Solicited Advice

Letting donors control the timing of appeals breeds loyalty and gets results, fund raisers are told

Charities that give donors control over the number of times they are solicited and

flexibility in choosing how much to give have a much better chance of getting people to give again and again, according to results of a study released at last week’s annual meeting of the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

At the meeting here, Adrian Sargeant offered results of a study of 2,800 people he conducted last fall at the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy, where he was a visiting professor, to determine what makes people stop giving to a charity, or never give at all.

Mr. Sargeant, who returned this winter to his post as a marketing professor at the Henley Management College, in England, based his results on data from 2,500 donors to 10 large U.S. organizations, including chapters of the Humane Society of the United States, the National Council of La Raza, and the Salvation Army. He also drew on responses from 300 people who said they had not donated to charity at all in recent years.

Mr. Sargeant said the study found that charities can do great damage to their fund-raising prospects when they communicate poorly. Nearly 40 percent of people who had ended their support for a charity pointed to one or more instances of what the donors perceived to be poor communication. By contrast, donors who described themselves in the survey as “very satisfied” with how they were treated by a charity they supported were twice as likely as those who described themselves as only “satisfied” to give subsequent donations to that group.

In addition, donors who have given multiple times cited the importance of receiving follow-up information on how money from past donations was used, and the courteousness of a group’s materials and employees.

Nearly half of the people who had not recently made any charitable donations cited negative perceptions about charities’ fund-raising tactics or negative experiences with other groups. Another 14.4 percent declined to give because they felt nonprofit organizations didn’t deserve their money or because they thought the government should finance the social-service work undertaken by nonprofit groups.

Mr. Sargeant’s study raised several significant questions about conventional fund-raising wisdom. While many fund raisers believe sending solicitations repeatedly is the key to success, Mr. Sargeant says his study found that is not so. In fact, donors cited too-frequent solicitations as a tactic that turned them off from making donations, and said that “not asking for support too often” was essential to getting a repeat gift.

Given those results, Mr. Sargeant suggests that many nonprofit groups would benefit from allowing those on their mailing lists to determine the type of correspondence they will receive.

A charity could give donors the choice, for example, of receiving monthly newsletters, of being approached only during the holiday fund-raising drive, or of removing themselves entirely from the group’s list.

Not only can that approach help charities to avoid turning off potential donors, but it also can improve efficiency by eliminating mailings to those who are unlikely to respond, Mr. Sargeant says.

The survey also raised questions about the practice of asking for a specific amount.

One section asked donors to rate how important different elements of fund raising were to them, using a scale in which 1 was “very unimportant” and 5 was “very important.” When asked the importance of being able to choose how much to donate, as opposed to being urged to give a prescribed amount, donors gave an average rating of 4.28 to the ability to choose. Only one other element, not being solicited too often, received a higher score, 4.30.

Nearly 15 percent of those who don’t support charity at all said they had been turned off by charities’ requests for large sums.

Mr. Sargeant predicts that Americans actually may contribute more when they decide for themselves how much to give. One reason, he says, is that few groups base the amount they seek in a direct-mail appeal on estimates of the income level of recipients of such solicitations.

For more information or free copies of the study results, contact Adrian Sargeant at AdrianS@henleymc.ac.uk.

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Gay men and lesbians represent a huge potential market for charitable donations, but one that nonprofit groups must nurture carefully if they hope to succeed at tapping it, Arthur Makar, executive director of the American Lung Association of Queens, in Rego Park, N.Y., told fund raisers.

Citing research by Overlooked Opinions, a company in Chicago that conducts polls of gays and lesbians, Mr. Makar said that homosexuals have more discretionary income than many other demographic groups because they are not likely to have children.

To tap the gay market, Mr. Makar said, charities should make sure that gays and lesbians are represented on their boards and staffs and that their programs do not exclude homosexuals, he said.

When a charity receives a gift from a gay couple, Mr. Makar said, the organization should, with the couple’s permission, list the pair together in its donor-recognition materials. Doing so, he said, sends a signal to other potential gay and lesbian donors that the charity welcomes and appreciates them.

When donors are not listed together, he said, “sometimes it’s because it’s a donor preference, but sometimes it’s because the organization is a little squeamish about it.” His advice: Lose the squeamishness.

Still, some attending Mr. Makar’s session pointed out that charities can risk alienating conservative donors by embracing gay contributors. One fund raiser said her charity had alienated some older donors by sponsoring a gay and lesbian film festival. Even so, she said, while the charity worried about losing those older donors, reaching out to gay and lesbians has become a bigger priority.

Mr. Makar advised fund raisers not to assume that gay and lesbian donors give only to gay and lesbian causes. They typically are motivated by the same factors — passion for a cause, respect for an organization, or a desire to meet other people at charity events — that spur other donors.

For charities searching for gay and lesbian donors, Mr. Makar suggested reading gay and lesbian publications, going to gay and lesbian events to meet prospective donors, getting to know gay and lesbian charity and business leaders, and recruiting volunteers to pool names of potential donors and come up with events that gay people might be interested in attending.

Jeffrey M. Wergeles, a fund raiser at KPBS, a public-broadcasting station in San Diego, added another suggestion during Mr. Makar’s session: Make sure the message of inclusiveness comes from the head of the charity. Mr. Wergeles said the director of KPBS attended the station’s first fund-raising event that was designed to attract gay and lesbian donors. The director’s presence, he said, was “very influential in our getting started on the right foot.”

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Aside from Mr. Sargeant’s study several other researchers reported on their findings. Among the studies:

Canadian donors. Two Canadian researchers said their study of donors had found that people who had entrepreneurial characteristics were more likely to give than those who didn’t.

Guy Mallabone and Tony Myers asked five questions of 1,203 Canadian donors to determine whether they had the attributes of entrepreneurs. Among the questions: Do donors consider themselves able to identify and pursue opportunities? Do they make decisions that affect the direction of their organization? And are they comfortable assuming risk?

The more strongly donors answered Yes to those questions, the more likely they were to make a gift, said Mr. Mallabone, vice president for external relations at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology. Entrepreneurs feel comfortable making decisions that lead to change and they feel they are doing that by making donations to charity, Mr. Mallabone said. When they give to charity, they’re effecting change by giving money, he said.

The two fund raisers called 9,000 people chosen at random by a polling firm. Of those they reached, 1,203 said they had given money to charity within the past two years.

About one-third of the donors could be classified as entrepreneurial, said Mr. Myers, associate director of development at the University of Alberta.

While entrepreneurial people tended to give more frequently than others, the survey found little difference between the motivations of entrepreneurs and those of others. For instance, the strongest motivator for both people who were entrepreneurial and those who weren’t was that they liked the vision or mission of the charity. Tax benefits were among the lowest motivators for both groups.

The authors plan to conduct a similar survey in the United States within the next year.

Fund-raising expenses. Preliminary results of a new study released here show that nonprofit groups devote the largest share of their fund-raising expenses to putting on special events.

A joint study by the Urban Institute’s Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy and Indiana University’s Center on Philanthropy examined the informational tax returns of 40,664 groups. Of the $7.7- billion the charities said they spent on fund raising, 31 percent ($2.4-billion) was spent on special events. Another 29 percent ($2.2-billion) went to personnel costs. The remainder was split among a range of other expenses.

Those findings are part of an effort to develop a comprehensive understanding of charity fund-raising costs. But researchers say it will be a while before they have conclusive results, because, they say, simply looking at informational tax returns is not enough. Many charities don’t fill out the fund-raising expenses consistently, they note.

This article was written by Laura Hruby, Nicole Lewis, Harvy Lipman, and Elizabeth Schwinn.

WHY DONORS STOP GIVING TO CHARITY