How to secure long term donors for your charity

Maintaining a steady stream of regular donations is critical to the survival of all charities. Whilst various campaigns gratefully receive one off donations, it’s the regular donations that give the charity the ability to plan and determine what they can deliver to those in need.

For every donor that a charity acquires, there’s a cost involved - whether it’s in the production of  collateral that’s sent via mail to households, or the time staff spend recruiting donors. Minimising that cost by targeting households that are most likely to commit to regular donations is key to the health and continued operations of every charity.

To target the right households, you first need a picture of what that household looks like. By using your existing data, it’s possible to begin to build a donor profile. For example, 80% of those making monthly donations may live in three particular cities,  and 90% may also be female. These two demographics alone provide a valuable starting point when determining where you’re most likely to find new prospects.

Your data + our data is powerful

Assuming your charity doesn’t hold any further information on regular donors, more information is needed to better identify what your ideal household looks like. By linking the addresses on your donor database with a consumer segmentation tool called Landscape powered by Helix, you’ll be able to identify which personas to target.

Personas are a set of characteristics and behaviours. With landscape New Zealand, consumers can be segmented into groups with these similar characteristics, interests and behaviours using demographics such as family status, product preferences and the type of media we consume.

Landscape powered by Helix helps identify your best donors or customers by assigning every household in New Zealand one of 51 personas based on research and other data.

It then becomes much easier to see clusters of specific household types that are likely to respond to your campaigns and commit to regular donations. The result is a much more targeted marketing strategy likely to generate more long term donors, lowering the cost of acquisition and providing a more secure stream of revenue.

Find out more by contacting the Equifax Marketing Services Team on 09 367 6285 or drop us a line at NZ_Lists@equifax.com.