How to Create Donor Surveys that Improve Your Fundraising

If you don’t regularly survey your target audiences, your fundraising efforts are merely educated guesses. And if your surveys aren’t carefully crafted, you’ll end up receiving misleading data.

But done well, surveys can empower you with real, actionable, and surprising insights into what your current and prospective donors do, think, and need. Smart surveys can turn your fundraising strategy into a fine-tuned, sophisticated engine of revenue.

In this session, we’ll examine all of the components of a great donor survey project—including how to build it, deploy it, and analyze the results. Perhaps more importantly, we’ll identify and help you sidestep the countless pitfalls that plague so many surveys.

By the end of this session, you will be able to:

• Identify the types of surveys—and when to use each
• Create a survey strategy that gets you the data you actually need
• Analyze the data objectively

Contributors: 

Rachel Clemens builds things. First, she built a career as a designer - working for some of the most recognizable names in advertising, including stints in London and Australia. Then, she built Creative Suitcase - her own strategic communications firm. Over the next 11 years, Creative Suitcase helped organizations like United Way, Habitat for Humanity, The University of Texas, and countless others, raise money and awareness to improve their communities. In 2016, Creative Suitcase merged with Mighty Citizen. As the Chief Marketing Officer, Rachel splits her days between promoting Mighty Citizen's marketing services and working directly with nonprofit clients on their branding, marketing, and campaigns. She is also a frequent speaker at local and national conferences and events.