June 7, 2009 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Loyal donors who give to the same cause for several years and those who recruit others to donate are the most-valuable supporters any charity can have.
Just how valuable is the subject of a new paper by the direct-marketing experts Tom Belford and Roger Craver, founders of The Agitator, a blog about fund-raising and advocacy trends.
Based on a study of 1,000 donors, the authors determined that “loyalist” donors who give to one or more groups on a monthly basis — and give to the same group or groups for at least two years — make up about 20 percent of all donors. They give more than four times as much, or $2,221 on average, to charities annually as do other donors, who donate just $467 on average.
Donors who said that they “often” urged someone else to give or described themselves as a “committed recruiter,” also account for some 20 percent of all donors. Such “recruiter” donors contribute an average of $1,080 to charity annually, compared with $749 among donors who do not meet the same characteristics.
Compared with other donors, both loyalist and recruiter donors reported more frequent online donations and greater use of online tools such as blogs, newsletters, and videos to keep up with the issues and causes they care about.
Based on the findings, Mr. Craver recommends several steps charities should take.
Among them: Track donors’ online behavior, including when they make comments on nonprofit blogs and sign up for online news alerts, to identify potential recruiters.
Such donors, he concludes, should be singled out for special recognition, such as getting their names listed in brochures distributed to the public, and be invited to participate in campaigns or other work enabling them to interact with others.
“A key point we are making is that fund raising via your recruiters is perhaps more like community organizing than traditional direct marketing and fund raising,” he writes. “You are not taking an order … you are empowering and enabling others to take orders for you.”
(The paper is available free to those who pay a monthly fee for in-depth information from The Agitator; it can be ordered online for $50.)
