Imagine playing a game without rules. No one would know what to do or how you win or lose, so everyone would be doing something different. They would be guessing. That’s exactly what happens to your stewardship strategy if you don’t have business rules in place.
Without that necessary structure, your stewardship program can’t “win.” In all likelihood, it can’t even survive. Here are some tips on how to establish business rules to get your stewardship program running at full speed:
- It all starts with organizational alignment
You need alignment throughout your organization when it comes to prioritizing stewardship. If you don’t have that from the beginning, there’s a good chance your program won’t work (or at least won’t work efficiently). You want to ensure all your peers are aligned in agreement around your strategy and all stand in a commitment to activating it.
- Make sure you have staff dedicated to stewardship
Whether you create a workgroup, establish a position, or add an emphasis within an existing position, knowing who is truly responsible for – and wakes up every day thinking about – stewardship is an important step. Make sure there is someone who is dedicated to stewardship not only from a workflow perspective but who also really understands the craft of it.
- Focus on a segment of your data
At Pursuant, one of the things we encourage our clients to do is to identify a subset or population or segment of your data that you can really wrap your arms around. This is an ideal starting point for thoughtful and active stewardship. Start small with a key area of focus and dig into that specific data to get the insights you need.
- Determine how you will measure success
When you look at your data, there are a couple of different things you can dive into: Where and how are you measuring retention? Where and how are you measuring stewardship? Stewardship in and of itself is not a metric. It’s not enough to say you want to retain everyone. So figuring out which cohorts you’re really going to focus on, measure, and plan for is an important piece of the puzzle.
Download our content paper “Demystifying the Donor Journey” to learn more steps you can take to increase the effectiveness of your stewardship strategy today.