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Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

Fundraising Tuesday: What Can We Do in Just One Month?

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Giving TuesdayA worthy nonprofit recently asked me:

We’ve participated in Giving Tuesday for several years, and recently, the amount of giving we’ve seen that day has dropped. What can we do over the next month to get it back up again?

My answer?

If you want good results on December 3, then use the entire month of November to thank your donors. Click To Tweet

In case you haven’t heard, Giving Tuesday was created when two organizations, the 92nd Street Y and the United Nations Foundation, came together in 2012, about a month before that year’s Thanksgiving. They reasoned that if there was a “Black Friday” for buying retail, and a “Cyber Monday” for buying online, why not a day set aside for the joy of giving?

Since then, many nonprofits have created Giving Tuesday campaigns. Results varied. Some made a lot of money without reducing the donations they received in their end-of-year campaigns: the best of both worlds! Others found the returns on Giving Tuesday didn’t justify their efforts.

Today’s question comes from a nonprofit that used to find Giving Tuesday worthwhile but is worried about what to expect in 2019. Is there anything they can do to boost donations when they have only one month to work on it?

Say the words: THANK YOU

You can say them in a letter, by phone, in a thank-a-thon.

You can say them in an email, poem, or  video.

You can say them in your newsletter, or you can say them when you send out your welcome packet.

In a box, with a fox

You can say “Thank you” in a box, or you can say “thank you” to a fox–if you’re Dr. Seuss! But remember to say those magic words.

Don’t imply. Don’t leave the donor wondering. Thank them.

How many ways can you say “thank you”?

A smaller organization might need to pick one or two of these methods and spend the month just sending email, or calling donors.

A larger organization–one that actually has a development department, or heavens, separate development and communications departments!–might be able to do several of these.

Choose as many ways to say thank you as you’re sure your nonprofit can do well.

 

Fundraising Tuesday: End of Year? Your Foolproof Timeline

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October

October already???

Did you just have an “OMG, It’s October already” moment?

Your nonprofit may raise 30%, 40%, or more of all the donations you receive all year in the month of December. A lot of organizations do.

And a lot of them started planning their end-of-year campaign in September.

Will your nonprofit reach your donors before they’ve tapped out their charitable donations budget for the year? More important, when you ask them to give, what are you going to say?

Fear not. Communicate! Consulting presents your foolproof timeline for making your end-of-year fundraising a success.

What to do this week

Step one: Thank your donors. Whether you thanked them already, in multiple ways, throughout the year, or whether they haven’t heard from you since last December, they need to hear from you NOW. Show them your gratitude. Tell them, “You’re my hero!”

What to do this month

Step two: Figure out the story you want to build your appeal letter around. If you need permission to tell the story, reach out to get it. If you need a photo, or permission to use a photo, ask for that permission now. (Anything that takes somebody else’s input takes more time. Get started as soon as you can.)

Step three: If you use a graphic designer to put together your package (envelope, letter, reply vehicle), get in touch with them. And if you use a mailing house to send out your appeal letter, get in touch with them too. You don’t want any surprises later!

What to do next month

Step four: Write your letter.

  1. Make sure you call the recipient by name (not “Dear Friend”) and by the name they want you to call them by.
  2. Write a great postscript–before you even write the body of the letter.
  3. Use photos, bold type, italics, bullet points and other tools to break up the text.
  4. Tell a real story, and leave them feeling the end of the story depends on them.
  5. Write a different letter to longtime donors than you do to prospects. (Segment your mailing list!) For renewals, thank them for their last donation and tell them what happened “because you helped.”
  6. Ask people to give, in so many words, at least three times.

Step five: Print up your letter, envelope, and other pieces of your package.

Step six: Call your volunteers to help stuff and mail your appeal (unless you pay a mailing house to do it). And get it in the mail!

What to do in December

Cat waiting for mailStep seven: Follow up your appeal letter with email.

Step eight: Follow up your appeal letter with a phone call.

Step nine: Follow up your appeal letter with social media. (It might be their love language!)

What to do next

Step ten: Starting in December, and straight through Martin Luther King Day: thank the donors. Don’t just let your auto-responder do it: thank them with email, with a personal letter, with a welcome packet, with video, with invitations to events, on your website…as many ways as you can think of.

Step eleven: Find out more about the donors. Ask them to answer a question or two about themselves, or play detective.

Step twelve: Communicate! Through all your channels, tell your supporters stories that will inform them, entertain them, enlighten them, and make them feel closer to you.

When it’s October of next year, you want them looking forward to being asked for an end-of-year gift. (And if you need help doing that, call Communicate! Consulting. Now!)

TY Thursday: Honor Your Donors

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thanks in actionI recently received a thank-you that reminded me of what I’d given, warmed my heart, and made it clear that the people saying “thanks” really knew me. When was the last time you made your donors feel that way?

My day job, of course, is consulting to nonprofit organizations to help them win the loyalty of their donors.

But my longest-running job (although just a few hours each week) is tutoring Jewish students for their bar or bat mitzvah.

It’s an intense relationship. The students, usually at a tender time in their lives, take on a complex task: reading from the Torah and prophets, and leading services, in Hebrew. They study for eight months to a year, and at the beginning, they’re not really sure they will succeed.

Bar mitzvah studyI get the joy of coaching them along and instilling confidence. On the day they actually celebrate becoming full-fledged members of the Jewish community, I’m there to prompt, but mostly to kvell (beam with pride).

Just a week ago–months after they had originally sent me a thank-you note–the family of one my students made a donation in my honor to RAICES, an organization that supports asylum seekers at the southwest border of the U.S.

They knew that I consider the way the U.S. treats these would-be legal immigrants shameful, and that my car wears the bumper sticker Never Again Means Close the Camps.

They made me smile, and they nearly made me cry. And they made me wonder: how many nonprofits are doing as well at saying “thank you” as the Newman/Nedell family?

  • Are you saying “thank you” just once, in a formal letter after receiving a gift? Or do you have a plan for thanking your donors throughout the year?
  • Is your thank-you impersonal, the same for every donor except for name and address? Or does your thank-you tell your donor you know what they care about (which is probably the reason they gave to you in the first place)?
  • Does your thank-you tell your donor, “I see you, and we are on the same side”?
You want to build a relationship of loyalty with your donors. Are you honoring them with your loyalty first? Click To Tweet

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