A much better way to make money than fundraising
Howard Lake | 31 January 2015 | Blogs
This is how my daughter plays hide and seek. She thinks if she can’t see me then I’m not there. That strategy sound familiar? Isn’t it exactly the same approach our sector takes to getting feedback from prospects or supporters?
If everyone from multi-national corporations right through to my local curry house are doing everything they can to find out what people interacting with them think, why don’t we? It’s long been common knowledge that more than 50% of the decision to purchase again is tied to the interaction in the moment. And as was reported recently the ROI of servicing an interaction is 70% (not a typo! And that’s only accounting for increase in lifetime value. If you actually act on the feedback and improve the overall experience there’s no telling how high that number can go).
So it begs the questions; why are we doing nothing to seek and act on information about these interactions?
The problem with the transactional mind-set
The answer is purely down to mind-set. No matter how sophisticated our programmes, or how shiny and new the channel, we fundamentally have not evolved from rattling a tin. The only thing we’re set up to notice, process and care about is the money being dropped in the ‘tin’.
The fundamental flaw with the transactional mind-set is that the data, no matter how much you torture it can never (never, never, never…) tell you why something did or didn’t happen, only that it did. It can’t ever tell you why X amount of people click on your ‘donate’ button but only Y donate. It can’t tell you why over half of peer-to-peer event registrants never make a gift or raise a penny. Nor can it tell you what’s working so that you can scale.
Ask, in the moment
Ask in the moment. Please rate our toilet sign in Changi airport, Singapore.
The only way you’ll get these answers is to ask, in the moment. Charities who’ve got into this way of working are seeing extraordinary results. In a test involving only a single instance of collecting donor feedback, here’s the performance six months after:
• Contributions/purchase of additional offers increased 3 times over the control
• 50% reduction in attrition
• 35% increase in net income
In other words, this is the silver bullet (and a much better way to make money than fundraising)! All we need do to start seeing these numbers in our own organisations is to make ourselves available. Recently the Agitator offered free, forever online feedback tools. And next month they’re holding a free webinar showcasing the extraordinary results charities are getting using them.
The opinions, thoughts and feelings of our prospects, supporters and donors exist whether we seek them or not. 100% of the risk lies in ignoring them.
Charlie Hulme is Managing Director of Donor Voice.
Main photo: playing peekaboo by AnneMS on Shutterstock.com
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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.