If you are serious about growing your fundraising and building  meaningful and lasting relationships with your donors, then you have to start by understanding who your donors are — truly are. What motivates them? What values are important to them? How do they see themselves in the world? Discovering your donors' identity — and then creating donor journeys and communications based on those identities — is a strategy with high returns. It can strengthen the connection your donors have with your cause, and lead to an increase in commitment, engagement and giving.To help you get started, we are talking with Dr. Kiki Koutmeridou a behavioural scientist at DonorVoice. Kiki holds a Masters in Neuroscience and a PHD in Cognitive Psychology. As the nonprofit sector's first practising behavioural scientist, Kiki works closely with charities on applying behavioural insights to their direct marketing communications.In today’s chat, we are going to focus on understanding identity to improve your giving and retention. Today we’ll cover:[4:55] - Understanding what donor identity is and is not[7:35] - Why donor identity is relevant in fundraising[9:26] - Dr. Koutmeridou explains identity presence and identity importance[12:30] - How to use donor identity to drive giving and increase retention [14:40] - Discovering your donor’s identities[17:40] - Targeting new donors [22:10] - Acknowledging who the donor really is[26:00] - The Fundraising 5 [30:05] - How smaller nonprofits can utilize these concepts[34:45] - Dr. Koutmeridou’s encouragement for nonprofit leadersDr. Koutmeridou would love to connect with you. You can find her on agitator.net, where you can ask her a question or sign up for her new course.Please consider subscribing to, rating, or sharing the podcast on your preferred platform. You can do that by clicking here To take advantage of our free resources and get your 5-minute fundraising fix, visit:fiveminutefundraisingfix.com