Posted on Wed, Aug 04, 2010
Join Kristin McCurry and Roger Craver tomorrow at 2:00 pm ET as they outline the critical 'must do' steps and reveal the most effective creative strategies in launching and building a successful middle donor program.
They explore key questions:
* Why mid-level donor programs are essential?
* How to identify the audience?
* What amounts to ask for?
* How to communicate and ask in the most effective ways?
* How to measure success?
Click to register for your complimentary seat.
Posted on Mon, Jul 19, 2010
Tomorrow the APRA 23rd Annual International Conference begins in Anaheim. Lori and I are putting the finishing touches on our Social Media: Fad to Facts workshop and I’m looking forward to my presentation on The Future of Data with my good friend Brian Dowling.
It doesn’t seem that long ago that I attended the first APRA, so seeing that 23rd is a bit startling. Those early days were exciting as the relatively small number of fundraising research professionals began to create the framework for the profession.
Sadly the last few years have not been kind to professional development budgets. In fact, many organizations have simply done away with it altogether determining that it is a luxury in times likes these. This short-sighted thinking sees a conference as an expense with no measurable revenue so therefore the ROI is in the red.
Worse yet there is a perception that professional development is only about the person attending the conference. They absolutely gain from the experience, but so too does the organization. The overused phrase “Think outside the box” should be “Think outside your organization” when it comes to attending a professional conference.
The organizational benefits of having team members interact with people who may be facing many of the same challenges, but are not in the same “box”, are numerous. Here are my top 5:
- Ideas
- The sessions and workshops provide you with dozens of unpaid consultants who can give you a new perspective on how to get your job done
- Connections
- Between the attendees, speakers and vendors you can create a network of people who can help your organization long after the conference
- Energy
- Especially in these times we all need to plug into positive people and bring that attitude back to our organization
- Tools
- With budgets tight it’s great to be able to see in one place the latest tools available and talk not only with vendors but also with users so that you can make the best decisions
- Confidence
- Armed with ideas, connections, energy, and knowledge about the latest tools and techniques you can return to your organization ready to make a difference
I realize that many of these are intangible benefits which are not easily quantified. But that is exactly why professional development provides such a high long-term ROI. The knowledge to make better decisions, access to leaders in the field, and stronger connections with peers will pay-back the registration and travel costs over and over again.
For those of you that made it through the budgeting gauntlet and are going to the APRA conference I hope to see you at the workshop, session and/or the DonorTrends booth (#114).
Safe travels!
David Lawson
Posted on Tue, Jul 13, 2010
Back in the early 90’s when I was working on the first wealth screening product for fundraisers to incorporate detailed real estate information, including multiple-property ownership, the median price of a house was $125K and just over 64% of Americans owned their home.
Over the next 14 years we enjoyed a heck of ride as the value of homes more than doubled and ownership reached 70%. This ride was even more extreme for people in states such as California and Florida.
Clearly real estate was an asset you wanted to know about when calculating a prospect’s wealth. And this was even more true of millionaires because nearly 100% of them owned their home.
Then came mid-2007 and suddenly we reached that roller coaster moment when the clicking stops and the fall begins. In the blink of an eye those reliable wealth estimates based on real estate values not only stopped being reliable, but they also became downright dangerous. This was especially true for prospects in the states that experienced the biggest increases in value.
Fundraisers found themselves using giving capacity estimates not even close to reality. There were exceptions in the middle of the country where real estate values had not increased nearly as much and mortgages were still primarily approved for people banks felt would not default, but elsewhere such was not the case.
Some comfort was taken in the thought it was the middle-class and not the wealthy being hit by the crisis. Not so fast! This chart is from a recent New York Times article entitled “Biggest Defaulters on Mortgages Are the Rich”:
The article talks about another problem with real estate and that is second home ownership. Pre-crisis this was a great indicator of wealth. Now it could be indicate your prospect is overextended.
For those people who saw real estate as an investment, you can see by the chart they are faring the worst.
So what is a fundraiser to do?
- Identify prospects who are rated primarily based on the value of their real estate.
- Create a special segment for prospects owning multiple properties.
- Look closely at these prospects to see if they have lowered or stopped their giving to you during the last two years.
- Find out if they are giving to other organizations using TrueGivers™.
- Determine what their current employment is using TrueLeaders™.
And don’t forget to take a look at any prospects with a wealth score. Real estate is a big factor in any scoring system used by traditional wealth screening vendors. That score may have been right a few years ago, but now it could be problematic.
Given all of this should you continue to use real estate? The answer is yes. Just use an abundance of caution and find other indicators, such as giving, to corroborate your capacity estimate.
David Lawson
Posted on Thu, Jul 08, 2010
We recently released the first part of an interview by Roger Craver with Kristin McCurry, who spoke about mid-level donor programs. And fundraisers from all over are glad we did, based on response we're seeing!
Kristin has been fundraising for 20 years and is a recognized leader in designing and running mid-level programs. She is the founder of MINDset direct and former National Director of Direct Marketing for the American Cancer Society.
In the second part of this interview, Kristin discusses the changing approach to development, the recession's impact, how major gift officers are being measured in new ways, and how all of these things affect middle donor programs.
Click on the icon to your left to download and listen to the second part of the interview with Kristen McCurry on mid-level donors now.
Or click on the link McCurry Interview part 2 to stream the podcast now.
Ryann
PS - Want to listen to the first part of the interview? Click here now!
Posted on Wed, Jul 07, 2010
We're very excited to announce the first installment of a multi-part series with thought leaders in fundraising. We're especially pleased that we're kicking things off with Roger Craver interviewing Kristin McCurry, who spoke about mid-level donor programs in an engaging and informative interview recently.
Kristin has been fundraising for 20 years and is a recognized leader in designing mid-level programs. She is the founder of MINDset direct and former National Director of Direct Marketing for the American Cancer Society.
In this 10 minute interview, Roger and Kristin discuss mid-level donor programs: what they are and where to start, the advantages of having a program, how to measure them, the stewardship gap in many organizations, and what such a program might mean in revenue.
Click on the icon to your left to download and listen to the interview with Kristen McCurry on mid-level donors now.
Or click on the link McCurry Interview part 1 to stream the podcast now.
We know you'll find this warm and engaging converstiaon between two friends and expert fundraisers to be valuable, whether you have a successful mid-level donor program or just heard the term for the first time.
Ryann
PS - Are you a Thought Leader? Email us at thoughtleaders@donortrends.com to schedule an interview. We'd look forward to hearing from you.
Posted on Mon, Jun 28, 2010
Giving for most people is something they do when asked or when something extraordinary is happening in the world. It is not something on their daily to-do list. Fundraisers know this so they are constantly coming up with emotional appeals linked to calls to action.
Then there are the people who consider giving an integral part of their lives. They don’t need a call to action because they proactively support the causes and institutions which matter most to them. These individuals are professional givers, people who devote a portion of their most precious resource – time – to making a difference.
Bill Gates is of course the extreme example of a professional giver, but it is rare for a founder and CEO to leave his or her profession prior to retirement and devote all of his/her time to doing good. What is more common is for someone who has done well, or won the DNA lottery, to spend a portion of his/her life focused on giving.
Thanks in part to Bill we are seeing more and more of these professional givers. These are very valuable donors, so finding them has become a high priority.
How do you find them?
The first step is to analyze your database to discover not only who is giving, but also how they are giving. You can do this with TrueGivers by using the Type of Gift data. Here are ones to look for:
- Capital Gift / Campaign Gift
- Endowment Gift
- Named Funds / Named Endowments / Area of Interest Funds
- Planned Gift / Legacy Gift / Bequest / Deferred Gifts / Estate Gifts
The second step is to look at the giving activity. You want to find donors who have given multiple gifts to any one organization and donors who have given to multiple organizations. The Type of Gift data helps you with these acknowledgements of long-term giving:
- Yearly gifts, past 2-4 years
- Yearly gifts, past 5-9 years
- Yearly gifts, past 10+ years
You can then look at the giving details to find multi-year and multi-organization giving activity.
There is another important clue that a donor is a professional giver and that is the establishment of a Donor Advised Fund (DAF) at a Community Foundation. This takes both time and money so you can safely assume that a person with a DAF is someone who is focused on philanthropy.
The challenge of course is DAF reporting is not like a foundation where you can download their latest tax return. Fortunately TrueGivers has hundreds of thousands of these donors so they will be part of your screening results.
All givers are important and should be treated with utmost care. Having said that, there are certain donors to whom fundraisers need to pay special attention. Chief among these are the professional givers, individuals who have made the decision to be proactive, not reactive, about their philanthropy.
Be proactive about finding professional givers, and your search will be well rewarded.
David Lawson
PS Check out the Giving Pledge website to see how the Gates' and Warren Buffett are trying to get their peergroup to join them as professional givers.
Posted on Fri, Jun 25, 2010
Once a week we've been releasing a podcast to supplement Roger Craver's 12 part series and whitepaper: 'What If There Were No New Donors?'. This week the focus moves from retention to share of wallet.
Donors are not a monogamous bunch, for the most-part. The majority give to more than one charity. Do you know where else your donor is giving? Moreover, do you know how much they're giving elsewhere, compared to what they give your organization?
Of course, first you need to know your competition. "Mission competition” is a term we've been using at DonorTrends to describe the competition between organizations in the same sector with virtually the same missions.
The following podcast, narrated by Roger, describes what mission competition and share of wallet mean, why it matters, and what you can start doing about it. There are two options to listen:
Click on the icon to your left to download and listen to the podcast on share of wallet now.
Click on the link Share of Wallet to stream the podcast now.
There is no more vacuum
As the number of organizations grows, and the barrier to entry shrinks, nonprofits need to become more aware of who you are constantly up against for donor dollars. Then you need to know what share of giving wallet you have, compared to your competition.
With that intelligence in hand, what's your next move?
For those donors who have shown capacity and propensity to give (due to the greater amount they're giving to your competition), how can you increase your share of their wallet? For those donors who are already giving more to you than your competition, are they flagged and treated as loyalists?
Enjoy, and don't forget to download the accompanying whitepaper here.
Ryann
Posted on Wed, Jun 23, 2010
Do you know the best emotional hot button(s) to get your donors to give to your cause? Can you name three of the seven emotional hot buttons?
We spend a lot of time around DonorTrends HQ indentifying and targeting the 'who' in fundraising. Who are your prospects, who are your most valuable donors, who are your competitors.
We use a lot of qualitative data to uncover this intelligence. We tell our clients who to target, who not to target, who your vulnerable, potentials and loyalists are. But sometimes it's good to remember that while all of that is well and good, we need to, and always need to, focus on the message.
Seeing an email about Denny Hatch's new book reminded us of this critical lesson.
Denny Hatch is a copywriting maverick and fantastic blogger who pulls no punches, offers interesting teaching stories, and shares his (always great) advice with the rest of us through his newsletter Business Common Sense.
He's just written a book that we're all clamoring to read - "The Secrets of Emotional, Hot-Button COPYWRITING". This excerpt alone made us want to read more: "Fear - Greed - Guilt - Anger - Exclusivity - Salvation - Flattery. These are the emotional hot buttons that make people respond--order goods and services, donate money to charities and send for more information."
Which of these hot buttons are in your latest appeals? Do you know which ones work best for your organization?
Caity and Ryann
Posted on Mon, Jun 21, 2010
'Save the X'; 'Cure X'; 'Excellence in X' are just a few of the tired mission themes that no longer resonate with givers. Today people want you to get off the platitudes and down to where the mission really happens.
The first step is to create a message map. Get out the brainstorming tools: post-it notes; whiteboards; and plenty of caffeine. Take a complete inventory of every single message you have on your website, case statement, annual report, press release, brochure, e-mail and any other communication. You will be surprised at just how many messages there are unless of course you are just getting going and then you might be fortunate enough to have only one. Enjoy it while it lasts because over time you are sure to have mission creep which leads to message creep which leads to a confusing array of often contradictory messages.
This exercise will lead to some organizational, and perhaps personal, soul searching. My suggestion is try to move on to the next step and come back later to deal with the deeper issues. Ultimately you have to because donors are demanding it, but for right now we are trying to create a message map which can link your mission to your TrueGivers results.
The second step: consolidate the messages into logical groups. Here you will find the inevitable duplication, and some contradictions. These groups then need to be categorized using the National Taxonomy code for Exempt Entities (NTEE). This is the same system we use for TrueGivers which means you can quickly link the interests you discovered with your messages.
Using the message map is going to expose any silos you may have within your organization. There may be a donor assigned to one area who actually may respond better to another. This is a big problem for higher education where the degree one receives is often the only determining factor about what one will be solicited for. That is truly a shame, as an engineer who may love the arts is not allowed to support the school of arts because internal politics dictate since he or she graduated from the school of engineering, the assignment for solicitation belongs to the engineering program.
Forcing your donors to give to what you think they should give to is like a restaurant saying you have to have chicken because that was the first thing you ordered years ago. Sounds silly, but to a donor it sounds just as silly because graduation from a particular school, college or program restricts solicitation for support to that area, rather than to an area which may be of more interest. The bottom line is that if they want the lasagna let them have it and everyone will be happier.
Nonprofits don't get off the message hook because they will look at what was initially supported and think that must still be the donor's interest. The reality is donors often give first to a general, or special, appeal at a lower level having not formed a deeper opinion. That general or special appeal may not be the aspect of your mission they are most interested in. In fact, they might not even realize you have a part of your mission which would interest them enough to dig deeper into their wallet.
The last step: that's where a message map and the power of TrueGivers comes into play. Imagine taking your lower level donors and finding the messages that link to their broader interests. That $50 donation can quickly become $1,000 and one day much more when you make the right connection.
Like all great journeys this one begins with a map so start yours today.
David Lawson
Posted on Thu, Jun 17, 2010
What if all our fears came true and there were no new donors?
That's the question Roger Craver poses in his whitepaper, called, aptly, "What if there were no new donors?". Scary thought indeed. But it's a fear we can face when we have the weapons to fight this demon.
That's why DonorTrends is offering not just the whitepaper, but a series of 12 podcasts and blog posts - one for each 'weapon' - right here in the Fundraising Action blog.
Last week we posted the first podcast by Roger, which you can find here. This week, the podcast is on donor retention.
Click on the ipod icon to the left to download and listen to the podcast from your media player.
From Roger: "ask yourself: Just how and why are donors staying with us? Why are they going away? Why and when are they upgrading? Why? Why? Why? This is the time to focus on all the questions that involve keeping donors in the fold and actively participating."
Let's look for a minute on why donors defect. Based on a national survey done by DonorTrends and the Agitator, there are a few common reasons why a donor leaves a nonprofit:
#1 reason: Changes in personal expenses (can no longer afford it).
#2 reason: "The organization did something I disagreed with."
#3 reason: "I found a different organization that I thought would be more effective."
The second two of these three reasons are within organizations' control to change. And I'll argue that both boil down to effective and sufficient communication.
We all know that the the #1 reason is a kind of catch-all that donors use. But don't you want to know if money is indeed the reason? Wouldn't you want to know if that donor is giving to other organizations, and if so, how much? With that intel in hand, you could target those donors who are indeed giving (and giving more!) to other organizations. You could write/phone those donors who really do seem to be tight this year, remind them how important their contribution is, and that you hope you can count on them when their situation turns around. Doing some donor screening could be a valuable part of your retention strategy.
What is your organization doing to stave off attrition?
Ryann