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TY Thursday: How to Energize Your Donors

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energizer

Energized donors keep on giving…and giving…

In Adam Grant’s book, Give and Take: How Helping Others Drive Our Success, he writes, “When people know how their work makes a difference, they feel energized to contribute more.”

The same applies to donors.

If you tell your donor how their gift changed someone’s life, they will be happy and proud, excited…and energized. They will want that feeling again. They will want to hear from you the next time you write. Chances are, they’ll give again, too.

Energize with a Sparkling Thank-You Letter

When it comes to exciting your donors, you have a golden opportunity, right after they give. Your first chance to make your one-time, impulse donor into a loyal Energizer Bunny of philanthropy is in your thank-you letter.

Joanne Fritz is a sage of the nonprofit world. In a recent article, she has given us all a great gift. She shared give examples of thank-you letters your donors will love. I call them:

  1. Painting the picture. (“Thanks to you, Michael and his sister, Janet, celebrated Michael’s 9th birthday with cake and balloons in a safe and loving place.”)
  2. Story anthology. (“Let me tell you what our services at Therapeutic Riding of Atlanta mean to some of the children who come to our classes.”)
  3. Instant impact report. (“No longer isolated in a hard-to-reach walk up in a high-rise building, Tom and Francis now have easy access to the services they need. Plus, they will receive two meals a day and participate in healthy and fun activities ranging from exercise classes to community field trips.”)
  4. Gusher of gratitude. (“The healing starts with a tiny spark … a glimmer of hope in soft, soulful eyes. And for homeless pets with serious injuries who come to Best Friends, the hope and the healing are all because of you.”)
  5. From general to personal. (Think an agency that does boring research can’t tell a great story? Think again!)
    “For the last forty years, research has shown that investing in women and girls has ripple effects through a community.Take Akina*, a young woman in Kenya who works for BURN, a clean cookstoves factory and social enterprise business supported by Acumen, a non-profit that invests in companies and ideas that aim to tackle poverty. Before BURN, Akina had never worked in a factory, but thanks to their investment in women, she has moved up to become a supervisor. Her wages pay for her younger sister’s education and the transportation costs for her brother to commute to his job.”

More TY Letters Your Donors Will Love

If you’re still looking for ways to make your thank-you letters sparkle, please take a look at this TY Thursday blog post you might have missed:
Write a Creative Thank-You Letter
In this post, you will find:

    • What You Need to Know Before You Thank
    • Great Advice on How to Start, from such luminaries of the nonprofit world as Beth Ann Locke, Gail Perry, and Pamela Grow
    • How to Write the Ideal Thank You Letter–advice from yours truly

Whether you follow the examples Joanne Fritz laid out or Write a Creative Thank-You Letter of your own, there’s no time like the present. If you want donors to keep on giving, you have to keep on thanking!

TY Thursday: Which Donor is Your True Love?

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Who's your true love?

Which should you love best?

If you’re going to go out of your way to thank a donor fabulously, creatively, as many times and as many ways as you can, which donor should it be?

Do you single out the person who gives you the most money, or the person who gives most loyally over the years?

Let me tell you two stories to help you decide.

The Sudden Passion

The receptionist at the anti-poverty agency where I worked brought me the day’s mail. I opened a handful of reply envelopes from our most recent fundraising appeal. Then I gasped. A woman who had never given us a penny before had sent in a check for $1,000!

For our little nonprofit, $1,000 was a fortune. It was ten times the amount of the average donor’s gift. And it was the first time that Jean had donated. We had great hopes for the future.

As far as I know, we did all the right things to let Jean feel the #donorlove. We

  • Sent her a thank-you letter with a personal note from the Executive Director, the same day we received her donation
  • Followed it up with a voicemail
  • Listed her in our newsletter and annual report
  • Invited her to special events

Yet we never heard from Jean again. I still don’t know why. Perhaps she meant to give to an organization in town with a similar name, and she was too embarrassed to tell us she’d made a mistake? Or perhaps we’d touched her heart just that one time, and the morning after, she realized she loved some other organization better?

I’m not sorry we had our brief moment of passion with Jean. But I’m glad we didn’t run away with her, thinking it was true love, and forget about the donors waiting at home.

The Love of a Lifetime

John was a client of our agency. He couldn’t give much at a time–certainly not $1,000! But he had volunteered or served on the Board for twenty-five years.

Whenever we sent an appeal letter, he gave what he could. And when we had our twenty-fifth anniversary gala, John went around town (walking with a cane) and solicited gifts from local businesses. Back at his subsidized elderly housing, he went door to door and asked his neighbors to donate.

Over a lifetime, John raised $1,000 many times over.

Because John was shy, we couldn’t applaud him in public the way we would have liked. We sent him thank-yous and listed his donations, but we never toasted him or sent him gifts.

At Board meetings, however, we thanked him and held him up as an example. And our agency went above and beyond to make sure he  (and later, his daughter) would keep his housing and benefits, even when he was hospitalized for months at a time. That was another way of saying thanks.

If You Have to Choose Your True Love, Here’s How

Ideally, of course, you’d thank every donor fervently and frequently. Aim to do that! If you have to choose, however, pick your most loyal donors at every level.

Don’t just thank your major donors. If your newsletters are full of pictures of people who pay for whole buildings or programs, then your average donor will think, “This organization doesn’t need people like me.”

Show the love to the donors who, over time, show the most true love to you. Share on X

Fundraising Tuesday: The Case of the Unknown Donors

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“You’ve got to help us,” the Executive Director said. “We have all these donors, and we don’t know them.  We’re communicating in the dark.”

Do the detective work to know your audiences

Do the detective work and know your donors

“A hundred dollars an hour plus expenses,” I said.  As a private detective, I’m used to searching in the dark.  Besides, it would be a break from snooping on cheating husbands and wives.

Here’s how I tracked down the unknown donors.

Searched the case files.  I looked through the database for tips about donors and prospects.  I combed the Board bios and meeting minutes to get the skinny on the directors.  For donors who were clients, the agency balked: confidentiality, they said.  I’d heard that one before.  “Give me a sample of client folders with the names removed.  I’ll take it from there.”

Talked to informants.  Who knows each audience the best?  The nice lady at the front desk told me stories about the people who come in looking for help that would curl your hair.  The program directors dished the dirt on the organizations they collaborate with: thick as thieves, but not as well funded. The Executive Director herself knew all the politicians in town.  I made notes.

Beat the pavement.  Take a tip from an old gumshoe: don’t wait by the phone.  Get out and talk to people.  Interview people.  Find out their motives.  How else will you know how to motivate them?

Tail the suspects.  These days, people leave trails a mile wide all over the Internet.  Track them.  What footprints can you find through a web search?  Who do they visit on Facebook?  See what business they’re conducting in LinkedIn groups.  Read the notes they scrawl and toss onto Twitter.  You don’t have to snap photos: they’re doing it for you, on Instagram and Pinterest and other juke joints all around.  Make yourself known there and see who talks.

Follow the money.  Are your unknown donors making payments to other organizations?  Look at donor lists to see what relationships they have on the side.

Get the suspects in a room.  Call it a focus group.  Call it an advisory board.  Call it Ishmael, if you like–just ask them the questions.  Put them at ease and they’ll sing like a room full of canaries.

I made my report.  The Executive Director was grateful. “Now we know who they are, what they want, where to find them, and how to talk to them.  I can just see the donation renewals coming in!”

“Good,” I said.  “Don’t spend it all in one place.”  They would need to do more investigation as their audiences changed.  Good investigators don’t come cheap.

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