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TY Thursday: Thank Like a Human

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Did you make donations online at the end of last year? If so, you probably saw a lot of email acknowledgments arrive in your inbox, automatically.

How many of these so-called thanks sounded like they were written by an automaton?

Most of the emails I received in response to my donation sounded that way. And for the nonprofits I gave to, it’s a missed opportunity.

A Donation is Part of a Relationship

Automation is a great labor-saving device. It means that a lot of fundraisers could celebrate New Year’s Day instead of working on Sunday and the holiday. But consider: how does it work for the donor?

First-time donors

bad dateWhen a donor gives to your organization for the first time, it’s like agreeing to a first date. Immediately, they wonder:

“Did I do the right thing? Do we have as much in common as I hoped we did? Am I going to be sorry I gave, or will it lead to something that can last?”

So imagine going out on a first date and hearing, “Thank you for agreeing to see me on December 29, for a dinner that cost $36.52. Your company for the evening meant a lot to me.”

Not very romantic, is it? And your date probably says that to everyone! So, there’s a good chance that first date–or first-time donation–will be the last.

Renewal donors

breakfast coupleGetting an impersonal message can be even more off-putting to the donor who’s been giving for years.

Imagine a loyal supporter of your organization. She has come to events, contributed items for your silent auction, and told her friends about you. This year, she has given her biggest donation ever, online, using her credit card. And what she got back from you was the same automaton response as everybody else.

It’s as if she’s sitting across the table from you at breakfast smiling because she’s left a present by your plate, and she says, “Happy anniversary, my love.” And you say, “Thank you. Please pass the salt”!

Nonprofits, we can do better than that.

Thanks! Auto-Responses that Show the Love

I want to give credit where credit is due. It takes some work to set up an automatic email to go out as soon as a donation comes in. And it’s better than nothing. Plus, some organizations write the ideal thank-you letter and send it in the mail.

But with just a little more effort, your nonprofit can thank donors like you mean it from the very first email you send. Here are good, better, and best ways of revising your automatic email to donors.

Good: Remind the donor what you do.

On the face of it, that seems silly. They just gave to you, right? They should know what you do! But you may be on their list from last year, and in any case, they may need a reminder before the memory fades. Give them the gift of a reminder.

Example–the Children’s Room in Arlington, MA says:

Your generosity supports our work with children, teens, and families who are coping with the death of an immediate family member, and the educators and professionals who seek to help them.

Better: tell the donor what their donation will do. Make the donor the hero.

Example–MADRE tells me:

Your gift enables women to provide food, shelter, emergency medical care and other critical resources for their families and communities. You give women the tools to build new skills and step up as leaders. And your dedication trains grassroots women to demand justice, and advocate for policies, locally and globally, that protect women’s rights.

Best: add a story.

Don’t just tell your donors they make a difference. Show them how they matter.

Share with them a story about one person (and possibly their family) in trouble, who is already better off “because you helped.”

So far, I am not seeing any of my favorite nonprofits tell stories in their automatic thank-you, and that’s a shame. But for your nonprofit, it’s an opportunity. Be the first one to add a story, and your donors will remember.

Using the Right Tools to Be More Human When You Thank

No matter what tool you’re using to acknowledge gifts, there’s a way to edit the acknowledgment. Before last year fades into memory, please take some time to edit it right now.

Whether you use the good, better, or best models above, you can certainly make your first response to a donor something that sounds like it came from a human being. When you’re done, it can be something you’re proud for your friends to receive!

And if the tool you’re using doesn’t give you enough room to tell a good story? Then this is the year to get another tool. The time you spend now will turn into happier donors this coming December…and forever

The Nonprofit Marketing Guide, by Kivi Leroux Miller: a review

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Kivi Leroux Miller feels your pain.  And she wants to help.

Kivi Leroux Miller

Kivi Leroux Miller

You work at a nonprofit organization.  Either it’s too small to have a communications department or nobody has recognized the need to market what you do until now.  You’ve recognized the need, but you feel daunted.  There are so many things you could do…and the so-called experts want you to do all of them yesterday!

Where do you get started?  How much can you do?  What will work best for your group and its cause? You don’t need theory or grandiose notions.  You need a friend who’s been there and can guide you through the process. Kivi wants to be that friend.

Throughout this book, you will hear great advice that you can put to use right away.  If you love the idea of a “quick and dirty marketing plan,” this is the book for you.

Be warned, though: “quick” is a relative term.  There are no magic wands to wave and no lamps to rub to get a genie to do the work for you.  This book will give you a good sense of what you need to do to be ready to plan and of all the resources–mostly time–that you’ll need to turn that plan into reality.  Knowing all that ahead of time will reassure you.  You’ll be able to see the road ahead.

As you go on reading the book, I predict that you’ll stop feeling daunted and start feeling excited.  You’ll see that (in Miller’s words), you can do it yourself without doing yourself in.  The later chapters of the book offer excellent advice on how to organize your efforts, how to take advantage of outside help when you need it, and “where to spend your limited dollars and where to scrimp.”

In other words, all the things you’d ask a trusted, wise advisor if you could sit down with her over lunch?  They are either in this book or on her blog.  Spend some time with each.  Then get started.

Robin Hood Marketing, by Katya Andresen: a review

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You care passionately about something.  You want other people to get involved.  You want their time, money, ideas, commitment.  How do you reach them?  Do you send out mail?  Work on your website?  Go deep on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram?  Sometimes it seems as if there’s a new way to reach out to people every day.  How do you figure out what will really work for you?

Robin Hood Marketing  Stop. Take a deep breath. Now, read Katya Andresen’s Robin Hood Marketing: Stealing Corporate Savvy to Sell Just Causes.Andresen, until recently the chief operating officer and chief strategy officer of Network for Good, has been a journalist, a marketer, and a nonprofit executive.  She doesn’t let the latest fad distract her.  She gets right to the point.  And the point is that good causes will not sell themselves–we have to use the most effective approaches to market them.Read the book for the “Robin Hood rules” she has robbed from the rich for-profit world and adapted for use by nonprofits.  Chief among those rules are “focus on getting people to do something specific” and “appeal to your audience’s values, not your own.”

Raising awareness is not enough: what action do you want people to take?  And making converts to the cause is too much, at least all in one step.  Get people to do something good for their own reasons (because of how the good action makes them feel about themselves, for instance).  They’ll be more likely to listen to your reasons later.  But even if they don’t, she asks, do you want to change minds or do you want to change the world?Read the book for a guide on how to plan your communications.  Step by step, Andresen shows you how to get to know your audience, your competition for support, and your potential partners, and how to shape your message to make a case that will connect with people and lead them to act.Read the book for excellent tips drawn from case studies and interviews.  Read it in order to ask yourself the right questions. For example:

  • What can we ask people to do that will be “fun, easy, popular, and rewarding”? (for supporters)
  • “Who wins when we win?” (for partners)
  • How can we supply information that is expert, fast, first, accurate, and tells a good story? (for journalists–they are a target audience too!)

I cannot give you a good enough sense of how rich this book is in a review.  It is so chock-full of detailed suggestions and examples that the best summary of the book is reading the book itself.  And it is very well organized, with bullet points up front, highlights marked throughout, and interviews at the end of each chapter.  I read the first edition of the book, originally published in 2006, and it still feels timely and up to date.  That’s what comes of focusing on the relationship between the organization and the audience and not on the constantly changing media.

My one reservation about this book is the same one that’s been coming up in my mind as I read a lot of books about communications, marketing, or psychology lately–even books I really like, such as the Heath brothers’ Switch and Made to Stick, and Beth Kanter and Allison Fine’s The Networked Nonprofit.  These books offer great ideas on how to change an individual’s behavior, or even a lot of individuals’ behavior.  But that is not the same thing as social change.

Social change generally means going up against entrenched structures of power.  Reading these books, you would never imagine that capitalism, racism, sexism, and tightly defined norms around gender affected anybody’s lives.  You would think that getting people to smoke less, use condoms, eat healthier diets, and donate to good organizations would revolutionize the way we live.

Perhaps it’s just that social change is outside the scope of these books.  But the authors market the books as if social change would come from better communications strategies alone.  That’s selling their books too hard.  They are worthwhile to read on their own merits.  People working for just causes need and should take advantage of the savvy that Katya Andresen supplies.

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