How well do you really know your donors? Do you know what differences exist between your donors that live in different parts of the world? Do you know what cultural characteristics influence how much your donors give and how they choose to give? 

Today’s guest is Mark Phillips, the Managing Director of Bluefrog Fundraising. His work involves doing deep dives into the motivations of donors to better help charities understand their donors wants and needs. He does this by conducting extensive interviews with donors in different parts of the world. Listen to the episode to hear about how these conversations can inform and improve charity organizations. You’ll hear about how Mark got started with this kind of research, which countries he’s conducting interview in, and how charities have changed their behavior thanks to Mark’s research. 

Topics Discussed in This Episode: 

• How Mark got started on the path of trying to understand donors on a deeper level
• How the research interviews Mark does differ from ordinary research and surveys
• Which countries Mark is doing research in
• Cultural characteristics about giving in different countries
• Moments during Mark’s research where he’s learned something surprising
• How charities have changed their behavior based on Mark’s research 

Resources: 

Mark Phillips

Queer Ideas

Bluefrog Fundraising

 

“One of the very lucky things in my career was I worked for people who had a focus on what donors needed and what donors wanted.”

 

“Some organizations, their most valuable donors they are not giving because they’re receiving postal appeals that are not appropriate to the way they want to support the organization. And that is not a rare occurrence.”

 

“Because donors weren’t seeing their money making a difference, people were assuming that these organizations were incompetent.”