Balancing the Mission Checkbook

The annual deluge of year end requests for contributions has begun in earnest. I received four letters at home yesterday, two at work, and three emails.

One of the letters and emails were from the same organization.

I think this year that I’ll make a stack of them and do an analysis after the holidays are over. I will certainly respond to some of them with a check, but others will not get more than an annoyed glance. Annoyed is the operative word. Like most people, my husband and I have a number of organizations that we support regularly because we are committed to their work, believe they are well-run and have a meaningful impact. There will be many other requests, though, from organizations either no connection to our lives, our issues, or our interests. But we’re still on their list – again and again and again. An article in the November 23, 2006 issue of the Chronicle of Philanthropy called “The Vanishing Donor” really struck a nerve with me. The article addresses the high donor dropout rate experienced by many organizations – donors will make one or two gifts and then disappear from the list.

But the biggest reason by far for the loss of donors is that many of them are just as angry as Ms. Medicus about the number of mailings they receive and other aggressive fund-raising tactics, experts say.Even so, most charities that rely heavily on direct-mail and telephone appeals have been slow to change how they interact with new donors, says Penelope Burk, a Chicago fund-raising consultant and author of Donor-Centered Fundraising: How to Hold On to Your Donors and Raise Much More Money.“It is difficult to transition out of the old system to a new one that is better for the times,” but the need for change is long overdue, says Ms. Burk, who has conducted in-depth research on 250 donors to determine what they want from charities and why they stop giving. Charities, she says, “are now in a state where the entire country is over-solicited and donors have hunkered down, looking for ways to get out from under these negative aspects of fund raising.”Donors tell Ms. Burk and other researchers that they are asked for money too often, provided with only token acknowledgments of their gifts, and offered little meaningful information about how their money was used. Donors also complain that they are not given sufficient choices about how a charity communicates with them. (November 23, 2006 Chronicle of Philanthropy).

Join a live discussion with researcher Penelope Burk on December 4th for more on this topic.

The research findings and recommendations were music to my ears:

• Ask donors what method of communication they prefer and how frequently they want to hear from you.
• Put effort into learning what your donors want from you. Do they want information about an issue, information about activities, or simply a thank you letter?
• Reduce the frequency of solicitations.
• Finally, thank your donors personally and sincerely.

I’m going to keep my stack and report back after the holiday. I’m also going to contact the organizations that we do support and invite them to have a different kind of relationship with us – a relationship that fits our preferences and needs. Next year I’ll take that into consideration when it’s time to write the checks.