Do you know what your donors will want this Christmas?
Howard Lake | 20 December 2010 | Blogs
As Christmas fast approaches and workloads temporarily quieten in the face of lots of snow and anticipation of the festive break, I have been looking both forwards and back – considering the year just passing and the one just coming.
These are, as someone may already have said, uncertain times, which mean both opportunities and anxieties in equal measure.
The continuing economic woes and the new Government’s mantra of “age of austerity” give predicting future donating trends a rather gloomy feel, at least in the short-term.
Meanwhile the continuing exponential growth of online activities, social networks, SMS giving, iPhone (and other) Apps, the iPad etc. etc. mean lots of opportunities to engage, motivate and inspire as never before.
However, it seems to us here at JGA that many fundraisers are still uncertain over how to best use and (in the nicest possible way) exploit these opportunities. In fact, in many cases they seem as unsure as ever as to who and what their donors are actually thinking about their organisation.
We recently moved our own site over to using a WordPress hosted blog template – it cost nothing, we did it all ourselves using simple-to-use templates, and it gives us a functionality and an ease of use we’ve never had before. We link to Twitter, to our e-mail subscription software and our Facebook page, and we can add news items, update pages and add to our library of free downloads in literally a few minutes. All this means we have already seen a significant increase in traffic to the site.
However, in its most crude definition, this is primarily a business-to-business site. Like all other agencies we offer information, news and other bits and pieces and hopefully fundraisers will find these useful and also maybe consider us when looking for consultancy or creative services.
For charities it is less clear-cut. The struggle is to attract and engage a reasonable volume of supporters, campaigners, donors, volunteers and other stakeholders in a way that keeps them interested and returning to the site, or participating in other activities the charity offers.
It can be very time consuming to maintain a website and all the related online activities – and without a clearly defined purpose and some sensible objectives, it can also be quite wasteful.
I am reminded of one of our Giving Group’s member comments (this is an ongoing Focus Group of charity donors we meet with on an irregular basis to discuss their charitable participation and opinions) who was frustrated at having his e-mail address ‘harvested’ by a charity he had supported for many years and then subsequently never receiving an e-mail from them.
A small point, but nonetheless a salutary one. Every engagement, every communication sets an expectation that your recipient will feel you have met or failed to meet. Whichever it is, they will judge you accordingly.
Next year, I would hope to see more charities engaging in a bit more research to find out what their donors really think and really say about them. This year (just like previous years) I have heard too many fundraisers and charities make proclamations about their donors/volunteers/campaigners etc. without any proof or evidence to back it up.
“Our donors don’t/won’t like that”, “our donors think they get mailed too much”, “our donors hate being telephoned”, “our donors don’t want to get thank you letters” – the list is seemingly endless. Yet too many times, when you ask for the proof to back up such statements, there is none other than a vague “they tell us all the time…”.
My belief is that too many times, individuals present their own likes and dislikes as being those of their donors without any certainty it is factually accurate.
Of course, they may well be right, but that is not the point. The point is – you need to definitively find out one way or the other with proof not guesswork.
Research doesn’t need to be expensive, or time-consuming, and it can offer enormously valuable insights and information of all different kinds. In Focus Groups and surveys we have done this year alone, I have seen a donor produce a gem of a phrase that a charity based a whole appeal proposition on, a charity reverse their entire thinking about their newsletters, and two new fundraising ‘products’ get defined by donors rather than the charity. I have seen assumptions about Annual Reviews, about thank you letters, about legacy promotion and about fundraising ‘costs’ provide totally different results than that which the charity was expecting, and almost without fail, charities who have never done research wishing they’d started earlier.
So in uncertain times, it would seem sensible to me that you do whatever you can to at least be as certain as you can be about what your donors like and dislike, and to find out what they want and don’t want.
Wishing you a happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year, especially in fundraising terms.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.