Conference Roundup: Wooing Lapsed Donors

When all is said and done, Titus said, fundraisers must ask themselves, “Can you ever really walk away (from these donors)?”

Instead of giving up, “go deeper.”

“Remember, a reinstated donor traditionally has a higher lifetime value than a newly acquired donor,” she said.

But it’s not just about getting donors to come back. Graham Hunter, session co-presenter and senior vice president of Greenwich, Conn.-based agency May Development Services, a division of Direct Media, said it’s about getting the most value from them. To that end, he suggested, fundraisers needs to define exactly what constitutes a lapsed donor, lay out an objective for each appeal, and compare lapsed-donor strategy to acquisition, traditional segmentation and modeling.