Communicate!

Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

TY Thursday: The Nonprofit Thank-a-Thon

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gratitudeIt’s vital for your nonprofit to thank donors, and one of the very best ways to do it is to pick up the phone and call them. If you’re lucky, though, you have so many donors that the Executive Director and Development Director both put together would consider thanking donors a full-time job! What’s the solution? Hold a thank-a-thon.

What’s a Thank-a-thon?

A thank-a-thon is like a phone-a-thon. Only instead of dialing for dollars, you have a room full of people calling people who have already given…just to say thanks.

Abigail Harmon gives us the portrait of the classic thank-a-thon.

Armed with a list of donors – big and small alike – and a script, each board member makes calls to thank donors for their support over the past year…Historically, a phone bank was required so that everyone could sit in a room and make the calls…but it is often more feasible to have board members bring their cell phones and chargers (just in case) to a house where they can sit around and make the calls.

You will need a staff member to hand out the lists and scripts and answer questions that might arise. And you will want to provide some food and drink. Your callers will be friendlier if they are fed!

4 Reasons a Thank-a-thon is Worth It

Why would you spend the time and energy of your board members and volunteers for an activity that’s not going to raise any more money right away?

  1. To raise more money next year. If a donor gives you money in 2016 and you send a perfunctory thank-you letter, the chances you’ll see another gift in 2017 are less than 30%. You can double that with a hearty thank-you in a real human voice.
  2. To make your Board members proud. Do you have a Board member who says, “I’ll do anything for this organization–except ask for money”? Turn their fear of asking into their joy at saying thank-you to a person who cares about the same organization they do!
  3. To give non-Board members a way to get more involved. There is no rule that says only directors of the organization can call and say thanks. A call from a fellow donor may be equally meaningful…both to the caller and donor on the other end.
  4. To make it fun. Yes, you can farm out the calls for people to do on their own time, in the privacy of their own homes. But there’s a certain infectious energy that spreads around the room during a thank-a-thon. Try it and see!

Why It’s Sometimes OK to Break the Rules

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Help a thief, or Help, a thief?If you’ve been reading Communicate! for a while, you know I’m not a grammar snob. In fact, my writing online would make my high school English teacher cringe.

Using sentence fragments. And starting sentence with conjunctions.

Repeating words for emphasis, without changing or alternating or varying them or combing through the thesaurus for other options.

Writing one-sentence paragraphs when I really want to make a point.

Why It’s Sometimes OK to Break the Rules

Part of the reason I write this way is that I do most of my writing online. Reading something on a screen is harder than perusing it in print. So, be kind to your reader. When you write for online publication, use shorter sentences and paragraphs, and leave more white space, if you want to be read.

The main reason it’s sometimes OK to break the rules has nothing to do with the medium, however. It’s all about the message. You should write in a way that helps to make your point.

Great writers have always known this. Jane Austen used the passive voice and split infinitives. Ernest Hemingway wrote sentence fragments. Charles Dickens’ sentences went on and on, even though he lampooned German writers for doing the same thing.

And Winston Churchill ended sentences with prepositions (although he probably didn’t say, “This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put”).

But the Rules Are Our Friends

Most of the time, the rules are there to help you. They’re like the street signs and traffic lights when you’re out driving: they make your direction clear to your reader and keep you from smashing into obstacles on the way to your conclusion.

You need to know the rules before you decide that in this case it makes sense to flout them. (And please, know the difference between “flout” and “flaunt”!)

Otherwise, you could end up saying the exact opposite of what you meant to say. Or at best, you could distract readers  from what you meant to say, and have them grinding their teeth about how you said it, instead.

Apostrophes

Thanks to Robert Bruce of 101 Books for inspiring this post.

Fundraising Tuesday: Remember My Name

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Do you know me?Your first chance to persuade the donor to give is the very first line of your letter: the salutation.

Mess up the salutation and it may be your last chance, too.

If I open your appeal letter and find it addressed to “Dear Friend” or “Supporter,” I throw it in the recycling bin. And I’m not alone.

Don’t you know me? What’s my name?

All your donors are receiving more and more solicitations. They have to winnow the pile–and tossing the letters that don’t call them by name is an easy way to do it.

Think about it. Who calls you “Dear Friend” when they’re not asking you for money? As Alan Sharpe says:

My wife never sends me a letter that begins, “Dear Friend.” Neither do my friends. And neither should you when writing to your donors.

Calling your donor “Dear Friend” is signaling that you don’t know or care who she is as long as she writes a check. And that’s insulting. As fundraising expert Gail Perry points out, “Your donor expects that you know her name and who she is, since she’s been sending you money for a while!”

A little more work–but I’m worth it.

It takes a little more work to call your donors by name.

1. You have to set up your fundraising letter with a “merge field.” That’s a short code that lets you pull names off a list and plug them in where they belong. Fortunately, the simplest word processing program can handle that. (Here’s a quick tutorial that will show you how.)

2. You really ought to take the chance to put your donor information into a database. If you’re still using a spreadsheet, you’re making life difficult on yourself–and increasing the chance that you’ll call your donors by the wrong name. Oops! There’s a donor who won’t renew!

3. And once you’ve printed the fundraising appeal letter with the correct name, you have to make sure the letter goes in the envelope that matches. You can’t just grab a letter off the pile and stuff it any more.

Truly, though, this is just a little more work. Once you’ve done it, you won’t have any problem doing it again.  And as your donor, I’m worth it.

(If you tell me I’m not, I may never give to you again–and “Dear Friend” tells me exactly that!)

The wrong way to use my name in fundraising

It is possible to use your donor’s name so often it sounds artificial. That puts them off, instead of bringing them closer.

Here’s a reader comment from my blog post, Fundraising Letters HAVE to Improve in 2016!:

Using my name too much, or trying to fake something handwritten (e.g., the fake post-it) are disingenuous and/or creepy. I would rather you call me friend once than use my name 5 times like a used car salesman.

But using the donor’s name in the salutation is still vital.

How to win me over for a lifetime

You may still be saying to yourself, “We’re getting donations sending Dear Friend letters. Why should we switch?”

I want to quote Alan Sharpe again, because he has had an experience that you probably have had too.

At the Business Depot where I buy my office supplies, there is a store clerk who always remembers my name. She serves hundreds of customers. Yet when I approach the cash, she makes me feel like I’m a special customer. I feel a little flattered every time. Her name, by the way, is Allyson.

Specialists in customer service have long known that remembering a customer’s name—and using it—is one of the most effective ways (and free ways) to encourage repeat business, customer loyalty and free word-of-mouth advertising. The same is just as true in fundraising.

It costs you seven times as much to find a new donor as it does to keep an old one. And the easiest way to keep me for a lifetime is always to call me by name.

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