Hello Future Donor!

I don't know about you, but my colleague Emily Goodstein mentioned that one thing she wishes was that organizations asked her more often about why and how she decided to get involved.  Emily is my bellwether for how millennials think and behave.  Me, I'm GenX, which might make you think I'm a slacker, but in fact I'm more likely to make a monthly gift to your organization than any other demographic segment.  As GenX and millennials increase their giving over time, knowing more about us and better personalizing communication to us will be paramount.

There’s a lot out there about how to convert prospects to donors. Direct mail has it down to a science. Email used to be the wild west, but over the last decade has generated its own list of best practices and golden rules, which are in turn enthusiastically broken by lead-edge innovators. The question is – how can you do it better and more efficiently?

The answer may lie in data. When I speak of data, in my mind I divide it up into two parts. The first is demographic and psychographic data, which is the kind of data you can buy. Think about things like age, sex, income, political affiliation, interests, the type of car you drive. In the long run, if you have good tools and good methodology, you can test different messaging on different segments and find pockets of profitability. Maybe people who drive a Prius who were born prior to 1985 are more likely to become a monthly sustainer, for example.

But that won’t tell you WHY a donor decided to give to your organization. To find out what motivated the donor (or better yet, what will motivate similar prospects), you usually will have to ask. Thanks to online systems and social media, it’s easier than ever to ask questions and collect responses online. Maybe even too easy – as anyone who has collected a lot of data and then had to cull through the results can tell you.

So it’s best to begin at the end. Before you jump in to write the questions and answers and set up the survey, think about how you will use the answers that you collect. Every single question should have an application that will help you better communicate with this potential donor. Otherwise you’re wasting your time and theirs. Don’t collect data that you’re not going to use.

Where can you collect this data? One of the easiest places is via your website in the place where people can join the email list. Best practices recommend that you keep the email signup form brief – if it’s too hard or seems like it will take too long to fill out the form, people might abandon it. But I think that it’s worth testing out including one very simple question. For-profit websites often ask “How did you hear about us?” They’re trying to gauge the effectiveness of their advertising spend. For a mission-driven nonprofit organization who wants to ask this potential supporter to make a gift, the question is a little different, and there are plenty of ways to ask it.

• Why do you want to join our email list?
• What is motivating you to get involved with us?
• What is your connection to our mission?
• Why is this issue important to you?

The format of the answer could vary – multiple choice, with “Other” if the person’s reason doesn’t fit one of your pre-written answers. Or just a text box, so they can state the reason in their own words. Or anything else you can dream up. Make sure you actually read the answers, or scan them for keywords, and make a meaningful attempt to understand what the person means.  In fact, for essay questions I'd argue that it's worth the time to have a real live human person read every single answer and categorize or tag the person somehow in your CRM system so you can use their answers for segmenting. 

Wondering where I got my information about generational giving patterns?  You don't have to take my word for it - you can download our study about generational giving.  It's a fascinating read, and important to boot, because it's where the future of giving is headed.

Who Owns the Donor?

Ask any nonprofit what the lifeblood of their organization is and most will tell you it’s the donor. Cultivating an ongoing relationship with the donor is of extreme importance, but it also raises a burning question: Who, exactly, owns the donor? Traditionally, it has been the development staff – or, in some instances, a senior fundraiser.

Talk to development staff at nearly any nonprofit organization and this is what you’ll likely hear: “It’s my job to develop and maintain the key connections that drive gifts. I need to control the interactions. Stay away from my contacts and let me do this my way.”

This “fundraiser owns the donor” model often works for a while, especially when programs are first introduced, but it can also be a double-edged sword. Here’s why.

• Fundraising complacency and high turnover of new development staff: When senior fundraisers amass large portfolios of contacts, they are eventually unable to effectively cultivate them. The hoarding of donors results in insufficient portfolios for junior and mid-career fundraisers, causing them to take on additional tasks to justify their positions – ultimately leading to dissatisfaction and high turnover. When experienced fundraisers push back on new ideas for portfolio alignment, executives and board members often abandon plans for rejuvenation, fearful that key fundraisers might walk, and take their donors with them. 
• Fundraiser poaching: Newer organizations and competing programs find it easier to recruit top performers with incremental pay increases rather than teaching the “art of giving” to new fundraisers. The end result is a lack of institutional knowledge when it comes to fundraising and a constant fear that the senior fundraiser will leave and take all of their loyal VIP donors with them. 
• Belief that communities have an insufficient culture of philanthropy: With development activity centering around a few major donors, little emphasis is given to cultivating or upgrading donors who give low dollar amounts and they fall through the multiple cracks. This results in a perception that these communities, often young adults and/or minorities, are not philanthropic, causing them to be ignored and an enormous opportunity going untapped.
• Inability to adapt: As organizations are pressed to offer more comprehensive services and communicate their mission more broadly, building a staff with particular specialties and differentiated roles is necessary to maintain an open line of communication with supporters. The advent of multichannel communication means no single individual can stay on top of everything. Often leaders lack the will and courage to make the needed investments, resulting in an undersized fundraising force with inadequate capacity and expertise to stay relevant and meet supporter needs.

The issue of who owns donors is really a question of who and what the sources of organizational value are in a given donor’s mind. Nonprofits can better position themselves for long-term success by adapting their community engagement strategy to create layered sources of value in donors’ minds. Some ways to do this include:

1. Give donors many meaningful connections to the organization. While one executive maintains the donor relationship, specialists -- like a planned gift assistant or a program director -- get called in for specific short-term consultations. All become sources of value to the donor and together strengthen the relationship.
2. Create tools and activities that add value throughout the cultivation process. Embedded videos, for example, create a more interactive web experience for constituents. Further, by cross-training staff members on trends, services and resources, more staff members can answer donor questions or more effectively lead them to the right place, creating a culture of responsiveness and resourcefulness.  
3. Capture supporter information using a CRM or other system. Empower people throughout the organization, not just one fundraiser or event coordinator, to learn the needs and history of each supporter. This will allow for all interactions to be personal and purposeful. Further, when staff members leave the organization, supporter knowledge is not lost.
4. Create a team-oriented fund development culture. Hire fundraisers who are team players. Establish systems and processes that encourage teamwork and best-practice sharing, like a documented moves management plan. Reduce short-term incentives and offer bonuses that reward all staff members when they complete tasks associated with long-term sustainability. Track team-based metrics and recognize fundraisers not only for revenue associated with one event or one fiscal year, but also for making lasting contributions.

When you create multiple sources of value, donors will rely more on the organization rather than any one individual within the organization.

Making the transition to an organization that provides multiple touch points to a donor isn’t easy. Organizations are more likely to succeed when they use events that create an expectation of change (new year, new leadership, missed financial goal, etc) as catalysts for enabling the transformation.

By and large, long-term donors engage with a nonprofit because they believe in the mission, are passionate about what the organization is doing and communicate with the nonprofit via various channels. Nonprofits should structure the organization to embrace the donor in a multifaceted way. Ultimately, the results will be a fully engaged donor that is "owned" by the nonprofit versus a moderately engaged donor that is "owned" by one individual.  

[Read the Harvard Business Review? If all but the last couple paragraphs sound familiar, it’s because this entire post was inspired by the corporate-focused “Who Owns Your Customer Relationships: Your Salespeople or Your Company?” as posted by Andris A. Zoltners, PK Sinha, and Sally E. Lorimer.] 

Survey Says...

I wear my Millennial identity on my sleeve. 

I’m a proud member of the American generation born between 1980 and 2000, and thus am slightly fascinated by research done on my peers.

The latest chapter in my Millennial research reading spree came in the form of the third annual Millennial Impact Report.  In addition to having a very well formatted website and some catchy social media content, the study itself is useful to nonprofits looking to engage those in their 20s and 30s in advocacy and fundraising.

You can download the full report here.  You can also participate in a virtual conference (sounds fun since I think you can wear PJs and not be judged) on July 19.

Here’s a few of the stats from the 2012 report and my take on how they’ll impact your online strategy:

• Millennials reported that their biggest pet peeve is not knowing how a gift will make a difference.  You can easily prevent this from happening by having clear giving categories on your donation form to inform donors before they donate ($150 will purchase one vaccine, etc.)
• The 2012 report found that 77% of millennials surveyed have smartphones.  This is a great reminder to make sure your website is optimized for mobile browsing and your forms look good on a tiny screen.
• 65% of the crowd surveyed report that they like to learn about nonprofits on the web, and 55% say they’re into learning about nonprofits via social media. This is just one more reason to give some TLC to your website and social media strategy. Mobile is important, but don’t leave your website in the dust!
• I was slightly saddened to learn that 40% of millennials surveyed had never been asked to serve on a board. What better way to get inside the brains (and hearts) of the under 35 team by inviting them into a leadership role?  Consider bringing on a group of three of four millennials onto your board together so they have buddies (and don’t feel like the token kid invited to sit with the adults).
• And my favorite stat of all: 70% of millennials made donations to non-profits online in 2011.  And when asked which method they preferred (online, in person, snail mail), millennials chose the web. So keep reading Connection Café to soak up all this online fundraising goodness…

End of Year Fundraising Kick-Off!

I know, I know…I’m like those annoying retailers putting out stockings when you haven’t even finished carving your pumpkin but considering that most organizations receive nearly half of their annual online donations in the last two months of the year, I’m totally going there.

That’s right – it is officially momentum-building time!  End of year is a busy time for everyone but you can watch those fundraising dollars go up at the end of the year if you get your supporters enthusiastic about your organization over the next few months.  Here are a few tips to get you started:

• Get to Know Your Supporters Better: Due to the diverse needs of your supporter base, segmenting constituents into appropriate groups will allow your organization to more effectively communicate relevant information to each group. Segmenting your list and then targeting groups with communications and appeals based on their interests, donation history, gender, age, length of membership or any other defining characteristic will result in higher response rates. Know who your supporters are and what they care about. Understand which donors, activists, and volunteers are most active, and devise special programs to keep them engaged. Regularly ask supporters to provide information about themselves to help you improve your segmentation and targeted messaging. Include questions in your online surveys, direct mail response cards and in sign-up sheets or surveys at events.
• The 5-Second Test: Gather your closest friends and display your home page for five seconds—then close it and ask a friend to write down what he or she remembers. Effective websites tell visitors within seconds of their arrival – where they are, what they can do, and why they should act.
• Promote a Sustainer Program: The donors who supported you last year likely had to be selective about their charities. It’s likely these donors may be even more inclined to be loyal to you and would be open to recurring donations or paying their annual donation amount throughout the year. Sustaining and pledge donors typically renew at rates 10-20% higher than single-gift donors. It’s important to offer reasons for people to give on a recurring basis or to pledge a larger commitment that can be paid out over time. 

View the full guide with 10 simple steps to set your organization up for a prosperous year-end.

35 Ideas to Recognize Top Event Fundraisers

People are motivated to participate in peer-to-peer fundraising events for many reasons.  As an event fundraiser, your mission should be to figure what is motivating your most valuable participants (Top Fundraisers & Team Captains) so that you can recognize their fundraising efforts in ways that deepen their relationship to your event and more importantly the mission of your organization.   Here are some ideas to get you started:

Pre-Event

1.    Early Registration Opportunities – Perfect for events that sell out
2.    Work Appropriate Logoed Apparel – Golf Shirts – Great for the guys!
3.    Enamel Pins
4.    Logoed Water Bottles
5.    Top Fundraiser Ball Caps – People love their team t-shirts on event day, compliment that shirt with a cap!
6.    Top Fundraiser Socks – Don’t compete with the team t-shirt, compliment it!
7.    Top Fundraiser Cycling Jerseys
8.    Top Fundraiser T-shirts
9.    Top Fundraiser Running singlets
10.    Feature their personal stories on your webpage
11.    Feature their fundraising tips on your blog, eNewsletter, print materials
12.    Access to media opportunities – Going to the radio/TV station?  Bring them along with you!
13.    Feature them in your Social Media
14.    Invite them to blog, tweet or socialize on your channels

Event Day

15.    Special reserved spot at the front of the Starting Line
16.    Access to the VIP tent
17.    Special Race Numbers or Bibs - Give your #1 Fundraiser a brightly colored #1 Race Bib
18.    reserved   port-a-potties at start line, route and finish line
19.    Reserved showers – Great for multi-day events
20.    Exclusive lines - Allow them to skip to the front of the long lines
21.    Access to premium food & drinks on Event Day
22.    Print their names on a prominently displayed banner

Post-Event / Off Season

23.    Handwritten Thank You Notes from your Board President or Executive Director
24.    Top Fundraising Trip or Prizes
25.    Access to VIP area at other fundraising events, let your top fundraiser from your cycling event hang out at your Walk VIP tent
26.    Access to Exclusive Volunteer Opportunities outside the event
27.    Invites to an Awards Dinner
28.    Invites to other organizational events throughout the year
29.    Going to Lobby your legislators?  Take them along!
30.    Discounts or Free Tickets to other events hosted by your org
31.    List out your top fundraisers on your website
32.    List out your top fundraisers in your eNewsletter
33.    List out your top fundraisers in your Print Newsletter
34.    List out your top fundraisers in your Annual Report
35.    List out your top fundraisers in a print ad