Donor Retention in Online Crowdfunding Communities: A Case Study of DonorsChoose.org

Online crowdfunding platforms like DonorsChoose.org and Kick-starter allow specific projects to get funded by targeted contribu-tions from a large number of people. Critical for the success of crowdfunding communities is recruitment and continued engage-ment of donors. With donor attrition rates above 70%, a significant challenge for online crowdfunding platforms as well as traditional offline non-profit organizations is the problem of donor retention. We present a large-scale study of millions of donors and dona-tions on DonorsChoose.org, a crowdfunding platform for education projects. Studying an online crowdfunding platform allows for an unprecedented detailed view of how people direct their donations. We explore various factors impacting donor retention which allows us to identify different groups of donors and quantify their propen-sity to return for subsequent donations. We find that donors are more likely to return if they had a positive interaction with the re-ceiver of the donation. We also show that this includes appropriate and timely recognition of their support as well as detailed commu-nication of their impact. Finally, we discuss how our findings could inform steps to improve donor retention in crowdfunding commu-nities and non-profit organizations