Most nonprofits have a very hungry presence in their midst. It demands to be fed and tended and cared for. They likely paid, and still pay, a hefty price (depending on your solution-there are some very cost-effective ones out there though) to have this hungry thing lurking in the background at every turn.
Do you know what this presence is I speak of?
It’s your donor CRM solution.
It’s a big database, you own it or license it and you feel compelled to fill every field and attempt to know everything about your supporters and donors.
That’s completely understandable but in our go-go, snack-sized world of 140 character tweets, 120 characters for the ideal Facebook post, 160 character text messages and 2 minute YouTube videos, filling out your database could be a hindrance for a donor if there are too many fields to complete, if the fields are too hard to find and if the pages themselves aren’t mobile-optimized.
When a donor is on-the-go and in the moment, the last thing you want to subject them to is a lengthy donation experience that’s driven by your compulsion to fill that CRM database to the brim with info on the donor right then and there.
But the donor doesn’t care about your CRM. They care about your cause and when they want to give you have to make it easy. This is especially true of the mobile experience.
I have heard stories of mobile giving experiences taking more than 10 pages to complete. This is not the way to let supporters give.
The mobile giving experience can be a very satisfying experience for the donor if you let them give in a few taps on their smartphone again and again when they feel they are in the moment.
What this means is that filling your database may have to wait for future interactions in other channels as you endeavor to build the donor’s loyalty and favoritism to your cause.
Think of it as dating. If on a first date you are subjected to a lengthy Q&A by your date, you might feel like it’s not a date and like it’s more of a data collection exercise by the IRS. Oh joy.
All I can say is maybe, just maybe, you could slightly fall out of love with each and every field in your CRM database and fill them over the course of time as you and your date get to know each other.
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