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Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

TY Thursday: Great TY Letters

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thank-you letter

We’ve been talking about “creative” ways to thank your donors using videos, phone calls, poetry, and gifts. But who says a traditional thank-you letter can’t be creative too?

What You Need to Know Before You Thank

First, get the basics right. As Allison Gauss reminds us:

For a truly meaningful thank you, there are a few things you should know about the person you’re thanking.

  1. Who is the donor?
  2. Which campaign or program did they give to?
  3. How will you turn their gift into impact?

Great Advice on How to Start

Once you know your donor and you can state how their donation will make a difference, you can start writing. Where do you start? You’re in luck! Generous experts have given us all great advice on to write letters our donors will treasure.

Writing the Ideal Thank-You Letter

I’d be silly not to mention my own article, The Ideal Thank-You Letter Went Out Today. If you wrote the ideal thank-you letter, you:

  • Called me by name.
  • Confirmed how much I gave you.
  • Told me how my gift would make a difference.
  • Illustrated my impact with a story.  Another story, besides the one in your appeal.
  • Included a photo or image to make my impact real.
  • Told me about how else I can help: by volunteering, or liking you on Facebook, or spreading the word to my friends. (The famous “call to action.”)
  • Signed it by hand, and wrote something just for me.

It’s Never Too Late

Are you looking back at that perfunctory piece of paper you mailed in January and wishing you had taken the time to write a better letter? It’s never too late!

Pick some first-time donors, some loyal donors, and some major donors from your list.

Write to them, “I was thinking of you again today because something happened today that only happened because you gave.”

Tell them a story. Show them a photo. Give them the details. And give them the credit.

Your donors will thank you!

Nonprofits, Make Your Donors Love You

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You’ve heard the saying, “It’s not what you eat between Christmas and New Year’s–it’s what you eat between New Year’s and Christmas”?  Similarly, it’s not what you write to your donors in your end-of-year appeal letter that determines how they feel about your organization. It’s what you write all year long.

Communication in marriageCommunications are the key to a good marriage. Your nonprofit’s communications are the key to a good relationship between your donors and you.

By next Valentine’s Day, make your donors love you. Here are the four steps to win their hearts.

This winter, work on your email.

When donors or prospects give you their email address, it’s like they met you on a blind date and decided to give you their phone number. What they’re saying is, “I want to hear from you.” It’s a huge gesture of trust.

Be worthy of their trust.

  • Find out the kind of content they want to see, and send it to them as often (and no more often) than they want to see it.
  • Write subject lines that signal, “I wrote this especially for you and I know you’ll want to read it.”
  • Personalize every email. “Dear friend” is not acceptable in 2015. It tells your donors they’re not worth your time.
  • Keep your list up to date. There are good email tools out there: MailChimp and Constant Contact are two that many nonprofits use. Buy one and learn how to use it. You–and your donors–will be glad you did.

This spring, take a good look at your website.

Your website is your online living room. If you’re going to invite donors there, you want them to stay a while.

  • Make the lighting comfortable. Is the font size large enough for middle-aged eyes? Does it read as well on Chrome or Firefox as on Internet Explorer or Safari? Can donors read it on their mobile devices? Can they read it with their screen readers (if they have limited eyesight)?
  • Make the room easy to get around. Place navigation bars on the homepage and on every page. Clearly label your pages and tabs, and don’t get too cute: “About Us” or “Who We Are” are better than “The 411.”
  • Put out the treats.  Your donors need to find what they’re looking for quickly or they’ll leave your site. Be sure everything is within three clicks from the home page: for instance, 1) home page, 2) contact us, 3) email. If you’re inviting people to sign up for an event, consider using a landing page with its own URL.

This summer, spice up your blogging life.

Did you ever meet someone and think to yourself, “I love talking with him. I could spend all night just listening to him?”

Writing a blog gives your donors a chance to say that about you.

Blogging is better for those long explorations than email. It’s more of a conversation than the rest of your website. Blogging is for lovers.

This fall, finally get social.

What would the love of your life think if when you were together, you only talked and never listened? Or if you only listened when he or she was talking about you?

Not very romantic, right?

But too many nonprofits think the reason to use social media is to have one more place to rattle on about themselves.

Social media are really more like social gatherings: parties, conferences, Chamber of Commerce meetings, public forums. You go those events to meet people and become an important part of the community. You go on social media to do the same.

Over time, if you pay attention to them, people come to know, like, and trust your organization. They actually seek you out for information and advice and opportunities to volunteer. They start thinking of you as “their” organization. They fall in love.

How do you use social media to make donors love you? I’ve been studying this subject for years, and I’m happy to share it with you.

social mediaThe No-Nonsense Nonprofit Guide to Social Media: How You Can Start Small, Win Loyal Friends, and Raise Funds Online and Off is your step-by-step guide to courting your donors.

Download it now, and by next fall, you can be happily engaged.

By next winter, you can be busy writing thank-you notes.

By next Valentine’s Day, your donors can be yours for life.

The No-Nonsense Nonprofit Guide to Social Media: How You Can Start Small, Win Loyal Friends, and Raise Funds Online and Off

Are You Wasting Your Time with Free Tools?

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We’ve talked about how to use tools you already have to track your donors, prospects, and constituents for free.

Free is not always the best price. 

Using Outlook, Google, or LinkedIn as your constituent relationship management system (or CRM) may be fine if all you want to do is look up what you know about one person. Suppose, however, that you want to:

  • Send a carefully crafted email to only those people who have given more than $100 as a donation and who live in the zip codes closest to your office.
  • Keep track of registration for a gala or other event.
  • Print call sheets for a phone-a-thon or a thank-a-thon.
  • Automatically send a welcome message and a series of follow-ups to new members.

You can’t do any of those directly from free tools. If you want to send a targeted email message, for example, you might have to create a distribution list in Outlook, export it to Excel, import that to an email marketing system like MailChimp or Constant Contact, compose and schedule the email, and then enter the results back in Outlook–all by hand.

Is spending all that time worthwhile for you? If not, consider spending some money.

Idealware has posted an excellent article, “A Few Good Constituent Relationship Management Tools.”  If you are considering buying software, read the article first.  Then ask yourself: what is it worth to this organization to know everybody the way we know our best supporters?

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