This is the third in a series of four posts reflecting on a conversation about donor-centred fundraising and growing donor love with Professor Jen Shang PhD, Philanthropic Psychologist, and Co-Founder and Co-Director at the Institute for Sustainable Philanthropy in the UK.

For each blog, I have edited the relevant excerpt from the interview as a starting point then expanded on it with my own thoughts before offering some questions for review and application within your own organisations. Here is the outline of the 4 posts:

Part 1 – Moving beyond donor-centred vs community-centric fundraising
Part 2 – Instead of “donor as hero”, why not “donor as fellow human being”?
Part 3 – Isn’t loving your donors just fancy personalisation and segmentation?
Part 4 – Is AI capable of growing love?

When I first began talking about the principles of philanthropic psychology with other fundraisers, I found myself struggling to explain why it was important. Especially when I began talking about donor identities, fundraisers would jump to the conclusion that I was talking about segmentation. But it’s so much more than that. I decided to ask Jen what she thought.

INTERVIEW EXCERPT 3

June: When I talk to fundraisers about philanthropic psychology, sometimes they’ll say to me, “Oh isn’t that just fancy segmentation or personalisation?”

Prof Jen: I think you ask them what the purpose of their segmentation or personalisation is, and the farthest you can push people is, “Oh, it’s good for lifetime value”.

And then you ask them, “Okay, so how do you measure lifetime value?” And they tell you how they measure lifetime value and you say, “Okay, so what actions have you taken to make sure that as you increase people’s lifetime value, you are also increasing their psychological wellbeing?”

Yeah, it is just fancy segmentations or personalisation, but it’s for the double bottom line purpose. So if you add the donors’ psychological wellbeing to it, then it’s no different from segmentation or personalisation except that most of the factors [you’re measuring and you’re motivated by] are different.

It’s really about having that perspective shift. It’s not so much the difference in what you do as why you do it. And once you change the why, then what you do will be different.

But that is because the factors driving the why are different. So it’s not ideologically, “Oh, we just want to do something different”. If you want to enhance people’s psychological wellbeing, you have to build connectedness and you have to help people feel encouraged and uplifted and reaching their moral ideals. So by the time you substitute one set of factors with another set factors or add on another set of factors, you’ll be doing like 50 or 60% of your things differently.

You can call the 60% of things that you do differently just fancy segmentation. Give it any term. I just never could see myself spending time fighting about terms because I really don’t care what term people use. As long as you grow love, I’m happy.

What I love about this response is how clear it is that philanthropic psychology starts with the heart.

It starts from assuming your donors are caring and loving people. Then, working to create stronger relationships and connections leads to better wellbeing for your donors – and then their gifts flow from that.

This “heart-first” approach doesn’t mean we don’t look at the data. It isn’t about throwing out everything you’ve been doing and starting again. As Jen says, it’s simply a perspective shift, and then what you choose to do – and what the donor chooses to do – follows on from that.

In donor-centred fundraising when we talk about personalisation, it’s about trying to make your direct mail communications as personal as possible to try and increase average gift and income. The more we do of this, the more successful we become, because as people give more, we get to know their giving patterns better.

The Recency Frequency Monetary model (RFM) tells us that donors with the highest RFM score are the most likely to give to us again. This means the more successful you are at personalisation, the more likely it is you’re going to select the same people for your mailings in the future. Budget constraints mean you can’t mail everyone, so you’ll cut lapsed donors, not someone who’s just given you a donation.

What this means is that donor fatigue is a real risk. Those committed, loyal donors you love may get tired of seeing your appeals. They may start to feel guilty, because every appeal you send is (by its nature) urgent. How might they feel if they aren’t able to give?

Or perhaps they do give every time, but still don’t feel good. We all know about toxic relationships… like the friend you continue to catch up with because you’re a nice person, even though you always feel worse about yourself after you’ve seen them.

In the same way, it’s possible donors could be in a toxic relationship with your organisation. They continue to give because they’re asked and they’re nice people, but they don’t feel good after. They may even feel resentful.

We’ve all heard donors say things like, “I give to Happy Child Charity but they send me so much mail!” While many donors don’t give if you don’t send them mail, still, this isn’t a sign of the joy and connection we want donors to feel when they give. This isn’t a sign of us improving their psychological wellbeing.

How great would it be if, instead, we could hear donors say, “I give to Happy Child Charity and they make me feel like such a great part of their family” or “I love hearing their stories and their pictures make me feel so good” or “I really look forward to their emails. They’re a bright spark in my day”.

Philanthropic psychology invites us to consider what actions we can take to make sure that as we increase lifetime value, we also increase our donors’ wellbeing. We assume people who give more often will feel better than those who don’t. Yet there might be some people who can’t afford to keep giving every time. How can we make those people feel good regardless of whether they can give this time?

From this perspective, we can think how we might help our donors feel great about life and about our charity, not simply because we want to increase average gift. That means not every communication we send to them should be aiming to increase average gift. It could be reflecting back to them how generous they are. Or letting them know the impact their kindness had on someone. Or helping them feel part of something meaningful and life-changing.

Just as we would think it’s strange to marry someone and only be nice to them because you want them to be nice back to you, it’s the same with the relationship with our donors. If you’re only getting to know your donors because you want them to give, that’s not real donor love or connection. Similarly, if you’re not actually interested in donors or people at all, and only interested in their money, then I’d argue you might want to consider a different career!

Personalisation. Segmentation. Philanthropic psychology.

It doesn’t matter what you call it. It only matters that you grow love.

What now?

As you think about growing love and connection for your donors, you may like to consider these questions.

1. As your donors’ lifetime value increases, how can you also boost their psychological wellbeing? How can you increase their wellbeing for themselves, but also in relation to your organisation?

2. Do you have any donors who may be in a toxic relationship with you? Is there a way you can move that relationship into a healthy, connected, loving space?