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TY Thursday: Launching a Donor Recognition Program, 4 Key Tips

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A guest post by Gerard Tonti

The main reasons donors stop giving are a lack of acknowledgement, recognition, and appreciation for their gifts. Every lapsed donor represents another donor your organization will have to acquire, which is a costly pursuit. In fact, acquiring a new donor can cost your nonprofit 50-100% more than the amount that donor will give to your nonprofit.

A donor recognition program, when effectively implemented, not only helps you retain your existing donors, but can also encourage them to become even more engaged. In the long run, this effort can provide a significant amount of additional funds for your organization.

Properly thanking your donors is at the center of every nonprofit’s donor recognition program. We’ll recommend you follow these tips when you launch your donor recognition program:

  1. Set a SMART goal.
  2. Make a detailed plan.
  3. Prioritize personalization.
  4. Offer tiers of recognition.

1. Set a SMART goal.

What does your nonprofit want or need to accomplish with your program? Depending on your specific needs, you may aim to:

  • Convert mid-level donors into major donors
  • Boost your donor retention rate for next year
  • Increase annual revenue

Donor recognition efforts can go a long way to support all of these goals, but choosing one will help your nonprofit stay focused.

Regardless of what your organization wants out of your donor recognition program, make sure your defined goal follows the SMART template. Your goal should be:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Attainable
  • Realistic (or relevant)
  • Time-based

For example, a SMART goal for your donor recognition program might be:

Improve the next calendar year’s mid-level donor retention rate by 10% through the implementation of a mid-level donor society and personal donation appreciation phone calls for mid-level donations.  

Setting your nonprofit’s goal will ensure it’s always clear whether or not your nonprofit has achieved the goal, and it will help you choose your specific donor recognition strategy.

If you need some assistance setting a specific goal, DonorSearch’s guide to nonprofit fundraising metrics contains a full list of Key Performance Indicators around which you can design your goal. Choose just one or two to guide your donor recognition program so your efforts remain targeted.

2. Make a detailed plan.

Once you’ve established a goal, it’s time to get your team together to make a plan for how to achieve it.

There are several things to consider when implementing a donor recognition program, like:

  • Who will be recognized? If your primary goal is to move mid-level donors up to major donors and improve your major donor fundraising numbers, you may choose not to prioritize lower-level donors. Be sure that “mid-level” is clearly defined with a donation range, so you can easily identify which donors will be included in your recognition program.
  • How will they be recognized? What recognition efforts can be automated by your organization’s constituent relationship management system, or CRM? (Donation receipts should make it on that list, but other, more personal communications like phone calls aren’t so easily automated.) Will you use a multi-channel approach? If so, which channels will you use? Will you further acknowledge your donors at events or in public?
  • When will they be recognized? The pace of donor recognition is also worth some thought and discussion with your team. An average thank-you communication schedule might go something like this:
    • Donation receipt: immediate
    • Donation thank-you email: within 24 hours
    • Donation appreciation call: within 72 hours
    • Donation thank-you letter: within 1 week
    • Thank-you gifts: within 1-2 weeks

Of course, this schedule doesn’t include special donor recognition events, which may be a part of your strategy as well.

3. Prioritize personalization.

The key to making your donor recognition efforts effective is to personalize your nonprofit’s communications. A generic “Dear supporter” salutation doesn’t make a strong impact, as donors don’t feel personally acknowledged. Donors need to hear that they matter, which means personalizing every touchpoint.

For nonprofits past a certain size, it’s necessary to rely on donor database software to assist with personalizing your recognition efforts. As we outline in our Salsa Fundraising CRM guide, you should use your CRM to:

  • Segment your donor list. Dividing your donors into separate lists based on specific commonalities allows you to easily target those groups for personal communications. For example, you may identify donors who have volunteered in the past so you can mention their past volunteer efforts in your thank-you letters. Doing so shows the donor your organization is paying attention to their support.

 

  • Automate communications. Once you’ve established the relevant donor segments, your CRM can automate certain communications so your recognition touchpoints won’t fall through the cracks.


  • Develop donor personas. In your donor profiles on your CRM, you can generate “donor personas,” or fictionalized representations of your nonprofit’s typical donors or supporters. Donor personas can help guide personalized communication strategies that you employ in your recognition program.

4. Offer tiers of recognition.

One of the most profitable yet easily overlooked fundraising strategies for nonprofits is showing gratitude for support. It’s important to offer tiers of recognition depending on the giving level of the donor. For example, a T-shirt and a thank-you letter would suffice for a one-time, average donor, but the same recognition wouldn’t fit one of your major donors.

Stepping up your recognition efforts as the donation amount increases ensures all of your donors feel adequately appreciated.

Plus, offering increasing levels of recognition can help incentivize donors to become more and more engaged with your mission. For example, recognizing your mid-level or sustaining donors with an invitation to a giving society can build exclusivity and encourage your lower-level donors to donate more to gain entrance into the society.

Similarly, public recognition of major donors on a donor recognition wall like one of these can help encourage your mid-level donors to give more and eventually become major contributors.

Your organization might establish the following tiered recognition plan:

  • Basic donor: thank-you email, letter, and branded gift (i.e. key chain, water bottle)
  • Sustaining donor: basic donor perks + entrance into donor society, special newsletter, annual appreciation event
  • Mid-level donor: sustaining donor perks + special access at events, annual behind-the-scenes tour, public recognition at events
  • Major donor: mid-level donor perks + inclusion on a donor wall or plaque, conversations with board members and directors, phone call, handwritten note, VIP access at events

This is just one example of a tiered recognition program—your nonprofit should decide what fits best for your organization and its goals. A smaller nonprofit may be able to implement personal phone calls for all of its mid-level donors and meet personally with all of its major donors, while a larger organization would lack the time and resources to call every mid-level donor. Tailor the program to fit your donors, your staff, and your existing donor stewardship strategies.

A strong donor recognition program is an invaluable fundraising asset. Despite the time and effort donor recognition takes, it’s an investment for your nonprofit’s future, strengthening your relationships with donors and encouraging them to become more involved with your mission over time.

Best of luck!

Salsa - Gerard TontiGerard Tonti is the Senior Creative Developer at Salsa Labs, the premier fundraising software company for growth-focused nonprofits.

Gerard’s marketing focus on content creation, conversion optimization and modern marketing technology helps him coach nonprofit development teams on digital fundraising best practices.

Use Content You Didn’t Write, and Add Value

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gift

You can share a lot more content with your donors and supporters if you don't have to write it all. Click To Tweet

Giving your donors content that matters to them is a generous gift. It’s also a way to make them value their relationship with your nonprofit even more.

When you share information that make them feel better, or smarter, or more well informed, you are priming your donors to read the next thing you send them–even if the next thing is an appeal for their support! And you are making them more likely to be generous in their turn.

But how do you come up with that content? Day after day, week after week, in your blog, your social media, and your newsletter?

Partly, you adopt an environmental philosophy: “reuse and recycle.” The same idea can turn into a blog post, a newsletter article, a video, and multiple posts or tweets on social media.

But partly, you realize that you can make good use of content that other people have created.

Working with Guest Authors

You might have noticed that I’ve had the pleasure of hosting a bunch of guest posts in the last few months:

And you will see more guest posts mixed in among my own inimitable prose in the months ahead! That’s not just to make my life easier (although it certainly helps). I host guest authors because they have something valuable to share with you, the readers of this blog.

How can your nonprofit work with guest authors to inform, entertain, and delight your donors? Here’s my advice:

  1. Have a strong sense of your audience, and make sure your guest authors are speaking to that audience. (If they aren’t yet, show them how you do it!)
  2. Promote their guest posts on your social media, and ask them to do the same, on theirs.
  3. Develop a working relationship with the guest author, so they are interested in sending you more good content in the future.

Collecting Content from the Web

Besides the people who write guest posts for you, where else can you get news, advice, perspectives, and information that your donors and supporters will love?

Answer: online.

You can approach the task of collecting content for your audience from the internet in two complementary ways. You can search for keywords you know will interest them, and you can monitor other sites that routinely post the right stuff.

For keyword search, please don’t spend your time manually checking for your keywords over and over. Automate it!

I recommend you set up a Google Alert  for a few keywords related to your donor’s interests. Have Google send you a daily digest by email. Then, you can look at the articles when you have the time and choose the ones that really hit the spot. Schedule them using something like Hootsuite or Buffer, or the tool of your choice.

For monitoring sites you like, the best tool I have found is Feedspot. I add blogs and websites I know produce valuable content for my audience. Then, from time to time, Feedspot suggests other, similar sites.

Again, if you use a tool like this, it’s convenient (because you can look through a list of posts all in the same email), efficient (because it takes much less time than visiting all those sites), and encouraging. Yes, you will be more likely to communicate regularly with your donors if you know it will be easy!

Adding Value and Making It Your Own

Now the work of communicating with your donors consistently has become much simpler. Congratulations! But please make sure that when you curate other people’s work, you a) give credit where credit is due, and b) put your own twist on what you share.

You can give credit by naming the original source and linking back to their site.

You can make it your own by adding something to what they wrote–ideally, something that your organization is in a special position to say. Let me give an example here.

One of my clients is an organization dedicated to helping Black women find the resources that they need to heal, advance, and organize. They work on a variety of issues, because their focus is not the issue but the person affected. Because of that:

  • When they share an article about navigating the medical establishment, they add an intro about the particular barriers Black women face, and strategies to surmount those barriers.
  • When they post items related to Mother’s Day, they relate them to Black women raising children.
  • When they direct their constituents to information about harm reduction, or environmental racism, or policy initiatives, they choose sources that take the experience of Black women into account–and they add thoughts based on their own expertise.

If you get into the routine of choosing content with your audience in mind, and putting it in the context that matters most to them, your readers…

…then those readers (including your donors!) will welcome every email, every blog or social media post, every video,  every newsletter you send their way. Each bit of content will be a gift you send them. And they will reciprocate with their own generosity.

How To Get Your NPO Off The Ground

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A guest post by Elena Stewart

Every year, countless people decide they want to start a nonprofit as a way to bring positive change to their community. However, not everyone pushes through with their good intentions. Looking for insight on getting started? You’ve come to the right place!

It Starts With Research

Your very first step is to determine how your nonprofit idea can benefit your community. Do the research first, and the rest of the process will fall into place. The National Council of Nonprofits suggests going about it by identifying supply and demand like you would if starting a for-profit business.

Next, identify your target demographic. This will guide your content and help you choose which tools to decide when promoting your organization.

You will also want to look into the best business structure. As a nonprofit organization (NPO), you have options. You might operate as a sole proprietorship or, in some cases, an LLC. If you choose the latter, pay close attention to the legalities, and know that your nonprofit must register as a 501(c)(3). Any assets collected must also be earmarked for charitable donation should your LLC dissolve.

Foundation Building for Your New Nonprofit

Now that you have defined your objectives and have handled legal matters, it’s time to build a solid foundation. A successful nonprofit will consist of many people, including board members and volunteers. You can even have paid employees, although Patriot Software cautions you to pay close attention to your pay structure. NPO employees can’t be paid a commission based on the money they raise.

If you haven’t yet, write a business plan for your nonprofit and share this information with your staff and volunteers. You will also need to file as a tax-exempt organization and, ideally, appoint one person to handle your tax filings. This individual’s work should be double-checked for accuracy and omissions before being submitted.

Fundraising

Fundraising is the backbone of most charitable organizations. Although your plan is not to profit from your efforts, it takes money to do good.

One approach is event fundraising. Decide the types of events that you’d like to host. This could be anything from selling logo clothing to partnering with local restaurants for a “spirit night.” You can also get your community involved by issuing challenges where teams pay a fee to compete in activities, such as community cleanup or stocking food pantries.

Keep in mind here that, depending on the type of event you have planned, you may be required to obtain a special license or permit, particularly if you plan to serve alcohol or host a raffle drawing as part of your fundraising campaign.

NPO volunteer

Ongoing Accountability

As the head of a fundraising NPO, you’re also expected to provide annual reports to the government, as well as your Board of Directors each year. Make sure that you keep up with all of your fundraising events, donations, and outreach efforts. Don’t forget about in-kind donations, which are those that do not involve cash but, instead, a donation of goods or services — often in exchange for visible recognition.

Keeping accurate records is paramount to the ongoing success of your nonprofit as it increases trustworthiness and can streamline the audit process if the IRS comes to call.

There are many other subtle nuances to launching a not-for-profit endeavor. It’s hard work, but the return is worth far more than a corporate job could ever offer. Good luck with your efforts, and know that the work you do today will have a lasting impact.

If you’re looking for a marketing partner for your NPO, Communicate! Consulting is the service for you. From demographic targeting to crafting content that matters, Dennis Fischman is your go-to expert. Call 617-501-6219 today.

About the author: Elena Stewart made the jump from a corporate job she wasn’t entirely happy with, to running her own business that gives her the financial freedom and flexible lifestyle she’s always wanted. As a life coach, she now gets the happiness of helping others get to the places that might seem out of reach.

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