Three people, an older woman and a younger man and woman, are standing together with blue 'Mind' T-shirts on. They are standing in a street of terraced houses, which is blurred int the background.

Connecting the dots: embedding supporter experience into Mind’s organisational strategy

Find out how getting some disappointing scores at Mind became an opportunity to improve their supporter experience and demonstrate real ROI from their supporter survey.

Katie Mitchell, Head of Supporter Engagement, Mind

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At Mind, we’re fighting for a future where no mind is left behind. Through our information, services and campaigns we tackle stigma, barriers and isolation so that everyone can access mental health support when they need it.

Since 2020, we’ve asked Mind supporters about their experience four times. Each time it has shone a light on where supporters were happy – and where there is room for improvement.

In 2022, our supporters expressed that they felt passionately about our work and goals, but were also telling us that they weren’t satisfied with their experience as a donor and didn’t have high levels of trust in us.

Three people in blue "Mind" shirts smiling on a street with brick buildings and cars. Bright, cheerful mood. — Asking supporters has shone a light on where they're happy and where there is room for improvement. Image credit: Mind

We knew we needed to do something about this. We didn’t want people to feel let down by Mind, and we also knew that poor supporter experience could be really damaging to our reputation and our financial future.

Mind cannot deliver on creating a mentally healthy society without bringing together a movement of people to campaign and fundraise, and our future just wasn’t sustainable if we didn’t nurture the loyalty of Mind’s supporters.

The journey

Our Chase Index results showed that we needed to focus on demonstrating impact to beneficiaries, and showing gratitude as an organisation, as key drivers to improving the experience.

The results of the survey gave us the data we needed to highlight this issue to Mind’s leadership team and recommend a strategy for change.

It was scary to share bad results, but Mind’s leaders were keen not to let supporters down; they really cared about how people were feeling when they supported Mind.

Action from insight

We were in the process of refreshing the organisational strategy, so in 2023, “supporter experience” was named as a strategic enabler in our organisation-wide strategy.

Our new supporter experience strategy was specific about the changes that needed to be made, focussing on areas where we were underperforming:

demonstrating impact on beneficiaries
appropriately thanking people for their support

Circular diagram with a blue center labeled "Vision, purpose and values," surrounded by pink and green segments listing organizational goals. — A new strategy for Mind - with supporter experience as a strategic enabler. Image credit: Mind

With buy-in secured, the focus of our strategy was clear:

Increased personalisation and impact of thanking: running a Thankathon, reviewing and updating thank you letters across all teams.
Deliver impact, story-telling and mental health moments content: this content was built into product journeys and onward stewardship through our email channel.
Measuring supporter experience consistently across all product journeys: using The Chase Index survey alongside an in-house method of surveying supporter satisfaction across product journeys.
Test cross-sell initiatives: for example, by including new audience segments in warm marketing.

The results of investing in supporter experience

By identifying specific actions to improve the experience, and by aligning the supporter experience strategy with the organisation’s strategic objectives, we’ve already grown supporter satisfaction by 3.6% and supporter trust by 3.4%.

This means that, for every £1 spent on the most recent survey, we can estimate £24 in additional income.

What’s next?

Our planned improvements to the supporter experience are built into our targets for income growth and although we’ve made good progress against our strategy there’s still lots to do:

We still want to improve how we show gratitude.

We want to listen to supporters more effectively, and be able to personalise how we communicate and what we offer.
We want to do more to ensure that what supporters are seeing and hearing from us reflects what’s happening in the news, their experience of mental health, and how they are making a difference.

A great supporter experience is now built into our targets for income growth. Image credit: Mind

Ultimately, Mind cannot mobilise support to address the mental health crisis if people do not trust that we’ll deliver on the change we’ve promised. This means that delivering a great supporter experience is crucial to the organisation’s reputation and future financial sustainability.

What was the impact?

Mind are already seeing higher loyalty scores from their supporters. Their focus on showing gratitude, demonstrating impact, and creating a strategy that the whole organisation can get behind, means that more people feel better connected to Mind's work and the positive change they can achieve together.