Get Fresh!

New donors are the lifeblood of nonprofit organizations. However, the challenge of finding, engaging and retaining them has only increased. Consider the following:

• In 2001, there were 855,095 registered 501(c)3 organizations. In 2005, that number was up to 1,045,979 — a 22 percent increase in five years (Giving USA 2005).

• The traditional post-World War II donor is aging out, and younger donors give differently than their parents and grandparents did. At best, 30 percent to 40 percent of new donors give again the following year.

• Direct mail, the most predictable method of acquiring large volumes of new donors, has seen cost increases — primarily in postage and paper, but also in higher list costs due to more overlap between lists.

Given all of this, we need to be thinking carefully about how we acquire donors and what we do to get them excited about our missions in order to retain them. This holds true for both traditional older donors and the younger ones who all organizations have been tasked with finding, but it’s particularly true with younger donors.