About Loyalty marks 10 years of research into supporter loyalty
Howard Lake | 9 October 2025 | Sponsored posts
Ahead of Loyalty Day next month supporter experience company About Loyalty looks back at its past 10 years of research into supporter loyalty.
UK Fundraising spoke to About Loyalty’s director Richard Spencer about the company’s growing data on how charities can deliver better experiences for their supporters.
How did you find your way to working with charities in supporter experience?
My working life began in the commercial world as a consultant in a small company based in North London. We worked to help much bigger companies secure more customers and keep them for longer. There was a lot of market research and competitor intelligence involved. It was really fast moving and I learned a lot.
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Very early on in that role, I realised that my efforts weren’t making any real positive difference in the world. It sounds corny, but it was very true. I was drawn to exploring something new and found a role at a the RSPB near where I lived. The role was to help the charity secure more supporters and keep them for longer. That’s where my charity-supporter-experience-journey began.
2025 marks ten years since you started unpicking how supporters feel about the charities they support. What’s been the biggest change, that you’ve seen across the sector in that time?
There has definitely been an increase in focus on supporters and their experience over recent years.
A quick search on job sites or LinkedIn show that there are many more roles with the word ‘supporter’ or ‘experience’ in the title – and sometimes both. There are teams called ‘supporter experience’ and more projects that cover supporter journeys and supporter experience. The change is significant.
We also had more than 1,000 people register for Loyalty Day last year. I think this reflects an increase in the understanding that supporter experience is important.
However, this has not gone far enough. Yet.
Why should charities be thinking more about their supporter experience?
For a supporter, it’s the only thing that matters.
Supporter experience is all about feelings. And I still see experience interpreted as process and clicks-through.
We do need to make more progress and respect the feelings that our supporters have when they interact with us. After all, it is the only thing they get back. And it can mean everything to many charity supporters.
Imagine if we all decided actively to give poor experiences to all of our supporters. We’d haemorrhage support, income and capacity.
However, it’s clear there is still reluctance to commit investment in delivering excellent experiences. I believe this is something we need to change.
There is sound evidence that improving the experience grows income: our research shows that a one-point increase in loyalty delivers a 20% increase in income over the following three years.
It also increases the likelihood of a legacy gift by 9%.
If any other proposed investment: a new CRM, an acquisition campaign, or an innovation pilot, promised returns like that, charity boards would be all over it and creating the space to make it happen.
Great supporter experiences are a win for beneficiaries, a win for supporters and therefore a win for charities and indeed all of us.
Supporter experience is still a fairly new area for many charities. Where would you point someone if they’re just starting out?
If you are starting out thinking about supporter experience there are lots of really great resources out there including the Chartered Institute of Fundraising Supporter Experience Group and The Showcase of Fundraising Innovation and Inspiration, home of the Commission on the Donor Experience, which was created 10 years ago too.
And I can be absolutely certain that there will be at least one other person in your charity or nonprofit who ‘gets’ this and is living and breathing excellent experiences every day.
When I worked at the RSPB, I had a colleague who lived for delivering excellent experiences. She was always able to add that something extra to each supporter interaction that made the experience very special.
There will be people like that at your organisation. Find them, talk to them, get them on board, and make something happen together!
It’s important to understand that supporter experience is not just for the fundraising team. It’s for everyone, from finance teams to senior leadership, so that supporter experience is championed and acted across the whole organisation.
Tell us a bit more about Loyalty Day. What is it, and who is it for?
At About Loyalty, our dream is that every charity everywhere focuses on what it feels like to be a supporter. Because this really, really matters. I don’t believe this can be over-emphasised.
We put on Loyalty Day each year to help all charities and nonprofits of all shapes and sizes to take the next step on their journey to delivering consistently amazing experiences for their supporters.
It’s a free afternoon of sessions that offer insights, inspiration, ideas, practical action – all focused on how to deliver brilliant experiences. This year, the theme is ‘the future of supporter experience’ – we’ll be hearing from experts at Mind, Greenpeace International, and Sydney Children’s Hospitals Foundation, with a special keynote from Ken Burnett. I honestly can’t wait.
We get amazing feedback every year and I know that it’s now a permanent fixture in some people’s annual calendar! It is the third Thursday in November each year, if that helps.
Loyalty Day takes place on Thursday 20th November online from 14:00 – 17:00 GMT. You can register for free and/or download About Loyalty’s latest research report, The definitive case for The definitive case for growing supporter loyalty.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.