What connection do donors have to your organization? We’d like to believe that donors give because they’re drawn to a worthy cause. While true for many, their connection is often more nuanced. Recognizing reasons that donors are drawn to give is crucial. It’s foundational for cultivating long-term relationships with them and making the shift from managing transactions to developing sustained relationships.
Identifying Annual Donors’ Connection is Important, But Evasive
As any major gifts officer can attest, listening is one of the most critical components of relationship building. Listening detects connection and alerts you to where donors’ passions lie, the impact you may have had on their lives, and how ready they are to act.
Listening to your individual and annual giving donors is equally important. Through research we field on behalf of our clients at Pursuant, donors tell us they give for many reasons, including:
- Direct personal connection after receiving services – perhaps as a grateful patient, season ticket holder, or the parent of a child with a disease
- In response to a request from a friend – as part of a peer to peer fundraising event or personal fundraising campaign
- As an honor or memorial gift in tribute to a friend or family member
- In response to an urgent need – particularly for disasters garnering media attention
- Simply to receive event admission
Are your donors’ motivations known? How do they align? Does a “continuum of connection” exist and which donors would you classify as highly-connected or lowly-connected? How would you define a donor as mission-focused? For our clients, answers are as varied as the organizations we serve, each offering a unique blend of programs and services and a related case for support.
Unlocking the Latent Power of Your CRM to Discover Donor Motivation
So what’s the best way to go about answering those questions?
At Pursuant, we guide our clients to listen to individual and annual giving donors at scale through our Strategic Segmentation methodology. The approach identifies key audiences within your donor database and helps to prioritize those who are ready for a more meaningful relationship.
By using advanced analytics to group your full donor file into clusters we’re able to describe them based on motivation and behavior, rather than departmental silo, hypothesized marketing segments, or website personas.
This donor-centric, research-based approach relies on advanced analytics to integrate donor supplied insights — data from your CRM, and 3rd party consumer information to describe your donors — whatever they may be. Our team works to manage all of the data analysis so that our clients don’t need sophisticated tools or data migration to discover these insights.
Applying Those Insights to Deepen Connections & Increase Lifetime Value
This rich segmentation analysis now gives us the ability to compare and contrast connection – as well as opportunity – of each segment. We have insights on profiles, relative size and value, demographics and motivation for support.
Our clients use these insights to inform strategic decision making. Based on cluster differences, clients may choose to invest in donor experience enhancements for segments with the greatest upside. These tactics include journey mapping, experience design, contact and content strategies that suit segment requirements and drive preference and loyalty. For segments with lower potential, insights might suggest a maintenance strategy, making no changes to current experience or touchpoints.
Are You Looking for a Way to Discover What Truly Motivates Your Donors to Give?
Latent value exists within your CRM. By taking a donor-centric, research-based approach you’ll have the ability to execute experience and personalization program enhancements that drive lifetime value for your most valuable donors.
To learn how Pursuant Insights’ Strategic Segmentation can help you unlock the latent value to discover why your donors give, connect with our team today.