Winning the Campaign for Donors’ Hearts and Donations

Retaining donors is essential for ongoing 'wins'

We all know the pain of acquiring new donors, only to watch them fade away without ever giving second gifts. The only thing that hurts more, perhaps, is when a longer-term donor stops giving.

Setting goals to improve your retention is essential — as is then strategizing methodologies to make those goals a reality. You're probably going to have to spend money to increase your retention, but a simple calculation can help put a value on the payback of that effort: Say you want to increase by 3 percent (for example) the number of donors you retain this year compared to last year, and every retained donor last year had an annual value of $XXX. How much more income would that conceivably raise? Multiply $XXX by 3 percent of last year's donors — that's your potential! (And see what I meant about numbers in the last section? I'm sure I lost a few readers in this paragraph.)