Fosbury Flop Your Culture

I was recently reading a thread inside of the LinkedIn group, it was a group of predominantly young professionals. Their conversation centered around using Instagram  as an annual report platform. At one level it was encouraging to read about such creativity on another it was evidence of the strength of the gravitational pull to keep things the way they have always been.

Limiting creativity to exist in our old structures will be incremental at best in improving the experience our donors appear to be craving. For example when you look at this image what do you see? An old woman?

Most likely you've seen this image 1 million times before. You know that one view is an old woman and another view is young women. Knowing this from your experience your mind can quickly turn off its ability to see something new. For example as you look at that image do see the pixels? Do you see it being displayed on the computer screen that was built somewhere? Do you understand what was going on in the lives of the people who built that screen? Where did it travel from to be in your hands? Experience is an incredibly powerful thing, but the opposite of every truth is another equal truth. Experience can also be very limiting if you aren't able to keep it in check.

In the summer of 1968 Dick Fosbury changed high jumping forever. His unique methodology for jumping the high bar changed the sport and had the Olympic Committee scratching its head. Dick discovered a better way and changed the sport, for the better.

It's possible that your donors are looking for you to create a Fosbury flop experience for them. Not that they are looking for you to jump over them backwards, but they are hopeful that you have the ability to create a new way for them to experience philanthropy. Will you tweak the past or create a completely new experience. Which do you believe will engage your best customers?

Culture = Donor Retention

A little bit more on the topic of improving donor retention by focusing on your internal culture. A recent survey, conducted by MSW Research,  discovered that employees ask themselves these three questions.
 1. Do I feel valued?
 2. Do I value the organization where I work?
 3. Do I feel I belong?

The responses to these questions become indicators regarding the engagement level of an organization's employees.

Any guesses on the results and how engaged employees really are?

If your environment looks anything like the above chart how could you possibly increase donor retention by focusing on increasing retention by a certain percent.

These findings are indeed sobering, however  if we peek into the DNA of an organization we may begin to see a correlation between employee satisfaction and donor retention. The level of an employee's engagement is impacted dramatically by feeling a number of key positive emotions ( inspired, enthusiastic, empowered, confident or valued).  70% of all surveyed felt at least one of these five key positive emotions, but only 12% felt three of them. Based on the number of positive emotions felt the findings looked like this:

What happens if employees feel negative emotions:

 To help understand the steps of designing a culture that creates donor retention check out the Donor Retention Boot Camp.  




Research & Charts: Dale Carnegie & MSW Research

Engagement: The Donor Retention Myth

I know all the rage currently is to discuss both communication/giving channels and engagement as key

tools for donor retention. If you've never been responsible for creating and delivering a strategy that resulted in donor retention then these items would be incredibly logical to focus on. The problem is it doesn't really work that way. You can't create something new and different with an old mindset, ie the dude on the right :-)

If donor retention is a desired outcome for you it begins with your organizational structure and culture , characteristics of your staff and the environment that is created for them to perform within. Retention is not an outcome as a result of doing X to another person. There are a couple of accounting phrases worth a closer look: FIFO and LIFO are keys to what creates extraordinary increases in both donor satisfaction, their sense of connection and ultimately their decision whether to stay longer. Retention is a direct result of the environment that is created for the workforce responsible for delivering the donor experience. What goes in is what comes out.

If you want to begin to understand what steps that you need to take in order to increase the lifetime value of a donor to your organization start with walking out of your office door. What is the environment with the staff and how is their energy? is there laughter? are people talking about getting together after work? is there any highly engaged group having a conversation about creating something extraordinary for their customers?

Suggesting that engagement is the focus of generating retention is the equivalent of suggesting you need plates in order to have a great restaurant. Of course you need engagement, just like you need plates. However, if there isn't a spirit of creativity, sense of pride and commitment to an extraordinary dining experience in the kitchen and with the wait staff that dining experience will not create a desire for the customer to return. 

Start devouring information on creating extraordinary teams and begin the process of understand the unique talents of each person that works in your fundraising operation. Dorothy put it best in the final scene when leaving the city of Oz. It really starts with understanding your own backyard and developing an appreciation for the unique talents of your team. These are the first gifts you need to cultivate in order for others to decide doing the same.

#1 Reason Donors Leave & Stay

There are a lot of different ways to start the process of attacking donor retention.
One way is to gain an

understanding of why donors leave your organization. Let's assume that for a large percentage it is the lack of communication, well that's easy we’ll just double our communications. But perhaps it's not about quantity,  possibly it is what you communicate, how you communicated and most importantly how the recipient emotionally reacts to that particular touch.

Building relationships of value requires a keen sense of a whole bunch of the complexities. It's easy to look at a chart and think donors leave because 18% of the time they don't receive a thank you. You can look at a statistic like that and assume we're in great shape we send thank you notes to everyone, But how do your donors receive your thank you? What reflection do your donors have on your thank you when you circle back and ask for the next gift? Do your thank you's evolve with the relationship?

Ultimately understanding some statistical elements as to why donors leave is a reasonable thing to be aware of, unfortunately it will not provide strong evidence of any one thing. However,  it is a piece of the mosaic dashboard you need to build in order to ultimately create your organization's knowledge compass.

To have significant impact on donor retention is going to require that every nonprofit examine the measures and metrics used to inform strategy. There is not a single tactic you can add that would significantly impact donor retention if you don't reimagine the institutional dashboard.

We are all familiar with the old saying regarding the definition of insanity. Doing the same things and expecting different results. However it is also equally insane to continue to do the same things and expect the same results.

 The number one reason donors both leave and stay is tied directly to the culture created by the organization.

Do Your Internal Systems Create A Culture Of Happiness?

Those of us in the nonprofit world have to admit, we just missed it. There are lots of reasons for this, along with future blog posts, but it is freeing to say we just didn't get it. Hop on to amazon and search for books on how to be happy, or just do a google search. As it turns out happiness is kind of a big deal, we all wish to do something of value and that at some level our life matters. These are pretty basic things. I mean who does not wish to have their time on this earth matter? And the other cool thing is when we do something that makes us happy, we tend to do it again and again.

Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi has long been a leader in studying why people are happy. In his book Flow, he helps the reader decipher how we acquire meaning, purpose and happiness in our life. The list of items almost directly align with the reason so many nonprofits exist. Being of value to others, sense of purpose being part of a greater good.

At the end of the day nonprofits exist to change lives. Not only can nonprofits change the lives of the people they serve but if the scientific studies are accurate they also have the power to change the lives of the people who invest in the mission. However, our national statistics suggest we never really accomplish the latter. Our industry stats point out that we never really keep donors long enough to impact their level of purpose or happiness. Without those triggers,  Czikszentmihalyi suggets people do not reach a place called flow. Designing a "flow' like experience for donors is a key aspect in creating a stewardship strategy that actually retains donors.  Designing a culture to deliver a flow like experience can not be attained by looking to our past or current "best"practices. This will require a rethink of how things have always been done.

This is a big topic and one that will be explored in great depth and with concrete take aways at the Donor Retention Bootcamp. It is interesting to note that part of our long term answers may be found in the design of games. Author Jane McGonigal begins to unlock a key ingredient to long term retention in her book "Reality Is Broken".