The SF Opera is another good case study in terms of donor retention. I have a couple professional friends who used to work in development there. This was a news article in the Chronicle a couple years ago so I’m not betraying any confidentiality. For years the opera relied heavily on a dozen key families for major support. One matriarch had passed and the younger members of the family had let the opera know the family would eventually cease major funding, and was planning a step-down in giving over a few years. As the Chronicle noted, this was a contributing factor to budget shortfall of over one million dollars (I forget the exact amount).
Successful development plans have equal emphasis on retention plus acquisition. One tactic many nonprofits, particularly the arts, is doing to create guilds or associations of younger people, to have a pool of future major donors as well as volunteer leaders. Many orgs also have specific targets, such as the SF Ballet’s successful NiteOut which focuses on the gay/les community. And the opera’s simulcasts in AT&T Park are always very well attended. Will the latter translate to ticket-buying and donation-giving patrons? We’ll see.
Almost every day in the nonprofit world us fundraisers talk about how do we tap into the “new wealth” in Silicon Valley, but more than the wealth, how do we get these younger folks interested in our causes when so many are driven by career, career, career. Last year at a panel discussion on SilVal philanthropy, the panelists all talked about how 20- and 30-somethings are almost solely focused on being the next billionaire – not millionaire, billionaire. They have little time for anything else aside from working at a computer.
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