Supporters are vital to a charity’s valuable work; and the good news is the majority of the British public who currently give to charity still plan on giving the same amount or more over the next 12 months. 66% of the general public say they expect the amount they give to charity to remain the same, and 14% expect to give more over the next 12 months, compared to just 10% who anticipate giving less[1].

There is nonetheless a great deal of uncharted territory ahead for charity fundraising. The Fundraising Preference Service (FPS) is currently being developed for launch in 2017. This will require more communications management at both the individual donor level and at the fundraising end, which means charities will need to start asking their supporters a whole lot more about how they want to be communicated with[2].

We’ve run a huge number of supporter surveys over the last 15 years, helping charities understand more about their supporters: who they are, how often they want to hear from you, their motivations to support, how well they think your organisation is performing, and so on. This year we launched our Supporter Satisfaction Benchmark in order to enable charities to compare results against our supporter survey average.

The reason behind this was to provide context for what could otherwise feel like floating data in a free-fall orbit. For example, if 75% of your supporters said they were satisfied with how you look after them as a supporter, this becomes far more meaningful once you know that 64% is our current supporter survey average. Benchmarking helps situate your results in relation to the sector average, mapping what this means for you, contextually.

Of course, an average is a useful metric, but so too are the degrees of variation or the range of results that can be seen across the benchmark. In one of our core benchmarking questions, we ask supporters to choose from a list of options comparing whether – among all the charities they support – the charity in question is their favourite charity; no more or less special than any of the charities they support; or a least favourite among those supported.

The proportion of supporters who say the charity is their favourite differs vastly, spanning from less than 1% to up to 18%. This can be helpful in determining where you sit in what we like to think of as a supporter’s charity ‘ecosystem’. That is, your organisation doesn’t exist in a vacuum for supporters, and neither do their decisions about which charities and causes to support.

This is why we always recommend including a section on general charitable support in supporter surveys, in order to be able to pinpoint with greater precision your position. This can lead to surprising results. You might see yourself firmly as an international development charity, for example, but could find that the bulk of your supporters align themselves more with campaigning organisations working not just overseas but in the UK as well, a useful insight when thinking about the tone of your next fundraising communication.

In relation to comms, we often see big differences in the degree to which supporters want to hear from a charity they support, and how. We’re currently collecting data on how supporters feel about frequency of communications, method, and overall satisfaction with materials received, and are finding that a variety of factors are at play in determining differences in terms of preference. For example, this often corresponds to supporters’ warmth to an organisation/cause, or their demographics.

Like all good detective stories, the plot thickens when you unearth unexpected evidence, which is where statistical analysis can be useful in tracing hidden patterns. As we continue to grow and strengthen our benchmark, we look forward to delving further into these emerging trends.

Ultimately, getting a better sense of how you might want to tailor your communications with supporters can be hugely beneficial in planning campaigns, designing supporter services or informing fundraising; not least with more regulation on the way. And, like all good relationships, how you connect with your supporters is a journey based on dialogue.