If you’ve hung around MarketSmart for any decent length of time, you know that at the heart of our approach to donor engagement and pre-qualification is the online survey.
Surveys allow donors to reveal profound truths and insights about themselves. And your nonprofit can use this information to identify and pre-qualify potential major donors. With our system, you can do this at scale – for far greater numbers of supporters than would otherwise be possible.
But, inevitably, when we talk with some organizations about our system, we get some version of this response:
“Donors don’t do surveys. They’re too busy.”
Often, this is asserted to be especially true for major donors. And it’s justified by the companion assertion that the nonprofit leader we’re talking with doesn’t do surveys. So naturally, if they don’t do surveys, no one else does either.
Don’t listen to these naysayers. We have reams of data that say otherwise. We have found that between 5-30% of your supporters will take a survey if it’s developed properly. And we’ve identified seven primary reasons why they fill out surveys.
Why Surveys Are So Valuable
With a properly developed survey, you can collect incredibly valuable information about your potential major donors such as:
- Why giving matters to them – why they care
- Who inspired them to care – family, friend, mentor, celebrity, etc
- How they prefer to interact with your mission
- How they rank your mission’s various components and programs
- How your organization ranks compared to others they support
- Their preferences for giving cash or assets
- Willingness to talk to a member of your team
- Openness to receiving personal follow-up communications – not solicitations
- Their age range and stage in life
- Occupation – entrepreneurs and professionals tend to give more
- Education level – highly educated people tend to give more
- Whether they are childless
You can see why this information would be so valuable. A good survey can deliver it, and follow-up surveys can continue to enrich what you know about each supporter and help identify which ones are ready for outreach.
But why would a supporter fill out these surveys?
Here are the seven reasons we’ve found for why donors take surveys.
1. The Organization Matters to Them
Some people simply respond to things when asked, and that’s all it takes – as long as your organization matters to them.
So, because they already care about your nonprofit, if you ask them to do something, they’ll do it. This subset of donors is easy to engage with content. They’ll open most of your emails, like your social posts, and engage in other ways as they’re able.
And, they’ll respond to surveys, simply because you asked.
2. Curiosity about the Questions
Other types of people are motivated by curiosity. They’re interested to see what you might want to know. It’s not that different than taking a political poll or opinion survey. People like to share their opinions, and they’re curious what will be asked in this one.
Curiosity is a powerful motive. For some survey-takers, all it takes is a little prodding along these lines, and they’ll fill out your survey.
3. Affection for the Organization Is More Like a Family Member
Nonprofits are not like businesses in many ways. One way is in how supporters perceive you. For causes they care about, nonprofit supporters think of them more along the lines of how they think about family members. They have deep affection for you and your mission. They care.
And because they care on this familial level, they’ll drop what they’re doing to answer your survey questions. It doesn’t take a lot of convincing to inspire these supporters to take your survey.
4. Want to Shape the Organization to Their Liking
Other supporters like the feeling of having influence over an organization’s direction. They believe that with this survey, they might be able to ‘fix’ a few things and help ensure things get done in a better way – which is of course their way.
Yes, there may be a smidge of narcissism in this cohort of survey-takers, but not necessarily. Some of these people really do know a lot, and their contributions to your survey will be valuable.
It’s the desire to influence and change things. For some people, this motivates a lot of their actions and how they spend their money and use their time. Taking a survey falls into this same category for them.
5. Want to be Heard
Yet another group of supporters is motivated to fill out surveys because they want to be heard. These are the people who get inspired by the idea of everyone getting ‘time at the mic’. These same people might be the ones inspired by ‘get out the vote’ campaigns.
Some people vote because they want to vote and no one needs to remind them. But others are drawn to the idea of being heard. This same mentality makes them want to take your survey. You are asking for their opinions, and they want to share them so they know they had a say in whatever’s about to happen.
6. Desire to Reciprocate
Other supporters will fill out surveys almost to thank you. Perhaps they’ve received value from your organization in other ways in the past, through giving, through events, through volunteering, or even as recipients or beneficiaries of your mission.
The survey then gives them an opportunity to give back. You did something for them, and now they want to do something for you in return.
7. Want to be Helpful
Lastly, we have found that some people just like to be helpful. They may or may not have a high level of passion for your mission, but they recognize that the world is a better place when people help each other.
You’re asking for survey participants, and they can see your need is sincere. So they fill it out because they want to be helpful.
Donor Survey Caveat
If you do decide to use donor surveys as a means of identifying and pre-qualifying future major donors, you need to be aware of a couple things.
This is a warning.
In our many years of experience with surveys, we have found that when organizations send our surveys but then don’t respond afterward to the people who filled them out, the outcome is actually worse than if they had never sent the survey at all. Many end up giving less, and some stop giving entirely.
Giving a survey isn’t just a research project. It’s not just about your organization. Responding with silence to donors who fill out surveys erodes their trust in your organization.
So, when you run a survey, make sure to plan a follow-up communication process that will ensure those who filled it out feel appreciated, heard, and valued for their contribution.
Engagement Fundraising – Free Book
Donor surveys are an essential component of what we call engagement fundraising.
But there’s a lot more to it than just surveys. In fact, MarketSmart Founder Greg Warner wrote a whole book called Engagement Fundraising, which is at the heart of what effective major gift fundraising looks like.
You can get a free copy of the book today
Related Posts:
- How to Deepen Your Major Donor Relationships
- 4 Primal Motives for Major Gifts – the REAL Reasons People Make Transformational Gifts
- How Many Major Donors Are You Overlooking Right Under Your Nose?
- 4 Ways Your Assumptions about Major Donors Are Hurting Your Fundraising