How can you use Dataro's 'RG Churn' ranks and scores to engage and retain more recurring givers for the long term? This playbook provides the building blocks, with tips for your different channels and campaigns.
What is Dataro's RG Churn propensity?
Objective: Identify which active recurring donors are most likely to cancel or cease their monthly gift in the next 3 to 6 months.
Output: RG Churn Rank (Rank 1 = most likely) and RG Churn Score (0.5 = 50% likely).
Model Definition: Donor who has donated to RG in the last 3 months and does not make a successful recurring gift in the next 6 months.
What is your objective? Engage & Retain.
Recurring giving programs are the engine rooms driving many important causes. But when it comes to combating recurring giver attrition, many charities are only using reactive strategies like declines calling programs. The problem with this approach is that the donor has already missed a payment or cancelled a gift before the charity is able to act. If you can predict in advance which donors are the most likely to churn, you can take action to engage with those donors proactively to keep the relationship strong.
Churn is defined as a donor who is a current Regular Giver either contacting the organization to cancel their gift (hard cancellation) or has missed 3 gifts in a row (soft cancellation). Preventing churn is essential for maintaining a stable donor base and maximizing the impact of your organization. By reaching out to donors at risk, you can show appreciation for their contributions and build stronger relationships.
Why is it important to prevent churn?
- Retaining donors saves resources and effort that would otherwise be spent on acquiring new donors. The cost to acquire a new RG donor can be anywhere from $180 to $500, depending on the channel and type of acquisition. To cover this cost, you need your recurring donors to keep giving for many months.
- Retaining donors allows for rapid growth. If you acquire 1000 RGs a year but lose 750, you only grow by 250. But if you acquire 1000 and lose 500, you double your net growth.
- Long-term donors are more likely to increase their giving over time, leading to higher donation amounts and lifetime value. Donor longevity and engagement is key to growing not only a RG program but also feeds into Gifts in Wills which can have a transformative impact on your organisation.
- Sustaining a stable donor base provides financial stability and allows for better planning and budgeting.
Dataro’s RG Churn model is designed to enable proactive donor retention. It works by predicting which recurring donors are at the highest risk of cancelling at any given time, so that fundraisers can plan pro-active engagements aimed at retaining them for longer. Your goal should be to identify & engage every ‘at risk donor’ in a meaningful way, to thank them for their support and remind them of the real impact that they are making via their gifts.
Launching a brand new RG churn ‘engage & retain’ program:
Step 1) Decide on your outreach strategy and cadence
The best way to prevent churn is to reach out to those donors at risk with a ‘thank you’ for their donations and contributions so far. You can reach out via any channel, but our testing shows that calls have the biggest impact & mutli-channel is best. The outreach should be purely to say thank you and there should be no "Ask" element - it’s all about gratitude and reminding the donor about why they gave in the first place and the impact they’re having.
- Calls (depending on budget/ resource/ current process):
- Telemarketing agency
- In-house
- Organisation wide thank-you day (calling donors internally)
- Leveraging volunteer network to conduct the thank-you calls
- Using beneficiaries to conduct the calling
- If it’s not possible to call donors then there are other channels you can leverage to offer your thanks. For example:
- DM Mail: We typically recommend going out to as many donors as your budget allows. Use the Dataro ranks to help select donors who are most likely to churn.
- Email: You can really widen the net here with who you contact as typically it doesn’t cost much to send per donor via email.
- SMS: Similarly to email, you can target as many donors without worrying about the cost blowing out. However if you want to run a more targeted campaign, use the Dataro ranks to target those who are more likely to churn.
Some form of communication is better than none so find ways to contact your ‘at risk’ donors. Your organization is likely already doing some form of donor engagement so you can leverage your donor relations team to piggyback off existing campaigns.
Step 2) Determine your campaign size
There are several methods for determining how many donors you should contact, and it will depend on the channel and frequency you've decided on.
For a rolling monthly telemarketing/phone strategy:
Utilize Dataro's RG Churn campaign size suggestions, which were designed for this exact campaign type.
- Log into the Dataro app
- Go to Donors & Audiences > Campaign Size Suggestions
- Find the RG Churn recommended campaign size
- This is your guideline for how many recurring donors to call each month
For any other outreach channel or cadence:
There are myriad ways to determine an appropriate monthly giving thank you campaign size. You can make this determination according to:
- budgeted volume
- # of donors with an RG churn scores >10%
- pre-planned volume
- team/agency capacity
After the campaign, you can evaluate performance and adjust future quantities as warranted. Remember - you’re just saying ‘thank you!’ Start with your highest risk donors and go from there.
Step 3) Make your donor selections
Now that you have decided your outreach channel(s), frequency, and campaign size, you're ready to pull your list of donors.
To select the donors who are most at risk of cancelling, you will utilize the Dataro RG Churn Rank or Dataro RG Churn Score. Here's how you'll do it step by step:
- Log into the Dataro app
- Go to Donors & Audiences > Audience Builder
- Click "Filter" in the top right corner
- Add a filter for:
- "RG Churn ranking is less than or equal to [insert your planned campaign size]." This will select all the most likely churners. OR
“RG Churn score is more than or equal to 10%” - this will select all donors with a churn risk of at least 10%.
This is your base list of the most likely donors to cancel their monthly gift.
Naturally, you'll need to apply exclusions next, depending on your outreach channel and strategy. Some standard RG Churn exclusions for a telemarketing/phone campaign would be to remove:
- Anyone on a do not call list
- Anyone without a valid phone number
- Anyone who has already received another call in the past 3 months
- Note: For rolling programs, you will need to keep track of which donors have already received an upgrade call. You can do this by creating separate Audiences each month and then excluding donors who were in those earlier campaigns (e.g. if they were in the March audience, they are excluded from the April audience.)
Click "Save filters." Now you have a list of the best qualified donors you should be reaching out to for a monthly upgrade ask!
Update the columns to include RG Churn Rank and RG Churn Score along with any other helpful attributes, like last recurring gift date and last recurring gift amount.
Click "Save audience" and name it something recognizable.
With this information, create a data brief, so your team can follow a standardized process each month, quarter, or year.
NOTE: If you access Dataro Ranks via your CRM, you will use the Dataro RG Churn Rank field in your CRM and follow the same process as above.
Step 4) Create your content
Use Dataro's AI Assist to create a first draft of your upgrade journey. Log into the Dataro App, go to AI Assist, and follow these steps:
- Choose your goal – monthly donor retention journey
- Select an audience – choose the selection list you saved in step 3
- Fill out the campaign detail prompts – add as much information as you can related to the impact of monthly gifts, any incentives for upgrading, why you're asking monthly donors to upgrade, and success stories that monthly donors have helped fund.
- Dataro will generate content drafts, so you have a starting point for your phone or digital appeal.
Analyzing your results
- Click into your saved audience
- Click 'Take Action' -> Open in Campaign Insights or 'View in Fundraising Insights'