Today, there are close to 2 million regular contributors to
non-profit organizations in Spain. In the past few years this
number has been growing consistently, but due to the economic
downturn there has recently been an alarming increase in the number
of subscription cancellations. Since for some organizations'
regular subscription contributions can account for more than 80% of
the total income, this recent trend represents a serious financing
problem.
In May 2009 Bain & Company decided to implement customer
loyalty and retention strategies in the non-profit sector to drive
success in member loyalty achievement. Under the coordination of
the Spanish Fundraising Association, Bain & Company launched a
pilot project together with the nine main non-profit organizations
working in Spain which account for more than 70% of the non-profit
sector's members and income. These organizations were Acción
contra el Hambre, ACNUR, Amnistía Internacional, Cruz Roja,
Greenpeace, Médicos Sin Fronteras, Plan España,
Unicef and World Vision.
The first task to be done was to group all the organizations
membership data in order to identify common patterns in donors'
behavior. There were over 1.5 million donors in Spain. At the same
time, more than 5 million surveys were carried out among current
and past donors in order to understand their motivation and
affinity to the different organizations.
The most relevant data identified is the following:
The average exit rate is 18%, which means that, on average, 18
out of 100 members quit the organizations annually. However, this
rate reaches 34% in some cases while in others stays under 10%. In
total, 160,000 members leave each year the participating
organizations, representing an over ?17 million loss in potential
annual contribution.
This case, a pioneer collaborating experience between the
private sector and the non-profit sector, was led by a Bain &
Company pro bono team with wide loyalty expertise in the private
sector (telecoms, financial services, consumer goods, etc.). The
participating non-profit organizations shared their data bases,
expertise and best practices.
To read more, download the PDF.
