What if I told you the reason 82% of your donors never give again is because of something you’re doing? 😳
It’s true – we churn through first-time givers by failing to build real relationships and showcase impact. We leave donors confused about what their money achieved, then bombard them with more asks.
Donors ghost you because you’re giving them buyer’s remorse. 👻
On this week’s straight-talk episode, I’m exploring the psychology behind why donors flee and how we inadvertently trigger their buyer’s remorse. Learn how to flip the script to create onboarding journeys that wow donors by:
- Asking the right questions to uncover their motivations
- Closing the story loop to spotlight their investment
- Shifting from extracting value to nurturing truly reciprocal partnerships
If you’re shaking your head thinking, “Rhea gets me!” – this discussion is for you. I’m bringing solutions that transform donor retention from 20% to 80% overnight. Listen now!
Important links:
https://go.rheawong.com/big-ask-gifts-program
Episode Transcript
RHEA 00:00
Hey you, it’s Rhea Wong. If you’re listening to Nonprofit Lowdown, I’m pretty sure that you’d love my weekly newsletter. Every Tuesday morning, you get updates on the newest podcast episodes, and then interspersed, we have fun special invitations for newsletter subscribers only, and fun raising inspo, because I know what it feels like to be in the trenches alone.
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Welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown, I’m your host, Rhea Wong.
Hey folks, Rhea Wong with you once again with Nonprofit Lowdown. I am going to talk about a perennial topic today, which is why your donors are not giving again. Now, I know that I’ve touched with a leaky bucket time and time again, but I just can’t help it. It’s a bug on my butt. So I’m going to talk about it again, because I was reminded of this statistic recently, and I Can’t get it out of my mind, which is this, that only actually less than 20 percent of donors will ever give again after their first time gift.
So let’s put that into perspective. What that means is let’s say you have a hundred people who give to your nonprofit of the hundred people, 18 of them will give again, which means that the remainder of them will not give again. Which means 82 of those people will give you a gift once and never again.
And I think we can all agree that represents a huge lost opportunity, because if we were able to retain those donors, how much easier would our job be? Because as we know, it only. It always costs more to get a new donor than to get a donor who’s already given. What I mean by that is we spend money to acquire a donor.
We spend staff time, we spend money on materials, we spend energy. That first gift is usually the hardest gift. The easier gift is the second gift, but it only happens when we meet particular needs of our donors. So I’m going to get into that for a second, but I just want you all to hear this. We really need to focus on donor retention because as a sector, I think overall our donor retention rates are about 40%, which means that every single year, over half of the people that we pour into the bucket, the ones that you worked so hard to find on social media, in your newsletter, to come to your events, et cetera, et cetera, do not repeat their gifts.
So I want you to go with me on this thought exercise. How would your Behaviors and practices be different. If there was a world where you could only ever have, where there was a world where you did not ever get a new donor and the only donors you were ever going to have for the ones that you currently have, what would be different?
I want you to pause this podcast if you can, and just take a second and jot down in that world, what would you do differently than you are doing today? I think it’s a really interesting question to ask. Okay, let’s come back. Even though I generally. teach on major donors. The truth is, a lot of major donors start off as small dollar donors.
The reason why is that a lot of folks want to see how you treat the gift. They want to see how you treat them as a test gift. And so they’ll often test the waters. And so what might be a minor gift to you, maybe it’s a hundred dollars, maybe it’s a thousand dollars is fairly minor to them, but it is a test gift.
And so the way that you get to major donors is that you take care of your smaller dollar donors. Now, I’m sure like many of you, I am a donor to lots of different things. And I have to say that I have yet to be wowed by a donor experience. This is what usually happens. I give money at the end of the year to any number of causes, either causes that are dear to my heart or causes that people I love are connected with or causes that I think are important in the world.
I usually get a tax. deductible form letter and a very perfunctory thank you. In the worst cases, what happens is that my email is sold to other folks and I get inundated by emails from similar type organizations, which also I do not love. And then. If I hear from them again, usually I don’t, but if I do, it’s usually about a year around the time that I gave the last to ask, where’s my next gift?
Now, this is obviously a problem because A, you never told me what you did with my money. What is the impact that I. quote, unquote, bought with the money that I gave you. B, how did you make me feel? And the answer is probably not very good. If you didn’t, if I didn’t hear from you for a whole year, and the only time I hear from you is when you want money, obviously that’s not going to make me feel good.
So I think the thing that we need to think about as fundraisers is how are we acting in ways that are both trust building and respectful of the Of the people who give us their hard earned money. Now, I know a lot of you are, I can hear the pushback, which is around being donor centric versus community centric.
I am not suggesting that we allow our donors to dictate the terms that we are bending over backwards for our donors that like they are the most, I think donors are. And should be recognized as an important community, an important constituent, an important stakeholder in the work that we do. If you do not recognize that they are, in fact, an important stakeholder, then you’re probably in the wrong business.
What I am suggesting to you is that I am, as a donor, Giving to something because I care about something. I’m giving to something because I want something in the world to happen. I talk about this a lot. I did an analysis of the letters that billionaires wrote to accompany their gifts to the giving pledge.
And what I found using ChatGPT as an analysis is the number one reason that people give is that they want to make an impact. We are all driven by a desire to want to help. We think about the basic human needs. We want certainty. We want significance. We want to belong to a community. We think And we want to contribute.
And when we think about Maslow’s hierarchy of need, the ability to be part of something bigger than ourselves to transcend ourselves is that most, it is the most noble human need. And so by giving a gift to an organization that I believe is doing good work, I am trying to transcend myself. I am trying to contribute beyond the confines of my own life, because I personally am not going to construct a school.
I personally am not going to. Go out and save the whales, but I can give money to organizations that I believe are doing the work. However, if as an organization, you don’t come back and tell me what you did with my money. I am robbed of the opportunity to feel that I am contributing to something bigger than myself.
And I want us to reframe the work a little bit. So it’s not thinking of it through the lens of, Oh, it’s so annoying that I have to constantly Communicate to my donors instead, what a gift I’m giving them by sharing with them the opportunity that I have given for them to be part of something bigger than themselves.
I think when we reframe it and come from a place of generosity and abundance, we think about it a little bit differently. The other thing that I want to say here too, is that we are all heroes of our own movies, right? We are the stars of our own personal movies. And in my personal movie, I give to these particular things because I want to tell myself a certain story about who I am in the world.
I’m the kind of person that, believes in education. I’m the kind of person that cleans the oceans, et cetera, et cetera. As fundraisers, we have to think of ourselves as the Yoda to the hero, That our donor is what I mean by that is we often as nonprofits talk about ourselves and our work and our clients as heroes of the story that doesn’t align with my vision of the world in my vision of the world, I am the hero of my story and so as fundraisers, we have to position ourselves as the mentors and guides to help our donors realize the victory that they seek.
And the victory can be any number of things. The victory can be. Certainty, the victory can be contribution. The victory can be community. And here’s where I’m going to put a plug in for getting to know your donors. Oftentimes we don’t know our donors enough. We don’t personalize, we don’t take the time to do these little small touches, like a handwritten note.
And instead. We blame our donors. Why aren’t they giving again? They should know that we need the money. Should they know that they need the money? Instead, I think we have to ask ourselves, what experience are we providing that helps them to feel good and want to come back for more? I often think about. I talk about Danny Meyer a lot.
So Danny Meyer is a restaurant chair here in New York City. And Danny Meyer’s restaurants are famous. So some of you may have heard of Shake Shack. He started that, but there are some other fancier restaurants that he has in New York. Now, if you go to a Danny Meyer restaurant, You are expecting a certain kind of experience, right?
If it was just about food, I would go to McDonald’s. why am I willing to spend a lot of money at a Danny Meyer restaurant versus going to McDonald’s and buying a 5 burger? It’s because there is a level of quality. There is a level of experience. There is a sense of. Standard that I am expecting when I go into a Danny Meyer restaurant.
Likewise, if you take the view from your nonprofit’s perspective of being, of going on the donor journey, what is the promise that you’re making to your donor about being a part of this organization, donating, and therefore being in the family, so to speak? What’s the emotional experience that, what I want you to know, what do I want you to do, and what do I want you to feel?
And taking these questions into account and then designing a donor experience around that, I think will be very interesting for you. The other piece is, I think it’s really beneficial for you to do donor interviews, because the thing is we often in the nonprofit world are constantly guessing at what our donors want.
We ask them out for coffee. We ask them to come to site visits. We ask, you don’t know necessarily if that’s a thing that they value. You don’t know if that’s a value add for them. And in fact, where I think we as a sector really stumble is that we try to get value. We try to extract value, i. e. a donation before asking first how we give value.
What have we done in order to be value additive to our donors lives before asking something in return? So it was a basic human need for reciprocity, right? And so if I am intentionally thinking about ways that I can enhance the value My donor’s lives and give them the victory they seek. Maybe it’s education.
Maybe it’s inspiration. Maybe they want to grow Maybe they want a community. Maybe they want significance There are all these reasons why but if you don’t know why if you literally have never actually Asked the question, why have you given to this organization? Why is this important to you? How would you like to be engaged with us?
That’s the other thing. We make so many assumptions about what people will do or don’t want to do. I don’t necessarily want to be on your email list. I don’t necessarily want to go on site visits. I might, other people might. But I think we have to do our donors the service of asking what is it they want, or at least having a mechanism by which we have some kind of two way communication.
Now I’m sure those of you listening are all donors to something. How would the donor experience be for you? If someone that you donated took a second to call you up and say, I just really want to thank you for your gift. Tell me, why did you decide to give to this? Why is this important to you? What kind of donor experience would you like?
When we are able to position ourselves as donors. A facilitator of a gift service provider, if you will. And by the way, all of us are in some kind of service job, but when we can put ourselves in the position of thinking about how to be value additive rather than extractive, we then have a different level of conversation.
And that’s when we have a trust, right? We trust people who we feel can help. Care about us. We trust people who are good at their jobs. We trust people that other people trust. And I talk about this a lot. It’s the three kinds of trust. There’s competency trust. Are you good at the things that you say that you’re good at?
Caring trust. Do you care about me as a person? And community trust. Does somebody that I trust you? If we did a slightly better job of doing this, and by the way, with all this technology that we have, we can actually do this at scale, we can personalize emails, we can look at donor behavior, we can look at where donors are coming from, we can see where they’re clicking on our websites, we have all of these tools at our disposal, and yet we’re not using them in the way that we could in order to maximize the gift.
Now, a big strategy here might be to reach out to your donors and do surveys. And when I say surveys, I also mean that you should use the survey as an engagement tool, not as a research tool because you’re opening up a channel for communication. I think the for profit world is instructive in this way.
So when I buy something online, I can’t buy anything without a pop up in my face. Most of the time I ignore them. Most of the time, people will probably ignore the survey. However, those that don’t will provide some very interesting data for you. And the more you understand your donor, the more you understand who they are, why they give, why they care about this particular thing, the more deeply you will be able to speak to them and craft the messaging and craft the donor experience.
Now you might say, Rhea, I’m sure that there are, If I have a hundred donors, there are a hundred different reasons why they’re giving. That might be true. However, I would say that you probably don’t know. I don’t know that because you haven’t asked the question. And so if you ask a hundred different donors and you come up with a hundred different reasons why they’re giving to your cause and a hundred different reasons how they got to your website and a hundred different reasons of how they would like to engage and zero patterns there, call me because I would be.
Literally shocked. What I think you will find is that you, there will be patterns that emerge. And when you find the patterns, you can double down on the things that work. The thing about data is that it doesn’t really lie. Numbers are numbers. And I think so often we fall in love with our own ugly baby.
We fall in love with the donor is definitely going to want this. Even when we have data to the contrary. So the, what I’m going to push here is that you actually take the time to find out the information and then number two, you actually act on the information. So I could think that you gave because I wrote the most beautiful email in the whole world, but if you tell me that you gave because someone recommended you, or you gave because this was a particular cause that, Is important to your family, or you gave because your cousin went to this Alma mater.
I don’t know. They’re like a million reasons, right? Or you gave, because I really thought that your metrics on your website told me that you were going to be really effective stewards of my money. What you then do with this information is that you craft messages that speak directly to your main type of donor.
Because the thing is, if you are trying to be a donor. All things to all people you’re, I think it’s a Hamilton one said, if you stand for nothing, you’ll fall for anything. Real talk. Y’all know me straight. No chaser. The reason why most of your donors are not giving again is not anything to do with them.
It’s not their fault. I feel like a lot of times we get into blaming our donors. It’s that your donor experience probably Sucks. Now, I know that’s very harsh. And I say that with love. I also think that there can be things that are, that you can do about that. So you can find people who are consistent donors to you.
Ask them why they give consistently. Ask them what a great donor experience has been for them. Ask them what touch points or stewardship moments have been really impactful for them. Then double down on that. You can think about doing things like, and again, automation is your friend. There are a million apps out there where you can have handwritten notes.
There are apps where you can create email sequences. So the moment I donate, maybe I get a sequence of six emails. Introducing me and inviting me in. No one wants to be at a cocktail party where they don’t know anyone. So help me to feel like I am part of the group. And again, think about the lovers of the emotional lovers that we’re all looking for.
There’s certainty, there’s variety, there’s significance, there’s love and connection, there’s growth, and there’s contribution. Which of these things drive your ideal donors? So if this is interesting to you, if this is hitting home for you, and again, I say this with love, I know how hard it is to be an ED.
I know there are a bajillion things that you’re thinking about every single day. And I’m suggesting to you that this one shift in thinking about your first time Donor onboarding can be a game changer and pay compound interest over time. Because if you’re able to retain an even a 10 percent increase, imagine there are, those are 10 more donors that you can hold on to year after year.
And so I think the amount of time that we can spend thinking about how we. Create a thoughtful and meaningful donor onboarding experience. We will see the impact of that for years to come. So I’m all about a little bit of investment for long term gain. This is a small investment that you can make for potentially huge ROI.
So if this is of interest to you, Also, I’m recruiting for my next cohort of my big ask gift program. In my program, we talk about these concepts and we study it. And we think about how we implement it for your nonprofit. The difference between watching a video on working out and actually meeting your trainer at the gym, which of these two things will give you the results you’re looking for.
I think you know. And so it’s one thing to know the information. It’s quite another to actually action on it and hold yourself accountable. So if this is interesting to you and this is resonating with you at all, consider applying today at RheaWong. com.
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