It isn’t that hard to get a $3,600 donor to give another $3,600.
It’s much harder to get a $3,600 donor to give $36,000.
I'm working with a leader who has tens of donors all giving around $10K a year. No matter how hard he tries getting them to move up to $25 or $50K, they wouldn’t budge.
They care about his organization’s cause. Many of them are also capable of giving a lot more. So why is it so hard to get them to up their donations?
Seth Godin, leading business author, gives us a clue through an idea he calls “Pattern Match, Pattern Interrupt.”
We humans are creatures of habit. Once we establish a behavior or opinion, we tend to continue along the same pattern.
When your $3,600 donor decided to give that amount to your organization, he was telling himself a certain story about your organization. A $3,600 story.
Next time you wanted $3,600, your request was a “Pattern Match'' to his internal story about your organization. So you had no trouble getting your money.
But as long as his story is fixed at $3,600, so will his giving be. If you want your donors to break the pattern and jump to higher numbers - you need to initiate a “Pattern Interrupt.”
The donor needs to experience a JOLT. They need to undo their existing pattern. They need to change their existing story.
How to do that? Here are two options.
1. The donor sees a significant upward shift in their finances.
No, that’s not exactly in your control. But acquiring wealth often causes donors to reset their existing giving patterns. So if such an opportunity comes your way, it’s a smart time to work on getting a larger commitment.
2. Most fundraising messages sound the same. Updates. Requests. Gratitude. Repeat.
Your donor’s brain filters those out. It’s all pattern matched.
But when you show up in an unexpected way—a bold ask, a raw story, a deeply personal conversation—you jolt them out of the pattern. They pause. They reconsider. They start telling themselves a new story.
That’s when bigger gifts become possible.
What’s one bold move you could make this week to interrupt a donor’s pattern—and start a new story?
Hatzlacha Raba!
Avraham
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