Imperfect

There’s been a lot in the blogosphere lately about communicating with donors and supporters.

A couple of weeks ago Jeff Brooks posted a hilarious but poignant video from the Proper Discord blog under the title: The self-centred nonprofit website. Watch it if you haven’t already. After laughing my way through it, I couldn’t help but think of numerous charity websites that would easily fall under this category.

Even worse, how many of us have not received a proper thank you for a donation? Stephen George warns of the implications of not thanking properly or even at all here. And Mark Phillips has often reminded us of the importance of tailoring and personalising our communications to donors here.

Of course, none of this is necessarily new. A re-read, or even first read, of Ken Burnett’s Relationship Fundraising or George Smith’s Asking Properly will reveal that even back in the “good old days” fundraisers were being encouraged to think about how they communicated and engaged with donors not just to lump them into a discrete and manageable, one size fits all, process.

As austerity measures continue to hit and fundraising becomes more and more challenging, we ignore all this advice and stick to our safe but uninspiring processes at our peril. Let’s not put too fine a point on it: we’re all competing with each other to acquire new donors and retain existing ones so can we really afford not to put a little bit more thought and care into how we communicate with them?

And by “communicating” I certainly don’t mean bombarding donors with asks which seems to be the default position many of us fall into together with the “organisation speak” of Jeff’s post above. A thoughtful thank you or update on what my donation has helped achieve would be nice from time to time and would probably stop me from chucking every mailing from you straight in the bin or the read later/never pile.

It’s at this point that I’d like to share with you the great relationship I have with one of the charities I regularly support. I seriously can’t remember how long I’ve supported them for. But I love my relationship with them because I’ve never felt part of a predictable process. In actual fact, I can’t even remember the last time they sent me an upgrade mailing. OK, I can see some of you shaking your heads and thinking “lazy fundraising” and “missed opportunities” but I think they’ve got it just right. Because when I compare them with another charity I support who’ve done nothing but send me regular appeals and upgrade mailings, I am now very much inclined to increase my regular donation to them simply for getting their relationship with me right. And yes, not only do they not pester me with regular asks, but they’re good at saying thank you and at informing me what my donation is helping them achieve.

We seriously need to ask ourselves constantly whether we’re really communicating intuitively with donors or whether we’re just falling into our comfortable but generally harmful default positions. As George Smith pointed out in Asking Properly way back in 1996: …”fundraisers need to concentrate more on what donors want and less on what we want to tell them.”

I’d be interested to know if all fundraisers make difficult, demanding donors or whether I’m just becoming more cynical with old age.

A year ago I blogged about a charity that had delighted me through their donor communications. A year later, the same charity seems to have undergone a personality change, or at least their donor development team has. While I appreciate there’s been an increase in need, I don’t particularly appreciate the increase in regular asks. Just because I’m no doubt classified as a “regular giver,” it doesn’t follow that I’ve agreed to regular asks.

The charity is making an assumption here that I don’t particularly agree with. I know it’s a lot easier to lump everyone into a donor communication and “development” process but that’s exactly what it feels like at this end – that I’ve been “lumped” together with a whole lot of other donors. If I feel “lumped together” with the rest of a database, how likely is it that I’m going to give more or extra? The phrase “lump it” comes to mind.

I know it costs more in time and resource to personalise relationships but in this day and age, I’m wondering whether we can afford not to even if we do work in an increasingly beleaguered voluntary sector.

Put it this way, this particularly difficult and demanding donor would have reacted differently if left to her own devices. Had I been engaged in a more personalised relationship, I could have let said charity know what issues concern me, accepted information from said charity on those issues because they interest me and yes, I would have made a donation in my own time.

Instead, I’m even considering whether to continue supporting said charity (which is a large one) and taking my support to a smaller one (or to a microfinance site) where I can see a real difference in the support I give.

Twenty odd years ago when I started as a marketing exec in the commercial sector, we said then that customers were becoming more sophisticated and demanding. Imagine what they are now twenty years on. Charities need to take heed of this if they want to stay ahead of the game and acquire and develop their donors.

I for one want more engagement and connection and will explore this further in posts to come.