Are our digital donor experience goals relevant?

Tags

Digital, Donor, Donor Experience, Goal, Nonprofit, SMART Goal, Strategy

The fourth criterion for SMART goals stresses the importance of choosing goals that really make a difference in improving the donor experience. A digital executive’s goal to “Make 50 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches by 2:00pm” may be specific, measurable, attainable, and time-bound, but lacks relevance to the donor. Many times you will need support to accomplish a goal: resources, a champion voice, someone to knock down obstacles. Goals that are relevant to your boss, your team, your organization and but most importantly, your donor, will receive that needed support. Being able to frame up simply how it will benefit the donor is very powerful.

Relevant goals (when met) drive the team, department, and organization forward in creating stunning experiences for the donor. A goal that supports or is in alignment with other donor goals would be considered a relevant goal.

A relevant goal can answer yes to these questions:

1. Does this seem worthwhile to the donor?
2. Is this the right time in the donor experience lifecycle?
3. Does this match our other donor journey efforts/needs?
4. Are you the right person/team to focus on this?
5. Is it applicable in current socio- economic- technical environment? Will it move digital change (transformation) ahead to the next phase?

How many times have we been “handed” a goal and we all have said, this isn’t going to move the needle. It’s just not relevant. Having employees and donors engaged is a “big deal”. Relevance is the key.

Without relevance, it is hard to know what we want to accomplish. When a goal is irrelevant, we all see the air go out of the balloon. There is nothing more demoralizing.

The digital executive is responsible for accessing “does it pass” the relevance test. This cannot be delegated. Having a pulse of donor goals helps a lot. Even if it is not relevant to an employee, a case should be made that it is relevant to the donor. How relevant it is becomes the driver.

Relevance can be given a score so that ideas that produce the best results are funded. We may need to do a series of quick tests to determine the winners. With limited funds and budget, the digital executive must focus resources.

Here are the key ideas:

1. Start focusing employees on the issue of donor relevance.
2. Begin testing and scoring the results of ideas.
3. Encourage listening to donors to know what is relevant to them.
4. Have clear goals for testing programs.
5. Know why this is important to the donor.
6. Involve donors and employees in generating ideas.
7. Be clear about resource constraints.

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6 Reasons Why Most Fundraisers Don’t Know Their Donor Retention Rate

Tags

Donor, Nonprofit, Retention

Donor retention is the key to successful fund raising at non-profits. It is essential to being cost effective. Acquiring new donors is very expensive.

So … what is your donor retention rate?

Over the last six years I have had the privilege of speaking to large gatherings of nonprofit professional fundraisers on an average of 2.5 times per month. At the beginning of each presentation, I typically ask the audience by a show of hands how many in the room know their donor retention rate.

Each time, very few hands go in the air.

I keep thinking that the percentage of people raising their hands will go up by at least a small percent each year, yet it remains a very dismal small percentage.

However, if I ask them any of the following questions, the answers are readily known:

• What is your fundraising dollar goal for this year?
• How much did you raise last year?
• How many donors do you have?
• How many new donors do you have in the last year?
• What is your best campaign or appeal?

Why isn’t donor retention on this list?

Source: 6 Reasons Why Most Fundraisers Don’t Know Their Donor Retention Rate

Unifying the experience for the donor

Tags

Digital, Donor, Donor Experience, Insights, Journey Mapping

Donor Experience

This is not all about data. At the end of the day, donors will expect a great (unified) experience across multiple channels. While it takes data to know the donor and systems to remember them, only great experiences lead to amazing service.

If I call you, I reasonable expect you have a history of my transactions regardless of channel and how long I have been your donor. I also probable expect for you to remember other issues and challenges I’ve had and how they were resolved. A breakdown in that at any point creates painful experiences.

This speaks to having worked through the donor journey, what is working and what isn’t, and improving the experience for the donor. This journey should identify data that is useful to know and insights that can create for you in delivering stunning service.

While journey maps are about much more than data, it is important to look at what data you have, what data you could use and what insight that could create in improving the whole experience.

Pay particular attention to data (structure and unstructured) that you already have from donors via your call center, web site, social media comments and email responses. There is a richness here that can inform the donor journey and the data that can used to improve it.

Improving the experience for the donor by providing front line staff better insights is foundational to the digital executive obsessed with the donor.  Journey maps without great data and insight could just be someone’s opinion.

Staff who are closest to the donor usually have a handle on what data and insight would be most useful to the journey mapping process. Be sure to engage them regularly.

Journey maps can be tedious and budgets may be constrained to bring in external resources to help. Consider an investment in training at least one of your staff who be the subject matter expert and facilitate the process, even if it just part time.

Here are the key ideas:

1. Start with one segment or persona and develop a simple journey map.
2. Begin by identify data that you have or gaps that exist in providing great insight.
3. Encourage a focus on insight and improving the journey.
4. See this as a holistic process integral to your ecosystem.

Involve staff closest to the donor.

Donor data is all about insight leading to action

Tags

Data, Donor, Insight, Nonprofit

Customer Insight

Data is very useful if it allows us to understand our donors better. Collecting data is of no value if it doesn’t lead to insight. Think data, insight and action.

There are all kind of insights that will lead to further action.  Here are several:

1. The value and potential of the donor
2. The next step in building the relationship based on other similar donors
3. Channels they may prefer
4. What is the level of engagement
5. Nonprofits and organizations they may have a relationship with.
6. Summaries of how recent and frequently of buying and engagement.
7. What kind of experience they are having. How satisfied they are.
8. What they are interested in. What type of content should be sent to them? How to render the content via static content, graphics or video.
9. Who is in their network and who influences them?
10. What kind of referrals do they make?
11. Real time data from Smart devices

The list goes on and on. In thinking about what data to gather, always think through what insight that it will give and where it will lead the relationship.

The intent is to develop a deep understanding of donors, using a disciplined approach, which can be leveraged across the organization to improve the experience for the donor and profitability for the corporation. Deeper knowledge of donors assists in uncovering and clarifying opportunities. In addition to data you may already have, there may need to be in-depth interviews, focus groups, surveys and industry analyst sources.

There could be several types of insight to look at:

1. A predictive model
2. Attitudinal understanding
3. Product behavior

The digital executive should also consider leading the charge to go beyond traditional quantitative and qualitative approaches. A new model is emerging know as real-time experience tracking (RET).

Real-time experience tracking was born of two insights. First, while a market researcher can’t easily follow customers around 24 hours a day, those donors’ cell phones can, and unlike human observers, they don’t sway people’s perceptions of experiences. The second insight was that although customers may interact with a company in thousands of ways, you really need to know only four things about each encounter: the brand involved, the type of touchpoint (TV ad, say, or call to the service center), how the participant felt about the experience, and how persuasive it was. (Did it make the customer more inclined to choose the brand next time?)

Source: Harvard Business Review Article

The digital executive has to be obsessive in understanding the donor. Without that passion and commitment, the voice of the donor may not be heard. This, at its core, is not about collecting data just because we can. It is all about understanding the donor, improving the experience and increasing the top line for the corporation.

Gaining the type of insight that brings real results may require investing in getting the right kind of data, different tools to analyze the data and staff that can accurately understand the data. Looking at the total economic benefit will be useful.

Here are the key ideas:

1. Start with a clear commitment to understanding the donor with deeper levels of insight.
2. Begin with some questions that need to be answered with the eye toward action to improve results.
3. Encourage a collaborative approach that cuts across departmental silos.
4. Obsess about understand the donor.
5. Create a culture that always looks at what we know from our donors before proceeding with an initiative.

Assess the total economic benefit of understanding the donor

The value of offline donor data

Tags

Data, Donor, Nonprofit, Offline

Smart Data

Not all data is as valuable as others. The human resources to manually enter offline donor data can be daunting and so many times it is the last priority. There are great services that automate the collection of offline data at a reasonable cost. The first step in the automation process is to create a data value strategy. That will help justify the cost of capturing the offline donor data and integrating it into your donor systems.

The opportunity to collect offline data for most nonprofits is huge. We tend to underestimate how much of it we really have. For some retail oriented businesses it is close to 100 percent. Think about what you know about donors online and what you know about them offline.

Offline can include knowledge gained in the call center, by donation staff, from surveys, point of sale transactions and retail interactions from service personnel. It may be helpful to do a quick audit of all that you really have. If may be more than you think. And it may lead to great insight than online data which leads to action and engagement.  It also getting easier and more cost effective to get the data via scanning / OCR technology.

Digital executives are passionate about getting insight on what is important to donors. Think about a world where you could act on the insights gained from your offline data. The cost of integrating may be worth its weight in gold.

The other side of this is that when donors give us information and tell us something, they expect us to remember it to provide them better service. The point of integrating offline data is to gain insight into donors that can’t be gained otherwise and to be able to act for better service.

Everyone can be involved in the effort. Imagine having a simple card that service personnel fill out with the answers to 3 questions what will give you great insight. They ask the questions and write down the answers. You have a service scan it and integrate it with your other donor data. What if you could get their email address? It may not be as difficult as you think. You can get everyone involved in the effort.

There is always the constraint of the budget. It is just too costly you think. Creating a value framework is not that difficult. A simple table can help you assess what offline data you have, what it would cost to get it into your systems and what insight it will give you to build relationships (leading to greater donation).

Alert!! Do you have a privacy policy? Is it up to date? How good is your data security? Has someone independent from your technical team assessed risks in your donor data security? Not having a budget to look at this is a high risk. The damage to your credibility is at stake.

Ask yourself:

1. What is the value of the offline data you have about your donors? How much of it do you have? What would it cost to get it integrated with your other data?
2. If you have that additional insight, what could you do with it to increase engagement, cross-sell, and up-sell?
3. What don’t you know, that if you started asking and integrating the data, would be hugely valuable?

Here are the key ideas:

1. Start by creating a strategy based on your offline data value framework.
2. Begin by testing high insight data integration. Have a plan of what action you will take based on that insight.
3. Encourage frontline staff to gather critical data that provides a high level of insight you can act on.
4. Focus on insight and action.
5. Create a team to oversee the effort and serve as ambassadors.
6. Establish a budget to do something to get started.
7. Pay attention to privacy and security.

Unifying Online & Offline Donor Data for a Consistent Experience

Tags

Donor, Donor Data, Donor Experience, Offline Data, Unifying Data

Donor Experience

The challenge of creating meaningful relationships is complicated by an abundance of data from both online and offline sources, as well as a multitude of communication channels to contend with. A big issue is how to consolidate donor information to drive consistent communications across channels.

By taking a unified approach, development staff can better shape interactions with their organization to create outstanding donor experiences.

What should we think through?

1. How to collect and manage online and offline donor data to truly understand our donors
2. Why a unified donor experience is essential for growth?
3. Common inconsistencies and gaps in the donor experience, and how to handle them
4. How to use data to track donor interactions, and use this information to improve communications across multiple channels

Here are the key ideas:

1. This is an ecosystem built for data, insight and action – Resist the temptation to focus and organize around silos. While silos can maximize a part of the system, they sub-optimize the whole. We are building a donor (digital) ecosystem.
2. What we should collect – We probably shouldn’t try to collect everything. We also should be collecting the “right” data. We should consider enhancing the data we collect to make it more valuable. Several suggested priorities are all online transaction detail and insight, most offline transaction detail and insight, social media data and insights and finally, call center transactions and insights.
3. The value of offline data – Not all data is as valuable as others. The human resources to manually enter offline data can be daunting and so many times it is the last priority. There are great services that automate the collection of offline data at a reasonable cost. The first step in the automation process is to create a data value strategy. That will help justify the cost of capturing the offline data and integrating it into your donor systems.
4. Understanding the donor – Data is very useful if it allows us to understand our donors better. Collecting data is of no value if it doesn’t lead to insight. Think data, insight and action.
5. Unifying the data – Even 2 pieces of unified data is more powerful than one. Having a plan for the most valuable sources and at least integrating some of the data will move insight ahead.
6. Unifying the experience – This is not all about data. At the end of the day, donors will expect a great (unified) experience across multiple channels. This is not all about data. At the end of the day, donors will expect a great (unified) experience across multiple channels. While it takes data to know the donor and systems to remember them, only great experiences lead to amazing service.
7. Doing something about the gaps – Knowing you have a gap in the data and the experience is one thing. Doing something that improves the experience is another. Insight is very useful but it must lead to action.
8. Creating a value framework – Not all data is of equal value and not every donor is either. Part of the framework that leads from insight to action is understanding which donors are of more value and those that will lead to greater levels of renewal.
9. An “Omni-Channel” approach – Unified data and a unified experience is created by an Omni-Channel approach. Omni-Channel creates a unified approach seamlessly across channels. All channels need to be fused into a single approach.

Why a nonprofit focus and alignment around the donor experience is critical

Tags

C-Suite, CEO, Donor, Donor Experience

Donor Experience

A great donation experience with the development department doesn’t make up for a poor billing experience. The donor’s experience is the sum total of all interactions, not just a single departments. One bad experience at a key touch point can bring down several great ones by other departments. While departments are necessary, silos created by them can be deadly for the overall donor experience.

Aligning your organization around the donor experience is hard work. It is easy to say we are going to do it and we are going to create a donor focused culture. It is harder to do it. It is necessary work though. Creating alignment starts with defining the stages of a donor’s journey from their point of view from start to finish.

Delivering a unified experience is the end game. To do that we have to stop doing one off work that optimizes part of the experience but sub optimizes the whole experience. What difference does it make if we improve the call center experience but ignore the reason why they were calling was a really bad web site experience?

Creating a reliable and repeatable experience isn’t tackled by each department having separate priorities and metrics. The “big things” need to get fixed. That requires the hard work of seeing the whole journey and creating big and stunning “wow” moments.

Creating alignment is accomplished by spending hours mapping out the whole experience, from the donors point of view, and fixing the big “pain points”. Alignment is not created in a series of one off improvements.

This process doesn’t have to take forever. There are always a few big things that can be tackled quickly. A continuous donor experience improvement process is the key to getting sustainable results.

The CEO and the C-Suite must require a holistic approach to the experience. Creating accountability for unified improvements is key. Middle managers can make or break the success if their efforts are always seen as departmental and not corporate.

The voice of the donor is usually best represented at the point where the moments of truth occur. That may be the donor service representatives, donation representatives, billing clerks or other front line personnel.

The main resource needed, which can be a big constraint, is requiring that multiple departments participate with commitments of time in mapping and improvement exercises. Once major pain points are identified, funds need to be allocated to actually solve the problems and just gloss over them by applying band aids.

Here are the key ideas:

1. The donors experience is the sum total of all interactions, not just a single departments.
2. Start by defining the stages of the experience and the moments of truth that comprise all of the experience touch points.
3. Begin soon. This can’t wait.
4. Encourage cross-departmental buy in.
5. Shoot for sustainable results.
6. The CEO must make this a priority and personal time devoted to being engaged.
7. Focus on middle management as a key fulcrum for change.
8. Significant time commitments are required.

 

Meet the new nonprofit donor, digital and connected

Tags

Connected, Digital, Donor, Non Profit

Digital Transformation

We are beginning to know a new donor. These donors are a blend of the traditional, the digital and the connected. They may still be some who use traditional media and occasionally read a magazine or paper, but most have moved to the web (digital) and social world (think Facebook and Pinterest) and are rapidly becoming connected via smartphones and tablets.

It is still a blend for most but for many, the connected world is becoming predominant. It will help you from being disrupted by thinking in a blend of digital and connected with more and more moving to connected.

The connected donor is perhaps the most disruptive for you. What percent of your donors would you classify as either traditional, digital or connected? How fast do you think the digital and connected will grow in your mix? Have you allocated your investment portfolio adequately to avoid being disrupted?

Now would be the time to begin the hard analysis so you have greater insight into how to create great experiences for our digital and connected donors. With the insights we gain, we can develop relevant and meaningful strategies. Those strategies can create real return on investment (ROI) for your nonprofit.

Our connected donors are closing traditional touch points and constantly opening new digital and connected avenues in real time. The expectations of the digital and connected donor are for an experience that is enjoyable, simple and relevant to their needs is fast locking the doors on the traditional approaches.

It isn’t helpful to focus time and energy on the closed door. It is helpful to define the experience in the digital and connected world by understanding that they are two-way channels for learning and engagement.

What we want to learn is how to design experiences that lead donors down a path that alter the decisions they make to engage with your mission. With our new digital and connected donor, we can see what paths work best and how engaged or disengaged donors are as a result of that experience.

Are we witnessing the “last breath” of the donor funnel?

Tags

Donor, Donor Experience, Intentional

Over the years, nonprofits have developed various models to explain donor behavior. Most of the ones I have seen have been very linear. The most famous is the donation (donor) funnel where a donor moves over time from one stage to another.

Perhaps at one point the world was that simple. For today’s connected donor, it is no longer a linear path to engagement.

The connected donor is following a journey of experiences with your brand. The visual is more a loop that includes awareness, consideration, evaluation, mission engagement (advocate or participate), sharing the experience, where they start to become loyal and continue engagement through another journey along the loop. This level of engagement requires dedicated monitoring, not just listening, to shepherd people along this delicate journey. In this new world of constant distractions, the journey can go astray without proper leadership.

This is why intentional journey design in creating the experience before, during and after it is experienced is so critical to relationships with connected donors. If people can’t connect with the intent of your mission, then they won’t contribute to the intended outcomes you desire to see.

Donor engagement is not about voodoo

Tags

Advocate, Donor, Donor Engagement, Mission, Volunteer

Engagement is not about voodoo. It is however as much about art as about science. It also draws heavily from social sciences; psychology, sociology, ethnography, and digital anthropology.

The behaviors of donors are critical to understand. These behaviors expresses patterns that are important to the journey you hope they take with your mission. It highlights for you new touch points and resources for potential investment. Your empathy and creativity are inspired by the decisions your donors make. This journey is very dynamic and every evolving.

What is a game changer from a research point of view? It is what your donors are doing online today. Certainly not what they did 2 years ago or perhaps not even 2 months ago.

Your nonprofit needs clarity. You can gain it now and learn where to focus investments and scarce resources. There are many moments of truth around something as straightforward as making a donation.

Be aware that the engagement path is not linear but more elliptical in nature. Many touch points that create amazing experiences continue to influence the journey. There are very specific factors, strategies, people, communities, and resources that come to influence engagement and loyalty.

This elliptical journey tends to repeat itself and levels of engagement increase. Regardless of how many times the journey is taken, the experience at all the moments of truth always wins greater engagement.

As you think about someone taking a journey with your mission, you might envision moments where they become aware, start considering you, decide to evaluate you, become engaged in some aspect of your mission and become loyal. The experience at each stage influences the connected donor to continue on the journey or opt out altogether.

Continuing on through multiple cycles creates donors who become advocates who volunteer. Each loop through the cycle creates a level of loyalty that is hard to break. Donors who opt out after one loop through a cycle probably did so due to a bad experience at one or more points in the first journey.

Here are the core experiences that need to be intentionally designed to be enjoyable, simple and meet donor needs.

1. Awareness
2. Consideration
3. Evaluation
4. Mission engagement (donate, volunteer, advocate or participate)
5. Share the experience
6. Become loyal and continue engagement through another journey along the loop

We used to view these factors as a linear path. Much research has occurred to help us understand that the connected donor moves in an elliptical path that is tilted in a positive or negative way based on the overall experience. When it becomes negative, they begin to loose awareness, stop considering you, etc. In other words, the brakes are on and they fall out of the path. When the experiences are positive, they continue on.

Whether through social search or traditional, shared experiences, whether good or bad, influence the connected donor in meaningful ways. Their shared experience will affect others on the same path who are following them.

There is a stunning truth to come to grips with about the connected donor. Before they can truly become loyal and promote you to others, they must experience the journey a second time to validate their experience. If anything comes up different in the second journey, they may consider other alternatives.

No matter what, the entire journey is very social and very public. Donors are more connected than you may be able to imagine and it is this truth that can define the experience for others who may be considering to make the same journey. Shared experiences are fed into the experience loop. Those experiences are now being indexed and extracted by others who are considering the same journey with your mission.

Is Donor-Centric Real or a Unicorn?

Tags

Donor, Donor Experience, Donor-Centric, Kevin Schulman

There is a lot said and written about being donor-centric and the donor experience. I am one of those who does it. Kevin Schulman poses a great question.

Is donor-centric real or a Unicorn?

It is worth knowing the answer.

In our prior post we stipulated that donors want to donate. They don’t want massive frustration and irritation in doing so, which is precisely what all the asks (i.e. volume) causes.  There is a study here proving that point.  And it doesn’t irritate some tiny, minority of folks who really aren’t “good” donors anyway, it irritates the majority of your donors.

In short, most give in spite of the fundraising volume machine and the irritation it causes, not because of it.

Source: Is Donor-Centric Real or a Unicorn? | Kevin Schulman | Pulse | LinkedIn

Why don’t donors don’t always give year after year?

Tags

Donor, Donor Retention

The challenge is that donors don’t always  give year after year. 

Donors staying loyal is the exception, not the rule. According to Chuck Longfield, ten years ago the average retention rates of a newly acquired donor were roughly 33%.  Today it’s 27%.

What can we do about this? Make a donor retention calendar to keep your donors loyal!

OK, so donor retention isn’t part of your job description. Your boss probably doesn’t religiously count how many donors were retained and how many were lost every year. You just have to get money in, by any means necessary. Meanwhile, that grant needs to get written, that trade show with potential sponsors is next week and you’ve got to craft your pitch, and your big event is coming up in two months and there’s still so much to do!

There’s so much on your plate! How can you keep your head above water?

“Remember, good customer service is often just deciding what you’re going to be bad at, so that you can focus on the things that matter.” – Uncommon Service, by Frei & Morriss

Here are 4 Steps to help you focus on the things that matter: via Making Your First Donor Retention Calendar, Step by Step | npENGAGE.

Improving the donor experience so as to never fear it being shared

Tags

Collaboration, Donor, Donor Experience, Major Donor, Mission

Major Donor – The pyramid is dead

Our donors are sharing experiences they have with us. This profoundly influences the journey others they know will take and the decisions they will make to become engaged with us. Our marketing efforts have one level of effect but they are always seen as our marketing efforts. What others say, in a peer-to-peer way, are the most potent influencers of all.

Word of mouth has always been powerful. Technology now allows for exponential reach for the person who shares their experience of us. It isn’t what we say about ourself but it is all about what others say about us that counts.

At some point, a donor will start a journey with our nonprofit. It may be small and unnoticeable to us to begin with. Maybe it was that $10 donation they made when a friend who was participating in an event asked them to give. They can give a lot more and they might.

Stunning experiences will lead the way to meaningful donor engagement

Tags

Connected Donor, Donor, Donor Experience, Learn, Listen

We are ready to open our mind, our heart, and our imagination to create new journeys and experiences for our donors. These stunning experiences leads the way to meaningful engagement and shareable journeys. This makes all the difference to a connected donor.

A key is continually walking in the digital footsteps of our donors to assess how engaged we feel. Does the experience inspire our imagination? It is all about embracing our connected donors. If we do, they will embrace us in return.

How important is the moment where a donor decides to engage?

Tags

Decision, Donor, Donor Experience, Engage

There comes a moment where a potential donor makes a decision to engage. They may be just “testing the waters” so to speak.

In the digital world, we can see this happen in real time or near real time. Unfortunately for many nonprofits, this is seen in a linear and transactional way. Please be aware that to our connected donor, this is not a transaction. In being intentional about our design leads to a journey, we can get ahead of the experience to make sure this first encounter leads to a continued journey.

Salesforce.com Seeks Nonprofit Input on Specialized Software

Tags

CRM, Donor, Nonprofit, Salesforce

Cloud-computing company Salesforce.com is soliciting input from nonprofits on how to tailor its programs to meet charities’ needs, the San Francisco Chronicle writes. The firm has convened a series of events, called Community Sprints, at which nonprofit officials can suggest changes or even rewrite code to customize Salesforce services in areas such as tracking donors or analyzing giving data.

The Sprints, held to date in San Franscisco, Seattle, and Washington, aim to make such customization possible for smaller organizations that lack the resources to do it on their own. The events help “make Salesforce workable out of the box for nonprofits of all sizes,” said Rob Acker, CEO of Salesforce.org, the firm’s philanthropic arm, which provides cloud software at steep discounts to some 27,000 groups worldwide.

Who “owns” the nonprofit donor?

Tags

Donor, Donor Experience, Know, Remember, Serve

Donate

Do we own our donors? Are they “the property” of the Development department? Are gala attendees interested in our mission in addition to the nice dinner they came to?

We are our donors charity and not the reverse. In fact, we may one of many charities they support.

We need to focus on what is important to them. That starts by knowing them. Do we regularly talk with them or have coffee with them? Do we understand why they give to us?

Once we know what is important, we need to capture that and remember it to serve them better. We need to create great experiences that focus on their goals.

We need to enable solutions that give donors the options and choices they want to make.

Get ready for a new generation of donors

Tags

Donor, Donor Experience, Empathy, Generation Y, Millennials, Nonprofit

Are we ready for a new generation of donors? Nonprofit executives, meet the Millennials. Millennials, meet XYZ nonprofit.

Oops, there is a gap here. Most nonprofit leaders aren’t a part of Generation Y (also known as Millennials). Generation Y is considered to be individuals born in the early 1980s to 2000s. They come after Generation X.

Millennials represent an important emerging group of potential donors as they are also sometimes referred to as “echo boomers”. This refers to their size relative to the large group of Baby Boomers. In the US, birth rates peaked in 1990. It is helpful to know that Millennials have distinctly different behaviors, values and attitudes from previous generations as a response to the technological and economic implications of the internet.

Society and technology is evolving faster than many nonprofits can adapt. We have to come to grips with the fact that donor landscapes are not only changing, they are evolving beyond our grasp. We and our leadership team are not dealing with donors we know and recognize. We are in fact talking to strangers.

This means that we all need to spend a lot of time understanding what is important to this evolving group of donors. Why would they want to engage with our mission? How do they make decisions? What is important to them in the donating experience?

Without that level of empathy, we can’t create meaningful experiences for this emerging and important donor. This group is critical to our future employees, advocates and donors. This would be the time to start designing experiences based on the donor’s interest and behavior.

Here is some information that may be helpful in looking at these strangers known as Gen Y:

• Seventy-three percent have earned and used virtual currency.
• Gen Y will form about 75 percent of the workforce by 2025 and are already actively shaping corporate culture and expectations. Only 11 percent define having a lot of money as a definition of success.
• Sixty-six percent will look up a store if they see a friend check in.
• Start-ups dominate the work force for Gen Y’ers. Only 7 percent work for a Fortune 500 nonprofit. They expect large organizations to hear their voice and recognize their contributions. They need an “intrapreneurial” culture.
• They are three times as likely to follow a brand over family members in social networks.
• Millennials watch TV with two or more electronic devices.
• Millennials trust strangers over friends and family when it comes time for purchase decisions. They value user-generated experiences heavily.
• Twenty-nine percent find love through Facebook while 33 percent are dumped via TXT or Wall posts. (I’m not making this up)
• Gen Y’ers believe that other donors care more about their opinions than nonprofits do. That is why they share their opinions online.
• Most people on Facebook have about 240 friends. Gen Y’ers maintain about 696 friends.

We need to bridge the gap from being strangers to becoming partners.

5 Fundraising focus areas for 2016

Tags

Donor, Donor Experience, Impact, Nonprofit, Technology

There are lots of ideas vying for our attention. As development executives, where should our focus be right now?

1. Exceed Donor Expectations – The current nonprofit average for donor retention is 23.7 percent.
2. Focus on Impact – 49 percent of donors are concerned about nonprofits spend their money.
3. Improve Data Quality – The average nonprofit churn on the master email list is 18%.
4. Build a Seamless Tech Experience – There is a 34 percent increase in conversion rates for responsive websites and donation forms. Everything must be mobile.
5. Embrace a Multi-channel Approach – Do you offer a share opportunity after the donation experience?

More and more donors are moving online to make their gifts. We are past the tipping point. The digital donor experience that is simple to use, meets the donors goals and is enjoyable is a must. 

What is the real rise in nonprofit giving?

Tags

Donor, Fund Raising, Nonprofit

What is the real rise in nonprofit giving?

 

After adjusting for inflation, charitable giving by Americans is more than 6½ times as big in 2014 as it was 60 years earlier.

Of course, one reason total giving went up is because the U.S. population almost doubled. But if we recalculate inflation-adjusted charitable giving on a per capita basis, we see that has also soared: by almost 3½ times. Charitable causes are very lucky to have a remarkably expansive American economy behind them, and a standard of living that refuses to stagnate.

What if we calculate charitable giving as a proportion of all national production (GDP)? The math reveals that over the last 60 years, donations as a proportion of our total annual output increased—but only very slightly. For most of the last lifetime, giving has hovered right around 2 percent of our total national treasure.

Two percent of GDP is a huge sum, particularly in comparison to other countries (see details on that at Graph 27). But it’s interesting that even as we have become a much wealthier people in the post-WWII era, the fraction we give away hasn’t risen. There seems to be something stubborn about that 2 percent rate.

Source: http://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/almanac/statistics/

How great Nonprofit leaders inspire action for donor engagement

Tags

Donor, Goal, How, Nonprofit, Strategy, What, Why

Golden Circle – Why, How and What

Why is important. It is in fact the starting point. Without it, our nonprofit, is just another commodity. Plenty of nonprofits do what we do. Some do it how we do it. It will be rare that any can beat us at the why.

Nonprofits typically do have a mission and a mission statement. Is that really why you do what you do? Is it clear in human terms and not focused on “nonprofit speak”? Is expressed in personal terms that inspire action?

In looking at many nonprofit mission statements many of them are really more focused on what we do as opposed to why we do it. Donors will see it for what it is. Donors connect with real human stories about why we do what we do.

Simon Sinek has a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle and the question “Why?” His examples include Apple, Martin Luther King, and the Wright brothers … (Filmed at TEDxPugetSound.)

How do you explain when things don’t go as we assume? Or better, how do you explain when others are able to achieve things that seem to defy all of the assumptions? For example: Why is Apple so innovative? Year after year, after year, after year, they’re more innovative than all their competition. And yet, they’re just a computer company. They’re just like everyone else. They have the same access to the same talent, the same agencies, the same consultants, the same media. Then why is it that they seem to have something different? Why is it that Martin Luther King led the Civil Rights Movement? He wasn’t the only man who suffered in a pre-civil rights America, and he certainly wasn’t the only great orator of the day. Why him? And why is it that the Wright brothers were able to figure out controlled, powered man flight when there were certainly other teams who were better qualified, better funded … and they didn’t achieve powered man flight, and the Wright brothers beat them to it. There’s something else at play here.

Why? How? What? This little idea explains why some organizations and some leaders are able to inspire where others aren’t. Let me define the terms really quickly. Every single person, every single organization on the planet knows what they do, 100 percent. Some know how they do it, whether you call it your differentiated value proposition or your proprietary process or your USP.

But very, very few people or organizations know why they do what they do. And by “why” I don’t mean “to make a profit.” That’s a result. It’s always a result. By “why,” I mean: What’s your purpose? What’s your cause? What’s your belief? Why does your organization exist? Why do you get out of bed in the morning? And why should anyone care?

Well, as a result, the way we think, the way we act, the way we communicate is from the outside in. It’s obvious. We go from the clearest thing to the fuzziest thing. But the inspired leaders and the inspired organizations –regardless of their size, regardless of their industry – all think, act and communicate from the inside out.

Why Donor Experiences should be intentional

Tags

Amazing, Design, Donor, Donor Experience, Mission

Donor Experience

As a digital nonprofit executive, design is important. What is being asked for is important but the experience the donor has in giving to our mission has become critical.

What does the future of your nonprofit look like? Is it focused on your mission AND design?

Digital nonprofit transformation is all about being intentional about the experiences our donors are having.

How many programs and services do you have? How many channels (Web, Social, Mobile, Call Center, Direct Mail, etc.) are you focused on? Do they all have a unified design and experience?

Mission + Design = Intentional experiences

We are clear about our mission. Are we clear about our design?

If not, we aren’t ready to be the digital executive of the future. If we aren’t ready to be a digital executive, we aren’t ready for the future. If we aren’t ready for the future, will we have a relevant job 5 to 10 years from now? Tough questions I know but worth considering.

So here are a couple more of intriguing questions:

1. How do we ensure that our donors are having an amazing experience?
2. Why make donors cope with the ordinary?
3. Why aren’t donors more engaged with both our mission and revenue opportunities?

Our focus and day to day work should be about creating amazing “donor experiences” in this new age of connected donors. What is going on in the rest of the world isn’t lost on our donors. They are judging us based on those experiences. We can bury our head in the sand. That will only get us left behind. Our credibility as a nonprofit is at stake.

What should we focus on? What is amazing? There is actually some simplicity to it and it can be measured.

1. How enjoyable are we to donate to?
2. How easy are we to do business with?
3. How effective are we at meeting donor needs?

Donors expect more from nonprofits more than ever before. So our programs and services have a level of expectation that our nonprofit may not be aware of. How does the experience our donors are having compare to USAA for example? Do you know?

Here is the harsh reality. Donors not only expect better experiences, they believe they are absolutely entitled to them. Will we be intentional in delivering on those expectations? Are we ready to get left behind with stagnant growth if we don’t deliver those experiences? We may not be ready for that but it may already be happening. I encourage you to think about it. It is a good question to ponder.

There is a unique opportunity to create amazing and positive experiences at our offices, on the web, at your call center (if you have one), on smart phones and in our direct mail pieces. Are all of those unified? Is the experience amazing?

That amazing or ordinary (or perhaps even bad) experience will be how your nonprofit is measured in terms of satisfaction or even revenue success. Do you know how your donors feel about the experience they are having with your nonprofit? If not, why not? Are you being intentional about that experience they just had at your office? Is it consistent with the experience they want on your web site?

As a nonprofit executive, you have an amazing opportunity to lead the charge regardless of your role. If you do, you will be a hero. To focus on what needs to be improved, the current donor experiences need to be measured so changes can be proven to make a difference.

Designing and unifying donor experiences will require skillsets that may not exist today. Deciding what else that is being done today that can be stopped so that staff can focus on design, experience mapping and unification efforts will require focus. The constraints of time and money will be important to address early in the transformation efforts.

Here are the key ideas:

1. Donor experiences need to be intentionally designed.
2. Donors aren’t satisfied with the ordinary and expect more.
3. Measuring donor experiences gives benchmarks for how we are doing.
4. Creating an intentional focus that also frames out what things to stop is transformative.

Do you have a talented donor experience team?

Tags

Donor, Donor Experience, Talent, Team

Donor Relations

There is a revolution going on with donors. The relationship they may have had with your mission and brand in the past has probably already changed. New technology (from a donor point of view) promises a new era of engagement, two way conversations, shared experiences and community. The relationship you want to have with your donors through these new devices and platforms and the actual state of donor engagement are not one and the same. In fact, it may be one sided and skewed towards you and not your donors.

Are you just showing up? I was struck by a school awards program. Most of the awards were for some sort of academic accomplishment. One was for “just showing up” (perfect attendance). There didn’t seem to be a correlation between “just showing up” and accomplishments. We must examine the role that new technology can actually play in improving relationships, engagement and experiences. Our strategy can’t be to “just show up” on the trendy channels. We need to invest in outcomes and amazing donor experiences. We need to properly estimate the extent to which even the briefest of exchanges can improve the relationship with our donors.

How donors interact with each other and with nonprofits is changing through big changes brought on by mobile, geo-location, social, real time, etc. Donors now discover information differently, share it like never before, and connect in ways we never could have imaged even five years ago. Our donors are driving rapid adoption because of the radically different nature of the experience itself.

Yes, it is a device that unlocks that experience but their expectation of the experience they want to have with us is changing as well. Think of how your donors have discovered self-expression, validation, communication, connections, knowledge and collaboration. Are they having those experiences with your nonprofit?

All of this is moving away from a luxury to an expectation. As far as you know, that is exactly how donors are measuring their experience with you today. Those that are “winning” understand that and are actively creating those experiences. That level of community experience is a lure for attention. It takes more than “just showing up” on the right channel and right device. Donor experience is much more than that. The donor experience is about being a part of a movement.

Here is a critical question. Do you have a user (donor) experience team? To a great extent, the donor experience (from a digital point of view) is King. This is not just about website design. It is about the art and science of shaping how your donors feel about your programs, products and services they engage with. Unless the design is intentional, the donor will have a sub-optimal experience with your mission. Donor experience is the critical enabler of meaningful and shareable experiences. The team’s role in your future can’t be underestimated. An empowered donor experience team offers you a powerful competitive advantage. So I will ask it again, “Do you have a talented donor experience team?”

Donor experience, and the professionals that staff it, go way beyond design and development. Among senior executives and the C-Suite, donor experience is probably either misunderstood, undervalued or perhaps not acknowledged at all. The donor experience team should be the most invested in and powerful team you have. They should be the most informed and most capable at improving the donor experiences, relationships, loyalty and overall income.

To the connected donor, the experience is everything. They don’t just donate. They don’t just surf your sites. They don’t just randomly engage in social networks. They want experiences. They want to connect with a community. They will invest in the experience and embrace your community if you provide it. They will share that experience with others who will want to connect with your mission as well.

Without powerful user experience professionals, you don’t have a competitive advantage. It is how you will gain and retain mission loyalty now and in the future. Without thoughtful and intentional user experiences, connected donors will meander without direction. Their attention will wane and their loyalty along with it.

Obsession with Donors and Their Experience

Tags

Donor, Donor Experience, Nonprofit, Obsession

Obsession

This isn’t about being normal. Sorry, normal just won’t work. We need to be obsessed with the donor experience. We need to think about it all the time. Doing anything else will just not work.

Being average is not helpful. Your staff need to look at you and scratch their heads in disbelief at how obsessed you are. Your peers need to be afraid of you when you discover average or bad donor experiences. They need think twice about not caring. You need to be a madman. This is about passion. The digital nonprofit executive needs to care and be passionate about astounding donor experiences.

Now you’re thinking, being obsessed isn’t usually a good thing. It can get you in trouble. Could it get you fired? This all sounds very risky. What evidence is there that it will work?

Now these are all good questions. Is there evidence being obsessed will pay off? Is this about belief or facts? Usually the only use of proof is to even have a shot at creating belief. Start with belief and then move to gathering the facts. If you don’t believe it, what difference will the facts make?

How much time do we spend understanding our donors, listening to them, and doing everything we can to improve the experience they are having with us and our programs/services? Seriously, are you obsessed? Does your calendar reflect this? How many donors did you talk with this last week? What were their biggest challenges?

It is not an understatement to say we need to be obsessed. If we aren’t, who else will be? The answer is that if we aren’t obsessed, our team will not be. If we aren’t obsessed, the culture will not change. There are a lot of ways to spend your time and for you to be focused on. Everyone is watching. What will you do?

I think a better question may be, what will be the results if I am not obsessed with the donor experience? You probably already know the answer to that question. The real risk is to not focus on the results that will come from average or bad donor experiences. In your gut, you know this is true. This is about the best use of your time and the amazing results that your passion and energy will bring the donor experience.

If your priority should be the donor experience then we will begin to envision what it will take to organize and execute around them as a priority. It has huge implications to what you do every day. It makes a difference to your budgets. How many of your resources can you devote to it? How many of your staff can you assign to it? How much time will you give it on your agendas? Do your staff think you are obsessed with it? Do your donors think you are obsessed with it?

 Dare to obsess. Dare to focus. Dare to change how you spend your time.

Three Steps to Move a First-Time Giver into a Major Donor

Tags

Cultivation, Donor, Donor Experience, Major Donor

Donor Relations

There are some basics to donor relationships. They do require some discipline to execute but pay off in the long term.

1. Quickly thank the donor in multiple ways.
2. Learn more about the donor and why they are giving.
3. Set a revenue goal and cultivation plan for the donor.

Converting a first-time donor into a major donor is easier than you think. In fact, if you apply these rules, you can convert the majority of your first-time donors into major givers. All it takes is cultivation. The secret sauce is thanking your donors properly, learning more about your donor’s interests, and holding yourself accountable. Ready to cue the music and get started?

via Three Steps to Move a First-Time Giver into a Major Donor.

Why being donor experience obsessed and focused improves transformation

Tags

Donor, Donor Experience, Focus, Obsession

Donor Experience

Being donor obsessed and focused is not an either/or kind of thing. It is “yes/and” at its core. We need to be obsessed with the experience of our donors AND we need to be focused on creating meeting donor needs. We need to be passionate about our focus on the things that make a difference for our donors and will transform us into a digital nonprofit.

Obsession is more an emotion. Focus is more intent and then execution. It is all well and good to focus on donors. What level of focus is that? Moderate? High? The range of focus doesn’t qualify the intensity of the focus.

Donor Experience transformational leadership is needed and it is needed now

Tags

C-Suite, Change, Culture, Donor, Donor Experience, Middle Managers, Transformation

Transform Culture

Leadership in the donor experience transformation world is purposeful in its approach to creating a long term sustainable change. Change efforts will be designed in a top-down approach in some cases. And they will be constantly refined from the bottom-up.

Employees are not expected to conform as much as they are expected to be involved and engaged. The communication approach of nonprofit executives is more like a campaign rather than a carefully refined command and control approach. Change activities for the donor experience are more likely to be a refine and reinforce approach.

Build a digital Nonprofit Ecosystem Focused on the Donor

Tags

Donor, Donor Experience, Donor Goals, Ecosystem

Digital Business Ecosystem

Building a digital nonprofit is about building an ecosystem, not just a few isolated initiatives that have no impact on each other, the nonprofit as a whole, your mission or your external networks.

In biology, an ecosystem “is a community of living organisms (plants, animals and microbes) in conjunction with the nonliving components of their environment (things like air, water and mineral soil), interacting as a system.” Source: Wikipedia

So, in a digital nonprofit ecosystem that is focused on amazing donor experiences, both living (people) and non-living (strategy, process and technology) interact as a system along with external networks of suppliers, vendors and donors. In essence, as a digital executive, you are building a system. Leave an essential part out, and the system is not complete.

The concept of a nonprofit ecosystem first appeared in Moore’s May/June 1993 Harvard Business Review article, titled “Predators and Prey: A New Ecology of Competition”, and won the McKinsey Award for article of the year. Moore defined “business ecosystem” as:

“An economic community supported by a foundation of interacting organizations and individuals—the organisms of the business world. The economic community produces goods and services of value to donors, who are themselves members of the ecosystem. The member organisms also include suppliers, lead producers, competitors, and other stakeholders. Over time, they coevolve their capabilities and roles, and tend to align themselves with the directions set by one or more central companies. Those companies holding leadership roles may change over time, but the function of ecosystem leader is valued by the community because it enables members to move toward shared visions to align their investments, and to find mutually supportive roles.”

Digital Ecosystem

An ecosystem is not just the nonprofit as a whole. It may include, suppliers, vendors, donors, and many other external components. Businesstermilology.com defines a business ecosystem as:

A strategic planning model, popular since the development of information technology, whereby a network of suppliers, distributors, competitors and donors all work through competition and cooperation to advance sales of products.

In a Harvard Magazine interview with Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Arbuckle professor of business administration, in HBS’s general management unit, and chair and director of the Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative, she discusses the development of the nonprofit ecosystem.

I chose “enriching” carefully because it not only means richer nutrients in your garden, but also the sense that we want continued prosperity. We want more people to feel they have rich lives and opportunity ahead. That is important.

In the mid-1990s, I worked on helping communities around the country adapt to disruptions from the Internet and globalization—trends that were very good for the prosperity of the country overall, but had communities worried about being left behind. I developed the idea associated with this transition from the industrial to the digital in World Class: competitive communities had to reach the highest standards in the world because your donors and employers now knew what the highest standards were, and didn’t necessarily need you to access them—they could go even outside their country. Those developments pointed to networks and larger systems—what cities and regions and small businesses needed to do to remain prosperous.

Many times we implement initiatives without looking at them holistically and from a systems point of view. Isolated initiatives may produce some short term results but never achieve the totality of results that a complete system can together. In this world of building a digital nonprofit, careful evaluation should be given to how the initiative fits in to “the whole” system. If it doesn’t fit, it may not be optimized to produce the best results.

Consider creating a killer web site that is housed at a hosting facility that doesn’t have the infrastructure in place for pages to be rendered fast. What good does it do to produce the site and the content if it can’t load properly on any device a donor is using? What if it is optimized for PC’s but not mobile devices? If most of your donors are coming to your content from mobile devices, that won’t know what you are trying to say.

Here are the key ideas:

1. Think in terms of ecosystems. Initiatives (projects) should be considered as a part of an ecosystem (including external factors).
2. Manage the digital nonprofit in terms of a network of donors
3. Shift from static to dynamic notions of value
4. Design the digital nonprofit for radical change focused on the donor and their goals
5. Open the culture of the organization beyond traditional departments
6. Tap into collective intelligence of the “open culture” with collaboration tools

Transforming the donor experience at our nonprofits

Tags

Digital Technology, Digital Transformation, Donor, Nonprofit, Plan, Transformation, Vision

Donor experience transformation is about making fundamental changes in how business is conducted at our nonprofit in order to help cope with a shift in environment. The shift has occurred for constituents and donors. The shift is becoming a digital nonprofit to have amazing experiences for our donors. The approach should be about transformation of the entire donor experience.

Digital Transformation

What is happening in many cases is that we are adding racing stripes to a 20 year old Chevy and think we now have a race car. We don’t have a racecar. We still have a 20 year old Chevy that looks fast but isn’t.

The first thing is to recognize is that there is a “burning platform”. This is a decision by the CEO and the C-Suite that the nonprofit must be different to survive. Without that fundamental vision at the highest level, complete donor experience transformation can’t occur. Incremental gains can be made by others but true transformation has to be owned by the most senior of senior management.

Your business is likely to face an extinction event in the next 10 years. And while you may see it coming, you may not have enough time to save your nonprofit.” ~~Nigel Fenwick, “The Future of Business is Digital”

And here is more from a recent study by MIT Sloan Management Review and Capgemini Consulting.

A study by MIT Sloan Management Review and Capgemini Consulting finds that companies now face a digital imperative: adopt new technologies effectively or face competitive obsolescence. While there is consensus on the importance of adopting digital technology, most employees find the process complex and slow. Many say their leaders lack urgency and fail to share a vision for how technology can change the business. Companies that succeed tend to have leaders who share their vision and define a road map, create cross-organizational authority for adoption and reward employees for working towards it.”  ~~ Michael Fitzgerald, Nina Kruschwitz, Didier Bonnet and Michael Welch

What we need to do is to envision the digital future of our nonprofit. Without a compelling vision of where you are going and why it is imperative, we will probably be painting race stripes on a 20 year old Chevy. What assets will be valuable in a digitally-transformed nonprofit? How can we transform the donor experience? What about improving internal operations to support the donor experience? How good is our nonprofit model? How can local chapters work differently – and work together differently – in a more connected way?

Look at the media industry. It has been completely transformed by digital technology. It is now happening, at various speeds, to the rest of our commercial, nonprofit and government world. Everyone is experimenting. Everyone is tinkering. Some are putting their toes in the water. A few have jumped in and find they aren’t drowning. They are reaping huge results.

A central question to answer as a digital executive is “Is my nonprofit ready to be disrupted?”

Critical to this question is the premise that we are going to be disrupted fairly radically if you don’t get ready. Do you personally believe a “radical change” is happening with donors now?  Of course, if you don’t believe that, no need to ask the question.

If you do believe it could happen, it is well worth getting away from the office to consider what to do very soon to avert it. Taking the time to have a serious answer might make all the difference in success or failure three years from now.

The next question is this. If you or your nonprofit isn’t ready, what should you do about it? It is important to think through what you personally should do as opposed to what “the nonprofit” should do. You can control your plan. You can only influence the corporate approach.

The answer will set your agenda for the next six months.

Let the transformation begin.

A radical change is happening. B2B and B2C are being overtaken by P2P—people to people. Companies that ignore it are taking a big risk.” Ray Wang, Principal Analyst, Founder and Chairman of Constellation Research

via Annual Report 2013 | Capgemini Worldwide.

Transformation is occurring at many nonprofits. Donor will continue to change in embracing digital connections. It can’t be escaped. It is about how people collaborate and work. It is about the way nonprofit processes are executed. It is most certainly about how we understand our donors and obsess about the experience they are having with us. It is about how we use digital technology to radically shift how we provide amazing experiences for our donors. It is radical and it is now.

Donors are in charge. That is a profound shift. At our core, do we get that shift? There is a convergence of donors being in control and our designing experiences that easily help them reach their goals. What if we don’t? They will let everyone know about it and go somewhere else. It is that simple. Do you see it coming?

As senior managers, we alone possess the skills and resources to make it happen. We can decide to transform and survive or we cannot. No one else can make that happen. It is up to us to create the vision.

It is up to us decide who is “on the bus” and who is not. Here is the tough thing. Not all of our people and senior management gets “it”. To assume otherwise will hinder us. We need to decide who is on board and who is not. We need to get those who are not on board off the bus, as gently as we can, but as soon as possible. Delay will only hinder us and we know it.

Our desire to strive to digital maturity and make it happen is something that really matters. We need to make sure there are targets for progress, that they are well known and that they are met. That cannot be delegated.

Communicating the vision can’t be delegated either. It is up to us to take a stand. It is up to us to communicate it. The message needs to get through and no one else can do it. Develop a serious communication plan. Make sure that it is followed.

We have to decide that monitoring engagement with the vision is measured. If we don’t decide that, who else will?  We have to decide to iterate the vision, goals and strategies. We have the starting point but others will add and enhance what we start with. Setting up an iterative process gains commitment and value. Just remember to not let people wander off into unfertile territory.

Having started with a great vision, goals and strategies, we have to make investment decisions. Again, no one else can do that for us. We have to decide what the priorities are and fund them. Only executives can cut across silos and departments to integrate the work. We have to coordinate digital initiatives that radically transform traditional operational initiatives. The keepers of the silos will not think that way and it is unreasonable to think they will. Executives have to make and force some of the funding in spite of what others may think.

We will have to decide what the KPI’s and metrics need to be. Others can inform that but we must agree and sometimes disagree with what the levers are to get us to make progress on our goals and strategies. Executives have to decide what the reasonable timeframes are to make progress. Shorter timeframes are better. That will help our people focus. We need to decide what processes we will use to make necessary adjustments. Adjustments will need to be made. Assuming otherwise has us blindly executing initiatives that get off track and don’t improve the donor experience.

All of this needs to start with the C-Suite. Others will support the effort but without the CEO vision and commitment, donor experience transformation will not occur. It will be more of the “flavor of the month” approach that employees and donors are very tired of.

Finally, there are real constraints here but they are not as dire as you may believe. Jeff Bezos has funded Amazon but never allowing the corporation to “take a profit”. It is a bold strategy. It pays off.

Here are the key ideas:

1. What assets will be valuable in a digitally-transformed nonprofit focused on the donor? Eliminate those that are marginal.
2. How can we transform donor experience? Internal operations? Our nonprofit model? Executives have to decide the transformation road map.
3. How can local chapters work differently – and work together differently – in a more connected way? We have to be serious about eliminating as many silos as we can.

New ways to think about engaging nonprofit donors

Tags

Customer Engagement, Customer Experience, Donor, Mission, Nonprofit

Donor Relations

Donor engagement is a very dynamic and ever-evolving journey. Drawing on several fields of study, donor engagement primarily centers on understanding donor behaviors. How you interpret and respond to these behavior patterns will shape the journey you hope your donors take with your mission. Research has shown that the engagement path is not a linear one, but rather an elliptical one. It is not limited to a single interaction; instead, it includes all of the touch points that an organization has with a donor. The path is shaped in a positive or negative way by the donor’s overall experience. And, there are many specific factors, strategies, people, communities and resources that influence engagement and loyalty along the way.

As you think about someone taking a journey with your mission, you might envision moments where they become aware, start considering your organization, decide to evaluate it, become engaged in some aspect of your mission and become loyal. The experience at each stage influences the connected donor to continue on the journey or opt out altogether. Continuing on through multiple cycles creates greater engagement – donors who advocate or decide to serve on the board. Each loop through the cycle creates a level of loyalty that is harder to break than the previous one. Donors who opt out after one loop through a cycle probably did so due to a bad experience at one or more points in the first journey.

There is a stunning yet simple truth about the connected donor: the connected donor’s experience is not limited to his or her own. In the age of social media, where one donor’s experience can be shared with thousands instantaneously, the power of shared experiences is amplified. These experiences, good or bad, shared via social media or traditionally, influence the path as well, and can affect decisions made by potential donors who may be considering the same journey.

Because the donor experience is so dynamic, it can be challenging to figure out where to start. Here are some ideas on how to help keep your donors engaged:

1. Call lost donors – Every month have your executives, or as many people in your organization you can, call at least five donors who have left you. Don’t have a script. Nothing is really required other than the ability to really listen. Create a summary to share results.
2. Call loyal donors – We often focus on lost donors, but it is also important to know what you do right and keep doing it. Create a summary to share results.
3. Be a donor – Ask everyone in your organization to do one thing you require your donors to do once a month. Create a summary to share results.
4. Connect with the frontline – Bring in people from all the frontline operations and give them an opportunity to talk candidly with the CEO about donor challenges.
5. Do donor math – Talk about lost and gained donors in every meeting you can. Relate the loss or gain to donor experience issues you are aware of, to what the frontline is saying and to what you experienced as a donor yourself.

If you want to go deeper, get a FREE eVersion (PDF) of the book “Digital Business Transformation in a Donor Obsessed World”.

How do we renew our special event donors?

Tags

Donor, Nonprofit, Peer to Peer donors, Special Events

Donate

We all know it is true. Most donors who give to special events don’t give again. The data indicates it is about 15% renewal. Not very good and not what we need to thrive. Special Event, peer to peer donors, give because of who asked them, not because they are committed to the mission of the nonprofit. We can pretend otherwise but to do so will be to ignore reality and face the uphill battle next year to acquire a whole new set of donors.

So, what is your goal to to change this? Do you have a strategy? Are you executing against it? Do you have a scoreboard and dashboard to monitor success?

Now would be the time to answer these questions.

Will peer to peer donors give again?  Will they become organization donors? We’ve debated this topic for years and while jury’s still out on what to do with peer to peer fundraising donors; I think it’s time we started making some headway on this topic.

Why now?  The fundraising world continues to evolve, now more than ever with the emergence of crowd funding.  In my mind, crowd funding is simply another albeit new term for fundraising.  Not sure about this?  Here’s the Oxford dictionary’s definition of crowd funding: The practice of funding a project or venture by raising many small amounts of money from a large number of people, typically via the Internet.

Sounds pretty similar to fundraising right?  Are you wondering why am I bringing up crowd funding in a post on peer to peer donors?  With so many people asking for money whether it’s to fund the creation of watch, a 3D printer or a cause – today more people are fundraising than ever before.  How will the surge of donation requests impact our participant and donor pools?

via The Great Peer to Peer Fundraising Donor Debate | npENGAGE.

7 Donor Loyalty Metrics Every Nonprofit Should Track

Tags

Attrition, Donor, Lifetime Value, Loyalty

Loyalty

Loyalty and donor renewal wins the day. Here are some great ideas on what to track. There may be a few to many but agreeing on a few and regularly reporting on them to senior management can make a huge difference.

The digital nonprofit and its executives are passionate about loyalty. The live, breath and eat it daily.

1. Attrition rate – the percentage of donors lost over a given period – usually a year. It is important to look at rates of attrition for specific categories of donors or appeals rather than across the database as a whole

2. Gains/Losses – the number of new donors recruited and the number of those now considered lapsed will also be of interest. Organizations participating in the Fundraising Effectiveness project can now benchmark their performance against other organizations.

3. Donor Lifetime Value – Lifetime value can be used to shape the development program, but it can also be used to measure its success. It is now possible to measure the success of a campaign or program by its impact on longer term value.

4. Transaction Frequency – organizations can also measure loyalty by the frequency with which annual fund or ‘cash’ donors engage with the organization.

5. Donor Satisfaction/Commitment and Trust – These are the three big drivers of loyalty, satisfaction being the most significant. At a minimum a development program should monitor its progress in this area.

6. Exit Polling – In seeking to maximize retention nonprofits should also engage in regular exit polling of their lapsed supporters. Common problems can be identified and remedial action taken as appropriate.

7. Number (and category) of Complaints – Organizations may also monitor the number of problems that donors experience with their programs. Indeed, donors should be actively encouraged to complain where the organization has failed to meet their expectations. Research indicates that donors who complain and have their problems corrected are subsequently more loyal than those that never encountered a problem in the first place.

via 7 Donor Loyalty Metrics Every Nonprofit Should Track.

Guest Blog: Kevin Schulman — Strategy starts where your comfort level ends

Tags

Donor, Guest Blog, Nonprofit, Plan, Strategic Choice, Strategy

Kevin Schulman – CEO of DonorVoice

Kevin Schulman is founder and managing partner of DonorVoice, a company helps non-profits increase retention and donor loyalty with an empirical, proven process to evaluate which communications, messages, events and donor service interactions cause lifetime value and by extension, those that don’t.  In short, they put the “donor” in donor-centric strategy and prove the value of this approach in the only way that matters – in-market testing.

Kevin developed the DonorVoice model, framework and product line in the commercial sector as an expert in relationship theory, loyalty and linking attitudinal data with transactional.

————-Guest Blog————–

Strategy Starts Where Your Comfort Level Ends

But, alas this is not how strategy is typically done. To start, we turn “strategy” the noun into an adjective (strategic) modifying “plan” or “planning”. This fateful, unintentional decision likely dooms any real strategy emerging. Instead, we end with a long, tedious document and an Excel file.

The Excel document is some form of a budget that tries to attach the same precision to the revenue (i.e. DEMAND) side of the equation as the cost (SUPPLY) side. The latter is 100% manageable by the organization, the former is not even close. And yet, we go through this long, tedious drill of perfectly forecasting and budgeting for revenue by program and department to match the equally precise cost estimates.

At the end of this many months long process – that we faithfully repeat year after year – we all feel good, comfortable and confident with detailed documents and excel budgeting to support that feeling.

The larger the spreadsheets, the more confident an organization is in its process. All those numbers and data feel analytical, scientific even.

So why do managers and those on the front lines responsible for executing the “strategy” tend to dread the annual strategic planning ritual? Why does it consume so much time and have so little impact on organizational actions? The reason; those people responsible for delivering on the plan recognize the process as it exists today does not produce novel strategies.

Instead, it perpetuates the status quo.

But, if the alternative is ideation sessions and off-sites to come up with radical, big new ideas then these same manager and directors make the right choice in sticking with the process that at least produces some short term comfort versus the 1 day of talking with no action.

The short term comfort (along with a certain amount of resignation) lasts until the returns start coming in and we see – to nobody’s actual surprise – that revenue is not as predictable as Excel would lead us to believe – though the costs are dead on.

So what is the alternative? How do we get back to real strategy? For starters, here are a few defining thoughts.

• Strategy is about forcing a choice, stating what we are and are not doing.
• It is about making assumptions and explicit choices and outlining both – BRIEFLY – in 1 page, 2 max.
• If your strategy document is more than 2 pages then there is a 99.9% it isn’t a strategy at all. It is a planning and forecasting and prognosticating exercise to deliver short term comfort. It is also almost certainly a document that looks radically similar to last year.
• A strategy is clear, concise and focused. Just like good copy.
• Strategy is about making small bets with the explicit choices made and not made and the associated assumptions spelled out.
• With a solid articulation of the 2 (or 3 max) choices available to solve a problem (e.g. falling retention rates, lousy uptake with monthly giving offer) or achieve a goal and equally solid articulation of the assumptions that must be true for either choice to work then we increase our chance of success.
• Evaluate those assumptions and determine which set best fits with what you do well, is most likely to be true and then make a choice. This will greatly increase chances of success.
• Increasing our chance of success is not the same as reducing risk
• It is about turning left or right and not believing we can do both at the same time.
• It is about monitoring performance of the small bet and modifying course or abandoning it all together.
• Contrary to popular wisdom, strategy is not about failing a whole lot first. That is called failing.
• If there is no risk, there is no strategy. If you feel comfortable, there is no a strategy