Category: Thank

Embrace Your Smallness

Steven  |  Thank

If you’re a small nonprofit, embrace it. Use it to your advantage. Especially when you are thanking your donors.

Here’s how to take advantage of your smallness and local-ness to Thank your donors in powerful ways.

Hand-write Thank You notes to Every Donor

Say you have 200 donors. You can send a handwritten thank you note to every single one of those donors. The vast majority of your donors will never have received a handwritten thank you note from a nonprofit before, let alone one signed by the Executive Director or a Board Member. You’ll make a big impression. And your chances of retaining that donor just skyrocketed.

Mention That You Are Local

I read recently that an increasing percentage of donations are moving from large, national charities to smaller, local orgs. That’s great news for you, and means that you should be mentioning your local-ness in your fundraising.

Let me give you a couple of examples:

  • Say you’re helping local middle-school kids improve their math skills. You should mention local middle schools by name and neighborhood. Say things like, “Your gift is going to help kids at Kennedy, and at McLure in North Ballard. These are local kids you’re helping. You see them playing on the soccer fields you drive by. And the next time you drive by, they are going to be better at math — thanks to you!”
  • This works even if you’re helping people on the other side of the world. You can say things like, “Thank you! You are supporting a small, local organization with an international impact. We’re located just South of downtown, over by the old brewery. We all live around here, and we love helping you make the world a better place.”

Do you get the idea? Do you see how rooting your organization in a place that the donor knows makes you more familiar and trustworthy? That’s a big deal (and getting bigger).

Show Her How Important She Is

If you only have a few hundred donors, every donor you have is more important to you than she is to the big national organizations she also gives to. Have you told her that?

Tell her by thanking her! Say things like, “[NAME], it’s you and about 250 other generous, compassionate people that make this organization go. You make it possible. So when I tell you that you’re an important part of what we’re doing, I mean it. You are a big deal to me, and your support has a big impact.”

If your donors are a big deal, by all means tell them they are a big deal! Too many small, local nonprofits get stuck trying to communicate as if they are a big organization. And they miss the beauty and power of their smallness.

Elbow Grease and Shoe Leather

We have a client where the executive director (a man, by the way) bakes pies and delivers them to top donors. We’ve worked with organizations that hand-deliver thank you cards from beneficiaries, crafts from Africa, hand-made pens, even a jug of home-brewed beer. Those kind of touches that can make a big impact.

The ‘National Big Disease That Your Uncle Has Foundation’ isn’t doing that for their donors, my friend! And when you do it for your donors, they will notice.

Good old-fashioned elbow grease and shoe leather will take you a long way.

If You Have A Few Too Many Donors For This . . .

Maybe you have 2,000 donors and can’t treat everyone this way. You can sure treat your major donors this way. Jim says this all the time: figure out how many people your human resources will allow you to give the special treatment to, start with your most valuable donor, and work down from there.

In Closing

If you’re a small, local nonprofit, your goal should be to act like the local hardware store that’s friendly and knows everybody by name. Don’t try to be Nordstrom’s. For one, you don’t have the resources or budget to pull it off. You can’t, and donors can smell it. Second, there already IS a Nordstroms! Be yourself. Embrace your strengths.

If you do this stuff, you’ll run circles around the really big nonprofits.

Because listen, most donors out there want to know two things: that their gift makes a difference, and that their gift matters. Embracing your smallness, especially when you’re Thanking, is one of the very best ways you can really show your donors that they and their gifts matter.

A Benediction For Fundraisers

Steven  |  Thank

I’d like to propose a benediction for Fundraisers. The close of one year and the open of another seems like a perfect time, no? I shared this with our email list members a few weeks ago thought you would enjoy it.

This is unabashedly based off a poem by Teresa of Avila (1515–1582).

Donors Have No Programs

Donors have no programs but yours.
They have strong hearts, but no body that helps people.

Yours is the mouth that tells donors of the ills of the world,
Yours are the feet that take her to where she can see the need,
Yours are the eyes that help her see what needs to be done,
Yours are the hands that do what needs to be done.

Yours is the Body, that makes it all possible.
Hers is the Generosity, that makes it all possible.

Fundraiser! Yours is the responsibility to Ask for her help,
And the responsibility to Report on her successes.

How much more good can she do with you, than without?
How much more joy can she have with you, than without?
For she has no programs on earth but yours.

My friend, may you have an incredible 2018. Fundraising is the best job in the whole world.

Podcast: The Right Way — And Wrong Way — To Thank Your Donors

Steven  |  Thank

Today I’m excited to share Episode #103 of the Fundraising Is Beautiful podcast that I host with Jeff Brooks. In this episode, we discuss why nonprofits should avoid using the word “partner” as a verb, the importance of a thank you letter, and the necessity of focusing on what the donor did rather than their relationship to your organization. Enjoy!

Play Episode #103: The right way — and wrong way — to thank your donors.

The Big Thank-You Mistake That Chases Away Donors

Jeff Brooks  |  Thank
Thank

When I was a Cub Scout, proudly dressed in the blue uniform with the yellow scarf, I once helped an old lady cross the street.

It went like this: I sidled up to an elderly woman who was standing on a corner, waiting for the light to change.

“Can I help you across, ma’am?” I asked.

She looked me up and down. Suspiciously. “Yes you can, I’m sure,” she said. “And you may.”

Her jab at my word choice went over my head.

The light changed, and I hooked my arm around hers and started across. I concentrated on matching her speed, as I’d heard about another Scout who had moved too quickly and pulled his old lady off her feet; he ran off in a panic, leaving her on her hands and knees in the middle of the street.

We made it across fine. Both of us upright. We got to the other side, and I unhooked by arm from hers.

I waited for my much-deserved praise.

She said: “Thank you for your commitment to traffic safety.”

And walked away. Leaving me gaping and confused, silently vowing never to help weird old ladies across the street again.

Okay, I made up that last part about her strange form of thanking me. No human being would do that.

But nonprofit organizations do exactly that all the time!

It’s probably happened to you as a donor:

  • You donate to help hungry children in Haiti, and they thank you for doing your part to fight world poverty.
  • You donate to fight a terrible government policy you hate, and they thank you for protecting civil liberties.
  • You donate to save some beautiful animal from extinction, and they thank you for your commitment to habitat preservation.

I know why it happens. The organization thinks of its mission as fighting world poverty. But if they sent out fundraising with that as the offer, they’d have shut their doors years ago. So they raise funds with specific offers, like feeding hungry children in Haiti …

But when it comes time to thank donors, they forget — or more likely, they don’t really care. So they thank the donor for helping them accomplish their mission in the broad sense.

Which is basically rude. And not human.

Don’t be that organization. Thank your donors for doing the thing you asked them to do.

It would be perfectly fine if — once you’ve really piled on the gratitude for the thing their gift accomplished — to tell them their gift also helped do that bigger thing.

But don’t act like you live on a different planet by thanking them for something they likely have no sense that they did at all.

Thank your donors for doing the thing you asked them to do.

Then they’ll happily keep coming back to help you across the street, again and again!

​Send a Pure Thank You Email

Steven  |  Thank
Thank

Either this week or next week, my advice is to send an thank you email to your donors. That’s right, a pure thank you.

Fill it with gratitude. Thank your donor with raw emotion. Thank her for what she did (gave a gift to help), not for what your organization did. Tell her how valuable she is to your organization.

Thank Her As If You Actually Need Her

Most organizations thank their donors as if the donor is a very small part of a very big process.

You know intuitively that’s not a good idea. That’s like treating everyone you meet as ‘just one of the several thousand people you’ll meet in your life.’

Your goal is to make her FEEL your gratitude and thankfulness. Thank her as if your organization actually needed her gift last year!

Fine. What’s the Benefit?

You mean other than being honorable and polite?

Because she likely just heard from you (and a lot of other organizations) asking her to help. This is your first chance in 2018 to close the loop and show her that she matters.

Right? She’s about to receive all sorts of annual reports and other messages that say, “Look what WE did last year, look how many people WE helped last year, WE are awesome!”

I submit to you that you’ll build deeper relationships with your donors more by saying, “Thank YOU for what YOU did last year!”

How To Write It

Always remember: your headline and first sentence are really important because most people won’t read the whole thing.

But if you get your message of gratitude in your subject line, your headline, and your first sentence, your donor is almost guaranteed to get it.

Your goal is to be emotional and personal. Don’t sound corporate. Sound like one person writing to express sincere thanks to one other person.

You don’t have to overthink this. I bet the following would be very effective:

Dear [NAME],

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!

Last year when your gift was needed, and you reached out in faith and generously helped. You and your gift matter, and you made a difference.

I am so incredibly grateful for you. Thank you for being a donor!

[SIGNATURE]

Try to have your email look as personal as possible – like it came straight from Outlook. If you have a fancy email template, try to use as little of it as possible. If you normally have a bunch of social or donation links at the bottom, delete them if you can. Don’t think of this as an email to your list. Think of it as an email from one grateful to one donor who is wondering if they matter.

Who To Send It To

Your donors.

Not to everybody on your email list. Just your donors. You do not want to give your non-donors one of the emotional benefits of giving (being Thanked) when they have not given a gift.

If you can’t segment out your non-donors, then send it to everybody.

When To Send It

As soon as you can!

Start your donors’ 2018 off with an incredible expression of gratitude to them! They’ll love it, your open rate will be higher than normal, you’ll feel great for doing it, and you’ll have taken a powerful first step towards fundraising success this year!

Thankuary is here!

Steven  |  Thank

Wanted to let you know about something special that’s happening this month . . .

Introducing Thankuary

We’re taking plain old January and turn it into Thankuary. It’s a whole month to help you and your nonprofit shower your donors with gratitude.

Two reasons:

  1. Your donors deserve it. They gave you gifts last year out of pure generosity! Do you know if they feel your gratitude? They sure deserve to. And personally, I think there’s a moral imperative to Thank and Thank well. (It might not be a moral imperative, but it sure was my Mama’s imperative!)
  2. It will help you raise more money in 2018. Thanking well is the very first step towards retaining a donor and making them more likely to give additional gifts. Just one data point for you: Leah Eustace from Blue Canoe Philanthropy showed that a 3-minute Thank You call raises donor retention by 10%. And, Thanking is part of the Virtuous Circle.

Here’s What We Propose

You take the month of January and intentionally Thank your donors with emotion and focus.

We know you have other stuff to do, too. We get it.

So to help, we’re going to spend January talking about the most effective ways to Thank your donors. You’ll get step-by-step instructions. Great ideas. Guest posts. Sample sentences and paragraphs you can steal.

If you think you do a fantastic job Thanking your donors, that’s great. I hope you’ll comment and share what’s worked for you.

How Thankuary Started

A couple of years ago we were working with an organization that swore up and down that they Thanked their donors well. So I looked through all of their receipts and thank you letters.

The first receipt letter I looked at began with this sentence:

“Recently our entire staff went on a retreat.”

That, my friends, is not the best way to start your receipt letter. What in the world were they thinking about Thanking where that sentence seemed like a good idea?

Fast-forward to last month we were meeting with another client. We were talking about spending January making sure their donors knew how important they were to this organization. (Is that something you should do for your organization?)

I said, off the top of my head, “Let’s call it Thankuary!”

And after much rejoicing, Thankuary was born.

So, Thankuary begins today. Stay tuned for our best advice on how you can Thank well, start your year off with some real donor love, and be on your way to a successful 2018!

Say “Thank You” Like You Really Mean It

Steven  |  Thank

Note from Steven: This is a guest post from Lisa, an experienced Development Director who is on the Better Fundraising team.

Your receipt letters are arguably the most-opened, most-read piece of mail (or email) you’ll ever sent to your donors. Are you giving them the attention they deserve?

When I started as the Director of Development at a local non-profit, the first thing I looked at was the receipting process. Why? Because the receipt letter was the first ‘touch’ a donor would receive after sending in their gift.

What I found was an organization that loved their donors but didn’t know how to thank them. It was common practice to hold on to the receipts until there were enough to mail at a bulk rate. This meant some donors were being asked for another gift BEFORE they had been thanked for their first one.

The receipts letters were generic so they could be used year around. There was no acknowledgment of the donor’s actual gift amount, or what their gift was used for.

Put on your “donor hat” for a moment. How would you feel about receiving a generic receipt after you’ve been asked again?

I would probably look somewhere else to donate my charitable dollars. And I believe many of their donors did.

So simply saying “thank you” IS NOT enough.

Better Fundraising understands the importance of saying thank you and how to say it well. It is part of their “virtuous circle” and the Ask, Thank, Report, Repeat system.

So what does it mean to thank donors well?

  • Let them know you received their gift in a timely fashion. Ideally, within 2-3 business days after you received their gift.
  • Be sincere and emotional in your thank letter. True gratitude shines through a well-written thank you.
  • Let them know what their gift was used for. For example, if you asked them to give a gift provide food and shelter, thank them for providing food and shelter.

And the thank yous don’t need to stop here! You can thank donors multiple times for their gift. By phone, text, online, at an event, a hand-written note. You can also develop a different thank you strategy for your mass, mids and major donors.

Thanking donors well should be part of your organization’s culture. If it’s not, start today!

To learn more about thanking donors (especially important this time of year!) watch Jim and Steven’s video on saying “Thank You.”

What I Wish I Knew Then

Steven  |  Ask, Report, Thank

Note from Steven: This is a guest post from Lisa, an experienced Development Director who is on the Better Fundraising team.

When I was a new development director, there never seemed to be enough time, money or man power to get everything done. It was overwhelming. Sound familiar?

I knew I needed to prioritize . . . but even that was hard.

As you sit in your seat today, wondering how you can have the biggest impact possible, take this advice from a person who played every role in her development department. Here are three things I wish someone would have told me right at the beginning . . .

Make it clear what the donor’s gift will do

Specifically, make it clear enough so a donor could easily repeat it to their friends.

Your organization probably does a lot of great things, but you need to focus on just one powerful thing. It’s ok if what you ask donors to do is only part of what your organization does. I’ve noticed that most donors respond better to one simple thing than having to learn about all your organization does.

Always have a system to thank your donors promptly

Donors should be thanked and receipted 24-48 hours after you receive their donation. If they give online they will get a digital thank you right away, but follow that up with a thank you in the mail. For larger gifts, you may want to call and personally thank the donor.

As I built relationships with donors over the years I learned that you cannot thank a donor too quickly. But, thanking a donor to slowly is a surefire way to losing donors over time.

Show each donor the difference their gift made

People give because they want to make a difference. So let them know how their gift made a difference! For most of your donors, this can be done in your organization’s newsletter. Or an e-update, but in my experience e-updates aren’t nearly as good at engaging donors as a printed newsletter.

And for major donors, do whatever it takes to show them.

Take them on a site visit, prepare a special report just for them, whatever it takes to show them how their gift made a difference!

Do these three things and you WILL see improvements in your program. Better Fundraising gets this. Their Ask, Thank, Report, Repeat formula teaches and emphasizes the fundamentals of fundraising, helping you prioritize and work on the things that really matter!

​Improve Your Fall Fundraising the charity: water Way

Steven  |  Ask, Report, Thank

Had the pleasure of interviewing Scott Harrison, the founder of charity: water for the Fundraising Is Beautiful podcast.

There’s a TON of tips you can use to improve your fall fundraising results! You’ll hear Scott talk about:

  • How important immediacy is
  • How to take your donors on a journey with every piece of donor communications
  • How charity: water “productizes” what they do to make it easy for donors to understand and then do something meaningful with each gift
  • How he’s comfortable sharing bad news with donors, and why that ultimately helps his organization.

I really encourage you to go take a listen. (And even subscribe!) I’m a better fundraiser for having listened to Scott, and you will be too! Here’s the link.