Flickr Photo: booskittyThe late, great Mr. Rogers has been asking us this question for decades now: "Who is in your neighborhood?" Though we have learned a great many lessons from our avuncular, becardiganed friend, the nonprofit sector is still struggling to master this one.

I think we all know, intuitively, that all donors are not the same. They engage with us for extremely personal reasons, and are inspired to continue their engagement for equally personal and diverse reasons.

Technology has come a long way in letting us customize our relationships with donors. Our donors can tell us what issues they care about, and how often they want to be contacted. With social media, we can let super-engaged donors participate in a variety of ways. We can provide financial and other administrative information easily to donors who value transparency and accountability.

But doing all of this, in any way, has always felt like finding that pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. If every single donor has unique needs and expectations, how can we possibly keep up?

This week, Convio released a new white paper with Sea Change Strategies and Edge Research that provides a nice tidy framework for thinking about personalizing donor experiences. In "The Wired Wealthy: Using the Internet to Connect with Your Middle and Major Donors," the authors surveyed more than 3,000 donors who gave $1,000 or more in an 18th month period and had valid email addresses.

There are lots of really useful tidbits in the report, but I thought the most interesting piece was the result of the cluster analysis. Among the respondents, the "key points of distinction are fundamentally attitudinal - what is it that [these] donors are seeking from the Internet channel, and to what extent are they getting it?"

In other words, it's how the respondents expect to be engaged by organizations online that predicts their answers to the survey questions. What the survey found is that there are three types of donors:

• Relationship Seekers (29%) - They are more than donors. They want to engage in all the work of the organization and, interestingly, are most likely to use social media tools like video, podcasts and social networking sites.
• All Business (30%) - These are the people who view donations as transactions, not relationships. They are most concerned with issues of transparency and accountability, and want their interactions with you to be efficient and effective.
• Casual Connectors (41%) - The Casual Connector may want to be engaged on particular issues or causes, but may not. These folks need opportunities, but don't necessarily want to be pushed into it.

First, I think this is a really interesting framework for thinking through communications strategies, and for analyzing web and messaging statistics. It's a manageable schema for approaching personalization in your communications.

Secondly, I think this turns the "leadership ladder" model of engagement on its head. For many years, we've talked about recruiting new donors and moving the up the ladder of engagement -- getting them to become advocates, bigger donors, volunteers, and recruiters for us and engaging them in an increasingly intimate relationship. This study suggests that the ladder might not exist for everyone. Rather, some people will be inclined to start at the most engaged level, while others may never want to pass the first rung.