Johanna Köver has extensive experience in Customer Relationship Management and is also the Project Manager for the development of the FundraisingBox CRM. In her daily work, she addresses questions such as how non-profit organizations can improve their donor retention, how NGOs can develop a CRM vision, and which data plays the most important role.
Why is donor retention so important for the success of an NGO?
Johanna: Inspiring donors who have previously supported your organization to make a follow-up donation is easier (and more cost-effective) than attracting new donors. This makes sense because you’ve already convinced each person who has supported you of your mission. Now it’s about staying engaged, which can be achieved with a few well-implemented retention measures. As you can see, donor retention could be your tool to maintain a certain “baseline” of support and secure your fundraising success sustainably.
What are the pillars of donor retention?
Johanna: I recommend personalized, regular, and empathetic communication! To engage your donors individually, it’s extremely important to focus on their needs in your donor retention efforts—this applies to all the channels you might communicate through (such as letters, emails, but also your donor support and website). Every person is different and wants to be addressed accordingly. Do your donors prefer postal mailings or email newsletters? Do they want to be informed only about specific projects or receive all updates from your organization? What do your donors think about your organization? Get to know your donors, find out what moves them and what excites them about your organization. I promise you, it will become increasingly easier to find the right retention measures for the right donor group.
Otherwise, just try things out! If you like a particular measure, go ahead and see what happens.
What do technical innovation and donor retention have to do with each other?
Johanna: Setting up and consistently following through on the right retention measures can be a large and time-consuming task. Fortunately, there are some great systems available today (such as CRM systems or marketing automation tools) that can help you cluster your target groups and set up retention measures. The nice thing is that many of these tools are getting smarter all the time. Therefore, looking to the future, it’s worth thinking about a good CRM system for your organization today. The right tool can also optimally support your internal teamwork—assign tasks to each other directly in the tool, store your communications in a shared location, evaluate your key metrics, and review how your measures are performing together, and much more!
