Photo by Ben White on Unsplash
Ajah regularly gets involved in projects and studies at the crux of fundraising and technology in Canada. We’re partners on a few academic-community research partnerships, and invest our time in helping build more evidence about the sector.
For the past year, we’ve been working with the #GivingTuesday initiative on their Data Collaborative, and want to share some of the intriguing things the initiative has uncovered about fundraising and giving.
There are lots of interesting findings coming out of the project, thanks to the unprecedented amount of data it is bringing together. We’ll be sharing more of these as we continue working with the initiative.
One of the most interesting findings so far has been about the concept of donor fatigue.
Some of the more recent analysis of the data gathered through the Collaborative is pointing to a surprising (and useful) revelation - the widely accepted notion of “donor fatigue” may be more myth than fact. This has some (potentially) big implications for how we approach donors.
The teams working on the #GivingTuesday data has been looking at donor fatigue specifically over the last year. To test this concept, they looked at the individual donations and transactions before, during, and after big spikes in giving - namely, #GivingTuesday and humanitarian campaigns after natural disasters.
The idea of donor fatigue implies that giving would drop to below normal levels following the spikes in giving on these dates. Donors, having given more, would give less for a period afterwards, because they’ve already exhausted the amount they were going to give.
However, we found that giving levels simply return to normal after a spike—they don’t dip any lower, and each of these events results in a net increase to total giving for the year. This pattern suggests that donors don’t get so tired out after all, and can give more if they are incentivized.
This finding not only goes against the grain of common sense, it also defies accepted industry ‘knowledge’ of donor fatigue.
Not to mention, it could change how we approach donors.
What is donor fatigue?
Donor fatigue is the long-held belief that should you message your prospects too often, they will grow tired of hearing from you again and again, and will subsequently lose interest in making a donation.
This conviction is at the forefront of “obstacles” for fundraisers, and there are countless articles and advice blogs out there explaining ways to overcome this “massive” hurdle.
Fortunately, it looks like this may be a misconception - and that donor fatigue may have more to do with the wrong message, rather than too much messaging.
Why donor fatigue doesn’t exist
The key tenet of donor fatigue is that donors perceive their funding as some form of sacrifice.
Essentially, if a donor considers their generous giving as a selfless sacrifice, and an organization constantly messages the donor asking for even more sacrifices, then that donor will (supposedly) come to view the organization as irritating, and potentially undeserving.
However, this new information may suggest this belief may not be so well-founded—perhaps donors don’t consider their funding projects as sacrifices at all.
Instead, donors may think of their donations in the same way they think of shopping, because rather than simply giving up something valuable for nothing in return (a sacrifice), they instead see it as giving up something valuable—and getting something valuable in return.
In reality, a donor sees it more as a transaction or exchange than a sacrifice. In return for their donation, they receive the knowledge that they’ve made an improvement in the world in some way.
Like making a purchase from a favorite store, regular advertising will not stop you from making repeat visits and purchases when you receive something of perceived value in return for your spend.
This shift in our knowledge of donor perceptions—from sacrifice to exchange—makes a world of difference for fundraisers.
But wait! You can still exasperate donors with your messaging
Knowing that reaching out to your prospects regularly will not irritate them will change the game for many organizations.
However, there are still ways to quickly exasperate your prospects—they just don’t lie in regular messaging.
You will likely irritate prospects not through regular contact, but through poor contact.
This could be:
The same message or content over and over
Useless messages that don’t offer new information
Unhelpful content that offers zero value
Avoiding sharing how past donations have been spent (lack of transparency)
Poorly communicated messages (such as bad spelling and grammar, or hard-to-read sentences)
It’s a rule that works in many forms of advertising: the more you talk to your target audience, the better your results are, provided your messaging is high-quality.