RFP: HQ192 - Donor Personas & Market Research

Mercy Corps is looking to grow our donor base—now and in the future—and to do so with a limited budget. To be successful, we need a deeper understanding of the audiences with whom we can have the most impact. We’re looking for a partner to aid us in achieving that.

Within our sector, support from individuals is increasingly important as the need for humanitarian assistance is on the rise and funding is on the decline. We also know that the need for this support is not short-term. However, Mercy Corps’ current donor file—which is whiter and older than the population as a whole—presents a challenge to our long-term file health and growth potential.

In addition to leveraging our current supporter base, we must build relationships with younger and more diverse audiences to ensure we have a robust pipeline of supporters for the future. And with limited dollars to achieve these growth goals, our efforts must be strategic to make the most impact.

Finally, as donors are key stakeholders who shape organizational direction, diversity within the donor base is vital to ensuring that Mercy Corps work is fully inclusive. Like many organizations, Mercy Corps is missing out on vital support by not engaging more diverse groups of donors, particularly as the United States becomes increasingly racially and ethnically diverse. 

Mercy Corps is poised to realize efficient growth of its donor file, and we are looking for a partner to accelerate our efforts to expand and diversify our donor base.

The outcome of this project will help us to:

• Identify under-represented philanthropic audiences that have a high propensity of becoming Mercy Corp donors and develop strategies for effectively engaging and communicating with those audiences, thereby expanding Mercy Corps’ donor base.
• Identify our brand awareness audience, e.g. what is the profile of the person -- demographically and psychographically -- that we should be targeting for our annual brand awareness campaign in order to provide top-of-funnel support to the MMF’s file growth and diversity goals. 

The deadline to have the project completed is June 30, 2020. 

Additional background information on the Mercy Corps donor file will be provided upon submission of a signed nondisclosure agreement.