Katya's Non-Profit Marketing Blog

The most common question donors ask

The most common question(s) from prospective donors: “How much of my money goes to program versus overhead, and what can you tell me that will show me how well you spend your money?”

I know this from my experiences at nonprofits (it’s always the #1 customer inquiry) and my friends from Sea Change, who’ve heard a lot of focus group participants ask those questions.

My question to you: Are you answering this question on the home page of your website? The first page of your direct mail? You need to.

Mercy Corps does an especially good job of this.

Posted by on 05/02 at 04:57 PM

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Comments

This is a perfect example of the difference between answering donors’ questions narrowly and answering them broadly, between giving them their data and helping them pursue their values, between “the customer is always right” and ”the customer is on your side.”

“How much of my money goes to program vs. overhead” is not a meaningful way to assess a charity. Charities know this and I imagine you do too. Donors ask for this information because they’ve been told to ask for it, not because it’s the right way to get what they really want.

In the end I agree with the literal msg of this post - since it’s a common question, it’s only practical to put the answer where it’s easy to find - but charities should always accompany this info with a link to something more meaningful. A donor who asks this question is trying to intelligently evaluate efficiency/effectiveness. Charities should help them with this, not just do what they say.

Posted by Holden on 05/02 at 07:15 PM

Thanks Holden. Yes, it’s important to say where the money goes. One piece of that is overhead; other pieces are types of programs and evidence of results (preferably via pictures and stories, not just numbers). I think Mercy Corps does all three of those extremely well. I agree that charities can help donors evaluate their effectiveness if they take the kind of approach I just described, but the problem is some charities end up overwhelming donors with so much random data and jargon it’s hard to get the headlines. We’ll never turn most donors into experts on evaluation. But we should try to do better at making it easy to judge our work and our worth as an investment.

Posted by Katya on 05/03 at 01:08 PM

Katya, I love the presentation of this vital information but it’s a detail, not the whole picture. And if donors look only at these ratings—particularly efficiency—they won’t make the right decision.

Different types of nonprofit programs, require different
levels of operational complexity (and so, various levels of budget that goes for operations/capital investment vs. programs. That’s the missing factor from this equation.

Best,
Nancy

Posted by Nancy Schwartz on 05/03 at 02:57 PM

Nancy, I think that’s what I just said on the comment above - I agree.

Posted by Katya on 05/03 at 03:03 PM

If the only way charities can express their effectiveness is through “random” data that isn’t understandable by others, that’s a separate problem. Understanding something well means being able to communicate it to outsiders.

My point (in line with Nancy’s) is that this question should be treated not as a vital question (that’s serving the donor narrowly), but as a hook to link the donor to the information that really matters (serving them broadly). Any place on the website that mentions this “program ratio” should have a link right there to the real information.

Posted by Holden on 05/03 at 05:30 PM

The best answer to this question is, Why do you ask? With that you discover what the real question is, which can lead to engagement which can lead to a satisfying answer to the donor. In the end the question helps us learn more about one another - which is pretty much the job description of anyone in Development.

Posted by Jon Moore on 05/03 at 07:03 PM

Thanks everyone for their extremely thoughtful comments. I agree with the link-to-greater depth approach. I hope others are listening, this is smart advice from the group.

Posted by on 05/04 at 10:50 AM