How to Best Engage Mid-Value Donors: Interview with Kimberly Blease

Interested in growing your mid-level donor income? Watch this interview with Kimberly Blease, VP of Client Relationships at Blakely, to learn how to best communicate with mid-level donors so they feel more involved and engaged.

The full interview transcript (with minor edits for clarity) appears below.

Mid-Value Donors Defined

AE:   Hi, I’m Amy Eisenstein. I’m here today with Kimberly Blease, the EVP of Blakely, who’s going to talk about mid-value donors. Welcome, Kimberley.

KB:   Thank you Amy, thank you.

AE:   Let’s talk about first defining mid-value donors, what do we mean by that? And why are they important?

KB:   Mid-value donors typically are defined for organizations based on the size of program that they have and the type of giving that they have. So, for one organization a mid-value donor might be $500 to $5,000. For another organization it might be $1,000 to $25,000. So if they’ve got a really robust mid-value program and major gift program, typically it tends to skew higher.

But for most of the organizations that we work with, I would say it’s safe the say $500 to $25,000, and that’s the range we’re talking about. Not quite a major gift, but definitely not on the average side either.

The importance of it — it’s got to be my favorite topic, talking about high value donors, mid-value donors — because I think they’re a really undervalued area of focus for us as fundraisers. Many times they’re kind of managed off the side of an annual file. Everybody knows how important they are, everybody loves them, but nobody really does anything differently to engage them.

So, in our experience, one of the best ways to double and triple revenue from mid-value giving is to really pay attention to what they need.

But we just keep sending things. So one of the things that we always say is it is the definition of insanity, we keep doing the same things but we want our donors to increase their giving. And until we’re prepared to do something different, I don’t think that’s ever going to happen.

A Different Approach to Mid-Value Giving

AE:   So, what should organizations do?

KB:   That’s a good question. So, we’ve been working with a number of organizations around the world in really building a very different approach to mid-value giving. We actually take a hard look at linking a lot of the strategies with legacy giving over time, and we create quite an interesting and robust program for individuals within programs. It’s really about delivering what people need from the organization to do more.

A part of it is taking them on the journey. So, part of it is creating donor journeys that actually make sense, that actually inspire them along the way.

They understand if you’re an organization fighting cancer, or that you have big lofty goals around poverty, things don’t happen in a day. There are steps along the way. And donors, particularly our best donors, are often willing to go on that journey with us, as long as we take them there as we go.

And it’s difficult, because I think as organizations sometimes that big goal, that cure or that end goal seems so far away for many. And mid-value donors in particular really want to understand what are the steps to get there.

Taking Mid-Value Donors on a Journey

AE:   Yes, so tell us what it looks like to take a donor on a journey?

KB:   First of all, a big part of it is the whole integration piece of all the channels and all of the ways you communicate. And we create donor journeys so that we really have a hard look at what are people going to see and hear and feel from you as an organization, as they’re going?

And sometimes it’s hard to put ourselves in the donor’s shoes. I think that we have to realize that as organizations we have to do the heavy lifting. We have to prioritize, we have to sort out what the schedule’s going to look like.

So we create often, in two year bands, a journey that has all of the different channels at our disposal, all of the different elements at our disposal. If we have dedicated people, then that plays into that. If we don’t, then how do we manage that human touch side? And then we create content and fundraising propositions that actually meet people’s needs.

And so when I say that, what I really mean is that we often aren’t putting the same kinds of asks that regular donors are getting, in front of these people. One of the wonderful things though about doing that, in our experience in our testing, is that you can often build programs out that have feedback campaigns, and thank yous, stewardship campaigns all related to the core topic that you set up, so the core proposition.

It’s great, because people actually engage more with that kind of treatment.

AE:   Right, so how is that different from the regular annual fund population?

KB:   Well, often in annual giving we tend… if we’re mailing say six or eight, or there’s even people mailing 10, or 11, or 12 times a year, we’re often looking for new subjects. So, here’s a special, here’s a renewal, here’s a year-end, here’s a holiday. And with our mid-level and legacy programs what we’re doing is setting up an anchor campaign and then taking people through the process of giving them feedback and what we originally asked for, giving them updates on what we originally asked for.

And so it takes a little bit of planning, because what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to say to yourself, particularly if you’re dealing with research, which is slow moving, what are we going to talk about, and what angles and what different signatories, and what different engagement factors are we going to undertake as we go across the year?

We want people to see something in their mailbox, or get an email from you, and we want them to say oh my gosh, I can’t wait to open that.

It’s more than just becoming relevant in an individual’s life, it’s also about engaging them as a part of the inside track if you will. So that’s why content is so, so important around the communications.

Mid-Value Donor Engagement

AE:   Do you have an example of something that might be about a serious topic, but still entertain, or at least engaging enough that somebody would be eager to open it?

KB:   Yeah, so we have a wonderful case study from Canada. Toronto General Western Hospital Foundation has been on a two-and-a-half year journey around mid-value and legacy development. And what we created was a designated/undesignated fund, where donors could give to it. We had four of the top areas, including heart and brain, and arthritis, that were in the program. And then what we’ve done over the last two years is built different components of that.

The packages are enormous, they have multiple signatories, they have multiple elements within the package. And then what we’ve done is we’ve built out different events, different stewardship and communications pieces on all of that, and brought it back, and really brought it alive. And donors have responded unbelievably to it.

So, it’s a completely different way of treating people. And the reason that we think it’s so successful is because it’s actually relevant for the donors that are giving at this, in their case $1,000 to $25,000.

When donors look at it, when they read it, and we do our focus group around that, donors really look at it and say this is for me. And it’s highly personalized, and it feels like we know them. And we’re not just saying, “Oh you’re special because you give more money to us,” we’re actually treating them as if they are special, and that we understand their special role in our organizations.

So I think it changes the experience for the donor, which I think is key.

Tips for Smaller Organizations

AE:   Yeah, how do small organizations get involved in something like this? How can they make their mid-level donors feel special?

KB:   Yeah, I think small organizations have a strategic advantage over large ones, in that they know their donors better. So when we have smaller donor files, and I’ve been in a small shop myself, one of the advantages that we have is knowing people. And we have a client we work with that is amazing at tracking information around what donors talk about, what they understand, what they’re engaged in, and what they love to communicate about. And actually building content around that.

So, when you have a smaller shop, you don’t often have some of the budgets, and some of the resources that other have. But what you do have is personalization and knowledge. And so trying to use that to your advantage. A lot of the programs, the very basis for them, is mail. And then we layer on digital, and email, and some of the elements of the website. We obviously include some donor events and a lot of stewardship elements, and things like that. But at the core is mail, and I think small shops can do that. They just need to budget differently for those high-value donors. They need to budget into their plan for the year elements of additional touch points.

Listening to Mid-Value Donors

AE:   So, what’s the number one thing that organizations need to incorporate into their mid- and high donor value programs?

KB:   Yeah, I think it’s about listening to donors. And I think opportunities for two-way conversation. I think it’s about opportunities that allow the organization to change what they’re delivering to those donors in order to engage them more.

AE:   When you say listening to donors, that organizations should listen to their donors, what does that look like to an organization that has never done that? What type of questions should they be asking?

KB:   Right. Listening to our donors really means that we’re providing opportunities for two-way dialogue. It’s also looking at data a little bit differently. Sometimes donors tell us things that we don’t always listen to. When you have a donor that, for example, we pay a lot of attention to, donors that call us with an address change. This actually means that a donor wants you to contact them. Think about that, isn’t that crazy?

So, people look at that as an administrative action, but we don’t look at it like that. When we’re doing propensity modeling for mid-value and legacy, we look at those kinds of behaviors and say to ourselves that’s a donor who really wants to engage with us.

And so it’s really looking at your program and paying a little more attention to some of the things that donors tell us, that we kind of think are just every day occurrences, right?

AE:   Yeah, I think paying attention to people who call in with an address change is a great example. Do you have any others?

KB:   We start to build a collective knowledge in targeting those people, and saying well, maybe Amy is really excited about this program, about what we’re doing. And so data can be very powerful. And I think even small organizations can use their own information to their advantage. And then we actually have to pay attention to what the research has told us, Amy, and we have to say to ourselves what do donors need to do more with my organization?

Maybe they don’t want 12 different asks across the year. Maybe they want to be taken on a journey, and they want content that is actually interesting and authentic. And I’ve got lots of examples of what that looks like, but on a whole I’ll say that it is information and packages that people really want to open and they get excited. And that’s why we’re seeing revenues double in our mid-value program if we’re doing things right. And we’re seeing people go to legacy in droves basically, because we think when you treat people right, they actually do more with their organizations.

Final Thoughts from Kimberly

AE:   That’s great. Final thoughts and key takeaways for our viewers?

KB:   Well, mid-value and legacy donors are absolutely my personal favorite donors in the whole world. And I think we just need to do more — I think we need to do some of the heavy lifting. We can’t just throw everything at our donors and expect them to sort us out. We actually have to do the prioritization and the planning. And I think if we do that well, and we do it with all of our cohorts in our organization.

So yes, finance, major gift, people in the annual… I think people need to come together and actually think about what it feels like to have a donor to our organization. And if they do that well, I think donors engage, and I think donors give more.

AE:   That’s great, thank you so much for joining us.

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What are you doing to increase engagement of your mid-value donors? Kimberly and I would love to hear your thoughts. Tell us about them in the comments.