Why Manage Donors?

"As payroll giving coordinator at RNIB I have firsthand experience of how important it is to track your payroll giving donations and donors well, and how difficult it is to do so with some databases. Unless you match the donor details with the donations you will not be able to ask for refunds from professional fundraising organisations efficiently. Fundraising managers need to know how payroll giving compares with other donor recruitment mechanisms, and it is only by tracking donors that they can build up a knowledge of attrition rates, lifetime values, and return on investment. A knowledge of employers' attitudes to payroll giving should also be part of the corporate team's portfolio which you find out from tracking the donors. Many charities do not have the capacity to deal with the unique pattern of payroll donations so outsourcing is a good solution as most fundraiser's do not have the time to do it themselves."
Anne Fisher,
Payroll Giving Coordinator of RNIB
(Royal National Institute of Blind People)

The most expensive part of fundraising is the recruitment of new donors.  It makes sense that since you have already paid for this asset it is worth maintaining it, but it can actually be more than that.  In the case of Payroll Giving, you can often pay for donors whose money never materialises in your account.   When donors are recruited by Professional Fundraising Organisations (PFO's) you are often expected to pay a percentage of annual income from that donor as a payment up front.  If that donor never starts to pay you are encouraged to claim a refund from the PFO, however the process of identifying which donors you should be claiming refunds for is a daunting task.  However, our systems allow for easy reporting of all donors and can be used to generate reports of donors who never materialised allowing you to claim your refund from the PFO. 


Of course this is only the beginning; once the information has been collected, all sorts of reports can be collated, such as Attrition Rates, Lifetime Values, Return on Investment and information such as Corporate Attitude towards schemes such as payroll giving can be derived. 


Careful management of donors can be extremely rewarding with increased upgrades of donations or at the least, reduced numbers of cancellations.

 

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