A Small Change, fundraising blog by Jason Dick, a campaign manager for a college in Redmond, largely offers tips for small orgs. More interesting to me are his meditations on how we think about charitable giving, donors, and donor cultivation.
His All Donors as Major Donors post is prime. Here he proposes that we think about the generosity of donors relative to their ability to give. The $50 gift from a person of modest means is as “major” as the $500 donation from someone affluent. All ARE in this real sense, major donors. Perhaps we should cultivate them with this in mind. Jason Dick even asks “why do we only personally cultivate donors at a specific level?”
When you visit All as Major, read the many posted comments, which reflect a good range of thinking on these matter, including some thoughts that I will echo.
I work almost exclusively with fairly large organizations, with donors numbering from 120,000 to several million. We’re doing direct marketing, which is purely based on numbers, percentage response, with a hard focus on net revenue resulting from any fundraising effort.
In this world, treating all donors as major donors would seem to be malpractice, potentially harming the revenue flow and available resources the organization needs to fulfill its mission.
A heartless assessment, eh?
Now lets mitigate the number crunching and adapt the wisdom behind treating all donors as “major” … in the sense that they are, indeed, often being more generous than we give them credit for, and that that their long-term potential could be more “major” if we thought about them differently.
Let’s first recognize that fundraising via mail and electronic media is not really focused on the ROI of each appeal.
Good fundraising is founded on lifetime value rather than net revenue. Any organization that thinks of appeals as “events” rather than touch-points in continuing campaign will never fulfill its fundraising potential.
When we look at longitudinal giving … donations over time … certain donor categories are clearly more “major” than they might otherwise seem. Smart organizations treat them accordingly, at very least “treating more donors as major donors.”
Now factor in the reality that most bequest donors never appear as “major donors” in our files.
The statistical profile of the average bequest donor is a 72-year-old woman who responds to mail appeals, has never sent a gift larger than $20 (though usually several times a year), and has given nothing in the last 18 months. Bequests don’t “fall from the sky.” They’re left by very generous people of modest means who remain below your radar until the six-figure gift arrives.
Both lifetime value and bequests dictate that we treat all donors well, the spirit behind “happydonors” and A Small Change.
The way we talk to donors is key to that treatment. Delivering “Thanks” and acknowledgement of the donors’ generosity within all levels of all communications.
This is more difficult to implement than many imagine, because it involves much more than technique. It’s attitude, your mindset when you writing an appeal. (I can teach technique, but attitude is a change in how you think, rather than what you do.)
Appreciation for the generosity of those with modest means can help shape the right attitude for effective fundraising copy.
For some really provocative thoughts on how we think about and communicate with donors, check out Jason Dick’s earlier The Rich Young Ruler for some very provocative thoughts on how we too often “mediate meaning” rather than “make meaning”in our dealings with donors.
P.S. I was led to A Small Change by a Nonprofit Blog Exchange “Virtual Event”. The Exchange is in my Useful Links column.