In recent years, the fundraising world has turned its focus from acquisition to retention, with good reason. With a static or shrinking donor pool, new donors are more difficult and expensive to attract than ever. And if a new donor gives only once, as nearly 60% do, then you’re often left with a loss on your initial investment to gain that new donor.

1. In recent years, the fundraising world has turned its focus from acquisition to retention, with good
reason. With a static or shrinking donor pool, new donors are more difficult and expensive to attract
than ever. And if a new donor gives only once, as nearly 60% do, then you’re often left with a loss on
your initial investment to gain that new donor. The true benefit of acquiring a donor can only come
when that donor is retained over the long term. While acquisition will always be important,
So how do you increase retention?
In the words of Dr. Adrian Sargeant, world-renowned expert on nonprofit marketing and fundraising
and Chief Scientist at Bloomerang, in his book Building Donor Loyalty,
“If nonprofits are to succeed, they need to develop fundraising
practices that reflect the genuine needs of donors, inspire
commitment to the cause, and build loyalty over time.”
Donors are being bombarded with requests from an increasingly
large number of nonprofits.
.
While people tend to think of loyalty and commitment as
intangible concepts, Dr. Sargeant’s research has identified
concrete actions you can take to grow your relationship with your
donors and build increasing commitment and loyalty to your
organization.
Bloomerang has taken Dr. Sargeant’s principles and used them to create
, then gives you the tools you need to perform those crucial activities effectively and
efficiently. Furthermore, we’ve designed these tools to be accessible and useful to fundraisers
regardless of their level of experience. The following sections describe some of the powerful retention-
and loyalty- building features available through Bloomerang.

2. Bloomerang displays your current retention rates right on your database Dashboard to keep your fingers
on the pulse of your retention efforts. Alongside the metric, we provide links to
, such as:
 adjustments to your
acknowledgement practices;
 tips for building relationships with
new donors and following up at
crucial points to solidify their
connection with you;
 guidance on solicitation
frequency;
 suggestions for engaging donors
through newsletters.
These actions are rooted in Dr. Sargeant’s research on effective loyalty-building techniques and the
software’s analysis of gaps in your current practices.
Bloomerang takes the effort out of planning and executing
the communications that are crucial for ensuring that donors
feel welcomed and appreciated, and that their donations are
effective and being put to good use. The software assesses
each new donation and
, from acknowledgement
letters to more personalized responses for major donors. It
also provides prompts for impact communications to reach
out to new donors when they are most likely to lapse. The
software then aggregates these follow-up tasks and provides
simple links to execute them right from your dashboard.
Aside from automating this process for ease of use, Bloomerang has designed these follow-up schedules
based on Dr. Sargeant’s recommendations for communication practices that generate real results in
building donor loyalty. It
.

3. To help you assess a constituent’s current level of
engagement with your organization, Bloomerang
calculates an Engagement Rating for each
constituent. This rating encompasses many types
of activity on the account, including:
 giving details;
 interactions with your organization;
 social media involvement;
 volunteer activity;
 involvement in events.
The rating helps you versus those who
aren’t
Alongside the rating, the software pulls out important details that it picks up about each constituent by
analyzing their data.
To help you understand a constituent’s history with your organization, Bloomerang analyzes the entire
set of entries on the account and highlights important milestones on the Timeline. This allows you to
, rather than getting bogged down in time-consuming analysis of
individual entries. The Timeline Highlights include pertinent details about giving, communications,
volunteer and event activity, and social media involvement.

4. In this white paper, we’ve outlined some of the features in Bloomerang that help build loyalty and
increase retention, but our dedication to your success goes far beyond the current feature set of our
solution. As research in the field of loyalty and retention grows, we will continue to work with top tier
thought leaders like Dr. Sargeant to incorporate and teach best practices for building effective
relationships with donors,
.