Understanding your donors is the key to successful communication, fundraising, and long-lasting relationships. By hosting donor focus groups, you can get to know your donors on a deeper level, allowing you to align future decisions with supporter expectations and preferences. Plus, donor focus groups provide an additional engagement opportunity that enables donors to get more involved in your mission beyond donating.
Organizing a donor focus group requires careful planning to ensure you run a productive session where donors feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and feelings about your organization. In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to host a donor focus group that leaves both your team and donors feeling satisfied and empowered to continue making a difference.
1. Define Your Goals
Kick off the focus group planning process by determining your goals. Outlining what you want to achieve beforehand ensures team members are on the same page and helps keep the discussion productive.
These goals should align with your nonprofit’s broader strategy and priorities. For example, you may aim to:
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Explore donors’ motivations for supporting your mission.
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Gather feedback on your recent capital campaign.
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Discover which donation methods and communication channels donors prefer.
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Identify opportunities for new corporate sponsorships.
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Test out new ethical fundraising collateral.
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Pinpoint which emerging fundraising trends donors are eager to participate in.
Once you’ve defined your main goal, transform it into a cohesive goal statement that you can share with staff, participants, and your facilitator. An example goal statement may look like this:
This focus group's purpose is to explore donors’ motivations for supporting our mission so we can communicate with supporters more effectively and offer personalized, relevant engagement opportunities.
2. Select Participants
Your focus group should capture diverse perspectives to ensure you obtain valuable, well-rounded insights. If you haven’t already, segment your donor base within your constituent relationship management platform (CRM) to place donors into relevant groups based on factors like:
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Giving frequency
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Average gift size
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Engagement level
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Length of involvement
For instance, if you’re gathering feedback on your recent capital campaign, you may group donors by average gift size, creating segments for major, mid-level, and small donors. Then, select participants from each group to learn about the experience at different giving levels.
When choosing participants, ensure they’re eligible to speak on the topic at hand. Continuing with the previous example, you may first create a segment of capital campaign participants so each focus group member can speak on their experience during the campaign. If you want to collect feedback from a specific group, such as new, monthly, or planned donors, segment based on these factors and ensure diversity by creating sub-segments for demographic characteristics like age, gender, and geographic location.
3. Choose a Facilitator
Next, find a facilitator who can lead the conversation. While you can choose a staff or board member, a third-party facilitator can bring an objective perspective to your focus group and use their previous experience to guide the discussion. The ideal facilitator will be someone willing and able to:
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Familiarize themself with your goals.
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Move the conversation along.
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Ensure participation from all focus group members.
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Keep the discussion focused.
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Create a safe, comfortable environment that encourages participants to share their honest thoughts and feelings.
Consider asking fellow nonprofits if they have a focus group facilitator they’d recommend, and brief any third-party facilitators you partner with on your organization’s background, mission, and objectives before getting started.
4. Create a Discussion Guide
Develop a roadmap for your conversations. The ideal discussion guide will include open-ended questions that help you achieve your goals and leave room for participants to speak freely and naturally on the topic.
Let’s say you’re evaluating donors’ experience with your recent peer-to-peer fundraising campaign. You may ask questions like:
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How did you hear about our peer-to-peer fundraising campaign?
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What was your experience like using our peer-to-peer fundraising platform?
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Did you enjoy taking the lead as a peer-to-peer fundraising participant? Why or why not?
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How did your friends and family react to the campaign when you shared your peer-to-peer fundraising page?
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If you personally contributed to the campaign, what inspired you to donate?
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Was the impact of the campaign clear? Why or why not?
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How could we improve the peer-to-peer fundraising experience in the future?
Depending on the format of your focus group, compile physical or digital copies of your discussion guide for the facilitator and participants. You may also send participants the questions ahead of time so they can come to the session prepared.
5. Invite Participants
Send personalized invitations to participants via email. These messages should explain the purpose of the focus group and how you’ll use participants’ feedback after the session has ended.
Include logistical details they’ll need to participate, such as the focus group’s:
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Date
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Time
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Location
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Session length
Add a link to register for the focus group that collects participant names and contact information. The registration form should also reiterate the purpose of the focus group, describe any incentives participants will receive (such as gift cards), and obtain permission to record participants’ thoughts, whether by handwritten notes, voice recording, and/or video recording.
6. Record and Analyze Feedback
During the session, take detailed notes on participants’ feedback. To stay present in the session while recording as much as possible, consider using an AI note-taking tool like Otter.ai or Fireflies.ai to transcribe the conversation.
After the focus group, meet with your staff, board, and facilitator to analyze donor feedback. Start by summarizing key themes or trends that emerged during the session. Then, dive into essential takeaways that you can translate into action.
For example, during your peer-to-peer fundraising focus group, you may find that most donors enjoyed taking on a more hands-on role in the fundraising process and personalizing their peer-to-peer fundraising pages. Many participants noted that they would like this opportunity more often, prompting your team to start scheduling quarterly peer-to-peer campaigns instead of annually.
However, you might also determine that a common struggle among donors was articulating your organization’s mission clearly and concisely to their friends and family. Therefore, your team can develop more comprehensive communication guidelines to share with participants before your next campaign.
Increasing Engagement with Donor Focus Groups
Donor focus groups expand on traditional feedback-gathering methods like surveys and polls to dive deeper into the donor experience and improve your fundraising, marketing, and stewardship efforts.
Round out your focus group by following up with participants. First and foremost, thank them for their time and participation. Then, reiterate how you plan to use their feedback and send any incentives promised in your initial invitations.