High-level donor fundraising
The definitions vary from charity to charity, but we are talking here about those donors who fall between the direct marketing channel and the major donor team. So, typically these are donors capable of giving a £500 gift as opposed to a £25 gift. But the reason they have been giving £25 until now is because they haven’t been asked for anything more than that by the charity.
And there is the first problem – who is looking after these valuable and often loyal donors? Normally no one!
Aristos has many years’ experience of working with these donors. And we have case studies of how effective it can be when a small amount of time and resource is set aside to developing this segment of the file.
Identify who you want to target. We recommend that this is done cumulatively as well as by looking at the largest gift. There are various ways of drawing the line of who’s in and who’s out and there are no hard-and-fast rules because every file is different. We can work with you to get to the ideal segment.
Decide how you are going to cultivate them. Usually working with high-level donors is a mix of mail and telephone but increasingly uses online as a channel. With much higher gift ‘asks’ the frequency of appeals generally reduces for this segment compared to the rest of the mail file. But keep the communication frequent and include plenty of reporting and acknowledgement in the mix.
Creative appropriate to the ask. As the ask increases, so should the way it is presented. This might mean longer letters with more detail such as project reports; it will probably require a more expensive pack and higher levels of personalisation.
High levels of reporting back and acknowledgement. As the value of the donation increases, so the need to report back and thank donors commensurate with the size of their gift. This is the one area which is sadly lacking in many charity fundraising programmes. After a recent high level appeal which we created and mailed on behalf of a charity client, we followed up 4 months later with a 6pp project report on progress. From that came further funds despite the fact there was no ask in the report and donor feedback on how grateful they were that their gifts were being acknowledged.
Be prepared to change the segment. The ‘cut’ talked about in the first point above is not a once-for-all segment decision. As the programme progresses there will be other donors from the general mailing file that need to be moved ‘up’ and there will also be members of this high-value segment that will be moved ‘up’ into the major donor programme. In fact one of the factors of running a high-level fundraising programme is that it becomes a feeder pool for the major donor team. The main point is to keep the criteria for belonging highly flexible.
If you would like to receive our ‘High-level Fundraising’ powerpoint presentation please contact us.
