Donor Experience SMART goals are specific. Does your goal sound too general? It is probably not a SMART goal yet.  The aim is for something very clear and absolutely unambiguous. SMART goals are stripped of vagaries, platitudes and jargon. They must tell a team exactly what is expected, why is it important to your donors, who’s involved, where is it going to happen and what experiences are important to the donor.

A specific goal will usually answer the five “W” questions:

1. What: What do I want to accomplish?
2. Why: What are the specific reasons, purpose or benefits to the donor of accomplishing the goal?
3. Who: What donors will be involved?
4. Where: Where is the location? Digital? Physical? Both?
5. Which: What are requirements and constraints?

It is important to be specific. For example, your goal may be to grow your business. That is pretty general. It would be more specific to say you want to acquire 3 new donors for your nonprofit. Or you might say you want to increase revenue from X to Y. A digital approach might to increase revenue from online donations from X to Y.

Being specific brings greater clarity in know what is to be accomplished. Clarity is the key. When you are building a digital nonprofit, as a leader, the more specific you can be about your goal, the better. It isn’t a goal to say we need to have a great presence on Facebook. What is the outcome you want on Facebook? Likes? Driving people to your content? Do you want donors to take some kind of action? What are the outcomes that your donors want? What does that experience look like?

In any kind of business, we can’t do everything. Resources are very limited and constrained. Getting specific with our goals creates great focus and great experiences for our donors.

Here are the key ideas:

1. Create goals that are very, very specific
2. Think through the digital outcome that will amaze your donors
3. Focus the outcome on your donors goals