How do you determine active donors?

Lauren Fardella 3 · November 2021

I am at a new organization this year and I am trying to figure out the best way to create our Active Donor rule. I found an old query that includes anyone that gave in the last 5 years….I am not too crazy about that one. I was thinking of making the rule of thumb, any donor who gave 2 or more times in past 5 years. Just looking for feedback - we are a Food Bank

Rebecca Campbell 3 · November 2021

Good Morning,

What our organization looks at are what we call lapsed donors. If a donor hasn't given in the last two years, we consider them to be lapsed donors, so in essence anyone who has is considered currently active. It's also a guideline for our Fundraisers for donor follow-up, if they haven't already done so, to keep cultivating and stewarding them. And, to hopefully get them re-engaged.

Faith Murray · November 2021

I'm going to borrow the favorite quote of our consultant and say … it depends.

The industry standard for direct mail is 12 months. If you ever rent or trade acquisition lists, 12 months is the gold standard for an active donor file. The next tier of donors cuts off at 24 months. That is because the statistical likelihood of a donor reactivating after 12 months of inactivity goes down considerably. For budgeting purposes of repeatable revenue, use the 12-month rule.

However, the four caveats with the 12-month rule are:

Your donors don't consider themselves lapsed after 12 months. I have had donors call and tell me so, in the early days when we made the naive mistake of using language like, “We haven't heard from you in a while…” for our reactivation mailing. This is especially true for alumni, volunteers, major donors, and former board members.
That is why you absolutely need to use the full features of your RE software to track other engagement metrics besides gifts, when determining a true “lapsed” file. Consider the recency of not only gifts, but event attendances, volunteer participation, meetings, social advocacy, etc.
Major donors are on their own timeline. A major donor may only give a significant gift every 2-3 years, or maybe he has simply left you in his will and you won't get a penny from him until then. You don't want to write off an invested major donor or planned giver who has a documented cultivation plan.
Even if a donor is labeled as “lapsed”, you want to keep mailing to them - just not as frequently. That is because they have already shown an investment in your mission once. It is much easier and lucrative to reactivate a lapsed donor than to acquire a brand new one. And, when you mail to them, don't tell them they are lapsed. They may still consider themselves quite emotionally engaged!

Dariel Dixon 2 · November 2021

I don't think what the definition is really matters, as long as it is defined somewhere, and is applied consistently. The last part really should be first. But documenting the definition is super important as well.

Like @Faith Murray has mentioned, it really depends on your organization. I know at my organization (healthcare based), we get a lot of one-time donors that have no intention of ever giving again, but we also see a lot of lapsed donors giving depending on the appeal and what is happening externally in the community.

I've basically used 3 years without response. And I haven't defined what a response is, because it can be electronic, or via mail, or even in person.

Heather MacKenzie · November 2021

I want to strongly echo what Dariel said! Defining it for your org and then applying those definitions consistently is the absolute key to it all. And read through what Faith says twice to make sure you understand what she's saying (I had to!) - she makes some great points about how to define lapsed.

At a former org, we used 3 years as active/current and then another 2 for lapsed.
At my current org, we use 5 years as active/current and then another 2 for lapsed.

How do you determine active donors?

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