Donor Relationship Management

To win in an increasingly competitive landscape, nonprofits must deepen their understanding of who donors are.

The relationship started like any other. The donor wanted to give to a specific program. The organization was very happy to help her.

It’s rare to have a conversation with a fundraising professional today where the term “integration” isn’t interjected at least once.

Marcie Maxwell will draw on her deep experience to help define the power that drives peer-to-peer campaigns.

I recently joined a group of donors who were creating a giving circle in the Coachella Valley of California. Giving circles are one of the faster growing giving mechanisms in the U.S. A giving circle is created when individual donors come together to pool their money to financially support nonprofit organizations.

In talking about donor identities, marketers will often say they’ve tried personas, and they haven’t worked like the marketer thought they would. Therefore, they aren’t going to invest more in seeking donor identities. Donor identities and personas are fundamentally different.

Today’s nonprofits are not just focused on getting the donation; they are now more focused on understanding donor behaviors, so that they can understand how they can resonate with their donors and connect with them in an authentic way. Classy recently released a new report, “The State of Modern Philanthropy 2019,” where it analyzed trends in return donor behavior.

Building a good relationship with funders is as important today as it has always been, but how do you build any sort of camaraderie if phone and face-to-face contact seem to be “out” and text and email are “in”? The answer, I believe, is simply learning how to communicate well.

In this day and age, where so much is automated and computerized, it’s good to know that we’re also human beings who, every now and then, just want to know that other people care. So think about this the next time you decide what it takes to better steward and recognize your donors. 

The donor giving path today is very different from that of the past. Not so long ago you could draw a straight line from the mailbox to a donation. But for modern constituents—the Baby Boomers, Gen Xers and Millennials alike—their journey is far more tangled.