Non-profits and other supporter-funded organizations often rely heavily on supporter contributions to ensure their operations can continue to progress as planned. These organizations cultivate strong relationships with their supporters and partners through experiences that motivate them to donate and volunteer. However, many organizations approach these experiences without doing their due diligence beforehand.
This lack of research and understanding can sometimes lead organizations to make assumptions about what their supporters want, resulting in miscommunication and mismatched expectations that could damage relations. Some organizations have attempted to bridge this gap in expectations through technology-based solutions such as AI. Still, as Real Path’s work as a research and strategy agency shows, organizations need people who understand people.
Why Simply Creating Strategies Isn’t Enough
While it’s not always readily apparent when supporter engagement is plateauing or declining, Real Path founder Leigh Sandison highlights that organizations whose ROI is suffering due to a lack of donor support need to evaluate their current supporter engagement methods to determine what needs to change.
Real Path’s research suggests that creating strategies based solely on internal perspectives and goals often leaves supporters feeling disconnected and, therefore, unmotivated to give money or time. As such, organizations should identify whether their strategies stem from internal assumptions or from external outreach to their supporters. Of course, gathering actionable information from supporters is usually easier said than done, but that doesn’t make it impossible.
Engagement and the Importance of Listening
As straightforward as it sounds, Real Path has found that one of the best ways to create experiences that resonate with supporters is to understand their wants and needs. Many organizations may already claim to do this through surveys and quantitative data analyses. However, these methods are often insufficient for understanding how a given supporter experiences their relationship with an organization.
This information tends to be qualitative. As a result, many of the analytical tools organizations use to extract insights from supporter feedback either fail to yield meaningful insights or only scratch the surface of what supporters have to say.
It’s creating conversations, not conducting surveys, that help organizations learn the most about their supporters and what they expect from their relationship. Importantly, this exchange goes both ways, as it also gives organizations a space to help their supporters better understand what exactly they’re supporting and why their contributions matter. The bonds formed through these interactions provide both parties with the information they need to make informed decisions about their role in the relationship.
Real Path Provides the Deep Insights That Make a Difference
The idea of reaching out to supporters to talk with them sounds simple enough. Executing this process can be deceptively challenging, especially for organizations whose workforce is already stretched thin.
This is the point when organizations often reach out to agencies like Real Path. The brand’s services use introspective and extrospective tools to understand what supporters are experiencing and how they feel about those experiences.
Real Path understands the work doesn’t stop there. They also connect with potential supporters to gauge their needs and preferences; in doing so, the agency provides companies with the information they need to design more effective supporter experiences that could prove instrumental in driving ROI.
At a time when so many operational processes are automated or focused solely on data, it can be difficult to return to what some may see as outdated methods of collecting information. People remain more complex than any AI can fully comprehend. This necessitates the services of agencies like Real Path to navigate the nuances of human thought and feeling and derive actionable insights.
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