October 15, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
Many charities are taking to the streets to raise money — knocking on doors or urging pedestrians to give. Most of the time, street fund raisers seek out people in their 20s and encourage them to sign a form that allows the charity to automatically take money once a month through their credit card or bank account.
But charities that do such fund raising should instead be pursuing women in their late 30s, especially those who work in professional jobs.
That’s the conclusion of Daryl Upsall, who heads a Madrid fund-raising consulting firm that specializes in face-to-face fund raising, and Owen Watkins, an international face-to-face fund-raising specialist at Unicef Switzerland.
Loyal Donors
Based on an analysis of records on the millions of donors recruited by face-to-face fund raising in Britain and Spain over the last five years, Mr. Upsall said, the 38to 40-year-old professional female has emerged as “the donor that tends to stick around.” They are more stable financially and give for longer periods, he said.
By contrast, a large percentage of 20-something donors recruited in face-to-face fund-raising campaigns stop giving within the first year, said Mr. Upsall.
Indeed, among the 750,000 new donors expected to be recruited by street fund raising in Britain alone this year, he said, 40 to 50 percent of them will stop giving within 12 months.
To recognize how valuable 30-something female professionals are to such fund-raising drives, Mr. Upsall noted, some charities such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees — which is now doing face-to-face fund raising in Spain — have started paying a bonus to in-house street fund raisers who recruit such donors.
