Has The Annual Report Become A Shrine To Transactions?

The fall is a great time of year, it's back to school, it's back to work from summer vacations, it's the start of annual fund season, football and it is the time of year the publication houses are excited about printing millions of annual reports. A google search reveals 768,000,000 results for annual reports less than %4 of that number for customized donor experiences.

What I find remarkable about this habit of producing annual reports is I can't quite tell if we do it because of the impact or because it is exactly what we have always done. If the AFP Fundraising Effectiveness (Ineffectiveness Really) is correct we are mere creatures of habit.

In many ways the annual report is our industries shrine to honoring the transaction. Our obsession with tying success in fundraising to simple measures around transactions has produced the lowest donor retention numbers our industry has ever seen. And please remember the annual report that describes how awesome the organization is is not at all about our most valued customers.

I ask you to consider if something else is at all possible? Do individuals wish to be funding a deficit? Or do they desire making a difference? Which would you value?

Might it be possible that the annual fund is actually an opportunity for people to become stewards of an

institution? What would your communications strategy look like if you were designing an opportunity for donors to have a sense of purpose and feel a level of responsibility in ensuring that the organization's mission could be maximized. Wouldn't that be more powerful than conversations such as: “doesn't really matter what you give as long as you participate.” That statement diminishes the organization, its purpose and trivializes individual investment and commitment.

I hope that you will consider that creating an opportunity with real purpose is what your donors and prospects desire. Here is a quick test to evaluate where your organization is:  write down on a sheet of paper the current average length of time your donors stay on the books, compare that with what that number was five years ago and then compare it to the same number of decade ago. If you don't know those three numbers it's highly possible that your organization has been building and maintaining a fundraising model that honors transactions.

It is remarkable that in an industry that suggests real success is about the quality of relationships that not a single national Association recognizes organizations that have had the longest relationships with financial supporters. There is also no recognition for those organizations that have dramatically improved the length of time they sustain their most important relationships. We do however award organizations that have turned their annual reports into beautiful works of art. Artfully honoring transactions appears to be valued.

Might it be time to honor something other than financial transactions? What does the data on your donors suggest, continuing 5 decades of similar strategy or creating something else? 

If you are interested in reviewing online tutorials on new ways to approach your Annual Fund click here

Modernizing Yesterday’s 8 Basics Of Donor Retention To Achieve Retention

I was recently reading a blog post where the author was commenting on another blog post about the eight basics of donor retention. The author correctly notes that the list of eight has pretty much been the same for almost 2 decades. Well, if the list has been sort of the same, and our retention rates are as dismal as they are, then it is logical that the list may no longer be relevant in its current form.

I have professionally wrestled with this list over a decade and a half ago. My team and I believed that

the items on this list were NOT capable of creating the outcomes we wanted. We wanted to dramatically increase our donor retention rates. After making significant changes in how we approached the items on this list we were able to increase donor retention well over 250%. The adjustments we made to each of these basics were as follows.

1. Listen more (traditional)

We realized we couldn't just listen more we needed to listen effectively. In order to be effective it required us to ask the right questions. What we learned over time was asking the right questions and listening to our donors response gave us the tools to be listened to when we designed a communication for them. Listening more without purpose or design was meaningless. 

2. Produce valuable content (traditional)

Over a decade we produced an incredible amount of content. The kind of content that was read at the highest percentages was content that was of personal value to the recipient. A foundation of any effective donor retention strategy requires content that is of personal value to the recipient. We learned that when you produced something for everyone it was not for anyone. Just producing content was not enough.

3. Communicate consistently (traditional)

After generating thousands and thousands of pieces of content we began to see a pattern. What emerged from analyzing our readership was individuals were uniquely consistent not globally consistent. This meant that if we were going to communicate consistently, and be effective, we needed to define what was consistent by individual donors.

4. Recognize contributions (traditional)

On the surface this seems fairly easy and something that our industry has focused a lot on over the past four or five decades. Recognition is critical, but again that looks different for individuals. Be careful in creating global recognition strategies, while they are appreciated global actions will not have the impact of a highly personalized recognition plan arrived at by asking the right questions and then listening intently to the response.

5. Show outcomes prove impact (traditional)

This seems quite logical yet in building an initiative that dramatically increased retention we learned that we needed to slightly adjust how we approached this item. What we learned was that we didn't need to demonstrate what we had accomplished in the past tense what we needed to do is design a communication strategy that validated the donors investment decision. As close to real time as we could we had our supporters part of major milestones. We celebrated our partnership and are shared impact so it was always clear that we were in this together. Designing communications as if we're partners is a critical element in shaping all conversations and communications with key donors, if your goal is improved retention.

6. Be responsive (traditional)

Our sense was being responsive was a minimal expectation. Who among us doesn't expect a timely call

returned or a gift acknowledged personally and quickly. Instead what would help us stand out in a very crowded philanthropic marketplace is anticipating their needs and being proactive in our communication. This required us to ask good questions listen to the answers and then design a proactive communication strategy that would wow our donors. Designing retention strategies with minimal expectations will rarely reap strong results.

7. Exude positivity (traditional)

Well of course it's important to be positive. What we learned was designing a ride for our donors that was wrapped in a feeling of passion for our shared belief was incredibly impactful in their desire to stay connected and create a tomorrow that we jointly believed was possible.

8. Put the donor first (traditional)

We started believing that this was true, but it turned out to really only being a half truth. Putting the donor first or being donor centered in the traditional manner will not dramatically impact retention. What we learned was what we needed to put first, and this required significant understanding of the individuals we worked with, was who the donor was looking to become. Tom Asacker, friend and author, was interviewed recently where he spoke about individuals each having their own personal narrative that is always evolving. To be effective in donor retention you need to understand the momentum of the individual narratives your donors are creating for themselves. You also have to put that evolution in the context of your mission. Understanding how those two things work together is probably the most impactful ingredient in designing a sophisticated, impactful donor retention strategy. It requires asking the right questions, understanding their life stage and effectively listening in order to create strategy.

Retention requires new thinking drawn from real experience and not traditional best practice.

Connecting or Engagement?

The distinction between engagement and connecting is significant. We have all been to a concert where you liked it but were not wowed.  In contrast have you been to a concert where you couldn't wait to purchase tickets to see the act again? Which one of those connected with you? Each of them technically engaged you.

The idea of engagement has its roots in stewarding our donors on our terms. In many ways is just more of the same type of thinking that brought us the retention rates that our industry experiences today.

Livingston Taylor teaches at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. He has also written a book on the art of building an audience. It is these principles that would serve the nonprofit community well to understand in order to build an emotionally engaged donor base.

Connecting with people in an emotional way that has them wanting more is not achieved through a

statistical number of communications or by a multichannel delivery system. An emotional connection can only be achieved through both the understanding of the individual you're looking to connect with and a delivery that reveals your authentic self.

One of the secrets to dramatically growing your donor retention rates is directly connected to your ability to build an emotionally engaged audience. Take a few moments and enjoy these works of art on how to connect with and build an audience.

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?