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TY Thursday: 5 Ways to Make Your Nonprofit’s Thank You Letters Stand Out

March 2, 2023 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

A guest post from Ann Fellman at Bloomerang

Picture this: You receive a letter in the mail from a nonprofit to which you recently donated. The letter reads, “Dear Donor, Thank you for your generous donation. It’s because of your support that we’re able to achieve our mission.”

How do you react?

You appreciate the thanks, but find it to be a little generic and bland. Plus, the letter doesn’t say anything specific about how the organization used your gift or how you can stay in touch.

Now, let’s switch hats from donor to nonprofit. As a nonprofit professional, you want to make your organization’s thank-you letters memorable and meaningful, whether they’re going to donors or volunteers. But how can you make your supporter communications stand out? Follow these five tips to get started:

1. Send your thank you letters as soon as possible.

Sending out thank you messages as quickly as possible after supporters interact with your organization ensures that you won’t accidentally overlook the thank you process. Plus, it leaves a positive impression on supporters and keeps your nonprofit on their radar.

Whether donors give online, in person, or via direct mail, send a thank you letter right away. This letter should be separate from the automated donation receipt that you email donors right after they give. Take the time to craft a personalized, detailed thank you message and send it within 48 hours of receiving the donation.

If your nonprofit has a large support base, you can automate the thank you process using your donor management system. According to Bloomerang’s donor management software guide, robust donor database systems allow you to keep track of donors’ names and donation history using contact records and profiles. Then, when you use a CRM that has an integrated email marketing system, you can automatically plug donors’ names and donation amounts into each message. This keeps all your data and communications organized in one simplified database.

In addition, you should quickly send thank you notes after your volunteer opportunities. Follow up within a couple of days thanking volunteers for their hard work and recapping what they were able to accomplish during the volunteer opportunity.

2. Personalize each thank you letter.

A personalized letter catches the recipient’s attention, helping your letter stand out in their mailbox or email inbox. Use the information stored in your donor management system to personalize your thank-you notes with donors’ names.

However, personalization doesn’t mean just including each supporter’s name in your greeting. It also means referencing each supporter’s exact contributions to your cause and if possible the campaign or program they supported.

For example, you should thank a donor for their $78 gift sent on November 18, 2022 to your annual fund, or a volunteer for the three hours they spent sorting donated food on a Saturday morning.

Supporters will appreciate that you’ve taken the time to identify and recognize the specific ways they’ve advanced your mission.

3. Provide a compelling progress update.

Saying thank you to donors is powerful, but it’s even more powerful when you explain to them that your organization couldn’t propel its mission without their help.

Make sure your thank you notes show donors how their gifts made a positive impact on your cause. Describe the project or program that you were able to improve with their help.

For example, you might say, “Because of your $30 donation, a local elementary school student will be able to receive a brand new school backpack.”

It’s helpful to write your thank you letter in the form of a story. Stories help create emotional connections and bring your mission to life for donors and volunteers.

Meyer Partners’ guide to nonprofit storytelling recommends identifying a single protagonist and telling their story using interviews, images, and videos. These multimedia elements help donors and volunteers feel much more connected to your mission and those you work with in the community.

4. Handwrite your thank-you notes.

Amid the piles of junk mail your supporters likely receive in their mailboxes, a handwritten thank you note stands out and provides a personal touch. Supporters will be touched that you took the time to write out your gratitude using pen and paper.

It may not be feasible to handwrite thank you letters for every donor or volunteer, so you might focus your efforts on writing notes for long-time supporters.

Also, if you have a lot of letters to write, you can have your donor database generate your letters and leave a space for a short handwritten, personalized note. For instance, you might include a handwritten P.S. that says something like “Thanks, Josh for your support, it means the world to us!”

5. Highlight additional ways to get involved.

Show supporters that you appreciate their involvement, no matter the form it takes, by inviting them to engage with your organization in more ways than one.

For example, use your thank you note to highlight opportunities like:

  • Your annual peer-to-peer fundraiser walkathon event
  • A recurring weekend volunteer opportunity
  • A supporter appreciation gala
  • An advocacy letter-writing campaign

Also, invite supporters to connect with you on multiple platforms by following your social media pages or subscribing to your email newsletter.

As you can see, an effective appreciation letter requires a little more than just a simple “thank you.” With the right timing, thoughtfulness, and personalization, your supporter thank you letters can be a powerful tool for building stronger relationships and bringing in reliable support for your fundraisers, volunteer opportunities, and other initiatives.


Author: Ann Fellman

As the Chief Marketing Officer at Bloomerang, Ann is responsible for the company’s overall thought leadership, brand, marketing, and community outreach programs that work to strengthen relationships with customers and the broader nonprofit community. Ann brings with her more than 24 years of experience in business-to-business (B2B) marketing in the technology industry, including time spent working at a nonprofit organization.

 

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Fundraising Tuesday: Building Better Donor Communications Through Technology–3 Tips

May 18, 2021 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

A guest post by Steven Shattuck of Bloomerang

Communicating with your nonprofit’s donors is probably pretty high on your to-do list. After all, communicating with donors and retaining them for the long haul is essential for organizational growth.

It’s much more expensive to acquire new support and replenish lapsed donors than it is to retain your supporters already in your donor database. Bloomerang’s retention guide even explains how a mid-sized organization can make more than $10,000 additional funds simply by increasing their retention rate by 10%.

This guide also discusses the reasons that supporters lapse, according to a study by Adrian Sargeant. It boils down to the idea that better communication can help prevent a large percentage of lapsed support.

reasons donors stopped

So how can you better communicate with your supporters to keep them around for the long term and help your organization grow? The answer is personalization and efficient use of technology. 

In this guide we’ll cover three tech tips that you can use to optimize your communications:

  1. Leverage Donor Segmentation in Your Database
  2. Choose Multiple Communication Platforms
  3. Automate Communications Where Appropriate

1. Leverage Donor Segmentation in Your Database

When was the last time you got a personal letter or email from a friend or colleague? Maybe your best friend knows how much you love cat videos, so she sent you the latest one with a note hoping that it’ll make your day. Or, maybe a colleague sent you a heartfelt thank-you for your work on a recent project. Perhaps it was even a constituent from within your nonprofit organization, explaining how much you impacted their lives.

All of these examples have one thing in common: They’re all incredibly personal. Your best friend used the knowledge she has about you to send the video, your colleague noted a recent action you took to help them, and your constituent discussed the direct impact of your actions. If they didn’t have this information, none of these parties could send as warm a note of appreciation.

Similarly,to communicate effectively with your supporters, you need to know something about them. Share on X

Use your donor database to get more personal

In an ideal world, you would be able to send an individualized message to every supporter in your donor database. However, you’re hard-pressed for time as it is, so that’s just inefficient.

Instead, you should create segments in your donor database that will guide communications, ensuring they’re personalized while also allowing you to work efficiently.  For instance, the most common ways to segment donors are by:

  • Recency. Separate donors who are brand new to the system from those who have been around for a while.
  • Frequency. Consider how often donors give to your organization. For example, monthly donors would be in a different segment from annual ones.
  • Type. How do these donors give to your organization? Do they give at events or online? Alternatively, are they volunteers who give their time?
  • Amount. Your team likely treats major donors and donors who contribute under $100 annually differently. Consider the in-betweens, too, to cover all your bases.
  • Reason. Ask donors why they give to your organization and create supporter segments based on similar answers.
  • Interest. You can reach donors with similar interests with a similar message. This analysis will help you craft the ideal communication messaging.

If you were to send the same newsletter, fundraising appeal, thank-you letters, and event invitations to everyone in your donor database,  those supporters would not remain engaged for long. They’d be getting too much irrelevant information.

Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach to our communications, leverage your donor database to create segments that will help tailor your message and personalize it according to what will best resonate with supporters.

2. Choose Multiple Communication Platforms

Too often, nonprofits take a binary approach to their communication plans. They may say, “It’s the digital age, so we’ve gone entirely digital” or “We’re resistant to new technology and have stuck to old-school methods.” While this may feel more manageable for busy nonprofit staff members, this strategy is actually harmful in the long run. Network for Good conducted a study noting that organizations that dropped to a single marketing channel from multiple ended up also dropping their retention rate by 31.32%.

Therefore, the best approach is to combine these methods and use a multi-channel approach to your communication strategy. 

Consider the number of platforms you engage with every day. You check your email, social media accounts, mailbox, text messages, and probably even more. With so many platforms available, you can make an impact by communicating your message on a number of different channels, all of which will reach your supporters at varying levels of success. However, when they see your branding across these channels, your supporters are more likely to retain the message due to repetitive exposure.

Combine repetitive exposure with well-crafted messaging and your supporters are bound to engage more than if they only received one message on one platform. You might consider communication platforms such as:

    • Email. Email is the bread and butter of a communication strategy.  Plan out automated drip campaigns and solicitations in your email marketing solution, and be sure you can track the records of these interactions in your donor database.
    • Direct mail. Do you get excited when you see you have mail in your mailbox (when it’s not a bill)? Your supporters do too! Hand-written or typed out messages sent through direct mail platforms help support your digital marketing strategies.
    • Social media. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter allow you to give regular updates about your organization’s latest activities. Adjust your messaging to account for the platform you’re using and create groups on these platforms to create a sense of digital community.
    • Your website. This is where your supporters go to learn more about your organization’s mission and often to give to your campaign page. Kanopi’s UX guide explains that “Good [User Experience}, especially on your nonprofit website, will lead to higher retention rates, higher engagement rates, and an overall lower cost for website development and support.” So be sure your site is easy to navigate, offers valuable information, and is well-designed overall.

Of course, you don’t want to take on more than you can handle all at once. Start by adding in one platform at a time so that you can give each one the attention it needs to become a valuable resource for your supporters. You might start by optimizing your website, then creating email drip campaigns, and finally writing several social media posts to engage supporters.

3. Automate Your Communications Where Appropriate

Automation is best used by organizations that have already created a marketing strategy that they’re using before ever automating their communications. Once you’re confident in your marketing strategy, you can start using automation to enhance it. 

Until technology matches human intelligence, we still need fundraisers and marketing specialists to communicate impactfully with supporters.

There are a few worst-case scenarios you want to avoid in the automation process. For example, perhaps you create a drip stream of messages guiding supporters to give to your latest campaign. A new donor donates once and feels good, but before they even receive a thank-you message, they’re entered into the middle of a drip campaign and receive another donation solicitation. That supporter likely will feel like their first contribution wasn’t even acknowledged, much less appreciated.

Poor automation is even more detrimental than no automation, which is why you should optimize your strategy before automating everything you can. Share on X

Some of the optimization opportunities you’ll probably get started with include:

  • Automating the confirmation email for online donations. This won’t replace your additional “thank you” that you’ll personalize later, but it should convey appreciation and act as proof that you did receive the gift.
  • Automating social media posts. Writing many social media posts all at once is a very efficient way to craft these messages. Schedule these posts to go out at specific times, but be sure to check in on them to be sure they’re still relevant before they’re posted.
  • Automating data collection. When you invest in new fundraising solutions, look for integrations or use a tool like Zapier to automate the data collection process. For example, you might automatically save the information about new supporters in your CRM when they give their first donation using an integrated donation page.

Nonprofit software and tech infrastructures are an important part of nonprofit strategies. However, you should also remember that technology can never completely replace a personal fundraising message. By leveraging technology, your goal is to maximize your relationships with supporters rather than ask the computer to do all the work.

 


Steven ShattuckSteven Shattuck is Chief Engagement Officer at Bloomerang and Executive Director of Launch Cause.

A prolific writer and speaker, Steven is a contributor to “Fundraising Principles and Practice: Second Edition” and volunteers his time on the Project Work Group of the Fundraising Effectiveness Project and is an AFP Center for Fundraising Innovation (CFI) committee member.

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Nonprofits, Don’t Be a Home Invader. Be Welcome

August 6, 2018 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

climb through window

If I don’t answer the door, you don’t climb through the window!

What should you do to interest a potential donor–and what shouldn’t you do? Let me tell you a story that will help you answer the question yourself.

Recently, my wife, Rona, thought about signing up for a service online. She went to the sign-up page, but she was dismayed at how much personal information the company was asking for upfront: not only name and email, but address, home phone, cell phone, location…Midway through the process, she clicked off.

The next thing you know, the company had mailed her at her home address. She knew it was them even before she opened the envelope. She’d used her “maiden name” to sign up, and that was on the mailing!

How do you think Rona felt? (How would you feel?)

Don’t be a Home Invader

Whether it’s a commercial organization or a nonprofit, there are things you just can’t do to interest a customer, or donor, in your business.

Let’s start with: you can’t ask for too much information at one time. It takes too long, and it raises suspicion that you might be using the data for nefarious purposes.

Your landing page needs to be as simple as you can make it. Name and email address might be all you need.

Then: you have to be prepared to take no for an answer. Just because you want that person’s attention–or donation–doesn’t mean they have to give it to you. Pursuing them is creepy…especially if you do it across platforms.

Imagine you knocked at my door, and I didn’t respond. You knew I was there, because the light was on and you heard me moving around. Would it be okay to climb in through the window and say hello? Of course not! Then why would it be okay to send me mail when I hadn’t even authorized you to send me email?

Be a Welcome Guest Instead. Here’s How.

Of course, you do want people who are interested in your nonprofit to hear from you. But there’s a wrong way to do that…and then, there’s a right way. If you do the right thing, you can be a welcome guest in their inbox.

The key is to offer your audiences content that’s so good and so useful to them, they keep coming back for more–and telling their friends. How do you do that? Here are five steps to take.

  1. Commit to doing better. Most nonprofits are happy just to be producing content at all. As Kivi Leroux Miller tells us, it’s time to question that approach.
  2. Know your audience. Know them so well you’d recognize them on the street. (John Haydon’s Nonprofit Marketing Personas Workbook will help you there.)
  3. Have a strategy. It can be as simple as “Who are the audiences we’re trying to reach? What do we already know about these audiences? What do we need to find out to give them what they’re looking for? What will they do differently if we succeed?”
  4. Keep it exciting. Look for ways to give your audiences useful information in a variety of forms—written, visual, online, through social media.
  5. Promote it. Use every means you have to spread the word about your great content. Word of mouth, public speaking, radio, TV. Newsletters, social media, your website. Link to it in the signature line of your emails. Find the hook so a local journalist turns it into a story. Be creative!

Getting to Know You, Getting to Know All About You

As you provide more value and win the trust of the person you’re trying to reach, maybe they will agree to sign up for your email. Again, keep the sign-up page simple.

Over time, you can ask more questions in an email series and store the answers in your database or CRM. You can start segmenting your email list, so that you send each person the kind of story they’d be interested in hearing.

You can create more and more reasons why the person hearing from you looks forward to your next message. Isn’t that better than having them call 911–block you–because you’ve invaded their online home?

 

 

 

 

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