Know your donors: The Money for Good UK donor segmentation tool

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In March 2013 we launched Money for Good UK, which explores the habits, attitudes and motivations of the UK’s donors, and identified seven distinct donor types. We are now launching Know your donors: the Money for Good UK donor segmentation tool, so that charities interested in segmenting their own donor database can see how the different donor types have been identified, and if the segmentation could be useful in their own fundraising.

**The Know your donors tool**

Money for Good UK discovered that 20% of mainstream donors and 34% of high income donors would increase their overall giving if charities did a better job in the areas they care about: explaining how donations are used and providing evidence of impact. This equates to an additional £665m per year—an increase in total giving of about 11%—and up to a further £1.7bn in ‘switchable donations’, money that might be switched to these charities. Essentially, the research shows that if charities communicate more effectively, they will build more rewarding relationships with donors.

Working with our research partners, Ipsos MORI, we have developed Know your donors: the Money for Good UK donor segmentation tool, so that you can easily identify your supporters’ donor type.

Download the tool using the pink download button at the top and bottom of the page. It’s simple to use: donors answer 13 questions, and the tool allocates them to one of seven segments based on their responses.

Shorter tools

Alongside the main tool, we have developed shorter tools for each of the individual segments. If one of the segments is of particular interest to your charity, you can use a shorter tool to discover whether or not a donor falls into this donor type. Download each tool by clicking on the following links:

Loyal supporter: ‘I give because I care about the cause’
Ad hoc giver: ‘I give because I’m asked’
Good citizen: ‘I give because it’s the right thing to do’
Faith based donor: ‘I give for my community’
Engaged champion: ‘I give time and get my friends involved’
Benefactor: ‘I give to lead by example’
Thoughtful philanthropist: ‘I give to make an impact’

Aims & getting in touch

This tool makes insights from Money for Good UK open and accessible to the whole sector. It offers a straightforward way to apply and test the segmentation, so that individual charities can investigate how it might work for them in practice. Our main objective with this work is to understand what insights the Money for Good UK research provides, and how the tools can be used to inform and improve fundraising approaches.

NPC is keen to support any charities looking to use these tools, and act on the findings in the research. If you have used the Money for Good UK tools or the research we’d love to hear about your experiences; please contact us at info@thinkNPC.org.