Most charities have well-defined approaches for staying in touch with donors who write small, yearly checks as well as with their top-shelf supporters. But for many groups, figuring out how much time and money to spend reaching out to the people who land somewhere in-between has been a challenge.
The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, for example, says that for years it viewed its Founder’s Society—a designation for donors who give a total of $500 to $5,000 over two years— mostly as a “holding place” from which to identify people who might make even larger gifts.
Two years ago, however, the organization decided to focus more on keeping such middle donors giving and encouraging them to contribute more often each year.
The effort seems to be working. In 2007, 2,367 members of the Founder’s Society gave $2-million. By 2009, 4,197 mid-level donors had contributed $3.5-million.
Rethinking Strategy
The economy, technological advances, and shifts in fund-raising philosophy have prompted many groups to rethink their approaches to mid-level donors.
Like the ASPCA, a growing number of nonprofit groups have found that they can raise more money from such donors by forging stronger ties with them and doing a better job giving supporters the information they want.
Traditionally, the main differences between the appeals charities sent to mid-level donors were a better stock of paper than those sent to smaller donors, closed envelopes instead of ones with a cutout window for the address, and first-class postage.
While organizations have kept the nice paper, they have also added staff members to help personalize communications with mid-level donors, such as adding handwritten notes and making thank-you calls. Charities are also providing greater detail about what they are doing with donors’ money and what it’s allowing them to accomplish, as well as setting up conference calls and other events with charity officials who can give mid-level contributors an inside view of the group’s work.
Significant Difference
A well-thought-out approach to middle donors can have a significant effect on a charity’s bottom line.
At Catholic Relief Services, an international aid organization in Baltimore, the charity’s 4,500 middle donors—people who have given at least three gifts of $1,000 each over the previous two years—account for only 1 percent of all annual-giving contributors. But in 2009, their gifts represented a quarter of the money donated by people who make annual gifts.
What’s more, the cost of raising money from these donors is extraordinarily low, roughly one cent on the dollar, compared with 22 cents for each person the group recruits through direct-mail appeals, according to the charity.
Catholic Relief Services employs seven part-time development associates who are charged with building closer ties to mid-level donors. The associates work 20 to 24 hours a week out of their homes. Many are stay-at-home mothers who have experience in fund raising or have worked in local parishes.
“We really wanted to tap into what was a little bit of a different kind of labor pool,” says Jean Simmons, the organization’s director of annual giving.
Catholic Relief Services also conducts an annual survey of its middle donors by phone, both to engage contributors and find out more about their interests.
“It’s a great way to start a conversation, especially when it’s a new donor,” says Donna Adair, who oversees the mid-level donor program.
Two years ago Mercy Corps, a Portland, Ore., international relief group, hired four part-time development associates to work with middle donors who give $1,000 to $4,999 annually.
In 2009 the charity saw a 5-percent increase in the number of people who continued to give at that level compared with the previous year.
The development associates are based in the four cities where Mercy Corps has the most donors: Boston, Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle. In addition to making phone calls and writing personal notes to the donors they have been assigned, the associates are responsible for organizing at least one in-person event for their donors each year.
Recently, a member of the charity’s emergency-response team in Haiti briefed donors in Portland.
“It was really no-frills, no cocktails, no anything, just donors who really wanted to hear first-hand what was going on with Mercy Corps’s program on the ground: How were we putting their gifts to work?” says Jennifer Schmidt, who runs the charity’s midlevel giving program.
The maturation of the middle-donor program is starting to change the way Mercy Corps moves donors from the direct-mail program to major gifts.
When the program started two years ago, there were very distinct boundaries, says Ms. Schmidt. When a donor gave $5,000 or more, responsibility for that relationship moved from the mid-level development associate to a major-gift officer.
Now, the two departments discuss individual cases and sometimes decide to keep the donor with the development associate if they have developed a strong bond.
“When it works, you want to keep doing what works,” says Ms. Schmidt.
She says that given the large number of prospective donors that big-gift fund raisers shepherd, the major-gift department is currently discussing whether some people it works with should be solicited through the mid-level efforts.
Maintaining Harmony
Such give and take is unusual, say fund-raising experts.
One of the biggest challenges that keep nonprofit organizations from reaching out to middle donors is the tension that often exists between fund raisers in the direct-mail and major-gifts departments, says Mark Rovner, president of Sea Change Strategies, a fund-raising consulting company in Takoma Park, Md.
“They genuinely dislike one another,” he says. “That’s not true everywhere, but it’s often true. The high-dollar people see the direct marketers as the used-car salesmen of fund raising, and the direct marketers see the high-dollar people as snobs who, if you’re not worth millions of dollars, you’re not worth my time.”
Too often, middle donors fall into the chasm between the two departments, says Mr. Rovner. That’s a real problem, he says.
With the increasing difficulty charities have had attracting new direct-mail donors in the past few years, the money contributed by middle donors is becoming even more important.
Ironically, charities that are able to establish the level of cooperation necessary to effectively reach middle donors often find ways to bring the direct-mail and major-gifts programs closer together.
Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta hired Elesha C. Mavrommatis in 2005 to start Hope’s Circle, a club of women who give $1,000 to $9,999 annually to the hospital.
The organization, which holds two luncheons a year as well as occasional educational events like a behind-the-scenes tour of the emergency room, caught on.
Soon, some women who had given $10,000 or more started coming to events, something that initially made the charity’s major-gift officers nervous, says Ms. Mavrommatis.
The key, she says, has been to respect one another’s roles.
For example, a Hope’s Circle member asked one of her friends who had been identified as a prospective big donor to attend the spring luncheon in April.
Ms. Mavrommatis invited the major-gift officer, who had been asked to forge closer ties with the woman but hadn’t yet met her.
Then, Ms. Mavrommatis introduced them to each other at the event.
“That’s a win-win,” says Ms. Mavrommatis. “She’s going to join Hope’s Circle, which is great, but she’s also connected with that gift officer who’s hoping to build a deeper relationship that might lead to a larger gift down the road.”
