We can all agree that the ALS #IceBucketChallenge was a roaring success. The ALSA says they’ve got about 1.9 million new donors to work with. Business and marketing teams the world over are wondering, “What’s our ice bucket challenge?” Of all the noise being written about what we can learn, why the campaign succeeded, or the cynics scowling about why the program was a terrible idea, one key element is being completely ignored by everyone: how does an organization retain new donors after a successful campaign?
This is one of those Ben Horowitz “hard things” that the media and business world tend to sweep under the rug. Nobody wants to hear about the nitty gritty when you’ve got a highly successful campaign bulldozing news cycles. But donor retention is the real business of every non-profit. Any progress an organization envisions—whether to expand research, create new drugs, or provide resources—is moot if its donor base gives only once. For example, Movember no longer supports just one form of cancer, and expansion into international markets is meant to sustain growth when North American markets are declining in donations raised. The non-profit sector can’t solely rely on “ice bucket moments” to sustain their business; and despite what people think, the business of “doing good” is still a business.
First, let’s agree that success is purely based on luck
The ice bucket challenge worked to encourage a new, younger legion of donors because it was interactive, self-fulfilling, and required nominations to swell contributions. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen these elements in a marketing campaign—profit or non-profit—and it continues to prove how much luck is a factor in what is successful and what is not. The folks behind this challenge had all the right elements of right place and right time. No business case study will help you find that answer.
I want to stop copycat marketing teams dead in their tracks. You can line up all the same elements as the ice bucket challenge, but I can guarantee that it won’t work for your business. A killer call-to-action, slick messaging, and perhaps some form of celebrity endorsement will not result in the success generated by the ALSA. Heck, the ALSA won’t even be able to recreate its own success. Participation year-over-year will slowly decline because the challenge will become stale to a very important and large group of new ALSA donors: young people.
Second, young donors are still sporadic donors
In my career, I’ve helped a number of non-profits connect with young donors. One campaign I worked on more than four years ago raised funds for AIDS relief in Africa by daring Canadians to perform an activity they wouldn’t normally do. Last year I wrote and directed a quick digital PSA on testicular cancer to connect with young males—a demographic my client had, until then, been unsuccessful in making a connection.
My key learning is that young donors are still trying to figure out what they believe in, and how consistently their demographic should support the same cause year-over-year. Gen-Y prefers to help causes that will result in an immediate benefit from their donation. Disaster relief is one particular area because money raised is immediately put to work and manifests in rebuilt roads or medical aid. Long-term initiatives like disease prevention and research is harder for my generation to grasp. Donations to these causes rarely result in immediate wins, and most donations will come from people who have a personal connection to the illness. In contrast, Boomers are still charging rhinos when it comes to fundraising, and they consistently give to the same organizations.
Organizations can’t rely on the sporadic moments when Gen-Y feels they want to participate. Retention rests largely on how you interact with donors beyond the first act of giving. Gen-Y is probably one of the hardest demographics to sustain a follow-up relationship with: their interests wane and move on quite quickly, fad cycles are much shorter because of hyper-inflated news cycles, and herd mentality dictates what is cool.
The ALSA can look to these potential follow-up resources as a way to sustain donor interest:
- The army of high-profile celebrities that took to the challenge (Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Charlie Sheen, etc). These are people that propelled the movement and encouraged legions of people. Their influence will be vital to holding new donor attention spans.
- Justin Ware reminds us that organizations need to thank their supporters profusely, and that many fail at this simple task. This helps to detail the impact of their gift, and to continue education of the cause.
- A strong direct or digital mail program. Everyone struggles with this, even the for-profit businesses. Use this channel to learn how donors want to be connected with, and act accordingly. What I usually tend to see is an organization dropping a letter or email at a random moment in my life and asking for money. No “Hi, how are you”, just “we need more money.” Cultivate a genuine CRM (Customer Relationship Management) program that fits the needs of your donors. Kyle Rush, the former deputy director of front-end development with Obama for America, has a beautifully detailed blog on how to achieve this.
Third, slacktivism is what works
Young donors are motivated by what others do around them. This may be true to all of society, but in our connected world, it’s even more prevalent.
These traits are echoed in Blackbaud’s 2013 The Next Generation of American Giving report; the fundraising software company compares Gen-Y’s donation habits to that of older generations. The insights are surprising and endemic of younger generations. Gen-Y prefers to give in a crowd, with peers, and through retail purchases. The easier the process, the more likely they are to donate. It’s why we are more likely to see a flurry of “Likes” for most causes rather than dollars. The real challenge is to take those behaviours and transform them into funds, and it’s what the creators behind the ice bucket challenge honed in on.
Within these findings we also see how traditional channels are still useful and, in some cases, stronger than online channels to solicit funds. This is a big component of my last point: don’t give up on other channels because a new one worked really well for somebody else. Budgets should be fair where necessary across call-centers, direct mail, mobile, and online—but it’s the effort that needs tweaking to meet the behaviours of a new demographic.
What does that mean? Gen-Y will still connect if you send them snail mail, but they don’t want to interact with the same old pamphlet that gets stuffed in every mailbox. Gen-Y may not like to be interrupted over dinner to hear more about your cause, but they might interact with a smartphone app—like the UNICEF Tap Project—that plays into their social media addiction.
Rather than throwing darts at the wall and hoping something sticks, I want organizations that are non-profit and for-profit to minimize “flukes” in their executions. Don’t just try to rebuild what worked once. Learn from it and optimize. Grow the experience to sustain support from your current and new donors. I applaud any initiative that is able to convince people in uncertain economic times to support a cause that may not directly affect them, but I deeply respect the organizations that think hard about what needs to happen next. The hard work that scientists, doctors, patients, and families do every day depends greatly on the contributions of everyday people. Let’s take the fad out of fundraising.
