Measuring Donor Loyalty

Conventional practice seeks to measure and understand loyalty through transactional analysis. Fundraisers working from this perspective equate loyalty with a particular pattern of purchases, contributions, advocacy actions, etc., and seek to build it by pushing enough of the “stuff” that seems to generate these behaviors (appeals, catalogs, e-mails, videos, petitions, etc.). The goal isn’t to create loyal donors through communications. Rather this approach assumes that some donors are innately loyal and simply need to be prodded to give. Put another way, sufficient volume increases the likelihood of “good” donors raising their hands, responding and thus keeping themselves in the “good” bucket.