Retention

During the heart of the pandemic, Louis Diez founded the Donor Participation Project, an online meetup for fundraisers to learn from one another. The project will launch its first conference this month. 

Donor engagement can be complicated. Donors are engaged in multiple ways, frequently with different appeals and solicitation amounts. This fragmented donor communications experience is a pernicious problem in the nonprofit industry.

In this session, Steven Shattuck from Bloomerang will break down leading research studies into 2020-21 fundraising and donor behavior.

Retaining donors is difficult and retaining a significant number of donors is rare among nonprofits. However, effective donor retention is possible with a retention plan that takes into account why your donors give to your nonprofit, works to build personal connections and gives donors the flexibility they need to continue giving to your organization. 

The motivation that gets someone to take the first step to support an organization (donating or volunteering) is quite different from their motivation to continue to be engaged. We do not need any further proof of this than the lousy retention rates that nonprofit organizations suffer year after year.

I was going through my resource development library with specific interest to the month of January. What should my job focus be this month with respect to donors? Since the heaviest concentration of time for donor solicitation has recently passed, what should you be doing at this time of the year?

Donor fatigue is a slow burn. Whether it manifests itself through a dwindling regular contribution, a shift in finances, a loss of inspiration, event support or an unforeseen reason, a once-enthusiastic financial contributor may come to a point where they’re just not as interested as they used to be.

Nonprofits put a lot of time, energy and money into acquiring peer-to-peer event participants, so it's vital to retain them year-over-year. This podcast will examine the best tactics for peer-to-peer participant retention, which starts at each participant's initial event signup, to help grow your event as well as fundraising dollars raised.

Moving forward, organizations should steward new relationships virtually and bring moves management strategies into their digital fundraising programs.

For many fundraising professionals, there is an intense focus on the annual gift solicitation, which is tremendously valuable. But what is happening before the ask? And what are we doing after the ask? How are we acquiring new donors and how are we retaining them? That's where growth funnels come in.