Donor retention is an increasingly popular (and important) topic for nonprofits, especially at the beginning of the year.
Today, we want to share a few of our favorite resources from around the web when it comes to improving your donor retention rates:
- How to Measure Your True Donor Retention Rates Exclusively focusing on dollars raised, number of donors, and percentage of donors retained year to year can mask significant problems within a fundraising strategy, as well as hide success stories. In this post, Curt Swindoll shares how failing to accurately measure retention rates can cause big issues.
- New Data: Retention Rates Are on the Rise. Earlier this month, our friends over at Bloomerang announced some good news…donor retention rates are on the rise. According to their post, the median donor retention rate increased from 39% in 2012 to 43% in 2013. In addition, the dollar retention rate increased from 40% in 2012 to 46% in 2013.
- Report: Charities Show Strides in Keeping Loyal Donors but Are Too Focused on Short-Term Results, Scholars Say. Charities made strides in the past year as they sought to persuade new donors to give again and to increase the amount such supporters contribute for second or third gifts. However, according to this recent post from The Chronicle of Philanthropy, nonprofit organizations are wasting money by putting too much effort into constantly replacing large numbers of donors who never make a repeat gift when they should be making investments that provide significantly more fundraising return in the long term.
We’d love to know: What is your organization doing to measure and improve your retention?