You have two sources of revenue from donors – existing donors and new donors. While you need a steady influx of new donors to sustain and grow any organization, your existing donors represent the easier path to higher revenue. Once someone has donated, it’s easier to get them to donate again. And if you upgrade donors to higher giving levels, your revenue will increase even if you don’t add a single new donor to your database.
The question is, how do we upgrade donors, and how do we measure it well enough to know if we’ve succeeded?
What Are Donor Upgrades?
Donor upgrades need to be measured precisely enough to know how your donors are altering their giving habits in either direction, or remaining constant. The best metric for doing this relies on assigning donors to giving levels.
The Fundraising Report Card categorizes all your donors into five giving levels, and from this baseline it calculates all sorts of fundraising metrics. These are the five levels, for annual giving:
- Under $100
- $100 to $250
- $250 to $1000
- $1000 to $5000
- Above $5000
By tracking the number of donors at each giving level each year, you’ll be able to see where your biggest growth and attrition is happening.
A couple things are worth noting before we talk about how to upgrade donors to higher giving levels.
First, if you gain a lot of new donors during one year, it’s possible for all five giving levels to increase. While this is certainly a good problem to have, that scenario would make it a bit harder to determine how many donor upgrades you’ve had that year. Likewise, if you lose a bunch of donors, all five levels could decline.
So this metric’s clearest insights show up when your number of new donors is relatively small compared to your existing numbers. For larger nonprofits, this isn’t typically a problem. If you have 10,000 donors, and you gain a couple hundred more each year, your donor upgrade data will be strong. Any substantial changes in giving levels will be evident.
Upload Your Data to See Your Recent Giving Level Breakdown
Curious to see how many donors you have at each giving level? This is the starting point before developing strategies to upgrade your donors.
Simply upload your donor data to the Fundraising Report Card and you can see your giving level breakdown in seconds. You only need three sets of donor data – donor ID numbers, donation amounts, and donation dates. That way, everything is kept confidential and anonymous, even from us.
Once you’ve uploaded your data, examine the data for the last five years if your data goes back that far. Look for trends and changes. For instance:
- Which giving levels have the most donors?
- Which levels have gained more or lost more donors in the last five years?
- Do donors seem to shift up one level at a time, or multiple levels?
- Is the data mostly flat and unchanging?
How your data looks will suggest the strategies you can develop to upgrade donors to higher giving levels.
Suggest a Repeat Gift to One-Time Donors
We mentioned this above already, and this is a great strategy for upgrading donors, especially in the lower levels. A one-time donor giving anything over $50 is a great candidate for giving a second gift. And just one more gift will likely bump them at least into the second lowest level.
You can also make this part of your event strategy if you’re doing a fundraising event. Getting one-time donors to attend your event will almost surely result in most of them upgrading to a higher giving level.
Put another way, a campaign for repeat donors – donor retention – should also result in more donor upgrades, especially in the lower three levels.
Thank Donors Early and Often
It’s been researched over and over, and the data is consistent. You can look for it if you still need convincing. The fact is, thanking donors leads to higher donor retention and more future gifts.
If you’re not thanking donors fast enough or often enough, make it a goal to increase your gratitude this year, then see if your efforts show up in your donor upgrade metrics.
Try thanking donors in different channels. For example, you can use email, SMS, postcards, handwritten cards, letters, instant messages on social media, and phone calls.
Just remember, when you thank them, the goal isn’t to ask for more money at that time. The act of gratitude stands on its own. But it makes the donor feel good about their gift. And with ongoing communication after that, many of them will continue to give.
Tie Gifts to Specific Outcomes – and Report on Them
Measurable outcomes are easier to report on than vague ideas of “hope”.
What are your donors’ gifts actually accomplishing? When you ask for money, link the gift to a specific outcome. The issue here isn’t that you’re restricting the gift only to that specific purpose. The point is that you’re giving donors a narrative to latch onto.
In February, you tell them about an upcoming initiative. In March, you launch the campaign. In April you begin the project and start seeing results. In May, you give donors a first look at the results. By the end of the year, donors can be told about this project numerous times, and they will feel great about playing their part in making it happen.
This is pretty easy to do, and it gives donors something tangible to look at and say, “I helped do that!” Donors love this. It’s why they give.
Doing this will lead to more gifts and bigger gifts, and it should upgrade a measurable number of donors to higher giving levels.
Turn Loyal Donors into Monthly Donors
Another great way to upgrade donors is to target your loyal donors who aren’t giving monthly, and create a campaign to convert them into monthly donors. Look for donors who have consistently given for several years, perhaps even multiple times per year.
Consider a phone campaign targeting this group, or a targeted mailing campaign. Or both. It might only be 50 donors. But imagine turning these 50 donors into monthly donors. As monthly donors, many of them will end up in higher giving levels.
Be Strategic with Giving Arrays
Giving arrays include a list of suggested donation amounts displayed on a fundraising appeal or donation form. A common mistake in fundraising is to use the same giving array everywhere – online, in email, in direct mail campaigns, etc. This is a missed opportunity. Here are a couple ways to use them more strategically.
Online donation form
For your main online donation page, your giving array will be seen by all kinds of donors. To get larger gifts, try this approach:
- Find your overall average donation amount
- Choose a number near that amount to include your giving array
- Make that number the bottom or nearly the bottom choice
The Fundraising Report Card makes it super easy to determine your average donation amount. Let’s say it’s $29. If that’s the average, a giving array like this will push donors to give more:
- $25
- $50
- $100
- $250
- $1000
- Other amount
You’re only giving them one option below the average. You could even make the lowest option $30, so no one can just choose an amount below the average. This will almost surely elevate your average donation amount and should also upgrade some donors to higher giving levels.
Segmented giving arrays
If you can segment your donor database sufficiently enough so you can send segmented fundraising campaigns, you can also create segmented giving arrays. This is a superb strategy if you can make it work. And you can do this with email campaigns, direct mail campaigns, and also phone campaigns.
For example, you could create a segment of all donors who gave less than $250 the last couple years – the lower two giving levels. Look at the average donation amount of just those donors, and create a giving array like the one above that will push them toward higher gifts.
Then you’d create a separate segment of donors in the third giving level – $250 to $1000 – and create a different giving array for them since they have a higher average.
With this approach, you’re connecting with each donor at a level they have proven to be comfortable with, but that encourages a larger gift and thus a potentially higher giving level.
Challenge Donors to Fulfill Their Desires
Last, sometimes it’s best to go for the heart. Donors want to give to causes they care about. Work hard to cultivate passion and devotion to your cause. Frame giving as part of their identity, as an outward expression of who they are.
Challenge donors and call them up to become their best selves. MarketSmart’s automated fundraising system achieves this all on its own, nurturing donors through targeted, personalized communication that helps them figure out why they care about your cause.
This is a great tool especially for appealing to donors in the higher giving levels.
