The Delighted Donor
By Dirk Rinker
Does a delighted donor give larger, give longer or
give more frequently than a donor who is merely
satisfied? Consider these facts from the world of
consumer satisfaction and loyalty research:
† A “ten percent improvement in donor retention
can increase returns by up to two hundred
percent”1 says Adrian Sargeant, one of the
leading philanthropy scholars in the US and UK.
† Researchers have demonstrated a radical increase
in customer loyalty when the objective is
customer delight rather than simple customer
satisfaction.
† A quarterly survey by the National Quality
Research Center at the University of Michigan
demonstrates a positive relationship between
measures of customer loyalty and financial
outcomes.
† As customer satisfaction increases, business
results improve.
† Customer satisfaction is so important to business
that the Federal government uses it to help
forecast economic trends.
In the arcane world of “c-sat” research, delight is
essentially the range in which a consumer’s
expectations are surpassed. Simple satisfaction can
be measured by several scales, including the popular
five-point scale, where five represents complete
satisfaction. This simple score, though, in and of
itself, is not enough to signal consumer delight.
Other factors – such as the likelihood to purchase
again, increase the purchase amount, recommend a
store or service, or tell others about a purchase
experience – must be factored into a score to
indicate customer delight.
There should be a comparable expression in the
nonprofit world that relates to donors. Nonprofits
would be well-served by managing toward goals
based on donor satisfaction, loyalty and even
delight, as many consumer firms now do. Such a
measurement would encourage nonprofits to pursue
the equity in stronger donor relationships and
manage toward immediate revenue goals.
1
The donor relationship is complex. The clear
tangible exchange found with consumer
transactions is not present. Still, there are certainly
ways to measure delight among donors.
We know that a donor’s first gift is usually more
about emotion than it is about organizational qualities.
Subsequent gift decisions are much more likely to
be processed through a filter of perceptions about an
organization. Therefore, it is crucial for any
measurement of donor delight to reflect not only
the emotional aspect of giving, but the perceptual
aspects as well.
From our own research and conversations with
other researchers on the subject, we believe donor
delight is signaled by these key factors – though not
necessarily in this order:
† Satisfaction with recent giving experiences (an
umbrella for many separate sub-factors)
† Likelihood to give again
† Agreement with organization’s mission
† Perception of the organization as honest
† Perception of their gifts as having an impact
† The number of ways a donor interacts with the
charity
† The life priority the donor places on giving
† The priority the donor places on an organization
Intuitively, we harbor no doubts that a delighted
donor gives larger gifts, gives for a longer time, and
will probably give more frequently than the average
donor. For this reason, we are sure that measuring
and acting on donor delight over time allows a
nonprofit to make concrete progress toward lasting
relationships with donors.
However, this area of exploration is still developing.
Few nonprofit researchers have even scanned this
horizon, let alone charted these waters.
"New Professorship Created to Bolster Fund-Raising Research," The Chronicle of Philanthropy, 22 February 2007, p. 53.
Tracking the Waves and Currents
We’ve looked at the concept of donor satisfaction
and delight, discussing how measuring donor
attitudes can help nonprofits manage donor
relationships with concrete goals in mind. Let’s
continue with a deeper discussion of two unique
areas of measurement:
Donor Behavior and Donor
Attitudes.
The basic question comes
down to whether
fundraisers plan based on
the waves or based on the
currents. Let me explain.
Donor behavior describes
all the outward appearances
of a donor's activity. The
acts of writing, calling,
giving, engaging,
volunteering, attending and
recommending a charity to
friends are all desirable
outward donor behaviors.
There are also undesirable
donor behaviors, typically
indicated by the absence of
a positive behavior.
Most sophisticated
nonprofit organizations
track donor behavior as a means of relating to
donors on a more personal level. Tracking the
outward evidence of giving, volunteering, or
attending drives the categories by which the donors
are classified, impacts a nonprofit's treatment of
them, and helps shape the measurements of
fundraising success.
On the most simplistic level, donor behavior occurs
as a reaction to some trigger event – a sort of cause
and effect relationship. Though not a deep,
psychological explanation, this is how donors (who
rarely think deeply about their giving) see it and
report it.
However, like an iceberg with 90% of its mass
underwater, we know that behavior is influenced in
ways that are not immediately visible. A recent
survey we conducted among 3,000 lapsed and active
donors shows they were very unlikely to view any
event in their personal lives or in the world around
them as causing a decrease in their giving behavior.
Yet they were much more likely to say that not
giving was triggered by their perceptions of a
nonprofit. This research supports the notion that
giving is “all systems go” until some barrier
influence rises up to challenge the emotional
motivation.
Our colleague Adrian
Sargeant of Indiana
University has developed a
comprehensive map of donor
behavior that shows how a
donor, before reaching a
decision to give, goes through
a veritable gauntlet of
attitudinal influences. These
influences have an enormous
impact on donor behavior.
The things your organization
does to trigger the donor's
decision process are like
waves hitting the top of the
iceberg – a lot of visible
activity, but little immediate
impact on the direction the
iceberg takes.
The thing is, the waves are
what fundraisers typically
measure. We can easily see
them, and see their impact.
Unfortunately, fundraisers
rarely measure the currents. And the currents that
flow beneath the surface have the power to stop the
iceberg cold, or force it in a completely new
direction. Like deep ocean currents, donor attitudes
have much more influence on the direction of a
donor's behavior than they are credited with.
Certainly, donor attitudes are quite complex.
Sargeant's excellent model shows us that
perceptions, experiences, habits, heritage and values
all shape the donor's reaction to your nonprofit's
appeal. These attitudes work both ways. Just as they
supply the principal momentum to any donor's
loyalty to a nonprofit, they are also the first line of
defense in checking the emotional impulse to give.
So, in addition to measuring the impact of the
“waves,” it makes sense to measure the “currents.”
In fact, by measuring the currents of donor
attitudes, we can predict in most cases which
direction our donor will travel – toward future gifts,
or away from them. All of this begs the question
The Delighted Donor | Campbell Rinker
“which donor attitudes should we measure to
provide that answer?”
According to Sargeant, “research among nonprofits
shows satisfaction and commitment to have a
strong positive impact on donor behavior and
retention, and that the optimum solution for
predicting future behavior is to measure both. If the
goal is to track trends over time and to provide
rudimentary diagnostics, in my view there is rarely a
need to move beyond a generic instrument.”
“Clients often suspect that they will be different,”
he says “but the same factors always seem to
emerge from the qualitative and quantitative
research.” (Our research backs up this claim,
especially for mass fundraisers. However, donors
acquired through events, personal solicitation or
friend-to-friend efforts are likely to have different
satisfaction drivers).
Sargeant continues, “the essential drivers of
satisfaction and commitment are dimensions that
are core to every direct marketing environment and
therefore relevant to every direct marketing
organization. While the basic questions may not
address every facet of service quality, they don't
have to. Although I may only be measuring 40% of
the construct, it is enough to be able to track long
term trends as a consequence of changes in
development strategy – and when used with
importance and expectations – enough to take
meaningful managerial decisions.”
Armed with a few satisfaction and commitment
insights from a short survey instrument, an
organization can predict the future behavior of
about 80% of surveyed donors (no, this is not a
typo!), based on comparing survey responses to
subsequent giving over the long term.
Should organizations measure the waves?
Absolutely. But because the fundamental donor
attitudes have so great an impact on giving, it makes
eminent sense to also measure the underlying
currents of donor satisfaction and commitment on
an ongoing basis.
Measuring the Touchpoints
In our experience, nonprofits rarely measure
attitudes such as satisfaction, loyalty and delight
among their donors.
Though asking the right questions and knowing
how to interpret the responses are key elements, an
equally vital element of the process is asking at the
right time.
Why is asking at the right time important?
Every relationship has its notable touchpoints. In
donor relationships, the point in time at which a
nonprofit connects with the donor and asks for
their opinions is significant – we might call these
times “opinion touchpoints.” Asking at one point
can obtain answers that are biased by emotion.
Asking at some other time might get responses that
lack relevance because they also lack the appropriate
context.
Good opinion touchpoints have several things in
common. First, they happen when the donor is
thinking about the nonprofit. This makes the
questions relevant to the donor's state of mind, and
also provides a natural occasion for giving opinions.
Furthermore, a good touchpoint doesn't require too
much from the donor. It is best to ask donors to do
only one thing at a time – that is, don't ask for
anything more than their opinions. Ask for opinions
at the same time you ask for a gift and you run the
risk of the donor forgetting to give, or thinking too
much about the process of giving and allowing
subconscious barriers to arise. On the flip side, if
their mind is focused on the emotional content of
the appeal you sent them, their frame of mind might
provide you with a false positive response to your
satisfaction survey. (The same can be said for
surveys conducted during member renewal or
annual campaigns, or outbound phone appeals).
Finally, a good touchpoint makes it easy for the
donor to respond. More people share when it's easy
to do, and the value of the data increases with
higher response rates. It makes sense to offer
several channels – mail, Internet, phone, fax – for
donors to give you the answers you need. For this
reason, we also recommend a short survey that only
requires a minute or so to complete.
Taking all these factors into consideration, we
believe there are a few “best” touchpoints at which
to ask donors for their attitudes about your
nonprofit:
1. When acknowledging or thanking donors
for their gift (as long as the thank you
receipt does not contain a gift ask),
2. Within a newsletter or magazine,
The Delighted Donor | Campbell Rinker
3. When fulfilling on a premium (with no
half a percent can add up to a lot of donor
secondary ask), and
responses.
4. As part of a donor welcome mailing or
A traditional outbound phone survey is best for
contact sequence.
achieving a random, representative sample of
donors. However, in the case of this survey where
Now that we've recommended when to ask the
modeling each donor's response is a key deliverable,
donor, it also makes sense to discuss how to ask the
quantity is the goal. That's why it is probably best to
donor. The possibilities include a web survey, self
use a traditional phone survey only for validating
mailer, an automated dial-in phone survey or a
response or for measuring the impact of having a
traditional phone survey. It is even possible to
lower percentage of the sample group respond to
arrange for all of these options, simply to make it
other survey channels.
easier for the donor to
respond. Let's consider the
The technology needed to
“People haven’t grasped the difference that
costs and benefits of these
combine response from all these
even small changes in donor retention can
options.
sources into one dataset for
make to the bottom line.
sorting, analysis, scoring and
The Internet is a natural
segmentation already exists. Your
“The smart corporations can tell you this
option for a short donor
nonprofit should be able to
about their customers. Our research with
satisfaction survey.
access your results via a secure
Invitations can be
nonprofits and companies suggests that a
Internet server anytime, from
programmed to automatically
10 percent improvement in donor retention
anywhere in the world.
follow a gift by the donor or
can increase return by up to 200 percent.”ibid
an e-mail acknowledgment
Some might ask “Why not simply
Adrian Sargeant, Indiana University
you send by a certain number
ask the donor whether or not
of days or weeks. This allows
they plan to give again? Wouldn't
for consistent timing across all donors. You may
that take all the guesswork out of trying to
also program your website to invite any web visitors
understand donor intentions?” Well, we do
to take the survey if their computer contains a
recommend asking donors about their intentions,
cookie you have planted to identify them as a
but don't leave it at that. By asking service
donor.
satisfaction questions, you add depth and context to
the responses about intent that can't be measured
A self-mailer is another natural choice. The
any other way, and which donors are ill-equipped to
questions may be printed on a bangtail envelope
consider when asked about their intentions in a
flap, or on a simple fold-over card. The envelope or
vacuum. Furthermore, your service satisfaction
mailer should be a pre-addressed and carry either
ratings tell you how to improve contact with all
your business reply mail permit or that of your
donors, not just respondents.
survey vendor. This invitation may go as a standalone mailing, or ride along with a thank-you
In summary, we see that the rationale, the science
receipt. You may also insert it into your newsletter
and the methods for measuring donor delight are all
or magazine. Survey methods like the e-mail and
available to nonprofits. Organizations that choose
self-mailer described here typically generate about
to measure these donor attitudes – alongside
5% response.
standard donor behavior metrics like percent
response and average gift – will add a valuable new
Another option is an inbound, or automated, phone
dimension to their development process and earn
survey. In this method, your organization simply
dividends in stronger donor loyalty and higher
prints a special 800-number with an invitation in its
donor value.
newsletter, magazine, thank-you receipts or on your
website. Respondents may call in and respond either
Campbell Rinker can help you leverage donor loyalty,
by speaking their answers or selecting a number on
produce stronger retention numbers, and increase
their touch-tone phone. The response rate for this
your donors’ giving.
type of survey is a very low half percent. However,
when you publish the invitation consistently, that
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The Delighted Donor | Campbell Rinker