The Perfect Recipe for Donor Prospect List Segmentation

By Sue Wong

With just a few ingredients, you can tailor every donor prospect acquisition effort.

Ingredients:

half cup of lapsed house donors
half cup of online activists, petition/survey signers and tippers cocktail
half cup of outside lists
half cup of co-op models (the secret sauce)
a dash of testing*

*Must have. No substitutions allowed.

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. While the oven comes to temperature, make sure to segment all the ingredients. Doing so will help you market to each segment more effectively.

2. In a large bowl, start by adding the lapsed donors. This ingredient must be ripened before using in this recipe (as early as 25 months and, depending on the organization, up to 61 months since the last contribution). The beauty of this base ingredient is that the names are free, which will only drive down your list costs and increase your ROI. Plus, it will allow you to reintroduce your mission to former donors and hopefully get them to renew their support at a more cost-efficient rate than through appeal or renewal efforts.

3. Next, pour in the online activists, petition/survey signers and tippers cocktail. You don't have to buy this ingredient; it can be easily made. Start with random selects (or the entire list, if so desired) from your lists of online activists and non-donor petition/survey signers. Both online activists and non-donor petitions/survey signers have indicated an interest in your organization but may not have made the leap to financial support. They are prime recipe candidates because, like lapsed names, they are free. Tippers are the love-hate ingredient in the cocktail. Tippers are the donors in your file who contribute less than $10 every time they respond. From them, you will get the response desired but not the average dollar amount sought. For best results, prioritize the online activists, petition/survey signers and tippers cocktail below the lapsed ingredient when combining.