My favorite buzzword to help you with your fundraising needs is “Donor Profiling”. 

"All the knowledge about fundraising can be summed up in 10 words” as per Joan Flanagan, a well-known professional fundraiser, consultant, and speaker. President of Joan Flanagan & Associates which is a Chicago-based fundraising counsel, she is also the author of "The Grass Roots Fundraising Book". She say,  says “Ask ‘em, thank ‘em, ask ‘em again, thank ‘em again”. 

While giving consultation to many fundraisers myself, I have found that they think these words are a great relief. Because when it comes to donor profiling, fundraisers always perceive it as a scary and tedious job, often considering to hire someone else to do it. 

It’s true that before starting a fundraising campaign, you need to know to talk to people and have some context of what causes matters to them. But have no fear, with the help of this article YOU will be able to make the most accurate donor profile on your own.

Let’s start from understanding all the basics of Donor profiling,

What is Donor Profile?

The donor profile tells you all about your donors. It’s an indicator of your donor’s preferences - perhaps it’s the motive behind their “giving”. ( Are they working? Or Are they students? Are they male or female? Do they or their loved ones have any particular disease/illness?)

The donor profile tells you about specific areas that interest your donors.( Dog people/ Environmentalist/ Feminist/ Refugee/ Theist, etc,.). It also tells you about how they want to be involved with your organization (Event Participants/ volunteers/Social media audience, etc.).

It all comes down to creating a persona of your donors and then catering them in a better way.

On a top-level, you can consider the following to identify your donor base:

1. Age
2. Education
3. Occupation
4. Gender
5. Monthly Income
6. Areas of Interest

But I’d say never forget that sometimes, a donor’s motivation can also be a result of certain undermined and understated factors like, people who donate to support the fundraising campaign of family members, friends or neighbors. People who donate on occasions because they feel guilty in saying “NO” to the fundraisers. Others can be people who want to create a philanthropic image in society. 

I think the only way to understand them better is by doing Donor profiling, it’s a nice strategy that really works. Donor Profiling is one of the leading approaches you should definitely try. 

Let's see how?

To start with, capture your donor’s data to understand more about them. But this is a point where the obvious question arises, “How to do so?”

Well, today's technology has provided us so many ways, let me tell you all about it,

1. Have a form integrated with your fundraising campaign to gather your donor’s data. On platforms like Crowdera.ai, you get the donor management suite with inbuilt CRM.

2. Ask all your donors for feedback via a carefully curated email. Feedbacks are one of the best methods for you to collect your donor's preferences and understand them in a better way.

You might want to have a look at 15 email templates for your fundraising campaign communication.

3. Ask your donors details in an event, and build a personal connection with them.

After asking the necessary details, divide your donors into various groups based on their interest and try to come up with a relevant perspective for all the respective sets. 

While doing donor profiling in the beginning, I was aiming to target a segment of people between 25-50 years of age, both male and female. But when I really wanted to pen down my donor's fears, motivations, choices, and preferences believe me I had a difficult time writing it all down.

In fact, I soon realized that it was almost impossible for a 25-year-old and a 50-year-old to be addressed and converted with a single messaging. 

So now,  do I not take on clients that might be 50 years old and ready to donate for my cause? Should I steer clear of that motivated enough and innovative 20-year-old who relates to my cause and wants to be one of my advocates among the Millennials?

Well, the answer for me was a clear NO: I wanted to address everyone irrespective of their age, location, gender or geography. 

And here I was, I figured out that the first underlying common theme of my perfect donor is to be passionate about the cause they believe in!

Have a look on to the following points which helped many fundraisers and can help you in finding out your niche,

1) Understand the purpose of your campaign

Unless you don’t understand the overall purpose, you can’t make anyone else interested. To understand their motivations, you need to understand all your motives and intentions.

2) Write down a list of actions that made your past donor make a clear choice

For me, it all came down to my previous donors being,

1. Truly passionate about their cause/business
2. Wanted to be actively involved
3. Their core values align with mine in some way or another
4. Personable and friendly making it easy to form a personal connection
5. Understands the value of their contribution and interested in knowing the outcomes of the campaign.

For a minute, think about these points and tell me who can you see as your audience falling in the right picture?

3) Picturing these perfect donors from the past, write down their biggest struggles

• Like having doubts about you or your organization
• Not having a proper Call to action for them in your communications to actually make them donate

4) Make a list of their biggest dreams

• Maybe they are looking for adopting a child
• Maybe they are a pet lover and want to create a better world for animals
• Maybe they are the people who believe in a particular religion, or who wants equal opportunity for women

5) Make a list their biggest fears

• Like having a long term illness in the family or among friends
• Or maybe they fear some kind of accident and are not ready to experience it again

6) Write down a few things they’re incredibly passionate about

• It could be art/ music/ idea/ innovation/ their own purpose of life

7) Write down a few of their interests

• It's possible they care about the elderly and want to help them, or
• Maybe they follow a blood donation regime

8) Write down the one thing that’s holding them back the most for making a donation

• It could be a lack of opportunity like they don’t know where to donate.
• Maybe they feel less responsible for donations in general.

9) Write down a few notes about how they will feel after contributing for your cause

• Could be self-gratification
• Could be a feeling of happiness because of the contribution made, or
• It could be a feeling of becoming inclusive and responsible

I am sure you’d also want to know what really motivates the donors to give or prevents them from doing so?

"Think of your fundraising campaign as a “product” and then look at your donors as your “audience” and try to provide them a “meaning” base on their perception of the world. This will help your donors relate with your cause in a better way."

Let me help you get a better picture by providing  the following stats about the donors, 

• Believing in the mission of the organization (54%) 
• Believing that their gift can make a difference (44%) 
• Experiencing personal satisfaction, enjoyment or fulfillment (39%)
• Supporting the same causes annually (36%)
• Giving back to the community (27%)
• Adhering to religious beliefs (23%)

Fundraising is not a very complicated process, in fact with all the fundraising platforms booming today, it has become much simpler than ever before. At its heart, fundraising comes down to one person (or organization) asking another person (or organization) for their contribution towards a particular cause. 

it’s nothing but your passion for the cause which is going to make your campaign successful.

Keep this thought in your mind and follow the steps to identify, ask, engage and retain your donors

Bottom line:

If you are not doing a proper Donor profiling, you are missing out on many prospects, whom you could have converted. Donor Profiling will give you an answer to the following:

1. Capacity

Please understand that the capacity of your donor does not depend on their income alone. It is one of the very common myths accepted in the fundraiser community. Think of it like, someone with a multi-million dollars in their account might just donate $100, on the other hand, someone, earning around $50,000 per month can be a constant supporter of a particular cause and donate $5,000 monthly.

2. Concern 

Find out if your donor has a reason to care about your cause. They might have donated to similar causes earlier. You can also analyze if your cause can relate to your donors in a personal way. For instance, maybe you work for an Orphanage and your donor is someone who has adopted a child recently Or somebody who is looking for adoption.

3. Connection

It’s always good to see if you have any connection to your donor. Do they know you personally? Are they in some way related to your organization? Or somebody from your organization knows them and introduce you to them? The closer the connection, the more likely for them to fund your cause!

We at Crowdera support our fundraisers by providing timely information, resources and articles to assist with all of their financial accounting and reporting, governance and management, tax compliance and assurance needs. Book a demo to know all about our fundraising suite.