It’s helpful to know donor demographics, giving histories, wealth capacity, and other data about them. But something we don’t talk about nearly as much are what we might call ‘donor personalities,’ or ‘giving identities.’
A study from the Generosity Commission, Hattaway Communication, and the BBB Wise Giving Alliance’s Donor Trust Survey used survey data to categorize donors into six different segments, with 70% accuracy.
70% isn’t great – it means there are a lot of exceptions to this. But it’s high enough that you can presume that a majority of your donors fit into one of these six donor identity categories. And that will help you more effectively communicate with them, especially if you can figure out which types of donors perhaps dominate your database – and there is data that different types of donors gravitate to certain types of nonprofits, as you’ll see in a bit.
So let’s explore the six different donor personality types, and see how this might help improve your donor communications and relationships.
Super Givers
Just like the name implies, Super Givers love to give, and they have the ability to do so.
They have the capacity to give consistently and sometimes in large amounts, and they have a strong desire to help others and to make social connections through giving. They have a high degree of trust in philanthropy and in nonprofit organizations, with 33% of them saying so.
And that trust extends to different types of charities too, also at far higher levels than the other five donor personality types. Over 40% of these donors trust religious, health, and veterans’ organizations. And even their least trusted charity category of arts and cultural nonprofits (19%) scores higher for trust than nearly all types of organizations for other donor personality types, particularly Apathetic Non-Givers and Show-Me Scrutinizers.
Many Super Givers are motivated to give either by religion or culture, and over 50% of them look forward to giving even more in the future directly to charitable organizations. These donors also like to attend fundraising events and volunteer their time.
Connection Seekers
This donor personality type also loves to give, but they have much less capacity for various reasons. They aspire to give more later in life, and are also driven by social connections. They want to make an impact by helping others.
However, Connection Seekers are skeptical of philanthropy, and it takes a lot more work for organizations to win them over. Their most trusted category of nonprofit sits at just 24%, for nonprofit hospitals, followed closely by social service and animal welfare organizations. But again, this isn’t far above the lowest category trusted by Super Givers in terms of the percentages.
Connection Seekers are civically optimistic, but not as much engaged in politics.
Not surprisingly then, they like to donate items like food, clothing, and other things that meet practical needs, and they like to volunteer their time, with 50% saying this. They are much more drawn to give to individuals directly – more than any other donor personality type by far – with 37% of these donors saying this.
Next Generation Doers
This donor personality type loves to give, and give frequently. They may not be wealthy, but giving is a major part of their life, and like Super Givers they are motivated by religious faith or culture, and they recognize the personal benefits of giving.
Next Generation Doers tend to be leaders in their fields or in other organizations, and they are often educators. They have fairly high levels of trust in nonprofit organizations. But, more important than that, only 52% of them think trust in charities is very important when deciding to give – this is the lowest of all six personality types for that metric.
29% say they highly trust charities, second only to Super Givers and far above the other four donor personality types.
These donors see the value in planning for the future. This is evidenced by the fact that they are far more likely than all other donor personality types to be interested in using donor advised funds as a means to increase their future giving. They’re also far more likely than all the others to want to attend events and raise money through their networks.
So, Next Generation Doers are great for P2P fundraising, spreading the word on social media and at their workplace, and for bringing people to events.
Interestingly, the type of charity plays very little role in whether Next Generation Doers trust them. The highest category of trust was 30% for veterans’ organizations, but the lowest level was 24% for arts and cultural charities. This 6% spread is by far the tiniest from the most trusted to the least. For example, the Show-Me Scrutinizers highest trusted category was at 35% (religious charities), and the lowest just 5% (environmental orgs).
Doers just want to participate in all sorts of ways, and they’re ready to get involved with just about any organization that captures their interest.
Civic-Minded Hopefuls
This donor personality type doesn’t tend to have as much money to give. They give where they can, but often find it difficult. However, they have a strong desire to help others and are optimistic about philanthropy. These donors tend to be politically active and generally support progressive ideas.
Civic-Minded Hopefuls lead the pack in wanting to volunteer, with 55% expressing this as a strong interest. And they are second only to Super Givers in wanting to donate to charities, at 48%. So even though they may not have a lot of money at the moment, they have a lot of desire, and they will be loyal to organizations. That loyalty can pay off later if their wealth situation changes. But in the meantime, they will show up to help.
As for charity categories, Civic-Minded Hopefuls have the most trust for animal welfare organizations at 32%, with social service and nonprofit hospitals right behind at 31%.
Their overall trust in organizations doesn’t dip as low as the other three (other than Super Givers and Next Generation Doers), with the least trusted category of religious organizations still trusted by 15% of these types of donors. The least trusted categories for the other three donor personality types were all in the single digits.
Show-Me Scrutinizers
As the name implies, this donor personality type wants to see the details before they commit to something. These are the ones who check nonprofit rating websites, feel prickly if you don’t publicize your form 990, and add up all the percentages to make sure they reach 100%.
Thus, they give, but giving isn’t a huge priority in their lives. They are unmotivated by social connections or helping others, but they are politically minded. When they do give, they tend to focus on local organizations, though in the political cases, this may not necessarily be true.
Show-Me Scrutinizers don’t show a lot of interest in most fundraising opportunities and activities, but when they do give, they prefer to donate to charities rather than individuals. The 41% of them who prefer to give to charities is second only to Civic-Minded Hopefuls at Super Givers.
This suggests that once they do find a charity they like and trust, they will be loyal.
Their highest level of trust, by far, is for religious organizations with 35% aligning with this, but it drops fast from there, with veterans’ charities at 28% and nonprofit hospitals in third at 21%.
Apathetic Non-Givers
You might think by the name that these people never give. And compared to the other donor personality types, they don’t prefer to give money to organizations. Their biggest gripe seems to be about giving money to institutions and official-sounding entities. Only 25% expressed interest in giving to charities – by far the lowest of the six donor personality types.
However, they lead the pack with 24% expressing openness in giving to family and friends, and they’re second only to Connection Seekers with 28% wanting to give to individuals in need. And, 49% like to donate items. So Apathetic Non-Givers do give, but they prefer giving directly to people. These types of donors may be more open to giving through crowdfunding sites than charity websites.
These donors often lack the motivation to give. They aren’t looking for it or thinking about it, and they have little desire to help others, in general. And, they often also lack the means to give much. They don’t care much about social or cultural impact, and believe institutions, not charities, should care for people.
Not surprisingly, their levels of trust in all types of charities are much lower than the other donor personality types. Apathetic Non-Givers have the highest trust in veterans’ organizations, but only 20% trust them. That percentage is lower than the trust in almost all categories for Super Givers, Next Generation Doers, and Civic-Minded Hopefuls.
What Types of Nonprofits Are Most Trusted?
It’s worth noting that there were some commonalities across all donor personality types in terms of which types of organizations are trusted the most and the least. This gives you an indication of how much of a barrier your nonprofit may have when it comes to earning the trust of potential donors.
The most trusted categories tended to be religious, health, nonprofit hospitals, veterans, animal welfare, and social service organizations, with a few ranking police and firefighter nonprofits in their top 5.
As for the least trusted categories, four types of nonprofits showed up collectively in the bottom 3. Five donor personality types ranked environmental orgs with low trust. Four of them had arts and cultural charities and educational organizations in their bottom 3, and three ranked civil rights and community action organizations lowly.
How to Use Donor Personality Types
The most valuable thing you can do with all this data is to try to determine the personality types for as many of your donors as possible.
Talk to them. See if you can find out what motivates them to give, and how much they trust charities in general.
For example, if a donor says they don’t trust most charities but that they do trust yours, and you run a religious or veterans’ organization, that donor might be a Show-Me Scrutinizer. You can confirm that by asking about other features of this donor personality type.
The benefit of knowing this is that you’ll know it might not be a good use of time to try to get that donor to bring a bunch of people to a fundraising event. It’s just not how they think or operate. But, if you have their loyalty, be sure to sustain it.
On the other hand, if you notice a supporter consistently showing up for volunteer opportunities, attending events, giving regularly, and getting other people involved, that sounds like a Next Generation Doer.
You can confidently ask that person to support your efforts in a variety of ways, because this is how they think about philanthropy. It means a lot to them, and they want to help.
Not all donors are the same.
The more you can understand what makes each donor tick, the more effectively you can communicate with them and sustain long-lasting loyalty.