It’s that time of year again to mine what is perhaps your best opportunity for success- retaining your existing donors.
Donors that have given more than once deserve your special attention. Why? Because as soon as donors give more than once, the odds that they give a 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc. gift literally skyrockets- you want to retain these donors.
The effect is so unique that in an article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy earlier this year, it was mentioned that:
“A 10% improvement in donor retention can increase overall results by up to 200%”
Now that’s powerful advice.
Within DonorPerfect, the easiest way to increase your retention rate is to target those people that are LYBUNTs. No, they don’t have some disfiguring disease, but rather this is a list of all the people that gave Last Year But Unfortunately Not This year (On a side note: I’m not sure why the “Y” in year is not included in the acronym, I’ve just always seen it written that way.)
To run this report, simply click on Reports, Financial Reports, and Select one of the LYBUNT listings.
Once you’ve focused on retaining your LYBUNTs, you can also target your SYBUNTs (Some year but unfortunately not this year) donors. These are the people that gave in some other year besides last year. Typically, it’s worth looking at those donors that have given in the last 3-4 years. If they have lapsed longer than that, it’s typically not cost effective to try and retain them- the efforts cost more than the additional revenue.
While it’s important to add new donors to your organization, don’t forget your existing ones- in the end they provide the foundation for your organization and any increase in retaining donors is more effective than increasing new donors.
The post Mining for Gold- Retaining Donors Is the Key appeared first on DonorPerfect.
