…you meet donors where they are and unless you do everything possible to make sure your donors continue their support.
Successful fundraisers meet donors where they are instead of expecting the donor to come running to wherever the fundraiser wants them to be.
Retention rates continue to plummet and as they do fundraisers have to understand that simply communicating at donors is different (and far less effective) than communicating to them.
Have you ever wondered if your donors feel like they made a mistake by giving to you in the first place? Hopefully, you haven’t forgotten that the donor experience goes beyond taking a donation and doing great things with it. It has to loop the donor back in –not just ask for another gift.
It needs to tell the donor what he or she is making possible.
Simply publishing an article online or in a newsletter saying that you helped 54,000 people in 2016 does not tell a donor what difference my gift made.
What this will mean is that it’s necessary to provide a wider variety of efforts-both online and offline-rather than assuming “If we build it they will come.
The onus of responsibility is clearly on nonprofit organizations to find the stories that illuminate the impact of donor support, while at the same time reporting back to donors on the depth of the impact in quantifiable terms.
How are you doing with reporting back to your donors? Are you building it? Are more coming?