Category: Thank

Treat Your Donors Like Partners (don’t just call them that)

Steven Screen  |  Thank
Partners.

Donor-centrism gets a lot of bad press these days.  (I even stay away from using the term sometimes because it can cause people to throw babies out with the bathwater.)

However, as Fundraisers and nonprofits, it’s still ethical and smart to honor an individual donor’s involvement in the work of a nonprofit.  And there are two main ways to do that:

  1. Write directly and clearly about their involvement.  In other words, don’t write only about the organization, the beneficiary, or the community.  Include the donor!  When you’re asking for support, tell the donor “your gift will help pay for _______.”  We’ve not inflated the donor into a “savior,” we’ve accurately described their involvement.
  2. Report back in a way the donor understands.  A person helping to fund your mission deserves to hear, in language and concepts that they don’t need a Master’s degree to understand quickly, how their gift made a difference.

If your donors really are your partners, treat them like partners. 

Because in any partner relationship – spouse, business partner, co-worker, whatever – sometimes you briefly put your partner’s needs above your own.  That’s all you’re doing here.

There’s no getting around the idea that from the standpoint of an individual donor, they aren’t “one of your donors,” you are one of their nonprofits.

When you talk to individual donors about their involvement, they are more likely to remain involved.

Giving Thanks for You

Steven Screen  |  Thank
Happy Thanksgiving.

We are thankful to be Fundraisers.  We get great joy from creating connections and funding good work – and hope that you do, too. 

One of our favorite quotes is Dr. Martin Luther King’s: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”  And I like to think that you and I have ‘bent the arc’ a little bit towards justice this year. 

The work you do matters.  And it makes a difference.

So Happy Thanksgiving, thanks for letting Better Fundraising be a part of your journey, and thanks for being a Fundraiser!

How to Thank Your Donor So She Actually Feels Thanked

Steven Screen  |  Thank
Thank You.

The goal of your Thank You and/or Receipt package is not just to acknowledge your donor’s donation.

Any organization can do that.

Any autoreply or receipt letter can do that.

Your goal should be to make your donor feel thanked, appreciated and important.

How?

When you thank her for helping your organization do its work, you’ve made it about you, about your organization.

What you want to do is make it about her. So, thank her for her generosity. Tell her what her gift is going to do (instead of saying what your organization is going to do). Tell her how important she is to your organization.

When you do that, you’ll find that most of your Thank You/Receipt copy is about her. And less of it is about your organization.

Less about You, More about Her

Donors are inundated with requests for support. In the United States, there’s one nonprofit for every 200 people. And almost all of those organizations talk about themselves. Endlessly.

But a very few of them have learned the secret: your donors are more interested in themselves – their lives, their values, their impact – than they are in your organization.

So if you talk to donors about their lives, their values and their impact, they will finally feel like a nonprofit “gets” them. They’ll feel that there’s a nonprofit that’s working on their behalf – trying to help them do what they want to do – instead of just another nonprofit trying to sound great to get their next donation.

Do you feel the fundamental difference? The posture of gratitude for what the donor did, not for what she helped your organization do?

If you can embrace that fundamental difference, and start communicating to your donors that way, you’ll begin to build a tribe of loyal donors who will give you more gifts, larger gifts, and will give to you for longer.

This post was originally published on May 21, 2019.

Measuring Speedy Gratitude

Bill Jacobs  |  Thank
Mr Zip

The following is a hand-picked guest post from Bill Jacobs.  Enjoy, and you can read more about Bill below.

* * *

On the first day of November, I sent out 49 small “white mail” donations to non-profits.

After three weeks, here is what I received:

  1. Two of the gifts were returned because the address was undeliverable.
  2. Of the 47 gifts that (I think) were delivered, I have received 14 acknowledgments (30% acknowledgment rate).

Now, there could be a lot of reasons why 70% of my received gifts were not (yet) acknowledged:

  1. Maybe some of my gifts got lost in the mail.
  2. Maybe some of my gifts are still being processed.
  3. Some of my receipts might be using nonprofit (slow) postage and haven’t arrived yet.
  4. Maybe some acknowledgments were batched and still waiting to be sent.
  5. Maybe my gifts ($10) were too small to acknowledge.

Whatever the reason, we have to do better at acknowledging gifts.

In the 25 years I’ve been in this business, one of my consistent recommendations is making it a priority to acknowledge gifts. All gifts – even $10 ones – should receive a receipt sent first class. And yes, even online gifts should get a mailed receipt.

Every donor – whether they say so or not – wants to have their gift acknowledged. Plus, it’s just the right thing to do.

* * *

Steven says: “Bill Jacobs is a fundraising analyst and founder of AnalyticalOnes.  I’ve learned more from Bill about analyzing fundraising data and knowing what to do next than from anyone else in my entire career.  You should subscribe to Bill’s blog, Data Stories!”

Thanking Your Donors is Essential

Sarah Lundberg  |  Thank
Thank donors.

Before my time at The Better Fundraising Co, I used to be a Director of Marketing and Communications for a nonprofit. But then the nonprofit I was working at needed me to create their fundraising materials from scratch, and I discovered a whole new world of expertise — it challenged the beliefs that my nonprofit and I had for how fundraising worked.

But we started raising a LOT more money. 

Before we learned direct mail fundraising best practices, thanking donors who gave in response to appeals and newsletters happened… sometimes. But thanking wasn’t built into our processes, so we dropped the ball more times than I’d care to admit.

We WERE thankful for our donors every time they gave, but we took it for granted that they knew we were thankful.

That was a big mistake.

When a donor makes a gift, they don’t know you’re thankful if you don’t tell them.

When we started building intentional direct mail “thank yous” into our internal processes, thanking started happening more consistently. And donors really appreciated being thanked.

What I wasn’t prepared for was how this consistent thanking process would change ME and my approach to fundraising.

One day I was sitting at my desk, writing thank you notes to everyone who had responded to our Christmas appeal. What started off as a tedious task became something else. As I wrote note after note, a wave of emotion hit me, and I could feel the tears in my eyes.

We had sent out a letter in the mail. And these kind, generous people chose to send money back to help. It felt… magical.

$50. $250. $5,000. I began to see each gift as a precious act of sacrifice from the donor.

What a gift.

I started to approach direct response fundraising differently after this emotional thanking experience. I was more comfortable boldly asking donors to give, because I knew they would be thanked personally and emotionally.

And most importantly, donors started to give more often through our appeals and e-appeals because they KNEW we were thankful for their gift.


Read the whole series:

Charging Your ‘Fundraising Battery’

Steven Screen  |  Thank
Battery charging.

Interestingly, the posts on this blog that tend to generate the most feedback are the posts that are about the Fundraiser, not about fundraising.

They are the posts where a Fundraiser feels seen for the work they are doing and the conditions they are doing it in.

So, here’s a note to all the leaders of Fundraising departments out there: make sure you help the Fundraisers you’re leading regularly recharge their “fundraising batteries.”

And I don’t mean giving them days off or spa days (though they aren’t going to turn those down).

I mean making sure they regularly connect with the power of their fundraising work, and feel appreciated for their fundraising work.  I mean things like this:

  • A monthly exercise where they visualize donors giving gifts, and get that “little jolt of joy” that happens when you put yourself in a donor’s shoes as they make a gift.
  • Bring in an experienced donor who can talk about the joy of giving, and the positive role that fundraising plays in a donor’s life
  • Regularly practice “fundraising fika.”
  • Remind them that while the results of their work may feel like numbers on a spreadsheet, to look around at all the program activity and know they play a major role in making it happen. 

Fundraising in a nonprofit (particularly smaller orgs) has its own unique difficulties.  What other department regularly gets negative critical feedback from all the other parts of the organization?  What other department’s wisdom and expertise is regularly pushed aside because of one person’s opinion?

So if you’re in charge of Fundraisers – make sure they regularly get to feel the beauty and grace of fundraising.  You’ll recharge their fundraising batteries, you’ll have happy co-workers who stick around longer, and you’ll create a place where Fundraisers want to work.

Thanks for Being a Fundraiser

Steven Screen  |  Thank
thanks

Today we’d like to thank you for being a Fundraiser.

You help your beneficiaries or cause with the funds you raise.

You help your organization fund needed programs and incredible impact. 

You help donors see what’s happening in the world, and you give them a way to get involved. 

That’s a lot for one job!

If you’re celebrating Thanksgiving here in the U.S. like we are, I hope you get a moment to breathe deep, relax your shoulders, and appreciate all the good you’ve done this year.

The work you do matters, and it makes a difference.

Thanks for being a Fundraiser!.

This post was originally published on November 23, 2023.

A Personal Note of Encouragement to YOU

Steven Screen  |  Thank
Encouragement.

Hey friend,

I’m reaching out to you today because I want to encourage you.

Being a fundraiser can be a difficult and lonely job.

It’s a job where it often feels like nothing is ever truly done. The hours can be long and – honestly – fundraisers rarely hear these important words:

Thank you – you are doing a GREAT job!

Because you ARE doing a great job.

Friend, you have chosen to do a job not many people can do.

You combine your passion for your cause with your ability to invite donors to do something meaningful.

You make a lot happen without a lot of resources.

When things get tough, you dig in, find a solution, and make sure your organization has the funding needed to continue.

You are a gift to your organization and to your community.

Thank you for choosing to do a tough and necessary job as a fundraiser.

Today, why not help cultivate a culture of gratitude at your organization by taking a minute to thank a co-worker for what they do? This gesture doesn’t have to be limited to the people you interact with daily. You might like to thank a faithful volunteer for helping stuff envelopes, a colleague on your programs team, or the person who does your payroll (yes, definitely thank them!).

We work hard to thank our donors for their generous support, so why not thank each other too?

So whether it’s a high-five, a thoughtful email, or a plate of fresh-baked cookies, take some time today to thank your colleagues for making the world a better place.

Don’t Let Your DAF Donors Fall through the Cracks of Your Thanking Process!

Sarah Lundberg  |  Thank
Crack.

Could you imagine a situation where one of your most dedicated and generous donors gives your organization a gift… and you never acknowledge or thank them?

That would never happen, right?

But it’s happening accidentally more and more often…

More and more donors are giving gifts through Donor Advised Funds (DAFs).  Because the gift is often labeled as from “Fidelity Charitable” or “Network for Good” (or something similar), the donor who initiated the gift mistakenly goes un-acknowledged and un-thanked.

You might remember that a few years ago, when Twitter was still Twitter, there was an account called The Whiny Donor.

Whiny was a gift to the nonprofit world because she Tweeted what other donors were thinking but not saying.

And Whiny had some experience with DAF giving…

Yikes!

Another gem…

Whiny has since stopped Tweeting, but what she experienced as a DAF donor is still too common.

And here’s the thing… if this is happening to your donors, most of them won’t complain. They’ll simply stop giving because they start to feel like their giving doesn’t matter.

That’s why it’s so important to thank and steward your DAF donors.

As you’re looking at year-end reports, make note of any gifts that came from a Donor Advised Fund (DAF) like Fidelity Charitable, Schwab Charitable, Vanguard Charitable, Network for Good, or any community foundation. Double-check to make sure the donor who initiated the gift was thanked.

If you’re unsure whether a DAF donor has been thanked, reach out with a phone call, a handwritten note, a personal email thanking them for their kind and generous gift — I’m sure you would put a smile on your donor’s face.

Donors who give through DAFs are some of your org’s most faithful donors. You can stand out from the crowd by doing an excellent job of thanking and stewarding them when they give through their DAF.