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If Less Than 80% of Your Volunteers are Giving, Something Is Wrong
We customize our approaches for each client, whether it is for consulting or training, by looking at their longitudinal data to identify predictive patterns. Using what we call a Vital Signs Assessment, we zero in on what we know to be the leading indicators of future success or future struggle. One of the four most important Vital Signs is the size of the volunteer community and the percentage of that community that gives each year. We have seen many organizations where the rate of giving is consistently over 90% and often hovering at 95%. In fact, after having done hundreds of such analyses, we can say that the cohort most likely to give are volunteers. We know that volunteers give 10 times more over their lifetime than non-engaged donors.
If less than 85% of your volunteers are giving it means:
- You’ve chosen the wrong volunteers, and/or
- You’ve given them unsatisfying work, and/or
- An inside view of your organization has caused them to lose faith in it
What most volunteers tell us is, “They use too much of my time and too little of my talent.” What they cite most often as a waste of their time is serving on advisory boards where they are treated as a captive audience like Hansel and Gretel and fed dog and pony presentations, assuming that will fatten up their philanthropy. This is why so many prospects have been led into the Hansel and Gretel deep dark woods of cultivation and so few donors have ever emerged from it.
So many volunteers say, “If they just want our money, why don’t they just go ahead and ask?” The fattening-up strategy isn’t working.
People are most likely to support what they helped shape not what they are told most often.
The more you tap into people’s talents, the more time they will give you, and the more treasure they will invest.
Sweat equity predicts the level of philanthropic investment.
It isn’t just “if you want people to give, ask their opinion,” it’s “let people help build what you want them to fund.”
Jim Langley is the president of Langley Innovations. Langley Innovations provides a range of services to its clients to help them understand the cultural underpinnings of philanthropy and the psychology of donors and, with that knowledge, to develop the most effective strategies and tactics to build broader and more lasting communities of support. Jim has authored numerous books including his most recent book, The Future of Fundraising: Adapting to New Philanthropic Realities, published by Academic Impressions in 2020.
Related Resources:
- Webinar: 4-Step Process for “Reimagining Fundraising Operations”
- The Power of Building Relationships: Why Donors Need Good Fundraisers
- How Many Major Donors Are You Overlooking Right Under Your Nose?
- Planting Seeds: The Step Before Cultivation
- Why Major Donors Give – How to Tap into Their Motives and Inspire Transformational Gifts
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Feeling like your job is getting harder because donor expectations have changed and competition for the charitable dollar is growing?
Finding that the old orthodoxies and conventions espoused by so-called experts in online echo-chambers and at conferences don’t work anymore?
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Then this book is for you.
Engagement Fundraising was developed from the perspective of a donor who discovered firsthand that the impersonal, spray-and-pray approaches of his beloved charity were not only offensive but also wasteful and ineffective. So he took action. And now, you can too.
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I respectfully disagree, as they are all giving TIME (and to varying degrees, TALENT, and maybe also TIES) already and may not be able to donate TREASURE right now or just yet (though I think one could carefully approach time donors for legacy gifts!). There might be another “T” out there that I’m forgetting. 🙂 (I’m in Silicon Valley where cost of living is high, our volunteers are very diverse across many axes, and the tech layoffs just keep coming)