Blackbaud News : Donor retention

Blackbaud in the News: 10 Things You Need to Know About Reactivating Lapsed Donors

Melanie Mathos — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 13:09:00 GMT

By Lawrence Henze, Managing Director, Target Analytics, a Blackbaud company

The more you know about your lapsed donors — their characteristics, interests and relationships to your organization — the better prepared you are to recapture these donors or, more importantly, prevent them from lapsing in the first place. Prevention is perhaps the strongest strategy in addressing lapsed-donor issues. Consider the following when developing your donor-retention strategy:

1. Proactive research
Acquisition for the sole purpose of bringing in new donors, without an eye toward donor retention, might be the major factor in high attrition or lapse rates. Why build an acquisition profile on a group of donors with a 50 percent to 75 percent attrition rate?

The solution is to build acquisition-to-retention model profiles that identify the characteristics of acquired donors who persist in their giving for two to three years. It's a much better strategy because you can identify persistent donors and their common characteristics and focus on acquisition lists that mirror these characteristics. Better yet, use a donor-retention model to score acquisition lists, and only mail prospects with a high likelihood to respond and persist over time.

Read the full article.

Blackbaud in the News: The Art of Donor Retention

Melanie Mathos — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 19:31:00 GMT

From The NonProfit Times

The Art of Donor Retention

By Beth Isikoff, Blackbaud’s director of national account development

When you reach out to your donors, what kind of picture are you painting? Constituent retention increasingly is, and will continue to be, a high priority for all nonprofits. The art of retention has always challenged fundraisers, who strive to stay on top of the latest and greatest strategies for keeping donors active.

Ninety-four percent of respondents to Blackbaud’s recent State of the Nonprofit Industry (SONI) survey said that retention is important, with 74% rating their performance in this area as “very good” or “good.” As retention stays top-of-mind for fundraisers, we must ask ourselves how we can continue to maintain relationships with our constituents and keep them involved with our missions. With acquisition costs on the rise, it is vital to find ways to keep the constituents you have worked so hard to get. The amount of time and money that goes into acquisition planning, production, and list management is monumental for many. It is indeed painful to watch acquisition investments dwindle because constituents do not renew or fail to engage further with you after their first gift.

Read the full article.

Blackbaud in the News: A Loyal Donor is a Retained Donor

Melanie Mathos — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:47:00 GMT

By Melissa Busch, associate senior editor, FundRaising Success

Donor retention boils down to loyalty.

"If you have a loyal constituent, you are able to retain them," Blackbaud enterprise solutions engineer Samantha Cohen said at a Blackbaud Delivers event about donor retention held last week in Philadelphia.

"A donor will talk about a hospital, a symphony, an animal-rescue organization that they support. A loyal donor will talk about my hospital, my symphony or my animal-rescue mission," she said. "That my is a shift to loyalty. They are emotionally invested in that institution."

Every nonprofit should be striving for loyal donors, Cohen said. Organizations can achieve this by building relationships with donors and showing them the benefits of their contributions. A good start is to understand the difference between retention and loyalty.

Read the article here.