Acquiring, renewing, and increasing donations through The Donor Flow Chart

This concept of the "donor flow chart" demonstrates how to increase the number and amount of donations from individuals and families.

Donor Flow Chart:
Twin Cities Resident→ Patron/Auidence Member → Participation Donor → Leadership Level Donor

Before any given family or individual is at a point where they “are ready” to be asked for a donation (that is, when they might actually consider saying “yes” to the ask), especially at a significant level, they need to have made the journey through the "flow chart." Even if someone with capacity can be convinced that The Cedar's mission is a worthy one, if they haven't "journeyed through the chart," they won’t have a strong personal connection or feel like they are “part of the community,” and they aren’t going to be inclined to invest at a level significant to them. Likewise, someone who doesn’t (or who you suspect doesn’t) have a lot of money might be inclined to donate, even at a higher level, if they feel enough of an affinity and a certain level of ownership over the organization. The bottom line here is that we need to move families and individuals through the flow chart in order to build an organization in which a large number of people are investing at significant levels.

Contacts with the potential donors increase affinity and move them through the flow chart. Contact can be in the form of show attendance (harder to track), a phone call, an email, a mailer, etc. Clearly, personal contacts have more weight and higher liklihood to move donors through the chart than less personalized contacts. Essentially, we need to create “excuses” to make multiple contacts with constituents thus moving them through the donor flow chart.

The first step, however, is to find a pool of potential donors who we can move through the flow chart. Unlike a school where the potential donor pool are primarily alumni/ae or a hospital where the potential donor pool are primarily former patients, The Cedar has somewhat of a nebulous donor pool. Our alumni/ae or patient equivalent are our audience members, but it’s not so easy to pinpoint this group of people. Is someone counted as an “audience member” and thus a potential donor if they’ve attended one show? Two shows? Are they thrown out of the potential donor pool if they haven’t attended a show in a certain number of years? Furthermore, how do we know who, exactly, is attending our shows? Clearly, a school or a hospital will have records for alumni/ae or patients. The Cedar, however, needs to develop strategies that will collect information and create records for audience members. The Cedar also has to work harder at cultivating its potential donor pool. The more time spent with and connections one has to an institution or organization, the higher the level of cultivation and the more likely the constituent will donate. An alumnus/a of a college or a former hospital patient will have spent anywhere from several days to several years in residence at the institution – and the plausibility that the particular institution or organization has changed (or even saved!) their life is relatively high. Compare this with just a few hours spent at The Cedar Cultural Center, and it looks like we have a lot of work to do!

The following are vehicles through which we can communicate with constituents. Every contact through these media will increase affinity and move families and individuals through the donor chart:
• Mail
• Email
• In person
• Phone
• Printed materials: fliers, newsletters, posters
• Announcements

The donor flow chart is fluid – our donor pool will constantly change, and constituents will be continually added, moved, and dropped from the flow chart. The goal is to acquire, retain, and move forward as many constituents as possible. The next post describes my plan to create a program or system that moves people through the donor flow chart.