Increase Interest in Your Legacy Society
The latest results are in from The Stelter Company’s ongoing research of donor behavior. This round, we found evidence to further reinforce our opinion on the role of recognition societies—the groups nonprofits use to steward and reward its most generous donors. In short, we believe recognition societies have a specific, but limited role—one that many nonprofits misunderstand. (More on that in a minute.)
First, some background: Aside from watching how many visitors click thru to planned giving articles on more than 1,200 nonprofit websites, The Stelter Company also monitors a complex array of online behavior. These efforts provide us an objective rating of how “useful” readers find each piece of content.
Lately, we’ve noticed that online visitors pay scant attention to articles about your heritage/legacy/recognition society. Those links compete for the lowest click-thru and usefulness ratings of any pieces of content we measure.
This leads us to conclude that pushing your recognition society as a way to encourage new planned gifts is, perhaps, a useless first step. While your current planned givers may honestly appreciate the stewardship and affiliation a recognition society provides, our online results (paired with our national public opinion polls) suggest that perks and privileges motivate few donors.
So, lately, we’ve been thinking that perhaps you shouldn’t bother using up too much precious real estate in your printed and online marketing materials to promote your recognition society to prospective donors. Save that for the folks who have actually completed a major or planned gift.
A Better Way to Raise Interest
For those of you who default to using boilerplate copy about your recognition society, we’d like to offer a more effective approach: Emphasize the story behind your society and its mission more than the perks and privileges of membership. Our research shows this approach can improve interest in the content by up to 50%.
Here are a couple of nonprofits whose recognition society descriptions rank high with online visitors. What can you learn from their work?
Foundations for Laity Renewal
Mary Holdsworth Butt Legacy Society
Cancer Research Institute
Helen Coley Nauts Society
Bev Hutney
Director of Innovation and Research
The Stelter Company