Growing Donor Files: It's Time for a New Approach

The analysis concluded the Affluent Professionals were a lot more valuable, generating approximately 70 percent more revenue per donor each year than the Traditional Retirees. The next piece was more interesting (and more actionable): Affluent Professionals and Traditional Retirees preferred different types of solicitations. In fact, the mail pieces that the Traditional Retirees liked most compared to the other clusters, the Affluent Professionals liked least — and vice versa. The chart at right shows the gross income per name (GIPN) for Affluent Professionals and for Traditional Retirees relative to the mean for all donors. For example, for the first solicitation, Fall MD#3, Affluent Professionals were 37 percent above the mean and Traditional Retirees were 23 percent below the mean (although they still produced net revenue). As shown above, GIPN was always higher for the Affluent Professionals vs. the Traditional Retirees as they are a much more valuable cluster of donors. However, for some solicitations such as Apr Appeal and July AF#5, the Traditional Retirees performed almost as well as the Affluent Professionals — specifically, these were the two best-performing solicitations for Traditional Retirees and the two worst for Affluent Professionals compared to other clusters. For Jan AF2, by contrast, the Affluent Professionals performed far better than the Traditional Retirees. These two clusters of donors respond best to very different types of appeals!