Join us for the Virtuous User Summit

August 19-21, 2025

📣 Responsive Nonprofit Summit • Free + Virtual 🎉

June 4-5, 2025

Practical Strategies. Real Results. Free to Attend.

The Responsive Nonprofit Summit June 4-5, 2025

Respond ’26 (User Summit) | Dallas, May 27–29. Practical learning, real connections, real results. Save $400 before Jan 16.

Already a Virtuous customer? Our Professional Services help with Data and Report Clean-Up, Custom Training, Consulting and Giving Page Optimization.

Contents

How nonprofits can listen strategically to their donors

This Week on the Responsive Weekly

The Responsive Weekly is a community of thinkers and doers who are focused on creating better donor experiences and more successful nonprofits.

What Happened This Week: The Quick Summary

This week, Emily Taylor of teenyBIG joined us to discuss strategic listening, and when to use a survey or an interview to listen to supporters.

What Happened This Week: The Whole Session

Watch the Full Recording Here

Top Takeaways

  • Before you start sending surveys or scheduling interviews, zero in on your goal. What do you want to know? Why? What are you going to do with that information? Who are you going to ask?
  • Surveys are great for getting concrete information, like preferences and demographic information.
  • Interviews are great for getting stories and learning about supporters’ feelings.
  • Once you have responses, you can start to look for patterns.
  • Use words you hear from your supporters to create communication and marketing that speaks directly to them.
  • Use the patterns and trends you observe in supporters’ answers to create donor personas and donor journey maps.

More From This Session

Here’s the full story from this week’s Generosity Report

author avatar
Megan Donahue
Megan Donahue is a writer specializing in all things nonprofit, content strategy, and the intersection of nonprofits and technology.

What you should do now

Below are three ways we can help you begin your journey to building more personalized fundraising with responsive technology.

See the Virtuous platform in action.  Schedule a call with our team for personalized answers and expert advice on transforming your nonprofit with donor management software.

Download our free Responsive Maturity Model and learn the 5 steps to more personalized donor experiences.

If you know another nonprofit pro who’d enjoy reading this page, share it with them via Email, Linkedin, Twitter, or Facebook.

The Responsive Maturity Model
5 Steps to More Personalized Donor Experiences
Get Responsive Fundraising Tips
Get updates delivered directly to your inbox.
Building Trust with Donors Through Better Impact Measurement with Sonja Schappert Howden

Building Trust with Donors Through Better Impact Measurement with Sonja Schappert Howden

Learn how fundraisers can move beyond outputs and communicate real, donor-centered impact with Sonja Howden of Seed Impact on The Responsive Lab.
Building a Relationship-First Fundraising Culture with Marc Stein

Building a Relationship-First Fundraising Culture with Marc Stein

How relationship-first fundraising drives trust, retention, and major gift growth at scale… insights from Marc Stein of Jews for Jesus.
Digital Strategies to Drive Sustainable Fundraising Growth with Matt Lombardi

Digital Strategies to Drive Sustainable Fundraising Growth with Matt Lombardi

How smart digital engagement drives donor action, retention, and recurring giving. A practical conversation with Matt Lombardi.

Grow generosity with Virtuous

Virtuous is the responsive fundraising software platform proven to help nonprofit organizations increase generosity by serving all donors personally, no matter their gift size.

“Virtuous truly understands nonprofits and the importance of our mission. And their open access to data and built-in custom reports gave us access to the data we need.”
Todd Shinabarger
Chief Information Officer