Trends In Donor Retention
4 December 2006 at 1:30 pm
As you begin your major Christmas campaign is your donor base holding up and how do your measure donor retention?
A new online survey looks at the latest donor retention trends.
Sage Software in the US worked with The Chronicle of Philanthropy to create a short online survey that to identify and measure issues, trends, and concerns regarding donor retention among these targeted Not for Profit organisations.
Just over half (56%) of the organisations surveyed said the number of donors this year are more than they had last year, while 30% indicated the number of donors was about the same as last year, and only 14% felt the number was less than last year.
Some 57% of the organisations indicated that they rely mostly on returning donors and 40% indicated they rely on both
new and returning donors.
Competition from like-missioned organisations was considered a main factor impacting on donors today by 42% of the surveyed organisations.
One fifth also mentioned attention on other giving opportunities, such as Tsunamis, Hurricane Katrina, and so forth.
The survey found that no dominant strategy emerged for 2006. It found that strategies appear to be very similar to 2005, with printed and mailed newsletters and deeply personalized messages being the most frequently stated strategies.
Most (85%) organisations indicated that technology was either very or somewhat influential in the retention of their donors; only 15% said technology was not influential at all.
About one fourth of the organizations indicated they used credit card processing features and database-pulled e-mails or addresses to streamline newsletter distributions.
Almost one fifth (19%) said they used profiles to help personalisation efforts as technology-oriented activities.
Two thirds (67%) of the organisations surveyed indicated that they measure donor retention.
