Donor capacity is an important factor to consider when cultivating your donors. But if you’re not sure exactly what it means or how to best use it, you’re not alone! In this article, we’ll walk you through the ins and outs of donors capacity. We’ll also share the difference between donor capacity and donor propensity or donor affinity.
As fundraisers, we know that there are no bad donors. Anyone who gives to your organization – no matter the amount – is an important part of your cause.
But some donors have a higher capacity to give than others, and it’s important to know the difference so our fundraising can be as efficient as possible.
This article will walk you through everything you need to know about donor capacity. Plus, we’ll define donor propensity and affinity and the ways they differ from donor capacity.
Donor capacity refers to how much wealth a donor can give. This means how much they can reasonably donate when considering their income and expenses. It’s their capacity to give to your nonprofit – and it’s an important factor to keep in mind when engaging donors.
Although it can sometimes be tricky, you can determine donor capacity for prospective and current donors with strategies we’ll outline later in this article.
Donor capacity is vital to understand when cultivating donor prospects because it can help in a few ways.
First, it helps you determine which prospective donors might turn into major donors. While mid-level donors are just as important to the longevity of your organization, donors that can give more can spurn big changes in your organization.
For example, if you’re completing a feasibility study for your next capital campaign, recognizing donor capacity can help you determine how likely you are to meet your campaign goals.
Understanding donor capacity helps you cultivate donor relationships more efficiently, too. Although developing relationships with all levels of donors is a good practice, realistically you don’t have time to spend connecting personally with each individual donor.
But if you know a donor has a larger capacity to give to your organization, you can justify spending more time getting to know them and learning about their philanthropic interests as a major donor.
When you know a donor can give more to your organization than they have in the past, you can reassess your cultivation practice and encourage them to give even more. This is the perfect time to meet with the donor and determine if there’s any specific area or project they’re interested in funding.
This should also be part of your lapsed donor strategy.
When it comes to understanding your prospective and current donors, there are three areas to keep in mind:
Let’s break these three donor attributes down a little more.
| Donor Capacity | Donor Propensity | Donor Affinity |
|---|---|---|
| A donor’s ability to give - the amount of wealth they have to donate. | A donor’s natural inclination to be charitable. | How a donor feels about your organization. |
| Several factors influence capacity, including income, real estate holdings, company matching, and the ability to make a planned gift. | Reviewing someone’s giving history is a great way to determine their propensity. | If a donor has given to similar organizations and causes as yours, that means they have an affinity for the cause - and are more likely to give to support your mission. |
| High capacity doesn’t mean you have a good prospective donor if they don’t have the propensity or affinity to donate to your cause. | High propensity and low capacity can still equal a great supporter for your organization, as they may provide other support beyond monetary gifts. | They are more likely to respond positively to cultivation efforts and you won’t have to put in quite as much effort. |
These three qualities work together to make the ideal donor. However, forecasting donor capacity is still vital – without the ability to give, a donor’s desire to do so can only go so far!
When it comes to forecasting capacity, there are a few routes you can take. Note that some information might be limited, depending on the donor, so you may need to make some educated guesses.
If you have the right donor management software, you’re sitting on a gold mine of data to help you determine a donor’s capacity.
Donorbox’s donor management tools make it easy to find prospective, high-capacity donors. Any donations made through Donorbox are automatically added to your donor database, so you don’t have to worry about missing anyone! Plus, you can manually add offline donations and integrate with your favorite CRM to seamlessly connect any previous donors, too.
From your Supporters dashboard, simply choose your filters. To find donor capacity, we recommend searching with the following filters:
Digging into someone’s giving history will help you determine how generous they can be.
To find high-capacity donors, consider simply running a report to pull donor data from your donor management software.
Donorbox offers three customizable report templates to help you compile a list of donors with the capacity to give more. They are:
The Donor Overview report includes the total donation amount and count for all donors – which makes it so easy to identify prospects for more cultivation!
Simply choose your report type and customize things like the date range and name of the report so your team members know exactly why you pulled this list. Here’s what it looks like –
Prospect research tools are the key to figuring out the capacity of donors – especially those who haven’t given to your organization yet.
While access to these tools can sometimes be pricey, it’s often worth it to pay a little more upfront to make your fundraising efforts more efficient.
We list five excellent prospect research tools in our blog, Prospect Research: The Ultimate Guide for Nonprofits. Check it out to learn more!
While some kinds of wealth are difficult to research without the right tools, finding someone’s employment information is often as easy as searching them on Google or finding their LinkedIn account.
While this doesn’t confirm their income, a donor’s employment information tells us a few useful things:
This is all helpful information on your quest to determine donor capacity.
Pro tip: Add employment info to the donor’s profile on your Donorbox dashboard. You can also add other information like their contact info, birthday, and more. This will all help your cultivation process!
Real estate, while not always telling when it comes to donor capacity, is still an important factor to research. The assumption is that, if someone has significant real estate holdings, they might have a higher capacity for donations.
This information is easier to find publicly than other factors, so it’s a popular factor to consider in donor capacity.
Finally, previous donations can also point to higher donor capacity. Some organizations will partner together to share donor information, so you may be able to gather information through these kinds of partnerships.
Otherwise, look for major donors listed on donor walls at organizations in your area or organizations with similar missions.
If someone has made regular major donations over a series of years, that points to a higher overall capacity for giving.
Now that you have a better idea of a prospective donor’s capacity, here are some tips to help you use it!
You can create targeted appeals for donors of every capacity level by segmenting your audience. Remember, even lower level donors – with lower capacity – are important to keep your organization fiscally healthy!
Targeting appeals based on capacity makes donors who can’t afford to give at a major donor level still feel good about their gift. Those who can afford more should be encouraged to give more.
Pro tip: Recurring giving is a great way to receive more donations overall from donors with a lower capacity to give. For example, they may not be able to give a major, one-time gift – but they could give a little each month as recurring donors, which adds up to a lot of value for your organization.
When you know someone has the capacity to give more, why not ask them to give more? Providing suggested donation amounts for campaigns is a great way to demonstrate the size of the gift that would be most beneficial for your cause.
Consider creating a campaign specifically to target high-capacity donors. With Donorbox donation forms and fundraising pages, you can customize the suggested amounts so donors are encouraged to give more.
Check out how The Poetry Society of New York created a fundraising page specifically for major donors. Their lowest suggested donation amount is $1,000!
Your list of prospective and current donors with a higher capacity is a great place to start with your capital campaign. Donors like the unique opportunity to help organizations expand, so a capital campaign is a great time to amp up your cultivation efforts.
Pro tip: Meet with your prospects to determine which aspects of your capital campaign they’re most interested in. Ask if they have any questions and provide documentation like a capital campaign report or your impact report.
Donors with higher capacity might be interested in giving on their own – or they might be enticed by an incentive.
Sponsorship opportunities are great ways to entice prospects to give. For example, you can name a part of your new building after them or list their name on your event programs at your next fundraising event.
This works especially well if your prospect is a business owner – they’ll love the opportunity to get their name out! Check out our guide to corporate-nonprofit partnerships for a closer look at this kind of relationship.
Donor capacity, or a donor’s financial ability to give, is just a piece of the pie when examining your donor prospects. Without the donor affinity and propensity aspects, you won’t have a complete picture of any given prospect.
However, knowing donor capacity can greatly affect your cultivation strategy – and help you work smarter, not harder.
The right donor management and fundraising software can help you cultivate better relationships with high-capacity donors. Donorbox has the tools you need to both determine donor capacity and use it wisely! With comprehensive filters to sort donor data, easy-to-use report templates, donor profiles that store a ton of donor info, and more, your donor cultivation cycle just got a lot easier.
Get started today to collect more donations and connect with more donors!
For more fundraising insight, check out the rest of our Nonprofit Blog. Subscribe to our newsletter for a monthly round-up of blog content.
Lindsey spent years wearing many hats in the nonprofit world. Whether she was helping arts nonprofits with their messaging and content, planning a fundraising gala, writing an NEA grant proposal, or running a membership program with over 400 members, she learned how to navigate – and appreciate! – the fast-paced world of fundraising. Now, she loves sharing those hard-earned lessons with the Donorbox community.
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Lindsey Baker Bower