Categories: Fundraising

How to Increase Fundraising Revenue by 68% by Simply Mimicking Your Donors

I love studies about waiters and restaurants. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you know that I truly think great waiters would make great fundraisers. The best ones know that mimicking their customers is a powerful way to increase their earnings.

 

Here are some interesting findings about mimicry that might inspire you to become a copy cat too:
1. People who are being mimicked become more generous towards the person who mimics them.
2. When a waitress mimicked her customers by literally repeating their order, she received a larger tip than when she did not mimic her customers. Mimicry increased the size of her tips by more than 68%.

 

So what’s the fundraising takeaway here?
The studies clearly demonstrated that mimicry influences the size of a tip (donation).
 
The author of the study noted that “previous research has shown not only that we like people who mimic us better than people who do not mimic us (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999), but also that mimicry makes us feel closer to other people (van Baaren et al., 2003).”

 

How can you use this information? It’s really very simple:

 

FIRST: Survey your donors regularly.
NEXT: Send them engagement offers and communications that clearly show that you heard them.

 

P.S.– Did you know that we developed the most powerful donor survey tool ever created (SurveyGiftmaker).  It does what the studies say you should do and it raises millions of dollars for organizations just like yours.  Is it time for you to give it a try? If you want to learn more about SurveyGiftmaker, the amazingly successful campaigns we launched recently for national organizations, or how surveys can help you boost your fundraising revenue today contact one of my Solutionists for a custom preview.

 

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Greg Warner

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Published by
Greg Warner
10 years ago

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