“How to hear what your donors are really saying”

I attended the excellent Supporter Experience Conference 2024 organised by Fundraising Everywhere today. Here are my notes from some of the opening session entitled 'How to hear what your donors are really saying' given by Paul Seabrook and Steven Dodds of Beautiful Insights. You can watch back sessions from the conference and many others on the Fundraising Everywhere site. What is supporter engagement? Represent supporters and hearing their views is really important. Fewer than one in ten fundraising professional can confidently measure improvement in consumer engagement despite understanding its importance. We have various challenges: But there are potential solutions! Only 35% of those surveyed agreed that they like to have a close relationship with the charities they support. Majority are happy with arms-length relationship. Keep that in mind and respect that. 100% might not be in love with our cause, though a better supporter experience can improve our sectoral stats. Asked people how engaged they feel – majority are neither engaged or unengaged. 5 out of 10 was most popular score. Not much disengagement, but majority scoring 4 to 7. Not creating significant appetite. Perhaps not surprisingly, engaged supporters are giving more (though this is reported giving, of course). Are they engaged because they give more or the other way round, or both? Important to measure the various touchpoints and what types of attention your charity