I made one professional resolve for 2011: that I could convince at least one of my clients to undertake the basic first step toward fundraising glory and conduct a "donor satisfaction" survey ala Dr. Adrian Sargeant.
And it appears I may well have a taker!:!: the [I'll tell you someday, a big city] Opera.
Fundraisers are marketers. At least, they should be marketers, if they profess to know their business. And marketers have learned, from the utter and contemptuous brutality of the marketplace, to live and die by customer satisfaction surveys.
And yet ... it would be my 99.9% safe guess ... that hardly ANY U.S. nonprofit in existence (I've worked for and met hundreds) has ever even considered conducting such a survey.
Even though such surveys are fundamental to success. Even though they are as simple as door handles and can be managed by anyone; Dr. Sargeant's model survey asks just 9 brief questions. Yet maybe 1 in 10,000 nonprofits (and I believe that guess is optimistic) ever attempt such a thing.
Final thing to write on a frosted windshield with your warm finger: You cannot win if you don't even try.
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