The Donor Issue

Donors are the lifeblood of our organizations as, to a greater or lesser extent, all charities rely on gifts from donors to execute their missions and mandates. Finding expression through concepts like stewardship and donor relations, the desire to engage with donors and make them loyal or “sticky” to our organizations has long been a priority for charities.

While these traditional concepts continue to be valid, they’re no longer enough. In this increasingly sophisticated and competitive philanthropic world, we need to push ourselves to think about donors differently if we hope to continue to grow and deepen our relationships with them.

While maintaining termslike stewardship and donor-centredness in our consciousness and vernacular, there are some new ideas being added into the mix – things like gathering donor insight, understanding donor behaviour and optimizing the donor experience. These different ways of thinking about donors are all areas to which smart organizations are devoting “think time”in an effort to build stronger, longer and deeper relationships with their donors at all gift levels. Central to these ideas is one theme – the need to better know your donors. In order to do this,organizations need two things. The first is to adopt an orientation that is curious about their donors and anxious to learn as much about them as possible. The second is data.