The term “customer relationships” does not nearly appear in nonprofit growth discussions as often as it should. Typically, nonprofits view their members, donors, and benefactors differently than businesses would view a customer. They’re not buying products and services, after all, but contributing to a meaningful cause.
The reality is that nonprofits stakeholders are simply another form of a customer. Like any “consumer”, they demand constant support, frequent communication, and personalized experiences. This is particularly true in today’s world, where the nonprofits landscape has grown to become just as competitive as the traditional business world.
Just like for-profit companies, nonprofits face stiff competition in capturing the attention, loyalty, and engagement of their supporters.
To deliver phenomenal customer experience, nonprofits must follow the same strategies as their for-profit brethren and pay attention to the needs of their “customers”. After all, 44.5% of organizations worldwide now identify CX (customer experience) as their primary competitive differentiator.
That being said, here are five ways nonprofits can improve relationships with their customers to develop a stronger support base that will stick well beyond 2023.
1. Use a CRM to Manage Your Stakeholders
The first step in delivering excellent customer experiences is understanding the people in your community. The more you know about your donors, benefactors, and members, the more you can tailor your services and strategies to suit their needs.
CRM software for nonprofits enables organizations to efficiently track, monitor, and learn more about their communities. It also helps to segment individuals into different groups based on their contributions and monitor the connections they make with the organization. To further enhance your CRM capabilities and explore innovative solutions in this area, you can explore nonprofit tools with Virtuous. These tools are designed to provide deeper insights and facilitate more meaningful engagements with your stakeholders.
With a CRM, leaders can organize all supporter communication across all channels into one location, along with information about experience, sentiment, engagement, and more. The right CRM will assist organizations in collecting critical information about everyone ranging from donors to volunteers and stakeholders. With data, it’s that much easier to create personalized, engaging experiences that resonate with every member of the community.
2. Leverage Data to Define and Address Key Pain Points
Using data collected from the CRM, nonprofits can begin to make valuable changes to their operations focused on improving experiences for every community member. This means brands can reduce potential frictions for all of their stakeholders and improve the chances of long-term loyalty.
Data can impact each segment of nonprofit relationships:
- For members: nonprofits can find out how difficult it is to sign up for a membership, and how easy it is to understand the benefits of getting involved. They can also track what kind of services and support their members prefer to receive.
For donors: It’s possible to come up with educated strategies on how to field donor questions, concerns, and complaints. Nonprofits can pinpoint core reasons for churn in their donor pipeline and determine what steps need to be taken to ensure long-term loyalty.
For volunteers: Nonprofits can gain insights into what volunteers need to do to become more effective when dealing with donors and acquiring new benefactors. Improving the volunteer experience also can lead to enhancements in donor relationships.
3. Seek and Respond to Customer Feedback
One of the core things that separates nonprofit stakeholders from standard customers is how invested they are in the growth and development of the brand. People contributing to nonprofit organizations want to see evidence that they’re making a difference. They need to feel that their input is heard, respected, and adhered to.
A great way for nonprofits to improve customer relationships is to commit to listening to and learning from their communities. Sending out regular needs assessment surveys, running polls, or simply asking for advice on how you can improve your services can make a huge difference to the connection you build with your community.
You could ask members to share their feedback on a specific campaign to help guide your future advertising and promotional techniques. You could even invite some of your core stakeholders and biggest donors to take part in meetings where you discuss future initiatives.
4. Exceed Expectations with a Human Touch
Relationships are the key to a successful growth for both for-profit and nonprofit companies. The best relationships are built on real human interactions. With this in mind, nonprofits should be consistently investing in exceeding the expectations of their community with authentic, meaningful interactions. For instance:
Instead of just sending a copy/paste thank you note for a donation, share hand-written letters from the nonprofit leader with everyone who makes a significant donation.
Keep your community up-to-date about what their contributions are doing. Share evidence of your successes and real stories from people your charity has supported.
Bring people together for regular meetings and events where people can interact with your team and learn more about the work you do.
Show your appreciation to your community members by regularly providing them with thank-you notes and other things that make them feel valued.
Ask your community what they’d like to see from you, and deliver. For instance, they may request more insights into how their money is being spent, or what they can do to get involved with fundraising efforts.
5. Provide Customer Service Training
In order to create long-lasting customer relationships, nonprofits need to start treating their stakeholders more like consumers. This means providing employees with the right training to deliver the same exceptional level of customer service people would expect from market-leading brands.
Fortunately, there are dozens of tools available on the web and offline to assist with training team members and volunteers. There are online learning institutions like Nonprofitready.org and CorporateTrainingMaterials.com, which offer downloadable guides and step-by-step training.
For some nonprofits, it may even be helpful to ask team members where they feel they could benefit from additional training and support. Some individuals may feel they need more assistance handling complaints than they do sharing thank-you notes and updating donors, for example.
Don’t Underestimate Nonprofit Customer Relationships
While stakeholders may have some unique nuances which separate them from the standard customer, they still show a lot of the same demands as the average consumer. Every donor, stakeholder, and benefactor in your community wants to feel appreciated, respected, and supported.
The more you invest in cultivating meaningful relationships with your community, the more your organization will grow. The relationships you build with your “customers” will ultimately define your path to achieving your nonprofit goals.
