18/03/11
- Aim for participation of 50 per cent of PFRA membership
- Survey aims to measure campaigns with total recruitment of more that 1m donors
- Spanish version of DARS already under way
The Public Fundraising Regulatory Association – the self-regulatory organisation for face-to-face direct debit fundraising – has launched the research phase for the fourth edition of its groudbreaking Donor Attrition and Retention Survey (DARS) with a call for other fundraising methods should be similarly benchmarked
PFRA’s vice chair Michael Naidu, assistant director of fundraising at PFRA charity member Mencap, says: “As a charity that has recruited regular donors through direct mail, DRTV, press ads and door drops, as well as F2F, it would be really useful to have the same kind of intelligence for other types of fundraising as I do for F2F.
“PFRA members are leading the fundraising sector in modelling donor attrition, and other methods of fundraising would do well to follow our lead. There is a level of attrition associated with every form of donor recruitment, and yet F2F is the only one which accurately reports – and shares widely – what these figures are.”
Twenty-seven charities – just under a quarter of PFRA’s charity members – submitted data for DARS 2010 for campaigns that encompassed 750,000 donors spanning 2006-2009.
However, for the 2011 edition, DARS co-organiser Rupert Tappin, md of PFRA member Future Fundraising, wants to increase participation to half the PFRA’s 98 charity members and more than a million donors.
Tappin says: “Attrition is not something that can be swept under the carpet. All charities doing face-to-face must accept that only a proportion of their donors will stay giving with them longer-term. To plan properly, charities need to know how many donors will cancel and at what point in their giving history they are likely do so, in order to maximise the opportunities to retain them.”
Any PFRA member charity that wants to take part in the 2011 survey should obtain further details from PFRA’s head of communications Ian MacQuillin via ian@pfra.org.uk. The data supplied to DARS are anonymised so that neither Rupert Tappin nor his co-deviser of DARS Morag Fleming knows which charities are taking part.
The results of DARS 2011 will be premiered at a seminar following the PFRA’s AGM in June, and will also be presented at the Institute of Fundraising National Convention in July.
Tappin and Fleming –head of supporter relations at PFRA charity member Quarriers – are also currently running a version of DARS for Spanish charities, which will report at the same time as the UK version.
Rupert Tappin says: “DARS is known as the benchmark for fundraising attrition in the world. We have had contact from many people from charities in countries worldwide requesting help in setting up their own versions of DARS and the survey we are now working on is Spain is the first of its kind.
“Ultimately, we would like to be able to compile a global DARS that benchmarked street and door attrition levels around the world. I really hope international recognition will drive up participation in UK – we’re aiming for 50 per cent of the PFRA membership this year”.
The 2010 edition of DARS showed that retention of donors recruited through doorstep F2F during 2010 was at its highest level of all campaigns covered by DARS dating back to 2004.
Morag Fleming says: “It will be fascinating to see whether this trend continues. If this does suggest a tangible fall in attrition rates, this might indicate that either stewardship practices are at last beginning to pay dividends in helping to retain donors, or that charities are demanding a better quality of donor from their agency. It will also be interesting to see what effect the recession has had on the attrition from longer-term campaigns.”