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TY Thursday: 3 Annual Reports that Thank Donors

July 1, 2021 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

With a good annual report, you can make donors feel thanked and valued. And when you do, you will create loyal donors and inspire renewed donations.

Why Annual Reports Matter

When a donor sends a gift to your nonprofit, they want to know these things:

  • You received the money.
  • You appreciated the donation.
  • You used it well.
  • It made a difference.

Not unreasonable of them, right? When you’re a donor, you probably want to hear about the same things. But the information that donors want is not going to get to them by accident. Your nonprofit has to make a deliberate effort.

They have questions. How do you let them know the answers ?

A great thank-you letter or email is the first step to letting donors know you are grateful. Then, communications throughout the year can reinforce your message that they are heroes making the difference.

Your annual report can pull it all together. By showing how you spent money and how it helped real people to live better, you can make the case that giving to your nonprofit was a good decision…and help the donor to make that decision again.

Three Ways to Create Annual Reports

Brochure

Provide annual report inside

Provide sent my wife and me a colorful tri-fold brochure. One side of the brochure focuses entirely on impact. “Over 1,500 providers trained,” it says, and then it:

  • Tells us what happened after the training: more healthcare and social service providers referring their patients for abortion, at more sites, sharing the information they’d learned more broadly.
  • Shows how immensely satisfied participants were with the training.
  • Quotes a participant bout what they learned and how it made them feel.

In three seconds, I could tell what Provide was saying. In thirty seconds, I could see why it was impressive.

Provide annual report text

 

The flip side of the brochure was somewhat crowded with the classic pie charts about finances (too large) and verbiage about Who We Are, Who We Work With, and Who We Train (too small and in white on black, which is hard for middle- and old-aged eyes to read). But these sentences in the message literally stood out:

We see you.

We hear you.

We appreciate you.

Could your nonprofit use a brochure like this to send those messages to your donors?

Newsletter style

PIH annual report coverPartners In Health sent us an an annual report that looks a lot like the newsletters they send us regularly.

The downside of that approach is that at first, it didn’t seem like anything special. I nearly put it aside to read later–and you know what happens to most things that are put aside like that: they end up in the recycling bin, unread!

The strength of the approach is that it’s “on brand,” so if I am used to getting good information from Partners In Health, I will expect a similar good experience from this mailing.

The report uses photos to show the human impact of its programs and graphics to present the overall numbers. Both of those work well.

The text included in the report is less effective. Again, it’s too small, and it’s all “we” (meaning the organization). The only place you appears is on the donation form included with the report–and sends the message that they are doing all the good, and my only role is as a piggy bank, not a partner in health.

Could your nonprofit adapt your newsletter format for an annual report? And if you do, could you use fewer words in larger font and make the donors feel like a partner?

Flyer and personal note

SHC annual report personal note

The Greater Somerville Homeless Coalition grabbed my attention as soon as I opened the envelope because, on notepaper-sized stationery, they hand-wrote the message:

Dennis & Rona,

We value you

and the support you give us!

SHC annual report coverThat emphasis on the donor continues onto the Coalition’s brochure, which starts out, “Clients arrive at our front steps in crisis. Your contribution opens the door…”

In fact, almost every time the brochure says “you,” it’s possible to read it as including you, the donor.

I appreciate you guys. You are doing frontline work right now.

You make the difference. Thank you for being part of the solution.

It is important for people like me, who can’t afford the rent, to have the kind of genuine support you give me.

 

SHC annual report insideLike Partners in Health, the Coalition presents its numbers in eye-catching graphics. But the Coalition’s annual report goes one step beyond what either of the other organizations did, because it tells us the story of one person and his children.

When donors ask, “What good did I do by giving to them?”, I don’t think they’re going to say “I sent 32,869 bags of groceries,” or even, “I housed 192 homeless clients.” I think they’re going to say, “I helped Johnnie and his children get out of the homeless shelter.”

Could your nonprofit touch the heart by including stories and personal notes in your annual report?

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

May 18, 2021 by Dennis Fischman 1 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. Click To Tweet

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. Click To Tweet

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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TY Thursday: Welcome New Donors

May 6, 2021 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

Why is it so important to welcome new donors? The first time a person gives to your nonprofit, she is waiting to see how you will respond.

If you say thanks and then forget about her, she is likely to do the same to you.

In fact, she may even experience donor’s remorse, the philanthropy equivalent of buyer’s remorse: “Why did I give that money to that organization? What was I thinking?”

But if you thank her in multiple ways, she will know why she gave. And one of the best ways to say thank you is to recognize a first-time donor, as personally as you can, and to welcome her onboard.

Here’s a Great Example of a Welcome Packet

My wife and I recently made a first-time donation to BAGLY, the Boston Alliance of Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer Youth. Here are some of the ways they made us feel welcome, right from the start.

The envelope they sent the welcome packet in was more of a greeting card size than a business size. It had a live stamp. And someone had written our address and the return address by hand, in purple ink.

The letter inside called us by name. It said “Thank you for joining us,” recognizing the first-time gift. It told us about a new program our donation would help launch this year, to help LGBTQ+ youth avoid homelessness. And it offered us ways to get involved, from emailing the Director of Development to following them on TikTok.

As if that weren’t enough, the packet included:

  1. A personally written postcard that said “Welcome to the BAGLY family. Thank you for donating!”
  2. Another card specifying the mental health services the organization offers to LGBTQ+ youth.
  3. One of the best answers I’ve ever seen to “What does this organization actually do?” Look at the flyer below.

BAGLY welcome flyer

There is no chance that a donor who receives this welcome packet will ask, “Who is this organization again? Why did I give them money?”

Instead, they will say, “Wow, I knew they were worthwhile but I didn’t know all that about them! I’m glad I gave! Now, what’s this TikTok thing?”

What will first-time donors say to themselves about your nonprofit? Send them an excellent welcome packet to make sure it’s something great.

 

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