Donor Surveys by Tony Poderis
|
 What Do You Know about Your Donors? (And What Do They Know about Your Organization?)
If you're going to ask people for money, it sure helps if they think highly of both your organization and its mission.
- Do they see your mission as vital and valid?
- Are you perceived as being successful at carrying out that mission?
- Has your organization earned and maintained trust and respect?
- Have you been an efficient steward of donations and resources?
- Has any controversy been associated with you?
- Have questions about any of your leaders arisen?
- Do people believe you are the right organization to address what you declare in your mission statement?
- Do donors know enough about you to have formed any deeply held opinions?
Learn about Your Donors
Methods to learn the opinions and impressions that donors have of your organization can be implemented in a number of ways, including mail, email, telephone, focus discussions, and face-to-face meetings. Whether through comprehensive one-on-one interviews or a mix of any of the other options, surveys do not need to be complicated research instruments. A simple questionnaire (or format, for personal meetings) can be tallied either by hand or, if you structure the questions right, on a simple computer spreadsheet.
When conducting a donor satisfaction and donor interest evaluation, I think a few suggestions on how to collect data are in order:
Questionnaires
Questionnaires are a good way to collect a lot of information quickly. Unsigned questionnaires guarantee anonymity. They are easy to manage, and multiple-choice responses can be easy to quantify. But you have to be careful not to write questions that bias responses. Questionnaires lack a personal touch, and both survey design and sample selection require a high level of expertise. At the very least, a professional should be involved in the creation of the questions.
Focus Groups
Focus groups
give you a chance to explore issues in depth with donors. Putting six or seven contributors in a room with a video camera and asking questions of the group as a whole can yield valuable information. However, it is sometimes tough to get people to commit to giving the time and showing up when expected. The group facilitator needs to be able to establish instant comfort for participants and keep them both engaged and on track. You will probably need a professional communicator as group facilitator. Focus groups should be scheduled on a continual basis to establish benchmarks and measure change. Since the responses are freeform, it can be hard to analyze results, and that analysis can be quite time consuming.
Interviews
Interviews give you a chance to talk with donors one on one. They can yield some great information due to the give-and-take method of the conversational process. However, the interview process is time consuming. The information acquired is often anecdotal in nature and can be very hard to quantify. It is easy for a less skillful interviewer to bias responses unintentionally.
What Do You Want to Know?
First, take a hard look at what you want to learn and decide how you intend to put the donors' responses to use. Although some questions are "standard," you will be more productive if you develop a survey tailored to your organization's specific need. Whether it's through comprehensive one-on-one interviews or a mix of other information gathering methods is used, donor survey planning must take into account:
- Size and make-up of the donor base to be surveyed
- Survey timeline
- Adequacy of resources to perform the survey
Responses
Will your donors answer honestly and objectively? The answer is a qualified "yes." Some will answer a question not quite truthfully, and we may never know the reason. Some may not understand a question and thus, will give a "wrong" answer. Sometimes a donor may find a question to be inappropriate, even offensive, and they will not reply. |
Acting on the Findings and Recommendations
|
 Once a donor survey has been completed and you've received a report of its findings, conclusions, and recommendations, you're ready to start the toughest part of the process. Now, you have to listen and pay attention and act. You have a wonderful opportunity to benefit greatly from what your donors told you about the pleasure and satisfaction they derive from supporting your organization, and you'll also benefit from simply being alerted to their concerns and cares. You work as best you can to "fix" the things that need fixing according to what the donors told you. And you need to continue and enhance the cultivation practices that are the most desired and satisfying to your donors. This will surely help maximize your chances for your donors' giving to continue, and it will provide opportunities for even larger gifts in the future.
What If the Donor Survey Tells You What You Don't Want to Hear?
Make sure that you take the time to go over every aspect of the donor survey. Don't skip over negative things that seem minor as you are first reviewing the survey. It is folly to take the time to conduct a donor survey, spend the money on it, and then risk alienating people important to the organization by ignoring the survey's recommendations. An organization that ignores some or all of a donor survey's findings is making a mistake that can damage the organization.
Who Should Conduct the Survey?
The principal value of having outside counsel perform a donor survey is the opportunity to obtain candid answers to tough questions. A consultant is not part of the organization's "family," and that means the responses from survey subjects will be more candid and complete.
However, face-to-face meetings between donors and staff or volunteers are great relationship builders as well as a productive data-gathering tool when structured for "listening and learning," instead of "talking and selling."
When They Become Non-Donors
You should also consider conducting selective "exit" interviews with major donors who have declared that their previous gift to your organization was their last gift --- whether or not you know the reason they asked you to take them off your donor list.
As well, donor surveys should be selectively conducted with those whose major gifts have been missed for no known reason for at least two years.
Rejections Are Opportunities to Correct Real or Perceived Problems
There are times when you can selectively conduct an exceedingly simple but effective survey.
When I was conducting telefunding campaigns as development director of the Cleveland Orchestra, I would look at the reports on people who had asked the night before to be taken off our list. Some of them would be people who had given us $250 or $500 or even $1,000 in the past. I would call them and say, "I know you said no, and we will take you off our list, but I want to be sure we are taking you off because of something that we can't fix or is out of our control." They would, invariably, appreciate the call and would tell me if they indeed wanted to be taken off the list because of a grievance. Sometimes the reason was something we could fix. Sometimes they would even reconsider and make a gift, but I never asked them to. The purpose of my call was to save these prospects for the future, if possible, and to find out if we had done something wrong.
You can use this same strategy at any time, even when the morning's mail and other sources bring bad news of a loss or a reduction of a major donation. Don't wait to find out.
Building Donor Loyalty
If you want donors to support and be loyal to your organization, they must know you, trust you, and believe that you are fulfilling your mission and using their contributions wisely. If you don't know who your donors are and what they think of your organization, you can't successfully communicate with them.
Just think. There you are, for once, not asking for their money, but making them feel as important as they really are when you ask for their opinions and impressions about your organization.
Be of good cheer and confident of the almost always welcomed and delighted reception you receive when you ask a donor to participate in your survey. It's almost a sure thing that the donor will say, "I'll be happy to answer you questions. No one ever asked me before."
Tony Poderis is a development professional, consultant, author, and speaker. He served as the development director for The Cleveland Orchestra from 1972 – 1992. You can view his website here.
|
|
|
 |
Raise More and Cut Costs
Join us to learn why The Raiser's Edge® is the only fundraising solution you'll ever need.
January 24, 2:00 p.m. ET
February 14, 2:00 p.m. ET
Building and Managing an Interactive Website
The industry average for online gifts is approximately $57. But Blackbaud® NetCommunity™ customers receive an average of $149 per gift. Learn how the power of TrueCRM™ in Blackbaud NetCommunity can help your organization build stronger relationships by creating a personalized online experience for your supporters.
February 6, 3:00 p.m. ET |
|
|
|
| |
