What inspires a donor to contribute repeatedly to a particular charity/NGO/not-for-profit organization in ever-increasing amounts, rather than spending that money elsewhere? The answer, in part, is what could broadly be called customer service, or perhaps "the donor experience."
For example, the way an organization like Women For Women International keeps the donor connected with what is happening in the field, via updates and proudly, painstakingly handwritten letters from the women in war-torn regions who receive Women For Women’s much-needed seed assistance.
Or how an organization like Project HOPE shares success stories from its work worldwide (where it has been delivering essential medicines and supplies, health expertise and medical training since the charity's founding in 1958) through both hardcopy and innovative electronic communication methods.
And how Charity:Water, the clean drinking water charity, focuses obsessively on using transparency as a centerpiece of their customer service/donor experience.
How to make millennials, Boomers and everyone in between fall in love your business. By Micah Solomon.
I want to be careful with my terminology here, as the term “service” in not for profits can be taken to mean caring for the recipients of the aid—which, while obviously central to many charities’ missions, is not exactly what I am talking about here. By “customer service” or “the donor experience,” I mean how a charity takes care of the donors, the people whose contributions keep a charity alive and make its mission possible.
Customer Service Basics for Not For Profits
What it takes to do this is relatively straightforward, yet so easily neglected. It is making sure your phones are answered with consideration and good manners, even though these manners and consideration have to be deployed by an already put-upon, harried volunteer. Or, it’s deciding that having harried volunteers answering the phone isn't sufficient, at which point you choose to sign your volunteers up for effective training or decide to outsource your phone operations to closely-aligned but offsite professionals.
It is ensuring that your donors feel cared for. Not in a fake way, nor in a flashy way that makes a donor feel that you're squandering resources. But in a human way that is both sincere and bottom-line savvy.
Because, let’s get realistic here: A charity can say over and over again in its marketing materials that “every donor counts.” But if so, why then do some charities routinely misspell donor names in the mispersonalized letters they send out, and even guess at the genders of donors with names like “Sandy” rather than investing the effort in finding out their true identities?
Going Beyond The Basics For Your Donors
Phone manners and careful personalization are examples of the service basics that can help make a difference in not for profit customer service. Stretching beyond these basics will make even more of a bottom line difference, as Jann Schultz, the senior director of integrated fundraising and communications for Project HOPE and I were discussing together recently. (Note: I have in previous years assisted the nonprofit where Jann was previously–the fabulous cleft palate focused miracle workers at Operation Smile–in addressing and moving forward on such issues.)
One of the commitments Jann makes to donor service at Project HOPE is to "touch" each donor regularly to keep the Project HOPE mission in the top of donors’ minds. She also tries to ensure that several of those touches happen at non-transactional moments, in other words, when her charity doesn’t need something from the donor, and the donor doesn’t need something–for example a receipt– from the charity, either. Which is an approach that makes an awful lot of sense.
Making It Easy For Millennials, And Other Smartphone Users, To Give
Customer service also means making it easy to give. For example, today's millennial generation [the generation, born 1980-2000, who have never known a world without a smartphone] are accustomed to doing most everything on their smartphones and tablets. Including donating: 50 percent of the millennials who donate to charitable organizations–and that’s a lot of millennials, although the amounts each can donate at present are still modest–do it through a smartphone app. “This is why digital responsive design is a must-have for charities, not a nice-to-have,” as Schultz puts it.
In The Post-Greg Mortenson World, Transparency Is Key
Ultimately, though, true customer service cannot happen in today's skeptical, once-bitten world without transparency. Call this the “post-Greg Mortenson world.”
Let’s take a look.
A few years back I was involved with a lovely elementary school that, with the best intensions in the world, was raising money for the now-discredited Greg Mortenson’s Pennies For Peace. In the course of the project, thanks to Jon Krakauer's reporting and 60 Minutes' publicity, the school realized that "Pennies For Peace" could be more correctly named “Pennies To Put Jet Fuel In Greg Mortenson’s Private Jet.” [For details, in perfect, devastating prose, of the Mortenson fiasco, please read Jon Krakauer’s short Kindle book, Three Cups Of Deceit. It will be the best $2.51 you ever spent. If you think, due to Mortenson's whitewashing since then that he has somehow reformed, read Krakauer's recent followup--this one is free for the clicking: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/08/is-it-time-to-forgive-greg-mortenson.html ]
Once the elementary school fundraisers did their (belated) due diligence on Mortenson and his willfully mismanaged charities, the school shifted gears and ended up donating the money those kids had raised to one of the most famously transparent of charities, Charity:Water.
Charity: Water lets you know exactly where your dollars go as a donor. I mean exactly. See an example of a Charity: Water completion report here, and an example of how Charity:Water makes use of Google Maps and GPS to show you both your specific dollars’ results and the charity's footprint worldwide here.) Even when things don’t go well, they’re straight with the donors about the reasons for their failures and the ways they plan to change their approach for their next run.
I am going to give Jann Schultz from Project HOPE the last words here, first about transparency:
Charities need to treat donors like the investors they are. They are investing in the belief that you will deliver on your promise to make a difference. A charity should encourage its donors–its investors– to investigate before they donate and needs to provide links to audited financials as well as independent charity evaluators.
And about customer service and the donor experience:
Donor service includes transparency, such as audited financial data, but that isn't the whole picture of what customer service should encompass. In spite of your best efforts at transparency and information sharing, for most donors it is impossible to directly evaluate a charity’s effectiveness in the field. If you are truly effective in the field, extend that effectiveness to the service provided to your donors as well. Because this donor service is in large part how a donor evaluates a charity. So delivering a ‘5 star experience’ is critical. And in spite of the challenges all charities face in serving multiple constituencies, it is well worth the effort.
Micah Solomon is a customer service consultant, customer service keynote speaker and the bestselling author most recently of High-Tech, High-Touch Customer Service
