Retention

The country’s economic crisis will force donors, especially older adults, to cut their contributions to charities for the rest of the year, according to a recently released survey. But those between the ages of 25 and 34 will increase their donations, according to the survey by direct-response marketing and fundraising firm Grizzard Communications Group, which is headquartered in Atlanta. The survey showed that only 13 percent of respondents expect to increase their giving for the remainder of 2008, while 29 percent plan to decrease it. Bill Jacobs, vice president of research and analytics and senior strategist with Grizzard, says the surprising

Organizations never want to say goodbye to a donor. And they don’t have to, says Nicole Titus, director of client services for the Washington, D.C.-based fundraising and communications agency OMP Direct. During the session “Baby Come Back! Wooing Lapsed Donors” at the 2008 New York Nonprofit Conference last month, Titus said wooing back donors comes down to four things: strategy, message, channel and technique. Strategy is based on what you know about your lapsed donors. * What has the biggest impact on your donor’s long-term value? Is it channel, gift or something else? “Target your most valuable donors first,” Titus said. *

I’ve been tracking an unusual renewal series as it unfolds — a purely postal mail campaign reminiscent of coordinated multichannel campaigns. Today, savvy nonprofits are exploiting all the multichannel possibilities and using e-mail to bookend renewal and special-appeal campaigns sent by postal mail, for example — alerting the donor that an important mailing is coming and following up after its projected arrival with another e-mail inquiring about its receipt and calling for action. The renewal series I’ve been monitoring is using this same strategy with a sequence of physical pre- and post-mailings around a Big Deal package. Building the anticipation The pre-package before

Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot about declining results for direct mail and flagging e-mail open rates. Our outreach apparently is not sparking the passionate responses we want. Don’t our donors and prospects love us anymore? Why don’t they take our calls? If this is starting to sound like an “advice for the lovelorn” column, then that’s appropriate. As fundraisers, we’ve got a lot of the same problems as the people writing Dear Abby. And I think our response-rate heartache is based in the root causes that the advice columnists so often cite. Really. The relationship we have with our donors and prospects is

In January, three fundraising professionals came together in a FundRaising Success webinar titled “Everything You Need to Know About Obtaining and Retaining Monthly Donors.” Though our pros were able to answer a number of the questions posed by the more than 100 attendees, they couldn’t get to all of them. So they took the time to answer many of those unanswered questions after the webinar ended. Over the past two weeks, you heard from two of our presenters; this week, it’s Jodi Scheib, vice president, fundraising, DMW Worldwide. Click here to read answers provided two weeks ago by Linda King, sustaining membership coordinator/Leadership Circle

From the Association of Fundraising Professionals: Sixty-two percent of Americans believe the typical nonprofit organization spends more than what is reasonable on overhead expenses such as administration and fundraising, according to a new survey. When respondents were asked what is a reasonable level of overhead costs for nonprofits, the average figure was 22.4 cents for every dollar collected. However, when asked what they thought the typical nonprofit actually spends on overhead costs, the figure was 36.3 cents per dollar. The findings, gleaned from a survey developed and conducted by Ellison Research involving more than 1,000 American adults, found that while respondents were fairly consistent

In January, three fundraising professionals came together in a FundRaising Success webinar titled “Everything You Need to Know About Obtaining and Retaining Monthly Donors.” Though our pros were able to answer a number of the questions posed by the more than 100 attendees, they couldn’t get to all of them. Over the next two weeks, we’ll be highlighting our experts’ answers to some of the questions that didn’t get answered during the webinar. This week, we’ll hear from Brian Cowart, senior director of mail acquisition and donor retention at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, who is responding mainly to questions about St. Jude’s monthly

In January, three fundraising professionals came together in a FundRaising Success webinar titled “Everything You Need to Know About Obtaining and Retaining Monthly Donors.” Though our pros were able to answer a number of the questions posed by the more than 100 attendees, they couldn’t get to all of them. Over the next three weeks, we’ll be highlighting our experts’ answers to some of the questions that didn’t get answered during the webinar. This week, we’ll hear from Linda King, sustaining membership coordinator/Leadership Circle coordinator at the Iowa Public Television Foundation. If you’d like to access the entire webinar online, go to www.fundraisingsuccessmag.com/docs/webinars.bsp

In a report titled “Myths of Monthly Donor Programs” on the Mal Warwick Associates Web site, Canadian consultant Harvey McKinnon talks about how easy it is for a nonprofit to lose annual donors to those organizations with more aggressive monthly donor campaigns. “When a donor joins a monthly donor club it has consequences. She may even start reducing her single gift donations to other nonprofits — perhaps yours! — because she has committed a greater share of her charitable funds through monthly donor programs. Here’s an example to illustrate my point: A donor, Ms. Cindy Williams, regularly gives a total of $1,000 a

Leave it to ASPCA’s Steve Froehlich to sneak a little banter about one-night stands into a session at the DMA Nonprofit Federation’s 2008 Washington Nonprofit Conference. Hey, the guy knows how to keep an audience on its toes. In the session titled, “Repeat After Me … I Will Give Again: Cementing Relationships that Garner a Second Gift,” which Steve co-presented with American Red Cross’ Margaret Carter and Convio’s Brian Hauf, he started off with this provocative question: “Before I begin, I’d like everyone who has ever had a one-night stand to think about how they felt the morning after.” (Needless to say there was