By Alan Sharpe, CFRE
Your donors have only one question that bothers them. If you want to acquire more donors, you have to answer it. If you want to raise more net revenue, you need to answer it. And if you want to increase the lifetime value of your donors, you must answer it.
Here’s their question: “How will my donation change the world?”
Donors are confused
Donors ask this question for a number of reasons. For one thing, they’re confused. If they live in Canada and want to support an organization that helps children with cancer, for example, should they donate to the Childhood Cancer Foundation, Canadian Cancer Society, Canadian Research Society, Cancer Recovery Foundation of Canada, Coast to Coast Against Cancer, Wellspring Cancer Support Foundation, Terry Fox Run, or someone else?
Many donors don’t know. Or can’t decide. So given that your non-profit organization has competitors who do similar work, you must tell prospective and current donors exactly how you will use their gift to transform lives. Otherwise your donors may donate somewhere else.
Donors have limited funds
There’s another reason you must tell your donors how their gift will make the world a better place. Some of them are on a fixed income. Others just retired. More than a few have student debt. Or other kinds of debt. Some are broke. Either way, they can’t support as many charities as they’d like, so they give their money to the few causes that promise to make the biggest difference with their gifts.
Donors fund specifics, not generalities
Given the choice between donating to “End Hunger in Your City” or giving a donation that buys “Thanksgiving dinner for $1.73″ for a man at the local homeless mission, you know what the donor will choose. And so does the donor. “How will my donation change the world?” is a question that demands a specific answer, not a general one. Supply the answer and your donor will supply the donation.
Don’t ask for a single donation until you can answer this question. That goes for every campaign, every appeal, every ask throughout the year. And make sure your answer is clear, concrete and compelling. Your donors demand it, no question about it.
Need help with your direct mail program?
Download this book now.
Mail Superiority: How to Run a Profitable Annual Direct Mail Fundraising Program.
Many fundraisers are still running on an assumption of trust. It’s critical to spend time in the shoes of a potential donor. They are consumers, and they are trained by the times in which they live. Information and opinion on virtually any product or service is easily and swiftly available. They expect specifics.
Donors always wanted to know they were making a difference. What’s been added is a sense that they are entitled to an immediate and detailed sense that they are making a difference. There is also an increasing demand for a simple, direct, route from cash to result. In other words, make it simple, and let the journey of my dollar from wallet to changing the world be short.
This appears to pose problems for complex charitable goals – say, international development. It’s a complex field. But tough: donors want specifics. They want results that matter, not a a generalized “we used 80% of your donation for the stated goals”. If organizations can’t be specific about results they will succumb to the appeal of those that can.
I’ve heard mutterings that huge effort goes into preparing statistics and reports of results, and placing them online, only to find that donors don’t look at them. This misses the point. They will donate if you are open and detailed in reporting. They may rarely look, but they know they can – and that’s what counts.