The Value of an Expectation

What would you do if you knew that 38 percent of your donors reported their satisfaction level with you as below average or, even worse, poor? Would you assume that their expectations were too high? Or that somehow the donor experience you were delivering was … well … subpar?

Most of us know — from personal experience as a donor or some level of donor interaction — that donors expect certain things from the organizations they support. More importantly, donors are known to give to multiple charities, bringing a load of expectations from organization to organization.

What's the key to improving donor satisfaction scores and, with that, donor value? A donor-centric approach founded on integrated and personalized multichannel communications is the answer. How do we know? Merkle, in partnership with a market-research agency, conducted a study surveying donors across four nonprofits in the health sector to understand the correlation between donor satisfaction and a donor's value. (In the interest of full disclosure, Jeff heads up the nonprofit group at Merkle).

Not surprisingly, the study found that a constituent's behavior is undeniably dependent on his or her satisfaction with the organization. Nine key drivers (out of 28 total) stood out as having the most potential to impact donor satisfaction. The priority rank was calculated based on the importance of the driver to satisfaction and the potential to improve performance of that driver. Hence, drivers with the strongest combination of high importance and low performance (meaning there was the most room for improvement) came out at the top of the list. Each of the drivers and its potential impact on performance/donor satisfaction are outlined in figure 1.

Some are no-brainers. We all understand the link between donor satisfaction (and therefore an increase in giving) to "ease of giving" and even to "organization is trustworthy." Right? However, more surprisingly, the key performance drivers varied wildly by organization.

While all participating organizations were health charities, their results yielded a diverse mix of key drivers of donor satisfaction. For example, figure 2 illustrates how different the individual findings were for two of the organizations.

This demonstrates why it is imperative for each nonprofit to understand the attitudes of its own donors and the top drivers of their satisfaction. It's also obvious that there is no silver bullet/easy fix for every organization.

So what do we do about it? Effective, coordinated, multichannel communication is at the root of building high levels of donor satisfaction. (Hey, this column is called "Multichannel Moxie" after all …)

The study utilized word clouds to help portray communication attributes that describe communications received from organizations. Words that appear larger were cited more frequently by respondents. In the case of the organization in the study that had the highest donor-satisfaction score, the largest words — touching, inspirational, believable — are rooted in emotional communication tactics.

While there may be other factors driving the higher donor satisfaction for this organization, we can infer that creating an emotional connection through storytelling and donor-centric communication contributes to its success.

Some of you might be saying, "Well duh … but how do we do that?"

Use data to know your donor!

Targeted segmentation is not a new phenomenon in the nonprofit world. Most nonprofits use donation history for segmentation. Some nonprofits also utilize demographic and other behavioral information to tailor their messaging and better convey it in the most relatable way.

However, while organizations are striving to achieve this, they often fail. Information gleaned from one channel is often not shared with the other channels (data sync challenges anyone?).

But understanding the donor's relationship — knowing the donor — is crucial to taking the relationship past the donor transaction and making it into a relationship with your organization. Think about someone with cancer who donates to an organization working to find a cure for that disease. When she tells the organization through an online communication that she has cancer, that information should be used to ensure that subsequent communications — regardless of the channel — speak to her as someone facing the challenges of living with cancer.

Make your donor the hero

A donor-centric approach to communications is another critical lever for change. Do your donors feel good about your cause? Are they the center of your work? Do your stories relate to them? Are you communicating to them the impact you've made because of their support? If not, it's time to revisit your message platforms!

Build trust with your donors

Trust is at the epicenter of the donor-organization relationship. It starts with transparency and educating donors even when the news is not favorable. When you make your donors "insiders," you build trust and knowledge and thereby improve satisfaction.

Interestingly, the study found that knowledge is a motivating factor for ongoing involvement but many organizations are weak in providing it. While donors consider themselves overall to be "knowledgeable" about the organizations they support, they feel inadequately informed about additional programs or services offered, their favorite cause's involvement in the community, and how that organization is rated by watchdog groups — which are all key drivers of satisfaction.

Across all lifecycle segments within the study, increasing donor satisfaction by 10 points (e.g., from 65 to 75) increases donor value by an average of $13.30 per year and increases retention rates as well. So perhaps we all need to think about adding a "donor satisfaction" metric to our dashboards. Measure it — then figure out how to improve it.

To see the full study results, please download a copy of Merkle's forthcoming whitepaper at merkleinc.com

Karin Kirchoff is vice president at MINDset direct. Reach her at kkirchoff@mindsetdirect.com. Jeff Regen is general manager of the nonprofit group at Merkle. Reach him at jregen@merkleinc.com

Danielle Visco, manager of client strategy at Merkle, also contributed to this column. Reach her at dvisco@merkleinc.com