CausePlanet Blog

According to Ken Burnett, “Our nonprofit sector is bleeding to death. We’re hemorrhaging donors, losing support as fast as we find it, seemingly condemned forever to pay a fortune just to stand still. It’s time we stemmed the flow.”

It’s understandable why Retention Fundraising author Roger Craver chose Burnett to write the forward for this book. Burnett brings the right amount of warning to the issue. Burnett is right. Our social sector is in dire need of determined action to diminish donor attrition invitation cards 80 birthday for free.

Why?

A few of the many reasons include the following: Attrition costs our organizations billions of dollars and effort. It suffocates the other mission-related work we’re trying to do. It undermines the sector as a whole. Unfortunately, many fundraisers accept low donor retention as a fact of life herunterladen.

Roger Craver says it doesn’t have to be that way. Craver has unpacked the answers to many of the challenges nonprofits face with attrition such as shifting the fundraiser’s focus to what matters most to donors, overthrowing retention barriers, responding efficiently and more.

Thanks to a study of more than 250 organizations, Craver and his collaborators have introduced a framework for boosting retention and the lifetime value of donors herunterladen. This framework is the foundation to improve each of the retention issues he presents, from redefining loyalty to understanding authentic engagement.

We asked Craver about how to make a case for retention activities if you need to enlist your colleagues and leadership in the process. We also had him share insights on the metrics you should measure:

CausePlanet: How do you convince nonprofit organizations that focusing on donor retention is worth the extra time, effort and expense autogenous training?

Craver: Year after year for the past decade, donor-retention rates have been sinking. Today, they’re at an all-time low.  According to studies by the Association of Fundraising Professionals, every $100 raised from new donors was offset by $100 in losses because of attrition. All this despite the facts that organizations have

– a 60-70 percent chance of obtaining additional gifts from an existing donor.

– a 20 to 40 percent chance of obtaining an additional gift from a recently lapsed donor windows 10 voor mac downloaden.

– but less than a 2 percent chance of obtaining a gift from a prospective donor (actuation).

So one thing should be glaringly obvious. The bulk of an organization’s fundraising spending should be aimed at holding onto and building relationships with existing donors, not in acquiring new ones herunterladen. It’s called “retention.” Unless an organization’s goal is to never grow and eventually decline, the failure to focus on retention is ultimately ruinous as the organization’s support shrinks like a raisin in the sun.

CausePlanet: Would you talk about how the metrics you have developed (lifetime value, etc.) help a nonprofit track its fundraising and justify its time and effort igo kartenupdatesen und installieren.pdf?

Craver: There are some fundamental metrics that serve as a sort of fundraiser’s GPS—Retention Rates and Lifetime Value. They quickly and easily indicate whether an organization is relevant to its donors.

Number of new donors making a second gift: A harbinger if not dead-on predictor of the retention rates and Lifetime Value an organization is likely to enjoy in the future zu downloaden oder downloaden.

Number of new donors retained into the second year: If you ask and answer the question as to why so many donors leave the first year and what your organization is doing to lose them and hold them, you’ll be on a true track to growth. Fail to answer them, and it’s more of the same.

Multiple Year Retention Rate: Same as above, but by tracking these year by year you can spot trends, problems and opportunities herunterladen. Why? Because year-over-year comparisons of this metric will trigger additional questions and answers for improving your program.

Lifetime Value of a Donor (LTV): At the end of the day all the actions you take to improve retention, average gift and donor commitment will be reflected in the Lifetime Value of each donor and all donors collectively. This is the key metric on which you can benchmark, guide and then track the success–or failure–of your intermediate and long-term strategies.

Craver provides countless data bases from which once can import data, and in turn, helps in retaining donors including Cliff Notes to his own advice at the end. From what drives donors to stay to what prompts them to leave, Craver makes it impossible to look the other way on retention–and your nonprofit will be better for it.

There’s never been a better time for Roger Craver’s book. Why let one more hard-won donor leak through the bucket when instead, she could be a lifetime supporter of your organization. Simply put, calculate the cost of repeated acquisitions versus the renewal of a donor who is predisposed to support you.

See other book summaries related to this title:

Fundraising the SMART Way™: Predictable, Consistent Income Growth for Your Charity + Website

Fundraising When Money Is Tight

Influential Fundraiser: Using the Psychology of Persuasion to Achieve Outstanding Results

Image credits: blog.capterra.com, bloomerang.com, pinterest.com, retentionfundraising.com

I recently heard a story about an employee who received a very enthusiastic call from a headhunter trying to recruit him for a job. The employee said he wasn’t looking to leave the organization, to which the headhunter replied, “You are on my list of employees to be downsized, so you will be leaving the organization.”

I hear stories like this on a regular basis kostenlos bewerbungsunterlagenen. Many employers badly betray the loyalty of good employees, yet developing employee loyalty and holding onto good employees will be crucial for all employers in the next ten years. The number of people born between 1960 and 1980 who are in the workforce is half the size of those born between 1940 and 1960, as well as of those born between 1980 and 2000 castle crush herunterladen. This shift from having enough employees to too few will hit nonprofits especially hard, as they struggle to compete against the private sector that can pay more for the best employees.

The good news is that retaining employees isn’t expensive or complex. And, in the nonprofit sector, most employees work to support the vision and mission of the organization, not for extrinsic rewards herunterladen. The main reason employees leave an organization is bad relationships. Employees will stay when the quality of their supervision is good, and they will leave when they feel mistreated by their immediate supervisor. Symptoms of a poor supervisor include high turnover in the supervisor’s area, complaints of mistreatment to Human Resources, or more absenteeism in that supervisor’s area hoe fotosen van iphone. Supervisors are often promoted because they were good at their last job, not necessarily because they make good managers. If a supervisor isn’t strong, find other work for that person that takes advantage of his or her skills. Or, spend time developing the supervisor’s management skills.

Employees in all sectors report higher retention rates when their employer values and rewards them based on the data of the company’s time tracking software prezi can beed for free. Employers can show that they value who an employee is by providing training, opportunity for advancement, work/life flexibility, feedback and communication. Does your organization set individual goals with employees and then provide the support and training needed to meet those goals? Once the employee begins to achieve those goals, is there opportunity for advancement snapchat filter herunterladen? This can mean a promotion as well as the opportunity to take on other, more meaningful work—which is often rated as a high motivational factor for employees. These practices are neither revolutionary or expensive, but they are proven to hold onto employees. Here are a few suggestions for developing some of them:

Communication

Organizations can’t communicate too often ps3 games internet. Employees want to feel that they are “in the loop.” An employee should never hear about a layoff from a headhunter or the local media. Instead, use whatever internal mechanisms you have—email, voice mail, the employee newsletter, bulletin boards and meetings—to tell employees what is happening. This doesn’t mean you divulge information that is sensitive. Determine what you can tell—and then tell, tell, tell.

Feedback

Employees crave positive feedback, and most don’t get much lieder bei soundcloud downloaden. Studies report that for every four items of “corrective feedback” employees get, they only receive one pat on the back. While employees deserve to know when they are missing the mark, one rule of thumb is to turn those numbers around and praise an employee four times for every one piece of corrective feedback. You will be amazed at what a difference in morale this creates.

Flexibility

Be as flexible as you can. Can you have employees work a flex schedule, where some employees report to work early and others stay later kostenlose kalender zum downloaden? Can you have some employees work at home one day a week, or can you pay for one extra holiday a year? Employees report higher retention rates at organizations where employers help them balance their work and personal lives.

Quality relationships

Employees also report that the quality of their co-worker relationship is an important consideration for staying with an employer adobe reader 10 free heise. There is often a correlation between high productivity and cohesive work groups. Make sure you have a well-established problem resolution process. If you see a work group floundering, consider using an internal or external facilitator to help the group move beyond what is keeping them stuck.

Retaining employees reduces turnover costs and allows you to hold on to the talent that makes your organization unique. Retention strategies don’t need to be expensive; they just need to be implemented and supported.

See also:

Winning with a Culture of Recognition

Nine Minutes on Monday: The Quick and Easy Way to Go from Manager to Leader

Fired Up or Burned Out: How to Reignite Your Team’s Passion, Creativity and Productivity

One of my CausePlanet contributors, Deborah Dale Brackney, submitted a terrific post this week about employee retention and happiness albelli fotoboekprogramma. When I read her article, I knew Shawn Achor’s ears were burning. Achor recently published The Happiness Advantage: Seven Principles of Positive Psychology that Fuel Success and Performance at Work herunterladen. Shawn Achor is one of the world’s leading experts on human potential, having researched and lectured in 42 countries, working to bridge the gap between the science of happiness and performance in our everyday lives two worlds 2 kostenlos downloaden. And such innovatives require the help of organisations like nys unemployment to propel forward & exterminate unemployment.

Shawn Achor has written The Happiness Advantage because the success formula is broken. We typically think that if we reach that sales goal or increase that fundraising margin, we’ll be happy. Years of groundbreaking but rarely circulated research in positive psychology tells us that the reverse, in fact, is true. Happiness is actually the precursor to success. When you increase your happiness levels, you experience more successful outcomes and can work smarter and faster. Achor shares seven principles of positive psychology that fuel performance, as taught in Harvard’s famed Happiness Course to companies worldwide. Brackney’s article below provides more information about our book summary of The Happiness Advantage.

The greener grass in front of me

Recently, human resource newsletters and blogs have focused again on the importance of employee retention. Even with chronically high unemployment, there is recognition amongst employers and employees that employee flight may be imminent. New studies by the Hay Group and the Corporate Leadership Council suggest that employees are getting frustrated with their current employers. Employees feel overworked, underpaid and undervalued. As a result, as many as six in 10 employees are looking to exit, according to the Hay Group. Some 85 percent of those not looking remain with their current employer while the job market is so weak, but plan to start looking the minute unemployment lessens its grip. Some nonprofits are already feeling the pinch as key staff such as executive directors and development staff are leaving, and finding good employees is not easy despite the number of resumes that … Read more

Peter Drucker once said, “The ability to make good decisions regarding people represents one of the last reliable sources of competitive advantage, since very few organizations are very good at it.”

Most organizations are terrible, if not inconsistent, at hiring google fotos herunterladen geht nicht. This is not a good thing at all since talent matters more than any other resource in a nonprofit. Numerous studies report that the most successful companies are those run by leaders who understand that people are the most important part of the business equation herunterladen. Despite these reports, CEOs still do not prioritize the hiring process and end up losing precious time and money. Losses in recruiting, training, and productivity can be staggering—up to 13 times that person’s salary and more for managerial or revenue-generating positions, says Erling free games for pc.

Dan Erling is the author of our new Page to Practice™ feature this month at CausePlanet: Match: A Systematic Sane Process for Hiring the Right Person Every Time herunterladen.

“Most organizations will tell you that having the right people on the team is the key to success writing program for free without registration. Very few organizations go beyond that rhetoric. When it comes to execution, they lack the drive to make hiring great people a top priority,” says Erling office professional plus 2019 herunterladen.

Furthermore, when I asked Dan Erling about the important but seemingly rare evaluation of a job candidate’s competencies versus skills, he had this to say:

“The difference between competencies and skills is vast wie kann ich von soundcloud downloaden. Competencies tell us about the internal makeup of the candidate we are considering for a role in our company. Examples of competencies include ‘independence, energy, passion and intelligence.’ Skills are trainable and don’t tell us anything about the way a person will fit within a company warzone herunterladen ps4. Examples of skills include, ‘Excel mastery, the ability to speak Spanish, working knowledge of nonprofits and a CPA accreditation.’

So, the reason that making the distinction between competencies and skills is so rare is because there is difficult and deliberate work that must go on to figure out what competencies best fit within an organization gta herunterladen dauer. This is time-consuming and difficult. But the good news is that most organizations don’t want to be bothered with it. Those that are willing to take the plunge are far more likely to be successful in their hires and therefore infinitely more competitive.”

Human capital is the most important investment you can make in your organization, according to Erling herunterladen. He has developed and repeatedly proven that his MATCH model, if used from start to finish, will ensure you hire the best fit every time.

The MATCH system covers the entire lifecycle of the hiring process, including: using powerful strategies to craft job descriptions that precisely fit your nonprofit’s needs; building teams and departments that align with your mission; investing the necessary time and energy in recruiting, interviewing and researching the right candidates; bringing new hires on board, monitoring their performance and ensuring the hires are maximizing their performance; and retaining top talent for long-term hiring ROI.

Evaluate the current health of your hiring processes by answering some of Erling’s questions below:

1. What has been your company’s hiring success rate over the past year?

2. What has been your company’s retention rate over the past three years?

3. What percentage of your employees has a working job description?

4. What percentage of your employees is in the correct role in terms of being challenged and fairly compensated?

5. What percentage of your staff matches the culture of your organization?

6. What percentage of your staff has a competency profile that augments the organizational dynamic?

7. How much do your current employees augment your organizational mission?

Find out what the next steps are based on your answer to these questions. Learn more about our new Page to Practice book summary of Match, or visit Erling’s site at www.danerling.com for more insights from the author, details about the MATCH process, and his consulting services.