Ah, the mysterious vehicle donor. While many who donate a vehicle to your station are die-hard fans, the primary motivation for most vehicle donors is the convenience your program provides. They want to get rid of a vehicle, and you offer an easy way to do that. More than half of vehicle donors have never given monetarily to your station despite knowing you and most likely enjoying your programming. What if you could convert this group into sustaining members? 

In our previous post, we shared highlights from CDP data on vehicle donor engagement opportunities. This article will look at how likely vehicle donors are to convert to membership. It all started with the following questions…

How well do vehicle donors retain in the year after their vehicle donation?  

The average retention rate among the 60 stations in our study using CDP data was just over 29%. This averaged number came from two groups:

• For donors who had given at least one gift before they donated a vehicle, the retention rate was 53.6%.

• For donors who gave a vehicle as their first gift to the station and then were asked to become a member, the retention rate was just over 8%.

If you read that and thought, “Gosh, 8%. That’s low,” You’d be correct. We’ll get to this in a moment. 

What percent of vehicle donors are new to giving to the station?

CDP data shows that slightly more than half (54%) of vehicle donors in the 60-station group were new to giving to the station. This is consistent with what we’ve seen at CARS (Charitable Adult Rides & Services). The rest of the vehicle donors had given a gift to their local station in the past five years. 

For existing members who make a vehicle donation, can we consider their gift a “passion indicator” for the station?  

Not really. Based on the retention rates for multi-year donors, it doesn’t look like current members who also make a vehicle donation are any more passionate about supporting their local station than members who haven’t donated a vehicle. You know, the selfish ones that want to keep their vehicles all to themselves. Kidding.

The CDP data on this is consistent with findings from CARS: The primary motivator to donate a vehicle is not to support your station. People donate a car when it becomes too expensive to repair or because they recently purchased a new one and no longer need their old one. The proceeds of their vehicle supporting your station is an added bonus.

So while they may be equally as passionate about your station as other donors, the fact that they’ve given a vehicle shouldn’t imply that they’re more passionate. Your station’s vehicle donation program is making life easier for them by helping them get rid of that vehicle they don’t need anymore.

In short, you should expect vehicle donors to behave the same as other donors. But here’s the catch—you have to treat them the same as any other new donor in your pipeline. This leads us to that surprisingly low 8% conversion rate for vehicle donors who have never given to your station before. 

How do vehicle donor conversion rates differ across stations? Which stations are more effective in turning vehicle donors into annual or monthly givers?

Looking at the CDP data, we see a wide variation in conversion rates across stations for vehicle donors. 

What’s most striking is that vehicle donor conversion rates are in the single digits for many stations. It appears these stations aren’t treating vehicle donors as prospective members by including them in their regular donor engagement pipeline. 

This would explain the average 8% rate for conversion of donors when a vehicle is their first gift to the station. In other words, it looks like many stations aren’t even asking vehicle donors to become annual or monthly givers. The leaders in converting vehicle donors into members appear to be stations that engage with their vehicle donors just as they would any other donor. 

We’re reaching out to stations that are particularly successful at retaining their vehicle donors. We’ll distill their practices into valuable tips, so your station doesn’t allow these donors to slip away. Expect to see details about this in Blog #3, our final installment in this series.

Written by Laurel Brow and Mike Wallace