# Finding and Keeping Felicity

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2009/10/01/finding-and-keeping-felicity/
- Published: 2009-10-01T09:28:12+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

In the build up to this year’s IFC (www.resource-alliance.org/ifc), one of the stories
that has leapt out at me is the emergence of ‘Felicity’ donor – the 38½ year old
female donor that is recruited through face-to-face (F2F) fundraising and just keeps
giving.

 

According to Daryl Upsall (Daryl Upsall Consulting SL) and Owen Watkins (Unicef)
who are delivering a F2F masterclass at the Resource Alliance’s IFC next month, 
this donor demographic is the ideal F2F fundraising target, not because she is most
likely to donate, but because she is most likely to keep on giving.

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The announcement of Felicity donor does not come as so much of a surprise– what 
does is the length of time it has taken us to come up with this definition. After
all, F2F has been a regular and important part of the fundraising mix in the UK 
for over 10 years now.

 

I remember back in the heady days of the late 90s when early investment in the technique
by relatively small to medium size organisations such as AICR, AFBP and NDCS transformed
charities, enabling them to reap the rewards of the method. At the time, we thought
that F2F would give us those younger donors that we all strived for. It did, but
the challenge has long been in getting them to stick around.

 

So… in comes Felicity. Whilst Felicity isn’t quite the young donor we were striving
for, she is mature enough to commit to the organisation and substantially younger
than ‘Dorothy’! What is more, she is least likely to cancel her Direct Debit over
the following weeks.

 

But, Felicity brings two major challenges of her own.

 

How do we recruit Felicity? In an ideal world, we would need fundraisers to mirror
Felicity’s demographic themselves, (to be women in their late 30s, well-educated
etc) but in reality, rates of pay are likely to preclude this. Instead, we need 
to shift the emphasis in F2F campaigns from attracting new and younger donors to
those that are going to keep on giving.

 

Secondly, Felicity is going to be more demanding. She will want you to talk to her,
to let her know what you are doing to deserve her support. And, the fact remains
that we can’t expect donors to keep on giving unless we do something about it. Attrition
is a problem that can only be counteracted with good donor care and stewardship.
It is essential that retention strategies are put in place, whether it be through
welcome calls, vismails, email updates, texts and thank you messages. We need to
shift the emphasis from acquisition to the lifetime value of each donor.

 

If Felicity is your future. You will need to implement rolling reactivation programmes
and upgrades, regular thank you and updates calls. Whether it is emails and texts
that she wants, to chat to you over the phone or good old fashioned snail mail, 
Felicity is in charge. Give her what she wants and the chances are that her lifetime
value will exceed all your expectations. Felicity is high maintenance, but worth
every penny.

 

 * **[Video interview with Owen Watkins at 29th IFC](https://fundraising.co.uk/2009/10/22/video-interview-owen-watkins-29th-ifc/)**(
   22 October 2009)
 * **[Part 3: A 'Right to Ask' campaign is the right thing to do](https://fundraising.co.uk/2010/02/11/part-3-039right-ask039-campaign-right-thing-do/)**(
   11 February 2010)
 * **[Hug a Chugger on 18 June – and every day](https://fundraising.co.uk/2010/06/12/hug-chugger-18-june-and-every-day/)**(
   12 June 2010)

## Comments

### By: Rarry Revan

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2009/10/01/finding-and-keeping-felicity/#comment-3771
- Published: 2009-10-10T10:26:22+01:00

great news that we have a new donor profile “Felicity”. But where does Felicity 
live? Daryl and Owen have pulled together results from across the globe so I wouldn’t
get too excited just yet.

Felicity sounds familiar to me, in fact I think I know a few. They support charities
by running marathons. CRUK’s running strategy is targetted at her and proving very
successful. Is face to face the best way to engage with Felicity?

Whether a charity works with an agency or in-house to recruit f2f it does not make
economic sense to focus on one or two profiles of donor. It would make sense to 
fundraise in areas where there are more Felicitys, but i have never seen a street
fundraiser with a queue of people waiting to sign up.

Rarry