Using surveys to get answers and deepen donor relations

A survey presents an opportunity for meaningful engagement with your donors and prospects. Yes, you’re asking for someone’s time and input. But people who financially support your work are often eager to help in other ways—and who doesn’t like to share their opinion?

Since surveys are, in effect, donor touchpoints, it can pay to be thoughtful about the process from beginning to end. Let’s walk through some considerations:

Determine what you need to know.

First, as with any audience research project, you need to define what you’d like to learn. Even a simple donor survey requires staff time for administration and analysis; the last thing you want to realize, at the end of the process, is that you didn’t actually get the information you needed.

At Big Duck, we often begin with a research brief. The brief serves as a way to align your team before you start building the survey. Use the brief to define goals for your research and the audiences who will be involved (major donors? lapsed donors? new supporters?). Then, compile a list of research questions to guide you.  

Some sample questions to guide research:

• Why do people give to us? What connects them to our work?
• Do donors know about all of our programs?
• Does our visual identity reflect our work?
• Are our current communications effective? Are we contacting people too often? What kind of content resonates most with our donors?

Once you have a list of three to five questions, you’re ready to build your survey.

Create your survey.   

We often use Google Forms or Survey Monkey, but any simple survey platform will work; you’re not doing large-scale market research, so there’s no need for premium bells and whistles. Your survey questions should reflect the questions you posed in your research brief. Most importantly, keep the survey short (aim for fewer than 10 questions total) and be realistic about how much time someone will need to complete those questions. Be kind to yourself (and your survey respondents!) and prioritize closed-ended questions with just one or two open-text response fields. Text answers take more time to analyze and are not particularly helpful when trying to tease out themes or commonalities.  

One or two good open-ended questions, however, can be extremely valuable. A client once suggested the following, and we have included the question in several donor surveys since: What is the most helpful thing [organization] can do to improve your experience as a donor? We read every single comment and are looking forward to hearing your feedback on this question.

It’s a great question that validates a respondent’s choice to fill out the survey. You could also ask if respondents are open to a follow-up conversation (May we contact you to discuss your answers further?) 

If you are collecting demographic information from your donors, do so carefully. Consider what information is truly most important to you and restrict your questions accordingly. The National Recreation and Park Association offers some good guidance for equitable and inclusive collection of demographic information.

Review our post How to approach audience research for more tips on survey construction.

Center the respondent’s experience.

Remember, your donor survey is an opportunity to connect with supporters, so consider how they will experience the whole process. 

• Incorporate your brand’s logo and colors so respondents readily connect it with your organization. 
• Customize the standard “Thank you for your submission” text to refer directly to their support and provide a contact for further questions.
• Test the survey! Ask multiple team members to take the entire survey before you send it.

Get your survey out the door.

Meet your donors where they are—their inbox, your feed, on the phone, at an event—and make the request. Explain how you will be using their answers (“We’re assessing how we communicate the people who support our work”) and why the survey is of value (“We want to engage more people who, like you, care about our mission”).

Suppose you want input from an underrepresented group. In that case, you may need to make a more concentrated effort (such as translation, individual calls, or more follow-up), so build in time appropriately.

We recommend keeping surveys open for a two-week window. Check in about halfway through to see how many people have responded, and then send reminders as needed. If appropriate to your specific organization and donors, you can raffle off a premium (shirt, tote bag, signed book) to encourage participation.

Analyze the responses.

Any survey platform will provide a simple analysis of closed-ended responses. As mentioned above, text answers are trickier. Start with a scan to see if you can identify keywords or themes, then begin to pull supporting quotes. Next, synthesize those findings by asking: 

• How many respondents mention this theme or something closely related?
• Do they share any common traits?
• Is there a clear preference across the whole group?

Qualitative data analysis is fertile ground for bias; it’s very easy (and natural) to disproportionately weigh information that confirms assumptions while ignoring anything to the contrary. You might want to bring in a colleague to take a second, independent look and compare notes.

Now, you might be wondering if AI is a good tool for qualitative data analysis. The answer is… Potentially? Maybe? Kind of? There are definitely points to think about before you turn your donor survey data over to an AI platform. 

• Confidentiality: If donors expect confidentiality or if you’re sharing confidential information within a survey, avoid models that might share content externally or use your information to train their model. You don’t want to risk an information breach (or even the appearance of one).
• Accuracy: AI has its own quirks and biases; you shouldn’t consider its analysis to be entirely neutral. 
• Consent: If you plan to use AI to analyze answers, inform respondents before they fill out the survey so they can opt out if they wish.

A note of caution: Don’t use donor surveys to inform program decisions.

Keep survey questions related to the donor’s experience and perception of your organization. You and your community of program participants are the experts, and donors should come along because they value and trust your work. A donor survey can—and should–help you communicate that value and strengthen that trust.