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Donor retention and donor qualification go together like peas in a pod
Some things just work best when coupled together.
Peanut butter and jelly. Toothpaste and a toothbrush. Cookies and milk. Soap and water. Simon and Garfunkel.
Get the idea?
Donor retention and donor qualification.
Similarly, you shouldn’t consider donor retention without involving donor qualification because there’s no sense in spending time and effort on retaining donors without a qualification strategy in place.
Retention efforts cost money. They are sophisticated too, so they cost time. Therefore, if you build a retention strategy that commands your team to try to retain every single donor, you may be doing more harm than good.
The trick is to try, instead, to determine who has the most passion and the most capacity to make a substantial impact on your organizational mission (without being too short-sighted). Otherwise, you might retain 1,000 low-dollar donors but let two major donors (who gave 5 times more than the 1,000 others combined) slip away. What good would that do?
Don’t get me wrong here.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t retain as many donors as possible, I’m just saying that you must involve qualification in your retention strategies.
Don’t go running around worrying about retention just because it’s the buzzword of the day thanks to some CRM vendor’s blog or some speaker you heard at a seminar.
If you’re going to worry about retention you should consider qualification too. They go hand-in-hand.
Related Posts:
>>Is donor qualification more important than donor identification?
>>Why QUALIFYING donors might be the silver bullet you’ve been looking for
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