Make It Personal: First Time Donor Retention

When it comes to donor retention, the numbers don’t lie. Non-Profit Organizations are struggling to keep barely one out of every five donors after their first gift.

Check out this great article from Jay Love, CEO at Bloomerang, titled What’s The Impact of Improving 1st-Time Donor Retention?

Jay says, 

“…if your fundraising team can just apply a few basic principles, the 19% retention level can be improved immensely. My personal three favorite principles are:

  1. Ensure at least three “touches” occur in the first 90 days after the gift is made
  2. Make the touches as personalized as possible
  3. Be different than most of your competition.”

Personalized messaging and touchpoints are key, but doing this at scale is difficult.

There is no glamorous secret to changing the results other than hard work to cultivate new donors, because the reality is that, with limited resources, you can either spend time prospecting for new supporters or cultivating the current ones. 

With a higher capacity to stay on as a recurring supporter if someone gives a second gift, we vote to invest time into your current and incoming supporters. These are the people who need to feel connected to your story. You won’t be disappointed. 

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