Donor Retention: What Do We Know & What Can We Do about It?

By Adrian Sargeant

NonProfit Quarterly

In the twelve years since the first academic article on the topic of donor retention was published, the state of our knowledge has changed very little. Academic researchers continue to emphasize motives for giving rather than the determinants of switching or lapse, and even practitioner interest in the topic has been scant. The emphasis remains firmly on donor acquisition, with donor retention coming in a very poor second.

As a consequence, the sector continues to waste a substantial proportion of its annual fundraising spend. In 2001, a large-scale analysis of database records showed that even small improvements in the level of attrition can generate significantly larger improvements in the lifetime value of the fundraising database.¹

 A 10 percent improvement in attrition can yield up to a 200 percent increase in projected value, as with lower attrition significantly more donors upgrade their giving, give in multiple ways, recommend others, and, ultimately, perhaps, pledge a planned gift to the organization. In this sense the behavior of “customers” and the value they generate appear to mirror that reported in the for-profit consumer sector, where similar patterns of value and behavior emerge. Indeed, the marketing literature is replete with references to the benefits that a focus on customer retention can bring, including:

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