conference.

Being donor-focused makes all the difference in your fundraising success. It means that everything you do is centered on donors and how they see things. It helps them feel good about their decision to give to you, and ultimately, this keeps your donors around for a long time. So where do you start to become more donor-focused? Here are three things you can start doing this week that will pay big rewards with a minimum investment of time.

Fundraising publications and blogs are full of good advice for improving donor retention, yet one of the most obvious steps to improved retention — a prompt thank-you to a gift — just seems too overwhelming for many nonprofits. According to Grizzard’s 2013 DonorGraphics™ media usage study, donors estimate that they receive acknowledgments of their donations only 74 percent of the time. That presents a differentiation opportunity that can help facilitate donor loyalty.

So we’re all on the donor retention bandwagon, right? Treat your donors well; use their personal information to show that you know what interests them; thank them promptly and frequently; describe the impactful results of their support, etc. But what about the acquisition variable in the retention equation?

While the above techniques are important, they all happen after the donor comes in the door — but retention potential comes into play long before that moment. And if donors don’t join your organization for the right reasons, then no amount of engagement and retention activities will keep them on board.

There are a lot of good organizations doing things right. But there are way too many organizations that are not donor-centered. So, I’ve been thinking about this for some time now. I researched consumer and donor bill of rights lists on the Internet and have talked with Jeff Schreifels about it. And we’ve come up with six rights that we believe capture what every major donor should be entitled to in his or her relationship to the organization to which they donate.

As Adrian Sargeant shares, “Improving donor retention by just 10 percent can double the lifetime value of your donor database.” Plan for increases in retention by using methods like the ones here.

In the spirit of improving donor retention rates in 2014, here are five no-brainer follow-up techniques to help you retain new online donors.

We get it — retention rates as a whole could be better, and increasing retention is an easy sell. Who doesn’t want to increase their retention? We read about it. We talk about it. We watch people wring their hands over it.

See how MSPCA-Angell uses direct-mail fundraising to retain donors and how the League of Women Voters uses direct-mail fundraising for acquiring new supporters.

During his session for last year's FundRaising Success Virtual Conference & Expo, "The (Proper) Care and Feeding of Mid-Level Donors," Andrew Laudano, vice president of fundraising at LW Robbins, focused on this core group of donors.