Developing the donor base is crucial for any non-profit organization, but it is often tempting to invest more in donor acquisition than in donor base development. However, this attitude is slowly changing, increasingly recognizing the importance of donors who are already involved in one’s organisation.
We have already seen in this article how non-profit organizations have the possibility to set up effective acquisition campaigns in order to increase the number of donors. Today we will examine with how they can manage to keep those who have already shown commitment to their cause through donor retention strategies, with the aim of increasing the percentage of donors who continue to donate regularly over time.
Donors to a non-profit can be divided into three categories: regulars, who donate recurringly and continuously, one-offs, that is those who make one-time donations, and lapsed, meaning those who have stopped donating for some time. For the latter, there is no general rule to define them, as it depends on each organization’s database and history. In general, a donor tends to be considered lapsed 12, 18 or 24 months after their last donation.
The goal of every non-profit organization is to be able to transform the largest number of donors into regulars, so as to be able to increase its revenue base and be able to carry out more and more initiatives related to its cause. It is estimated that it is 10 times more expensive to recruit a new donor than to receive new donations from existing donors.
Often, however, the mistake is made of focusing above all on one-off and lapsed donors, constantly asking for the renewal of the donation, while regular donors could fall into oblivion. Instead, it is they who need the most care, because not only do they have to stay updated on the organization’s initiatives, but they must also receive communications that are able to maintain their loyalty at a high level, so as to prevent them from abandoning the cause.
In order to be able to carry out effective donor retention campaigns, it is therefore necessary for non-profit organizations to carry out a detailed analysis of their regular, one-off or lapsed donors, in order to be able to build a communication tailored to each of them and which is able to link to their ideas and needs, increasing their feeling of involvement with the organisation.
All this can now be done in a very simple way by relying on cutting-edge technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, thanks to which it becomes possible to analyse the donor base in depth to define the best methods and the most suitable means of communication for interacting with each donor, thus facilitating their transformation into regular or, even increasing the economic contribution of current regular donors to the organization.
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