Charlie Hulme appointed MD of DonorVoice in the UK
Howard Lake | 12 February 2014 | News
US donor experience and relationship company DonorVoice has opened a UK office and appointed Charlie Hulme, formerly Creative Director at Pell & Bales, as UK Managing Director.
DonorVoice works with charities in the USA, Europe, Australia and the UK, focusing on improving donor retention. It helps organisations identify and tackle the marketing, fundraising and donor service experiences that help determine whether a donor will stay or go.
The company’s website uses the graphical analogy of a leaky bucket to demonstrate the attrition of donors.
Loyalty expert Roger Craver, founding partner of DonorVoice and editor of The Agitator, said:
“The UK market is long overdue the great opportunity DonorVoice brings. We’re proud to have Charlie at the helm given his expertise in what is required to deliver a brilliant donor experience and in understanding the financial value attached to it.”
Charlie Hulme, UK MD of DonorVoice
Hulme, who spent three years at Pell & Bales, said:
“The biggest challenge to a charity’s mission, brand and net revenue.is donors leaving faster than they can be replaced.
“Despite the obvious financial argument for trying to keep donors loyal – it can cost up to 10 times as much to bring in a new donor as hold onto an existing one, and it takes, on average, 18 months for a new donor to cover the cost of acquisition – the trend lines of retention are getting worse, not better.
“While the concepts of loyalty and retention are not new (and getting increased focus) until now there was nobody in the UK providing an empirical, proven model to define and measure loyalty, connect it to value and most importantly, identify the organization specific interactions that cause or detract from that loyalty and value.
“This is not theory; charities that are doing it are seeing huge reduction in attrition and huge gain in lifetime value”.
Photo: leaky bucket by ConstantinosZ on Shutterstock.com
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.