Segmentation tools have until now focused on behavioural characteristics. They have helped identify what should be said to whom, but have so far offered no support for how or in what manner people should be informed of these messages. This article explains how a new method - Social Values - has been developed which categorises the outlook, attitudes and beliefs of the population, and thereby helps fundraising professionals to consistently speak to current and potential donors in a manner appropriate to their psychological profile.

Creating and applying fundraising strategies across the charitable spectrum has relied on two tools up to now - transactional data, and third party targeting systems and/or datasets.

The Limitations of Lifestyle Segmentation
To date, segmentation systems have all been based on some aspect of behaviour. Sometimes very effective fundraising strategy triggers rely on transactional information private to the organisation. Naturally, these all centre around the existing, or projected, value of the donor to the charitable concern.

Associative patterns may also be deduced from transactional information, especially when combined with geodemographic segmentation and lifestyle data. An example might be that: "'low loan commitment', combined with 'city slicker' or 'responsible families' geodemographic type is a powerful predictor of take up for our charitable raffle".

Another such could be "extensive travel experience, combined with arts interest and above average household income, is a strong indicator of interest in donations to our third world appeal." These techniques have all proved more or less effective in identifying and modelling people's likely behaviour - who was most likely to do what. And initially, charities who bothered to intelligently apply data-based initiatives could achieve a significant advantage over rival causes.

Nowadays, there is little opportunity to produce differentiation and campaign uplift using these tools, as they are now within the grasp of every third sector organisation. All initiatives to date have rested on behaviour rather than attitude. Yet why is this an important distinction to make? Perhaps we should dwell briefly on the implications for fundraisers.

In the mid 1990s, a proponent of lifestyle profiling mounted an eye-catching advertising campaign. Its tagline read, "You've modelled your 'best' customers... You've identified a 'lookalike' target audience... You've selected the volumes you need.... There's only one problem.... None of them are interested!" This campaign was starkly emphasizing the difference between modelled likelihoods and individual expressions of interest, which are the bread and butter of the charitable sector.

The Science of Social Values
Today, we could construct an updated version taking us into the world of psychological profiling and social values. It might read, "You've identified who you need to reach... You've constructed appropriate offers for them... You've modelled their lifetime value... There's only one problem... You have no idea how to talk to them!"

If you can identify an individual's outlook on life, their beliefs and attitudes, their psychology, their social values, then you stand a far greater chance of sending them messages "in their own language". The basic appeal that you are putting to your potential donors may be exactly the same in each case, but for each social value subgroup within your target audience that offer will ideally need to be differently presented and described.

Charitable giving is motivated by a person's attitudes, beliefs and motivations, rather than their behaviour. Salary and lifestyle indicators are not accurate reflections of likelihood to give to a particular charitable concern. Before describing the structure of social values profiling, let us take an example drawn from real life to illustrate what they can help fundraising professionals achieve.

A UK based disability charity recently launched a campaign designed to attract new donors over the Christmas period. The existing database was profiled, revealing that two social value groups were over-represented. 'Self Explorers' (see boxed explanation) donated far more than any other group, while 'Belongers' represented 37% of the existing supporter base, but were almost half of those who responded to the campaign.

Three different creative mailings were then developed: one for the Self Explorers, one for the Belongers, and one 'control' copy which was not focused on a particular psychological profile but had been employed successfully in a previous campaign. The appropriate mailing was sent to each of the two groups mentioned, with all other prospects receiving the control copy.

When compared to the control copy, the directly attributable increase in donated income for the targeted copy was over 70%. This was a significant uplift in income and an example of the fact that for charitable fund-raising, potential donors are best identified through social value profiling, as there is little or no correlation between propensity to give and most other types of consumer behaviour.

The significance of recent social values developments for fundraising professionals, is that the methodology has been refined for commercial purposes, and has been modelled robustly (using proprietary statistical approaches to lifestyle and geodemographic data) across the whole UK population - for the first time sample sizes have been statistically significant enough for that process to work properly. As a result, the following cycle is now possible.

1) There are now over 7 million individual records which can be matched to a national look-up table to establish a rough first look at that community's predominant social values.
2) Using these insights, donor strategies - whether fundraising or marketing - can be constructed for each main psychological group.
3) Campaign creative then uses these insights and strategies to create appropriate mailings, promotions, and so on. Resulting campaign response uplift in fundraising has been significant; up to an extreme of 59%.
4) Triggers may then be established in the follow-up process which deal differently with each main psychological type of donor.

Because the approach is new, as yet there is only anecdotal evidence reporting improvement in response and depth of relationship.

Finally, we need to highlight the subject of long-term donor value. Examining lifestyle and geo-demographic profiles are, of course, extremely powerful in the short term for identifying potentially valuable campaign prospects. However, behaviours change. In contrast, the values, beliefs and motivations of the supporter will not change much through the years.

The exact role that social values will play in modelling long-term donor value is not yet fully understood. However, early experiments to assess its impact in this area are underway. We would expect that they will at least play an important part in understanding whether current behaviours are likely to carry on until old age.

Person A and Person B might have exactly the same behavioural profile today. However, for a self explorer this behaviour is simply a peer pressure preliminary before a mature and more reflective adulthood where such spending patterns rapidly fade away. If another, by contrast, is a genuine conspicuous consumer, their behaviour is likely to remain much more consistent for all their born days, and for whom one can more reliably long-term value as a result of this likely behavioural consistency.

Conclusion
Social values, in helping to identify attitudes and beliefs, as opposed to just looking at behavioural history, put an important new technique in the hands of fundraising professionals. Social Values puts the how into charitable communications, joining the who, the what, and the where. They add a critical new dimension in improving our ability to persuade the potential donor to give.

Steve Barr is the managing director of The Values Company and can be contacted by emailing stephen@thevaluescompany.com