Retention Fundraising: The New Art and Science of Keeping Your Donors for Life

Description

There are eight main reasons why donors stop supporting organizations. Do you know them? You will after reading Retention Fundraising: The New Art and Science of Keeping Your Donors for Life . There’s gold in your current donors waiting to be mined. And in this newly updated edition , Roger Craver has drawn a detailed map to those riches. For three years, pioneering fundraiser Roger Craver immersed himself in a study of nonprofits in the U.S. and the U.K. His singular aim was to uncover why donors quit an organization and what can be done to make them stay. Some quick figures show why Craver’s book on donor retention is timely: If yours is a typical organization, you have a 60 to 70 percent chance of obtaining an additional gift from an existing donor. You have a 20 to 40 percent chance of obtaining an additional gift from a recently lapsed donor. But you have less than a 2 percent chance of obtaining a gift from a prospect . That bears repeating: The average organization has less than a 2 percent chance of securing a gift from a prospect. So one thing is glaringly obvious. The bulk of an organization’s fundraising expenditures should be aimed at strengthening relationships with existing donors, not in acquiring new givers (though there’s still a role for that, of course). Through painstaking research, Craver has singled out the exact ways an organization can deepen donor commitment. There are, he learned, seven key “drivers” that matter most to donors. These “drivers” – ranging from meaningful appreciation to opportunities for authentic involvement - have a direct cause-and-effect relationship. Move your donors from low to high commitment, and their giving will increase dramatically. Best of all, responding to what your donors want isn’t costly, as Craver shows in real-life examples. Table of Contents PART 1: What Is Retention, and Why Is It Important? 1 Time for Change 2 Why the CFO Will Love You 3 Losing Donors Through the Leaky Bucket 4 Why Donors Leave PART 2: Setting the Stage for Improved Retention 5 Confessions of a Fundraiser: Why I Changed 6 Thinking Differently to Improve Retention 7 Understanding Relationships 8 Eliminating Guesswork by Redefining Loyalty 9 Barriers to Retention PART 3: The New Methodology and How to Increase Retention 10 Why Is Donor Attitude So Important? 11 What Experiences Really Matter to the Best Donors? 12 Identifying the Most Committed Donors 13 Putting the Survey Results to Work 14 Plan Your Retention Changes PART 4: What to Do: Best Practices 15 Identifying Donor Experiences That Drive Commitment 16 The 7 Key Drivers of Donor Commitment 17 Best Practices for Delivering on Key Drivers for What to Communicate 18 Best Practices for Delivering on Key Drivers for How to Communicate 19 Easy Retention Wins for Everyone PART 5: Do the Math 20 What’s Your Retention Rate and Why It Matters 21 Lifetime Value: The Ultimate Metric 22 How Do Lifetime Value and Retention Connect? PART 6: Donor Retention Made Easy and Final Thoughts 23 Cliff Notes for Retention 24 Final Thoughts