Connecting the dots: embedding supporter experience into Mind’s organisational strategy
Find out how getting some disappointing loyalty scores at Mind became an opportunity to build support for a focused strategy that would go on to improve their supporter experience.
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.
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
In 2022, our supporters scored most highly for commitment – people cared passionately about Mind’s mission - but they scored less highly across satisfaction and trust.
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 really 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.
Action from insight 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, and appropriately thanking people for their support. 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.
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.
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