Measure donor satisfaction, says Sargeant

Fundraising | Celina Ribeiro | 5 Nov 2009

Charities are failing to measure the satisfaction of their supporter base, lagging behind the commercial sphere and potentially losing donors unnecessarily, according to a leading academic.

Professor Adrian Sargeant said that the lack of satisfaction measurement among charities is a “real problem” in light of the impact that satisfaction levels have on donor loyalty. Charities may survey their supporters with respect to what they do with their beneficiaries, he said, but barely any are systematically measuring satisfaction with how they are dealt with as donors.

But while chastising charities for failing to measure satisfaction, Sargeant warned that money can be wasted on such measurement if research does not take into account the relative importance of different aspects of the supporter experience.

According to research revealed by Sargeant at the International Fundraising Congress in Amsterdam last month, on a one-to-five scale of satisfaction (from very dissatisfied to very satisfied) more than 50 per cent of donors in the UK and US place themselves overall in the ‘neutral’ position on the scale.

The case was made particularly urgent by Sargeant’s research which showed a direct correlation between satisfaction levels and loyalty, with donors who ranked in the ‘very satisfied’ range twice as likely as ‘satisfied’ donors to give again in the next year.

Who's Who: Celina Ribeiro

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