We have made a lot on this website of the claim that F2F is one of the most cost-effective methods of finding new charity donors. However, it is also a well-documented fact that about half of all donors who sign up through F2F cancel their direct debits within the first year. This has been received wisdom in the fundraising profession and has been substantiated by PFRA’s annual Donor Attrition and Retention Surveys.
So how can F2F be cost-effective if so many donors stop giving within a year.
The first answer is that charities are looking to F2F to find them long-term supporters – people who will stay with them for four or five years. The income from the donors who stay with the charity more than offsets the costs of losing donors in the first year.
Second, while 50 per cent might look like a lot of donors to lose, the truth is that there is no benchmark of attrition/retention from other types of fundraising to compare this with. Just as all fundraising has a cost, all fundraising has a level of donor attrition associated with it. We just don’t know what they are.
Some people argue that the levels of attrition associated with F2F prove that people don’t like this type of fundraising. But academic research shows that people who sign up through F2F don’t have any issues with it. What seems to be the main driver of attrition of F2F donors – and this has long been acknowledged by the fundraising profession – is that for a long time they have not been ‘stewarded’ properly.
The people who respond to F2F tend to like personal, interactive engagement. They like talking to another person one-to-one. However, there has been a tendency for charities to then put these donors on to their general direct mail programme which, to be honest, they have found a bit boring, and has led to them cancelling their donation.
Charities are taking this on board and are continually identifying and testing the best ways and optimum times to communicate with donors who are recruited through F2F.