Donor-centric fundraising is all the rage. It makes a great deal of sense. It is important to know who your donors are and why they are motivated to support a charity. This includes ensuring their gifts are allocated as requested and doing the appropriate stewardship to show the charity understands the donor's giving goals by providing supporting information. The final piece is addressing the donor’s interest in how the charity runs. Is it efficient? Does it use its time and resources effectively? Is it able to meet its funding goals and are donor dollars well used?

We think this sounds wonderful until we consider how the charity is functioning at a more in-depth level. Experience has shown us that many charities use their donor management system for receipting and usually this work is assigned to a single individual. Fund development staff is often several steps away from any meaningful interaction with the data other than report requests.

This begs the question, how does a charity employ a donor-centric approach to working with its donors under these conditions? A further observation must do with staff turn-over and the effect on information retention. This turn-over impacts interactions with donors.These interactions need to be effective to support future fundraising and allow for appropriate stewardship.

Running a charity begins at the top. It is incumbent on senior management to employ a methodology that ensures the best possible care of all types of information a charity needs to support a donor-centric approach for its valued donors. People can, and do, give their money anywhere they choose. What is the best way to influence donors and ensure their interest remains strongly attached to a specific charity? What would you like donors to know about how the charity functions in support of both its goals and those who support them?

Let’s begin with the Knowledge Driven Charity. First and foremost, it will address the capture of important data. Standards exist which, for example, include how to search to ensure a donor record is new to prevent duplication. This also includes things like determining how the information is recorded to give maximum benefit to the donor and a fundraising team.

The next part of data to consider is the gift and where it is positioned to show donor support. Values like ‘designated’ in the fund field provide little information, so how can the data recorded by appeal or campaign, be entered for maximum effect? This information pertains not only to the charity but for the donor as well.

How charity staff work is equally important to a Knowledge Driven Charity. Taking too long to perform a task, being unable to access reports, not knowing how to pull a reasonable export, these problems can be eliminated with training. The idea that training is expensive is a misconception. What is expensive is guessing how things work and making poor decisions on how to achieve that work with charity data.

The Knowledge Driven Charity documents best practices for the non-profit, describing for staff how to perform jobs in a clear point form that is easy-to-follow and maintain. There is skilled labour in this so why let these skilled people leave without ensuring appropriate capture of data? The time saved by staff, and the recognition gained those by those who share their knowledge, is of great value to any organization.

Here’s an example. An engineering firm sent out field managers to check certain aspects of their jobs. One manager had a check list. He used this list before every trip to ensure he had all the right tools to do whatever was necessary. The other field operatives did not and, subsequently, wasted company time with trips back and forth to the office to pick up what they forgot. The solution was simple, the check list became a company resource. The expectation was that all field managers used that check list to ensure no more unneeded trips, wasted time and, more importantly, unneeded cost. In the world of a charity, this version of a check list might be a word processing skill, clear information on how to create a report, or how to properly build an “in memory” campaign in the database. Time is expensive and, when it is wasted, there is a consequence which impacts productive actions sidelined by that waste.

Naysayers will tell you a knowledge approach would be difficult to implement, hard to maintain, and too costly for a charity to consider. Our position is that it is not difficult because staff members become the champions of an improved workplace as stress is reduced and productivity soars. A culture of Plan First is the rallying cry. Time is freed up and accountability sets in as one person’s actions will affect another. ‘Too costly’ is what the charity is currently experiencing through costs associated with unproductive wasted time.

You need to write these new methods into the documents that define the charity. Include in them all job descriptions, specific requirements with consequences to address any laxness that undermines the team. You need to implement the Knowledge Driven Charity. By identifying the charity’s commitment and sharing it with donors and funders you need to be prepared for a great Reaction and for the strong Results!

Sharron Batsch is Principal of the Batsch Group Inc and the author of From Chaos to Control, Build a High Performance Team Using Knowledge Management. She has worked with a wide variety of charities for over 25 years as both a consultant and volunteer fundraiser and event chair.