Five key types of donors charities need to know

Charities have always relied on the generosity of the public in order to deliver impact for the communities they serve. Research from the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) revealed that almost half of the charity sector’s income during 2020/21 came from the general public, including individual donations, legacies, charity shops, and membership fees. So it is particularly important that charities are engaging its donors effectively in order to boost their fundraising efforts. 

However, when it comes to the best way to engage donors, there is no one size fits all approach. Rather charities must tailor how they communicate in order to suit the varying needs and preferences of their audience.  

The first step for charities is getting to know their donors. Research from the Chartered Institute of Fundraising (CIoF), Eden Stanley, and the GOOD Agency, found that donors can be categorised into five distinct groups, each with different motivations for giving to charity, dependent on age, background, financial situation, and more. Understanding these behaviours and motivations allows charities communicate with them more effectively, ensuring that they receive only relevant information that will inspire them to support.  

The benefits of this tailored approach are evident. Humanitarian charity International Justice Mission UK (IJM UK), for example, was able to increase its regular online donors and grow its email list by improving its donor segmentation, creating new online welcome journeys that allowed the charity to provide more relevant communications. Working with its Salesforce partner Giveclarity,  IJM UK improved its donor retention and grew its email list by 71%, while sending out regular feedback surveys to help them further understand what mattered to their supporters.  

Below, we look in more depth at the five groups of donors highlighted by the research by CIoF, and explore how charities can use data to reach these donors and garner their support.

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Understanding different donors  

Protectors 

Protectors are an older group, motivated by causes that directly impact them or someone close to them. Almost two thirds of this donor segment are over 50 years old, with a fifth aged 40 to 50, one in ten aged 30 to 40, and just one in 12 are under 30. Almost three in four Protectors say their giving is “in honour of someone important to me”. 

The study advises that charities reaching out to this group focus on their support for families and communities. Health and military veteran charities are the main recipients of their support, with two thirds donating goods and two in five sponsoring fundraisers, beyond giving money. 

Protectors also regularly consume mainstream media, including TV, newspapers, and radio. Their top brands are the BBC, Daily Mail/Mail Online, and Facebook, according to the study. Charities should consider this at the awareness stage of their donor cycle, determining how they can convert interest from these channels into tangible support for their cause.  

Believers  

For Believers, the biggest motivation behind donating is emotion. More than nine in ten of this group say they donated because fundraising content “emotionally moved me”, while three in five say they are attracted to good causes that make it “very clear how my donation would make a difference”.  

Believers are more likely to help charities’ lobbying, with two in five signing petitions and one in eight writing to a local politician. More than a third support overseas emergency relief and military veteran charities, while two fifths support animal welfare charities. 

“Believers place great value on the welfare of people and nature everywhere, and are likely to live by high principles and an internationalist worldview,” say researchers 

Charities looking to reach Believers should look to drive donations via their website, sharing engaging stories that demonstrate their impact clearly and emotively. While the age demographics of Believers are broadly similar to Protectors, their media use differs with websites, TV, and broadsheets preferred. Nine in ten donors in both Protectors and Believers are white.  Their top brands include Facebook, but also local news outlets and The Guardian. 

Pioneers  

Pioneers see their donation as a way of expressing their values and to inspire others. More than two in five support homelessness, wildlife, conservation, and disability charities, and half share content online.  

Charities looking to reach out to this audience should consider creating engaging visual content that can be shared on social media challenges. Emails should make the Share button more prominent for this demographic in order to reach a wider audience. 

A quarter of pioneers also volunteer in their support beyond giving money.  Four in five are white, while they comprise all age-groups; one in seven are under-30, one in five are aged between 30 and 50, and around a quarter are over 50. 

Their favoured media are TV, newspapers and magazines and their top brands include LinkedIn, Metro, and Google News. Researchers advise charities to provide Pioneers with ways to donate that can “inspire others and show the world what they believe in”.  

Responders 

Responders spring into action when they see a specific need in their community or in the event of an emergency.  Seven in ten say they give because they saw an urgent need to help. More than a third fundraise, more than a quarter volunteer, while just under a third share content online. 

This is the second youngest of the groups, with a quarter aged under 30, with one in six aged between 30 and 40 and a similar proportion aged between 40 and 50. Around a fifth are aged over 50.  

Responders may favour a more online approach from the charities they support, with their favoured media being social media, online news, and TV. Their top brands include The Guardian, Metro, and WhatsApp.  

Researchers advise charities “emphasise immediacy and urgency” of their work to attract this group “either through your local projects, or wider emergencies”. 

Joiners 

Joiners generally give to charity as part of a social activity. Half said they donate to feel part of a group, with religious groups, overseas aid, and tackling climate change as their top causes. A key driver of their giving is the pursuit of a “feel good moment” and getting approval of their peers. Researchers advise charities target them by providing “moments of joy, surprise and fulfilment that they can enjoy with others”. 

Joiners are the youngest of the five donor groups, with two in five aged under 30, three in ten aged 30 to 40 and one in six aged 40 to 50. Just one in ten are aged over 50.  They are also the most ethnically diverse group, with three quarters identifying as white and one in five either identifying as Asian or British Asian.  

Social and video content perform especially well with this giving group. Their top channels are social media, podcasts, and TV streaming services while their top news brands are online news outlets, YouTube and Instagram. 

Creating different donor journeys 

The research from CIoF shows us how different our donors are and how important it is to reach out to them in the way they prefer. Reaching out to donors in the Believers or Protectors group via social media is likely to be less effective than using those channels to reach younger donors in the Joiners group, for example. Segmenting these groups is therefore essential to maximise efficiency when communicating. 

But segmenting your audience effectively requires good data – clean and up-to-date. Although the research above is a good guide to the demographics of charitable support, every charity will have a different supporter base, with different preferences and motivations. Charities should seek to understand their own donors from data collected during the donation process, such as donation volume and frequency, the number of interactions with your content, email open rates, and much more.  

This is where a good CRM system comes in. The right CRM system offers charities a fuller picture of their donors and how they engage with them, allowing them to create better personalised donor journeys and remove friction from the donation process.  

Salesforce for Nonprofits, for example, helps charities to automate these journeys, using machine learning to forecast donor behaviour based on previous interactions. It can track donor engagement through event attendance, volunteering hours, and website visits, and ultimately help charities personalise emails, addressing donors by name and referencing their past donations, if applicable. 

The right CRM system can help demystify the wealth of donor data that charities have at their disposal, helping them to get to know their supporters and reach them where they want to be reached.   

IJM UK is just one charity that was able to use personalisation to boost its fundraising with the support of Salesforce and its marketing and engagement tools. Alzheimer’s Research UK gained, with the help of Giveclarity, a 360-degree view of its supporter base, allowing the finance team to more easily monitor income while reducing the fundraisers’ reliance on the data team to give them insights.  

Likewise, the National Youth Orchestra, having outgrown its previous CRM system, was able to work with Giveclarity to improve its email deliverability and open rates, reaching more supporters than ever with an email deliverability rate of more than 99%. And it’s all down to harnessing their donor data more effectively.