[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][text_output]Let me do you a favor from the very start with this disclaimer and tell you that if your company does not view supporting charitable causes as an important part of its corporate identity, you can check out now. You probably will not care about the next few paragraphs and I don’t want to waste your time.
But, if Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and making a positive impact in your community is something your company is already investing in, I can help you have a more significant impact with your efforts to support those causes – particularly if your corporate support is of the direct financial sort. And if you stick with me for just a few minutes, I bet you learn something.
Direct, monetary support from private businesses can help charities in a lot of ways. Most often corporate support will be used for a charities’ operating expenses, to pay for staff, or underwrite an event or other activity. Maybe they’ll put your name on a t-shirt or some other swag, give you sponsorship at a golf event, or put your logo on their website.
The bottom line: Charities want you to write them a check.
But what if you could give them something better? What if you could give them a platform that will provide greater, longer-term financial impact, increased visibility, and valuable social content?
In addition to that, what if the same platform gave your company long-lasting and valuable brand benefits that improve your revenue?
(You are getting something of value in this relationship, aren’t you?)
I suggest that you consider giving them something they can’t – or won’t buy.
In the nonprofit world, there is a metric known as donor retention. (A simplified explanation would be that the donor retention rate is the percentage of donors who gave last year and also gave this year.) In general, nonprofits spend less effort on donor retention activities because retention isn’t seen as a direct source of growth revenue and it’s a bit more difficult to measure the success of a donor retention activity.
For example, if a charity initiates a campaign and asks 1,000 people for $10 – they can easily measure the effectiveness by counting the money at the end of the campaign. Simple enough.
A donor retention operation is meant to help prevent existing supporters from ending their support, so the difficulty comes in how to measure the number of people who were going to stop giving, but didn’t stop? See what I mean?
Since it’s not easy to measure and because running a retention operation would take money from other “growth” programs, retention tends to be a low priority.
However, donor attrition and the revenue lost because of it, on average, is very high, with the most recent reported average that 57 percent of donors giving ONE TIME, and never again. (There are some studies that indicate the number is as high as 80 percent!) This is devastating to their revenue.
Just as it is to attract and retain customers of your business, it’s expensive to acquire a donor – it’s less expensive to keep a donor.
It’s true that charities will always lose donors but it does not need to happen unchecked at such a velocity.
I call the activity charities participate in a Battle for Hearts. How is it that they can win a heart of a donor and so quickly lose it? Evidence indicates that it’s a failure to communicate.
- Thought the charity did not need them – 5%
- No information on how monies were used – 8%
- No memory of supporting – 9%
- Never thanked for donating – 13%
- Poor service or communication – 18%
- Other charities are more deserving – 36%
Why isn’t there more of an effort to address this? Maybe it’s because the charities are too busy asking for new money – which they must continue to do. But I want you to consider the following statement from Professor Adrian Sargeant:
“Improving Donor Retention by Just 10% Can Double the Lifetime Value of your Donor Database.”
What would a 10% improvement in donor retention mean to the organizations you support? What if we could do even better?
Working together, we can increase the ability of the non-profits you support to serve their constituents. Equally as important, we will deepen your companies’ corporate brand and create strong, long-term images of goodwill and community involvement that result in greater customer preference and loyalty.
I’d love to talk to you directly about what causes are important to you and your current social impact activities and share some ideas with you.
Get in touch. We can do more good.
***If you didn’t change the channel after the disclaimer – don’t think that terms like, “corporate identity”, “brand benefits” and “Corporate Social Responsibility” don’t apply to your small company – they do. Even if you don’t use the terms, they’re identifying characteristics of how businesses are known in the marketplace and the way they operate. Well-positioned companies typically lead competitors for the same space, and it doesn’t matter if the company is a local services company or a Fortune company.[/text_output][/vc_column][/vc_row]