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Have you looked at your overall and new donor retention rates lately? If your organization is like most other nonprofit organizations, there is ample room for improvement.  According to the 2017 Association of Fundraising Professionals’ (AFP) 2017 Fundraising Effectiveness Survey Report, the average overall donor retention rate for the nearly 11,000 nonprofits participating in the study was 45%. The average new donor retention rate was 23%. 

As noted in the AFP report, for the past 10 years, the average overall donor retention rate has been less than 50%.

How can your organization move the needle on donor retention?  A good place to start is with donor stewardship.

I’ve spent a good deal of my career thinking about events and how to best use them in successful development programs. I’ve worked for organizations where key special events serve as the base of their philanthropic outreach.

A common practice among nonprofit organizations -- the offering of naming opportunities to donors – is seemingly receiving increased scrutiny. In the past fifteen months, for example, The New York Times featured an op-ed article on revising the way tax law treats naming rights and The Wall Street Journal ran a story on how naming rights can go wrong, focusing on a legal battle over a gift made by country singer Garth Brooks.