The Flawed Argument That ‘Fewer Donors Giving to Our Appeal Means Some Donors Are More Engaged and Will Give More Later’

I was in a meeting a couple of weeks ago where someone said the following:

“I like what you’re proposing for this appeal, but we need to include more information about our organization and its programs.”

I replied that, in my experience, if we spend more time educating donors about the organization that we would raise less money.

Their response was, “I can see that we might raise less money but I’m OK with that.  Because if donors know more, they will be more engaged, and we know that more engaged donors give more.  Plus, how will we ever get long term donors if they don’t know more about us?”

There’s a lot to unpack here, but the idea I want to focus on is the myth that “if a nonprofit educates people more about the organization, it will result in more long-term giving.”  Maybe said differently, “it’s OK to raise less money with each piece, because donors will give more in the long term if they know more about us.”

I’ve never met someone with numerical evidence to back this up.  And at Better Fundraising we have loads of experience helping organizations leave the “educate donors” idea behind; they start raising more money immediately, and they end the year with higher retention rates than they’ve had before.

Here’s how the math works…

Take an organization that is making sure to educate donors in their appeals, and they are getting a 3% response rate.  If they send 6 appeals per year, 18% of donors will have given to appeals.  (To keep it simple, I’m leaving aside donors who give multiple gifts per year.)

Compare that to an organization that’s following our approach (see my previous post) and is averaging a 5% response rate on its appeals.  If they send 6 appeals per year, 30% of their donors will have given to appeals by the end of the year.

Would you rather have your appeals cause 30% of your donors to give, or would you like to have your appeals cause 18% of your donors to give?

So if an organization is arguing that “less giving now” will cause more total giving, the organization must explain two things:

1. How it is going to make up the lost gift from the 12% of donors (in the example above) who would have responded to appeals, but didn’t.
2. How exactly the additional money is going to come in.  Will retention rates be higher?  Will gifts from major donors be higher?  Will average gifts be higher at year-end?  What’s the measurable evidence?

And while it’s true (in my experience) that “more engaged donors give more,” what is the evidence that a donor is more engaged?  How can you reach the conclusion that “because fewer donors responded to an appeal that there are also some donors who are now more engaged”?

As far as I can tell, there is zero empirical evidence for that.  (After all, if we were given an assignment to measure “engagement” for an appeal letter or e-appeal, wouldn’t the primary measurement be “how many people gave”?  Seriously here, if that’s not the metric, what is?)

I think you have to contort yourself into a very weird position to argue that “fewer donors giving indicates that some donors are more engaged.”

In my experience, the more people you have giving to appeals (and any sort of fundraising), the more money you’ve raised and the more donors you’ve retained at the end of the year.

Now, I can’t speak for an organization’s relationship with one particular major donor, where a smart major gifts officer builds a case over the course of a year and makes a bold ask and gets an amazing gift at the end of the year.  That’s a 1-to-1 situation.

But I can give you a data-driven recommendation for your mail and email mass donor programs, which are one-to-many.  For your next appeal, look for a part of your organization’s work that is happening soon, and is something that you think donors would be interested in funding.

Don’t try to educate your donors; share with them the important thing that needs to happen soon, and invite them to get involved by sending in a gift today.  You’ll raise more money in both the short term and the long term.