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Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

Fundraising Tuesday: Write the Donor a Love Letter

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Listen, my friends: I’ve been trying to tell you how to write the ideal appeal letter in many different ways.

I’ve mentioned that your Board is not your audience, it’s your donors…and that you need to make your donor feel like the hero of the story, and get to know them, remember them, and thank them.

Forget what I said. Someone I just met said it better.

Why Donors Give

I was speaking to a conference of people with disabilities in the northeast U.S. I was explaining that bragging about your organization and its accomplishments may make donors say, “That’s nice, but why should I care?”

I told them donors give not because you do good work but because giving makes them feel good about themselves. “Because of you,” the nonprofit should say to the donor, “a wonderful thing is happening.”

One participant at the conference turned his wheelchair to face me and raised his hand. “Now I get it,” he said.”What you’re saying is You want to write the donor a love letter. Share on X

Why a Good Appeal Letter is like a Love Letter

love letter

Brown paper card-sized envelope sealed with a valentine sticker

No heartsick suitor ever won his lady’s love by boasting. “I’m so great. I’ve done so well in so many ways. I deserve your love, so love me.” Sorry, Romeo, that’s not going to touch the heart.

What you have to say in your letter is what makes the other person–in this case, the donor–so love-able. Their values. The cause they support. The difference they make with each donation.

Persuade your donor that it’s their action that changes the world for the endangered people, species, or ecosystem they care about. Your organization is the vehicle by which they express what’s best about themselves–but only the vehicle.

Don’t focus on getting them to love you. Show the donor you love them.

Are you puzzled about how to write a love letter to your donor? Email me at [email protected]. I’ll be your Cyrano and show you the way to your donor’s heart.

Fundraising Tuesday: Improving Donor Affinity–3 Event Ideas for Nonprofits

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A guest post by Sarah Tedesco, DonorSearch

Donors contribute to your nonprofit because they are passionate about your cause. However, with so many worthy causes out there, you need to nurture each donor’s personal interests in your nonprofit in order to retain their support.

This natural interest in your cause or nonprofit is called donor affinity. Cultivating donor affinity is an effective way for your nonprofit to maintain engagement and ensure donors remain connected to your cause.

So how can you encourage donor affinity? One great way to ensure your donors continue to care about your organization is to host an event that sparks their passion. Here are our top three event ideas for improving donor affinity:

  1. Charity Auction
  2. 5K Run or Walk
  3. Educational Webinar

Each of these events will allow your organization to connect with donors and build a stronger community among your supporters. By growing your community and reminding donors of their impact, you can improve donor affinity and ensure that your supporters remain engaged. Let’s take a closer look at each of these events and how you can plan them successfully.

1. Charity Auction

Auctions are not only a great way to raise money for your nonprofit, but they’re also a very engaging event for your supporters. Auctions provide an opportunity for your donors to support a cause they care about while also purchasing something they truly love. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when planning your auction:

  • Determine what type of auction you’ll host early on. Before you dive into the details of planning your auction, you’ll need to determine what type of auction you’d like to host. Will it be a traditional or silent auction? In-person, virtual, or hybrid? Once you determine the type of auction you’ll host, you can adjust your planning and marketing strategy accordingly.

 

  • Connect with local businesses. Local businesses can have a huge impact on your local community and how involved they become with your work. Consider reaching out to local businesses to see if they’d be interested in donating items to your auction to demonstrate their support for your cause. Local businesses can also connect you with patrons of their establishments who might already have an interest in your cause.

 

  • Emphasize the impact of bids. To cultivate donor affinity, you need to demonstrate how your donors are making an impact. During the auction, be sure to emphasize how donations and bids will help your nonprofit achieve your goals, launch new initiatives, and forward your mission.

While an auction doesn’t explicitly draw on a donor’s natural interest in your nonprofit, there are plenty of opportunities to nurture donor affinity. Because auctions are such engaging events, your donors will likely already be paying close attention to the event, meaning it’s the perfect chance to share important information about your cause.

2. 5K Run or Walk

One reliable way to improve donor affinity is to build community. A strong community of supporters can motivate, inspire, and educate each other, and there’s no better event to build community than a 5K race. These races can gather many of your supporters together and rally everyone around your cause. When planning your 5K run or walk, you should:

  • Encourage teams. Teams are a great way to add some friendly competition while getting more supporters involved! For instance, if you have an active alumni network, encourage them to form their own teams and see which alumni groups can raise the most funds.

 

  • Share content about your nonprofit and mission. In the registration process, follow-up emails, and on the actual day, be sure that you’re reminding participants why they’re there: to support your nonprofit. Consider having beneficiaries of your nonprofit speak at the event and share their story to deepen the personal connection that your donors have to your cause.

 

  • Host a celebration at the end. When the 5K run or walk is over, host a big celebration with food, games, and a ceremony to celebrate your fastest runners and most effective peer-to-peer fundraisers. A celebration will ensure that your participants enjoy their time and associate your nonprofit with happy memories!

To help your event run as smoothly as possible, invest in nonprofit software that allows you to register participants, track their donations, and identify relationships between donors (such as members of the same family who joined the same team). With this information, you can identify opportunities to grow donor affinity even after the event is over.

3. Educational Webinar

In many instances, donor affinity can grow out of newfound awareness or education. Perhaps a potential donor had no idea about the cause that your nonprofit is supporting or they were recently affected by the issue you’re trying to address. They will turn to your nonprofit to provide answers to their questions and knowledge about the issue.

With the right approach, your nonprofit can make supporters care even more about the issue, improving donor affinity across the board. To raise awareness about your cause, host an educational webinar featuring informed speakers and representatives of your nonprofit.

To host a successful webinar, you should:

  • Discuss topics that are interesting to your donors. Each donor’s interest in your nonprofit likely grew out of different circumstances, but they probably want to learn more about similar topics. Design your webinar around certain topics that are the most interesting to your donors. And if you’re unsure which topics your donors might be interested in, don’t be afraid to ask!

 

  • Emphasize how your nonprofit has made a difference. While donors may be interested in your cause, they might not have a full understanding of how your nonprofit is making a difference. During your webinar, emphasize the difference that your nonprofit has made and how donations can help you further your impact.

 

  • Host a Q&A session. A great webinar likely prompts questions from your audience, so give attendees the chance to ask speakers their burning questions. Creating a dynamic and engaging conversation will also help donors feel like an integral part of your nonprofit’s dialogue.

Hosting an exclusive webinar is also a great way to nurture affinity among major donors. According to DonorSearch’s guide on major donor fundraising, creating events specifically targeted towards major donors can effectively deepen their engagement and encourage them to donate more. A webinar is the perfect way to combine education with your long-term fundraising strategy.

Cultivating donor affinity is crucial for any nonprofit. Not only can it help you better tailor your nonprofit’s marketing strategy, events, and programs, but it can also help you deepen each donor’s relationship with your nonprofit. Good luck!

Sarah TedescoSarah Tedesco is the Executive Vice President of DonorSearch, a prospect research and wealth screening company that focuses on proven philanthropy. Sarah is responsible for managing the production and customer support department concerning client contract fulfillment, increasing retention rate and customer satisfaction. She collaborates with other team members on a variety of issues including sales, marketing and product development ideas.

Fundraising Tuesday: Make the Calendar Your Friend. Easy!

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What if I told you there was a way you could reach out and touch your supporters more often, with less effort, with more impact, and raise more money for your nonprofit? Would you be interested?

There is, and it’s called an integrated donor communications calendar. And it’s easy!

Why Planning Your Posts and Your Asks Makes Life Easier

Did you ever have this experience? You open your computer, see that you haven’t emailed, Facebooked, tweeted, etc., to your donors in weeks. Your heart sinks.

“I really have to get in touch with them right now,” you say to yourself. “But what in the world will I say?”

I sympathize. There’s nothing more off-putting than a blank screen (unless it’s a blank piece of paper). Many’s the time I’ve got up and made myself a cup of tea, or cleaned the cats’ litter box…anything to delay that fateful moment when I have to have an idea.

The problem isn’t with you, or me. The problem is that we are leaving too much to chance.

Yes, a blinding flash of inspiration can strike just at the moment when you sit down to write. It can happen. But that’s not the way to bet.

Instead, we can more or less guarantee that we will have something to write about. Not only that, but we can make sure that we’ll be sending out the right messages at the right time, to the right audience, making them feel seen and appreciated (and more likely to donate when asked).

Planning ahead makes life easier for us and better for our readers and donors. So, how do we start? We start with a calendar.

What to Put on Your Donor Communications Calendar

The three types of content you want to share with your supporters are:

  1. Seasonal
  2. Campaign
  3. Evergreen

Seasonal communications

Topical content is what will be top of your donor’s minds and close to their hearts at any given time.

If you know your audience, you know what they care about, specifically. For example, the Martin Luther King holiday is just another Monday off for some communities. For others, it is the most important day of their year.

Think about what will be front and center for the audience that gives to your nonprofit throughout the year. Take out a calendar, go month by month, and list the topics. Then, think about what your organization is especially well positioned to say about them. (For instance: “Did Martin Luther King play a role in promoting Fair Housing?” is a good post for a Fair Housing Commission, but it would be weird and distracting for a group focused on environmental racism to put out.)

Now, put that precise topic on your calendar, on the date when you want it to go public. Plan backwards from that date f0r

  • when you want to finalize and schedule it,
  • when you want to create different formats for your email and your various social media,
  • when you want to write it,
  • when you want to assemble photos, links, quotes, etc., for it
  • when you need to interview anyone for it (because anything that involves more than one person will take longer!)

When you put those steps on your calendar, you won’t wake up in a panic in mid-January wondering what to post. You’ll come back to work after New Year’s Day, look at your calendar, and have your plan for your MLK Day post in order. Simple!

Do the same thing for as many significant dates during the year as you can come up with. You’re off to a great start for the year.

Campaign communications

Let’s say your organization advocates for new policies when the legislature is in session–or runs a summer camp–or has an annual gala. Unlike the seasonal topics, these campaigns are not events that donors will necessarily know about by themselves. But you want them to pay attention!

Talk with your Executive Director and colleagues about what the organization will be doing over the course of the calendar year that you want the public to pay attention to, and perhaps even get involved in. Figure out the key dates, the essential themes, and the calls to action you want to share. Plan multiple messages across different platforms.

Now, block out the time on your calendar when most or all of your messaging is going to focus on that campaign.

Evergreen communications

Between seasonal content and campaign content, your communications calendar is starting to look substantial! Remember, though: consistency matters. Your donors and other supporters should look forward to hearing from you regularly. If you do a monthly newsletter, it should be every month. If you do a weekly Facebook post (I’d suggest more often), make sure you don’t skip a week. If you’re on Twitter, you can do variations of the same tweet multiple times a week, or a day. And so on.

Where are you going to get all that content? That’s where evergreen topics are so, so helpful.

Evergreen content is the kind of story that your donors will find interesting no matter what week, month, or year it is and what else may be going on. It’s what they care about, always. If you recognize what matters to them and serve it up regularly, they will keep coming back for more.

Cast your net to catch evergreen content when it shows up on the internet. (Google Alert and Feedspot are two of the many tools you can use for this.) Create a system for collecting stories from your staff, and a story bank, and you can pull from that treasure trove at will.

Betwixt and between the seasonal and campaign topics, at any time on your calendar, you can share your evergreen content with your readers. Sometimes, that will be what they remember the best!

Integrate Fundraising into Your Calendar

Most of fundraising is what happens between the asks.

Fundraising includes the thanks you send and the impact you demonstrate. It also includes the ways you provide value to your donors and the ways you make them happy to hear from you.

But of course, fundraising is also asking for money. And you should include your direct mail, email, and events fundraising in your calendar, too. That way, your asks can build off what you are already saying to your donors–and your communications can seamlessly lead into your solicitations.

The best day to start your communications calendar is today! List those seasonal, campaign, and evergreen topics and start plugging them into your schedule. Do yourself a favor and never have to wonder “What in the world will I say?” again.

 

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