Posted on: October 28th, 2008 by

Every now and again you speak to someone who can completely (and inadvertently) change the way you think about something. I had this experience recently with Dave.

Dave is a rather cool mate of Reuben – our Creative Director. He’s a committed Christian, a regular charity donor and someone who generally cares about stuff. Lots of stuff. As we prepared for a pitch we put a video camera in front of him and let him talk about his relationships with the charities that he supports.

Now I have run and sat in many different focus groups, I’ve met many donors, I’ve read letters from donors and sat on supporter care phone-lines. But something about Dave rang true – and reflected what we were seeing in the results for clients.

Dave started talking about the way he wants charities to communicate with him. He talked about his direct debits and he talked about his donations. He also talked about his campaigning actions, his attendance at events, his volunteering for a local asylum help charity and his other fundraising.

He used the word involvement a lot. He said that he “likes to give to charities that he is personally involved with”.

But he didn’t mean a charity that he has benefitted from or one that works in his local community – he was talking about charities that allow him to do more than give.

What does Dave want?

As a sector we have been talking about Supporter Journeys, integrating fundraising and campaigning, 360o supporter relationships, holistic relationships… Zzzzzzzzzzz!

Dave bought this to life for me. If we want to engage Dave, we have to offer more. I think that there are five things we have to offer him:

1. We have to allow him to have a personal stake in the work we do. If you are Christian Aid you can involve him in campaigning while his local asylum seeker’s help charity can ask him to volunteer. Either way he is now involved with the solution. We have seen that people who campaign donate more than those who don’t – now we know why!
2. We have to ask him what he wants. I’ve seen some great results for organisations that have sent their supporters surveys and then used their answers intelligently.
3. Give them some control in the relationship. WSPA recently wrote to their donors outlining three urgent projects that needed their support and asking their donors to state which project they wanted their donation to go to. The result was their best performing appeal ever – even though 80% of donors chose to let WSPA use their donation anywhere.
4. Understand the supporters’ wider relationship with you and use it to personalise the communication. Whether you are the WRVS writing to people who are volunteers, RSPB asking people who joined at their Abernethy reserve to support their latest appeal to plant woodland at that reserve or Bowel Cancer UK writing to people who have used their services you should show them that you know this!
5. Target by motivations not behaviours. Mencap use their data to estimate donor motivations – not perfect, but it gives them a 16% uplift in response. And Friends of the Earth have recently surveyed their entire file in order to target supporters who are motivated by different aspects of their work differently.

Although Dave talked about all these concepts, he used a completely different language to us – something that we’d do well to take note of. What was striking was that none of these were the end – they were simply things that would get him more passionate about the causes and the brands that he supports.

Interestingly, Dave also spoke of a charity that he had no connection with, but which he supported through a direct debit (“just one of those direct debits that you pick up along the way without really knowing why”). His whole body language changed when he talked about them – he was significantly less enthused by this support. There was no passion.

I’ve managed to get this far without mentioning the recession (oops, sorry, credit crunch) but I feel pretty confident that I know which support he will stop first if he has to cut back on his giving!

Of course, not everyone is like Dave. Some donors will still be happy to have a more distant relationship, responding to appeals or setting up their direct debits and letting the donation carry on indefinitely. Some will prefer campaigning, others volunteering and others events.

We shouldn’t force anything onto our donors – rather we should give them opportunities to express their preferences, their choices and their passions. We should analyse their support and listen when they talk to us.

But Dave wants a new sort of donor relationship and we have to offer him this if we are going to keep him, and his generation giving in the years ahead.
Roger Lawson is Strategy and Planning Director at The Good Agency. He creates impactful donor acquisition and development strategies that involve and grow donors for organisations as varied as Christian Aid, RSPB, Breast Cancer Campaign, WSPA and Arthritis Care.

He can be contacted at roger.lawson@thegoodagency.co.uk