Read the report Ken Burnett, author of the best- selling “Relationship Fundraising” calls, “BREAKTHROUGH!” The Seven Key Drivers of Donor Commitment Idea Bank Specific ideas any organization can take to dramatically increase Donor Commitment and Retention. November 2011 www.thedonorvoice.com
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Read the report Ken
Burnett, author of the best-
selling “Relationship
Fundraising” calls,
“BREAKTHROUGH!”
The Seven Key Drivers of Donor Commitment Idea Bank
Specific ideas any organization can take to dramatically increase Donor
“Is this likely to be of value for the serious fundraising? You bet. It’s worth at least the authors’ combined weight in precious metal. It’s not the first such effort …but it’s a sophisticated step forward and it does show, convincingly why any fundraiser today would be simply certifiable to fail to understand and act on these findings.
“Particularly I recommend the Seven Key Drivers of Donor Commitment and the Idea Bank that accompanies them. To anyone who thinks all this is mere common sense, reflect please on the fact that common sense remains very rare.
“If you would steal a march on your competitors all you have to do is just put these ideas into practice now.”
--Ken Burnett, Author of best-selling “Relationship Fundraising: A Donor-based Approach to Raising Money.”
Overview
The DonorVoice point of view is quite simple; until non-profits focus as much on donor attitudes as
they do behaviors, they will never fix the retention problem. And until retention is addressed, non-
profits will forever be dealing with a leakier bucket, one that cannot be re-filled fast enough.
Why attitudes?
• Donor attitudes dictate why donors behave as they do.
• You cannot understand the “why” by looking at RFM segments or other behavior markers.
• The only way to strengthen the donor relationship and retention is by focusing on the
“why”. DonorVoice set out to,
Goal One: Prove the link between donor attitude and behavior and,
Goal Two: Identify what non-profits can do to strengthen donor relationships
We conducted an online, nationally (US) representative survey among 1200 recent (last 12
months), frequent (more than 2 gifts to cause based charities) donors.
The survey responses were collected between July 6th and 15th. The fielding process adhered to
best practices to assure maximum coverage across all days of the week and times of day.
The Executive Summary of this report, which goes into great detail on the “proof” side (Goal One)
can be found here.
This report focuses on Goal Two where we identified seven (out of 32 possibilities) key fundraising,
marketing, communication and operational activities a non-profit should engage in to increase
donor retention. It answers the question of “now what do we do?” that invariably arises when
looking at the seven drivers, by providing a myriad of ideas, tactics and just good fundraising know-
how for each of the seven.
As Ken Burnett points out in the Foreword, for those who might suggest this is all common sense
we would only point out that it is common knowledge the value of a retained donor is ten times that
of a newly acquired one and yet, the retention rates for the non-profit sector have only worsened.
It would seem a little more common sense is in order.
Before reviewing the Idea Bank for each driver it is worth reviewing the long list of POSSIBLE
drivers of Donor Commitment (our model for retention and a proven predictor of behavior) and
recognizing (or accepting) that most activities performed by non-profits DO NOT MATTER to the