A Realistic Look at Annual Funds

Find those SYBNTs with the best combination of high recency and high frequency. Focus on them like you focus on LYBNTs. Set goals for each segment of this group, design targeted strategies for the group and work to achieve the goals. A statistician can build a grid based on your donor records that segments your SYBNTs strategically. Use recency as one axis and frequency as the second in the grid. The upper left cell will contain those who have the longest giving record and the shortest lapse. The lower right cell will contain those who gave only once many years ago. Work from the upper left first toward the lower right. Identify how many you need to reacquire to compensate for LYBNT attrition, and target accordingly. Think about real numbers for these goals. “More” and “as many as possible” are not helpful unless you have infinite resources to invest in the effort. The key here is to budget finite resources to achieve specific goals — strategies are not strategies if they are vague.