October 14, 2004 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Building Donor Loyalty: The Fundraiser’s Guide to Increasing Lifetime Value
by Adrian Sargeant and Elaine Jay
It’s significantly easier, and less costly, for a nonprofit group to secure a gift from somebody who has already made a contribution than it is to reach a first-time supporter, write Adrian Sargeant, a professor of nonprofit marketing at the University of the West of England, and Elaine Jay, director of Sargeant Associates, a fund-raising consulting firm in Devon, England, founded by Mr. Sargeant.
In this book, they offer recommendations on how fund raisers can capitalize on the donors they already have.
Many of their insights are drawn from a nearly four-year study of more than 20,000 donors to assess the factors that drive donor loyalty. The research project, which relied on focus groups and surveys, asked individuals on both sides of the Atlantic why they stop giving and how much contact they prefer with a charitable organization.
The authors say building a relationship with potential donors is far more effective than treating each solicitation as a separate transaction. They offer recommendations on how to establish relationships with and build loyalty among donors—some of them obvious, like recognizing contributors by name—and others more sweeping, such as using information about donors’ demographics to tailor fund-raising solicitations to match donors’ interests.
The authors also provide a methodology for calculating a donor’s “lifetime value”—the total contribution a donor is expected to make over the course of his or her lifetime, minus the amount spent recruiting and retaining the donor. By determining a person’s “LTV,” write the authors, an organization can better evaluate which donors are worth spending a lot of time and money to woo and which ones are not.
Publisher: Jossey-Bass, 989 Market Street, San Francisco, Calif. 94103-1741; (317) 572-3986 or (800) 956-7739; fax (317) 572-4002; http://www.josseybass.com; 208 pages; $35; I.S.B.N. 0-7879-6834-X.
