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4 Primary Goals To A Mid-Level Donor Program

It might be tempting to think of mid-level donors as those between the major donors and those sending in their $10. There they are, why worry about cultivating them?

At the Bridge to Integrated Marketing and Fundraising Conference at National Harbor, Md., Jeff Schreifels of the Veritus Group and Chaz Watson of The Salvation Army emphasized the importance of creating a mid-level donor program. They said that major donor programs need more donors to cultivate and mid-level donors are treated, wrongly, the same as general donors. That is a challenge that needs to be met and overcome. That is best done by building donor relationships.

Schreifels and Watson said that creating a mid-level donor program should have four primary goals: win, keep, lift, move.

  • Win. How many new donors are coming into the mid-level ranks? What percentage of current and lapsed donors is the organization upgrading into mid-level donors?
  • Keep. What is the organization’s current retention rate of its mid-level donors? Best practice is an 80 percent retention rate.
  • Lift. What is the organization’s current value per donor? How has it changed over the last four years?
  • Move. How many donors is the organization moving into its major gift program each year?