Lack of Personalized Appeals Means Fewer Donations, Study Suggests
By HEATHER JOSLYN
Contributor
November 8, 2017 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Title: “What People Want: Accenture Public Service Citizen Survey, Nonprofits”
Organization: Accenture
Summary: Fifty-five percent of Americans in the recent survey of people in six countries said they would be willing to give more time or money to organizations that interact with them in a more personalized way. And that extra support could be substantial: One in four Americans would give at least 25 percent more money or time.
But charities may be leaving money on the table. Though almost 70 percent of U.S. respondents said they want charities to give them a personalized experience when they interact with those organizations, only 53 percent of Americans said nonprofits provide the tailored communications they want.
Generic communications may be hurting charities most with younger supporters, the survey suggests: Sixty percent of U.S. millennials said they would give more if the encounters they had with charities were more personalized.
The survey by Accenture, a global consulting company, polled more than 6,000 adults online during the first half of 2017. In addition to more than 1,000 Americans, the company surveyed people from Australia, Britain, France, Germany, Singapore.
Among the findings about American donors:
Just over eight in 10 people in the study said it’s important to know the real outcomes of their gifts and volunteerism, a share that remained consistent across all nationalities surveyed. Two out of three said providing information about those results would help create a more personalized experience for them. n Sixty-four percent said nonprofits should use more digital technology. Fifty-two percent said they would like to make online donations.n Only half said charities use social media effectively.
In all nations surveyed, email was the preferred method for digital communication, with 29 percent of all respondents picking it. However, millennials were roughly equally keen on websites, email, and social media as their preferred online communication channels.
