According to research collected by my team and I regarding analysis into attrition, the two best indicators of early lapsers is age and gift size.  We don’t want to discriminate against young and generous people but sadly there are really no other ways to judge whether an individual will be a reliable long-term monthly donor with the information we currently possess. 

It turns out that donors under 22 years and donors who make large gifts are very likely to lapse.  In fact, a 21 year old donor is twice as likely to lapse than a 45 year old donor.  That in effect means that a 21 year donor costs the charity two times more.  A few of our clients have conducted their own analysis and have found the same thing.

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The spawling thoughts behind the above information is the question…how do we let younger donors know they also matter and keep them engaged and passionate?

How to make an impact on younger donors is really the issue at hand…

• How do we engage a generation that basically has no attention span?
• How do we engage a generation that despises paper waste, are rarely homeowners, push mail to the side and prefer shorter, more tactical forms of communication
• Donors are also consumers and they are bombarded with so much information (both important and useless) that they now want more information all the time and anytime…how does the non-profit industry stand out?  How do you get attention without there having to be a massive earthquake or tsunami or flood….

What avenues of scoail media and communication are valuable? 

• should we SMS text them?
• Should we develop a cell phone application?
• should we email them?
• add them to facebook?
• Tweet and blog more frequently? 

Everyone knows, or at least should know that donors under the age of 30 do not open mail or a newspaper all that frequently if at all anymore….

We live in the golden age of communication….we need to learn how to navigate and connect with younger donors who are already connecting and waiting for you to inform and educate them…

Over the next couple of days I will have some of my phone canvassers discussing their thoughts on engaging donors….

Peace and love and all of the above,

Ryan