What “donor centric” really means in fundraising

“Donor centric” might be the most misused concepts in our industry. It sometimes means “I use my own tastes and preferences to decide how we should treat donors.”

Big mistake. Big, expensive mistake.

The decisions go like this:

• Address labels? I have no use for them. Hate ’em. Not donor centric.
  
• Emotional stories? I see right through them. Manipulative. Not donor centric.
  
• Long messages? Ain’t nobody got time for that. Not donor centric.
  
• Frequent contact? It annoys me. Not donor centric.
  
• Short sentences, short paragraphs, colloquial language? I’m too sophisticated. Not donor centric.
  
• Direct mail? I’ve never responded to it in my life. Not donor centric.
  

This version of “donor centric” is not donor centric at all. It’s egocentric. And it’s not only disrespectful of donors … it’s an ineffective way to raise funds.

A post at 101fundraising, Not relationships VS results — relationships FOR results, looks at this issue:

Your donors want to give. They enjoy it. You have no right to cancel money-making programs like premium mailings because you don’t like the idea of it. Being donor centric means paying attention to how your donors behave and making smart decisions based on those observations.

One of the hard things about fundraising is that what you think you’d respond to almost never works in real life. There are two reasons for this:

1. Your donors are not you. They are different in many significant ways.
   
2. Even if you were exactly like your donors, you don’t really know what you’d respond to. Your conscious opinions on the matter are at best wild guesses. More likely, your conscious opinions are exactly wrong.
   

Don’t let egocentric fundraising posing as donor-centric fundraising alienate you from your donors and crush your fundraising revenue.