How many of your current donors would give you a larger gift if you only knew how to ask them? Quite a few, quite likely. The secret to upgrading your supporters to larger levels of giving is to discover what they want and then to give it to them. Here’s one way to do it.
Let’s say you launch a direct mail fundraising letter campaign to raise funds for people in India who have been displaced by an earthquake. After most of your donations are in, tally the results and flag everyone in your database who gave to this appeal.
Now the next time you mail an appeal letter, send a special letter asking these same donors to consider the following:
- giving another gift at the same level to help the same people in India
- giving another gift to help earthquake victims in Honduras
- giving to the victims in India and to the ones in Honduras
- joining your monthly giving program for India
- joining your monthly giving program for earthquake relief
You could include all of these options on the donor reply card (not recommended; there are too many), or you could simply choose one of these options and make that your only ask in the letter. Once your donations are in, you would do some analysis of the results. Your data from this second campaign would help you identify:
- donors who are interested in earthquake relief
- donors who are interested in India
- donors who support emergency appeals in general
What you are doing with this exercise is segmenting your house mailing list into groups of donors who share interests. This knowledge is valuable to your organization because it helps you to customize your appeals to donors based on what they like to support.
Another advantage of segmenting your database is that it helps you increase revenues. Donors who are asked to support only those projects or initiatives that interest them are likely to give you a larger gift than donors who are asked to support your general fund.
You can slice and dice your database as many ways as you want. Using the above example, you could flag all donors who support your work in India, further segment this group into those who support your earthquake relief work in India, and further segment this group into donors who support your medical aid to victims of earthquakes in India.
As long as you have a robust donor tracking software system, competent staff, and time to do this kind of segmenting, you will be in a good position to increase the number and dollar amount of the donations you receive from donors in your house list.
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