Here is a fun experiment: ask a fellow fundraiser about one of his or her vendors and wait for the reaction. One thing is certain, regardless of how they feel, your colleague will respond with a strong reaction.
Whenever I chat with other fundraisers, the topic of our relationships with vendors comes up. The reactions almost always fall in one of two camps: either they love a particular vendor and view them as an indispensable part of the fundraising process, or they see the vendor as a necessary evil to hit their goals for the year.
But why is it that vendors and agencies –professionals and specialists in practice – can cause such wild differences in opinion? And why are there so few middle-of-the-road impressions made?
Partly, this is a result of us, as organizations, ceding control of our most valued assets – our donors. We willingly let outsiders speak directly to our donors and solicit them on our behalf. We do this for many reasons, but chief among them are two assumptions that we must believe in order to bring on board a vendor:
1) We assume that the vendor is an expert and will deliver its target results.
2) We assume that the vendor enables our organization to make better use of our limited resources; either by delivering better financial results than we could, or freeing up other resources to complete other tasks.
Take a moment right now to think about one of your vendors and hold its performance against those two assumptions. Take a few minutes and consider how this vendor is impacting your organization.
Bringing those two assumptions to the front and reviewing your vendor’s impact against them is critical to ensuring a successful relationship. It ensures that the building blocks for the vendor’s work are in place and that real value is being delivered to the organization.
Beyond that, here are 3 key tips for ensuring that you are making the most of your vendor relationships so that you can work toward better results for both organizations.
Tip 1: Challenge your vendor
Like moth to a flame, a quality vendor will gladly run with a request for creativity and innovation. It is an opportunity for any agency to differentiate itself from competitors and enhance its value to your organization.
Vendors are also better positioned to take the lead on testing new ideas and tactics. Their long-term profitability depends on continually demonstrating value to clients. This is best achieved by consistently improving their service. However, as the client, we must be the spark to ignite their creative fire!
Tip 2: Have a clear desired outcome for your donors
Vendors are specialists in their particular field and will tend to bring ideas into their area of expertise. It is our role to be aware of our organization’s desired outcomes for donors. We must ensure that the ideas put forward by the vendor support our internal desired outcomes for donors – whether it is increasing their gift value, converting to monthly giving, or retaining their annual donation.
This is especially important if you’ve challenged your vendor to test out some new ideas. Make sure their innovation is working towards your organization’s goals.
Tip 3: Analyze the situation for yourself!
At the end of the day, your vendor works on behalf of your organization. Our donors and all of the information surrounding the relationship is on our system. When a vendor analyzes the impact of a given campaign, it is limited to the information it gathered during the campaign. In essence, every vendor is working with an incomplete picture.
We must conduct our own analysis, taking into account other factors. Consider sharing some of this information with your vendor, in order to give them a better understanding of your donors.
