The Secret of Developing Supporters

By Stephen Pidgeon

The secret of developing supporters…in just 1000 words!  What a challenge this is, to lay down the techniques of supporter development in just a couple of pages.  It’s what I’ve spent the last twenty years of my life doing and it’s the most important strategy any fundraiser can design.  So let’s look at some principles rather than techniques, some strategies rather than tactics.

My first principle (Principle one) is based on a definition of a brand that I have often quoted.  It comes from the Managing Director of a chain of high street shops in the UK and goes like this…’the brand is what the customer sees, I would say that customer experience is the reality of the brand’.  For fundraisers, this can be translated as ‘the supporter experience is the reality of your charity’s brand’.  In other words, the reputation of your charity, your charity’s brand, depends on the experiences you offer your supporters.

Just think about it.  Your supporter sends you a donation, maybe a large donation.  They get nothing for their money EXCEPT the good feeling that they’ve done something that is right, something good.  They enjoy the whole experience, otherwise…why would they do it?  However, whether or not they repeat that experience is probably down to you and what you do next.  The supporter’s view of your charity and its brand is, at that moment, your responsibility.

Now, for the last ten years, ‘what you do next’ for most charities has been to thank them by letter or email.  Top marks, because that simply extends the pleasure that the supporter felt briefly when they sent their money off, and it reinforces the feeling that this is a charity that cares about its supporters.  There are still a few, mostly middle aged men, who try to apply logic to this process and only thank donors who give a large gift.  They are daft, experiences are to do with feelings not logic, donors are moved to support you because they ‘feel’ they want to, not because of logical argument!

Which brings me to Principle two; deciding to give money to a charity is an emotional process, it’s much more to do with the heart than the brain.  So a mailed appeal should aim to produce tears of sadness or outrage or anger.  An event must produce laughter or comradeship or unity.  You should try to give your supporters what I have called ‘planned emotional moments’, moments when they feel like thanking the charity for the opportunity you’ve given them to do something they’d be unable to do without you. 

So anything that prolongs that emotional moment is a good thing.  Thank you letters, news of how the money is being spent and the impact it is having on people’s lives, information on the charity’s successes (and failures!) all maintain the ‘moment’!  And everything that destroys the emotional moment is a disaster.  Sadly, many fundraisers are very good at destroying relationships with supporters.  They do it by insensitive mailings that don’t look remotely personal, asking for information that’s already been given, talking about the charity’s work that is totally outside the experience the supporter bought into, offers of prizedraws or other products which may be completely inappropriate and so on.

Principle three therefore is very basic!  Charity supporters are intelligent folk, they are concerned for mankind or for their fellow creatures, and take quite difficult steps to do something about it.  Fundraisers can no longer abuse that intelligence by sending them endless appeal mailings and offers of products they don’t respond to, or invitations to events they never answer.  Abuse like that provides a poor supporter experience.

If a supporter is not responding, then fundraisers must change their tactics.  That means of course that fundraisers must analyse their response data very carefully.  I don’t think it’s acceptable any more to plan a campaign to current supporters, knowing that you will get response rates of less than 10%.  You have to ask yourself about the impact of the campaign on the 90% of supporters who have not responded.  That impact is important because you should be in this business for the long-term, not just the immediate cash produced by the campaign.

Now, of the 90% who don’t respond, many will be pleased to have heard from you, interested in the campaign but will decide not to send money.  That’s fine.  Others will simply throw it away unopened.  The ones you must worry about are the supporters who will feel guilty about not supporting you, concerned they have let you down, upset they cannot do more and so on.  You are giving these good supporters a bad experience.

Supporters should be asked how often they want to hear from your charity and what they want to hear about.  Fundraisers must do what they used to do before mass mailing and mass emailing was invented.  They must listen to their supporters, learn what they want, research their views and design communication programmes that really please.

My last principle is really pretty obvious.  So often, the supporter receives information that is inconsistent - it looks different, comes from different people and says different things.  It often FEELS as though it’s coming from a different organisation, and that’s a pity because it simply confuses the supporter.  Principle four therefore says ‘be clear and consistent when you describe your work’.

Four principles then, to encourage you to provide good and consistent supporter experiences.  You may feel, as a fundraiser, your job is to get as much money out of your supporters as possible.  I believe, in the end, you’ll get more money by caring for your supporters’ experience than by demanding money from them.  Because in the end, when they die, they could give you the most important gift of their lives, their legacy gift.  And that is likely to be the biggest gift ever.

Stephen is Chairman of Target Direct, the UK’s favourite direct marketing fundraising agency, with clients like Salvation Army, British Heart Foundation and The Royal British Legion. He is passionate about fundraising and is frequently more outspoken than is good for him. It certainly makes for an interesting life!

Stephen will also be speaking at this year's 27th International Fundraising Congress in the Netherlands in October. To find out more about Stephen's sessions and more about the Congress in general, please click here.