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