The following articles, written by Sean Triner, Co-founder and Director of Pareto Fundraising and Pareto Phone were originally published in The Agitator column of Fundraising and Philanthropy Magazine’s e-newsletter.
Swap donors with a competitor charity? The proposition seems absurd! Yet, as Sean Triner enlightens us, it’s a tried-and-true way to win new donors – and if you’re not willing to give it a go, he says, then quit moaning about acquisition …
This year is going to be tough. No doubt about it.
No one knows what will happen to giving patterns if the crunch hurts more, and Australians begin to lose their jobs. There are so many unknowns we know about, and almost certainly a pile of unknown unknowns too (to quote a certain former US secretary of defence). So we can’t speculate, but we can plan for different scenarios. And it seems to me there is no scenario where cutting good fundraising is a clever idea. By ‘good’ fundraising I mean anything that makes a net profit in a timeframe that is manageable from a cash-flow point of view.
In my ‘Ten point plan to recession-proofing your fundraising’, the key point is that by implementing good fundraising practice, your charity has the best chance of surviving whatever happens. However, it looks at fundraising strategy rather than tactics. What I am getting agitated about at the moment is tactical. And one tactical issue more than any.
I know tens of brilliant, professional fundraisers who are moaning about how hard (and expensive) it is to get new donors. And they are right. It takes at least twelve months, usually closer to 24, and often longer to get your money back for acquiring at least 1,000 donors. Even the big charities with tens of thousands of donors are grumbling about it.
Well here is a new rule.
If you have already got more than 5,000 donors you are BANNED FROM COMPLAINING ABOUT ACQUISITION COSTS. Unless you are taking steps to swap your donors. No excuses or exceptions.
What is swapping?
Simply, the process of ‘you can mail my donors if I can mail yours’.
Swapping donors has been going on for decades. I was working at a UK disability charity (John Grooms Association, now Livability) back in 1992 and the cheapest – and some of the most loyal – donors were recruited from reciprocals. And John Grooms had seven years of data showing it didn’t harm their own database to swap them. After that, I was into swapping (donors that is) at Action Research and Mind before I moved to Australia in late 2002. By then, John Grooms had 17 years of data, and it was still good.
It is not illegal unless you told your donors you wouldn’t swap them, but even then there is a way forward. If you told your donors you would not sell their information you may still be OK too. And it does not harm your long-term relationships by more than the long-term benefits, provided you don’t swap more than about a dozen times a year. The biggest indicator as to whether someone will donate to you is that they donated to your charity before. The second biggest indicator is that they donated to someone else.
At John Grooms, we would get better results swapping with a totally different type of charity (e.g. overseas development or animal welfare charity) than we would mailing to shopping survey respondents who said ‘if asked I would donate to John Grooms’!
At Pareto Fundraising, we have recently facilitated swaps between a couple of charities, and lo and behold – it works in Australia too! The response rates and ROI on swapped donors is much better, even when asking for a regular gift.
It seems counter-intuitive that swapping your greatest asset would be so … practical and yet benign. But it is.
How do you swap?
Well, in Australia there are co-operatives and third party agencies like Pareto that can arrange it, or you can just call another charity and suggest it. For best results, you need to agree on a consistent segmentation (to ensure you are swapping like for like), and do some de-duping in house.
The like for like swapping is a bit tricky. In the olden days (early 90’s) we would just swap something like ‘mail donors, donated >£15, made more than one gift.’ Provided you both agree on a fair system, that is fine.
Co-operatives get great results too, especially if you only choose charity donors. But be careful, as some co-operatives lump all charity supporters together. You want to make sure you are not swapping with event ticket purchasers or the like. Of course, swapping alone is not a magic bullet. Having the best list available (which swapping will provide) and mailing them a crap pack will still produce crap results. Acquisition is about asking the right people with the right proposition.
Oh, you can also swap regular givers and high value donors but don’t swap face-to-face recruited donors.
Please, Australian fundraisers, 2009 is a year for change, and you need to put in place the steps to be able to cushion the impact of this economic thing. Refusing to swap because you (or a boss) doesn’t like it is not acceptable – and you’re banned from complaining about acquisition costs.
Sean Triner, co-founder of Pareto Fundraising and Pareto Phone, is still getting agitated even though his nomad life is over. He now lives on a macadamia farm in northern NSW. For more information, detail and a full paper on swapping (donors) check out his blog http://seantriner.blogspot.com.
(c) Sean Triner, February 2009
