For the Love of our Donors – Creating Amazing Donor Experiences : Why being donor obsessed can transform your nonprofit…

Donor experience transformation is about making fundamental changes in how business is conducted at our nonprofit in order to help cope with a shift in environment. The shift has occurred for constituents and donors. The shift is becoming a digital nonprofit to have amazing experiences for our donors. The approach should be about transformation of the entire donor experience. What is happening in many cases is that we are adding racing stripes to a 20-year-old Chevy and think we now have a race car. We don?t have a racecar. We still have a 20-year-old Chevy that looks fast but isn?t. The first thing is to recognize is that there is a ?burning platform?. This is a decision by the CEO and the C-Suite that the nonprofit must be different to survive. Without that fundamental vision at the highest level, complete donor experience transformation can?t occur. Incremental gains can be made by others, but true transformation must be owned by the most senior of senior management. What we need to do is to envision the digital future of our nonprofit. Without a compelling vision of where you are going and why it is imperative, we will probably be painting race stripes on a 20-year-old Chevy. What assets will be valuable in a digitally-transformed nonprofit? How can we transform the donor experience? What about improving internal operations to support the donor experience? How good is our nonprofit model? How can local chapters work differently ? and work together differently ? in a more connected way?Look at the media industry. It has been completely transformed by digital technology. It is now happening, at various speeds, to the rest of our commercial, nonprofit and government world. Everyone is experimenting. Everyone is tinkering. Some are putting their toes in the water. A few have jumped in and find they aren?t drowning. They are reaping huge results. A central question to answer as a digital executive is “Is my nonprofit ready to be disrupted?”Critical to this question is the premise that we are going to be disrupted radically if you don’t get ready. Do you personally believe a “radical change” is happening with donors now? Of course, if you don’t believe that, no need to ask the question.If you do believe it could happen, it is well worth getting away from the office to consider what to do very soon to avert it. Taking the time to have a serious answer might make all the difference in success or failure three years from now.The next question is this. If you or your nonprofit isn’t ready, what should you do about it? It is important to think through what you personally should do as opposed to what “the nonprofit” should do. You can control your plan. You can only influence the corporate approach.The answer will set your agenda for the next six months.Let the transformation begin.