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TY Thursday: How to Energize Your Donors

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energizer

Energized donors keep on giving…and giving…

In Adam Grant’s book, Give and Take: How Helping Others Drive Our Success, he writes, “When people know how their work makes a difference, they feel energized to contribute more.”

The same applies to donors.

If you tell your donor how their gift changed someone’s life, they will be happy and proud, excited…and energized. They will want that feeling again. They will want to hear from you the next time you write. Chances are, they’ll give again, too.

Energize with a Sparkling Thank-You Letter

When it comes to exciting your donors, you have a golden opportunity, right after they give. Your first chance to make your one-time, impulse donor into a loyal Energizer Bunny of philanthropy is in your thank-you letter.

Joanne Fritz is a sage of the nonprofit world. In a recent article, she has given us all a great gift. She shared give examples of thank-you letters your donors will love. I call them:

  1. Painting the picture. (“Thanks to you, Michael and his sister, Janet, celebrated Michael’s 9th birthday with cake and balloons in a safe and loving place.”)
  2. Story anthology. (“Let me tell you what our services at Therapeutic Riding of Atlanta mean to some of the children who come to our classes.”)
  3. Instant impact report. (“No longer isolated in a hard-to-reach walk up in a high-rise building, Tom and Francis now have easy access to the services they need. Plus, they will receive two meals a day and participate in healthy and fun activities ranging from exercise classes to community field trips.”)
  4. Gusher of gratitude. (“The healing starts with a tiny spark … a glimmer of hope in soft, soulful eyes. And for homeless pets with serious injuries who come to Best Friends, the hope and the healing are all because of you.”)
  5. From general to personal. (Think an agency that does boring research can’t tell a great story? Think again!)
    “For the last forty years, research has shown that investing in women and girls has ripple effects through a community.Take Akina*, a young woman in Kenya who works for BURN, a clean cookstoves factory and social enterprise business supported by Acumen, a non-profit that invests in companies and ideas that aim to tackle poverty. Before BURN, Akina had never worked in a factory, but thanks to their investment in women, she has moved up to become a supervisor. Her wages pay for her younger sister’s education and the transportation costs for her brother to commute to his job.”

More TY Letters Your Donors Will Love

If you’re still looking for ways to make your thank-you letters sparkle, please take a look at this TY Thursday blog post you might have missed:
Write a Creative Thank-You Letter
In this post, you will find:

    • What You Need to Know Before You Thank
    • Great Advice on How to Start, from such luminaries of the nonprofit world as Beth Ann Locke, Gail Perry, and Pamela Grow
    • How to Write the Ideal Thank You Letter–advice from yours truly

Whether you follow the examples Joanne Fritz laid out or Write a Creative Thank-You Letter of your own, there’s no time like the present. If you want donors to keep on giving, you have to keep on thanking!

TY Thursday: Write a Creative Thank-You Letter

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thank-you letterWe’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:

Be Creative! It’s Never Too Late

Are you looking back at that perfunctory piece of paper you mailed in December  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!

TY Thursday: Don’t Forget the Thank-You

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Do you follow @DennisFischman on Twitter? If so, I’ve thanked you–I hope.

If I forgot, I apologize! But if you’re a nonprofit and you forget to say thank you, then you owe an apology to your donor and to yourself. Don’t forget!

Twitter thank youHow I forgot to say thanks

Whenever anybody follows me on Twitter, I make a point of saying thanks. I don’t always follow back. That depends on what you usually tweet about and whether it’s interesting to me.

But I do say “thanks”–because, out of the gazillion people on the web, you chose to spend some attention on me.

So how could I forget?

Sarah Gallo, who’s on Twitter as @5foottraveler, followed me on Sunday. I wanted to tweet back at her, “TY to @5foottraveler for following!” I copied and pasted her Twitter handle and added the “for following” part, and I was just about to schedule the tweet when I noticed something was missing.

That’s right. The “TY” part.

Fortunately, I caught it in time. But because I even came close to leaving out the thanks, I want to say to Sarah publicly, “Thanks, and safe travels!”

thank you signs

Nonprofits, Don’t Forget to Thank Donors

At your nonprofit, when you acknowledge donations, are you making the same mistake as I did? Are you leaving out the actual thanks?

You could be, if:

  • Your letter reads like a tax receipt instead of a personal note.
  • You’re talking about what a great organization you are, instead of what great things the donor’s gift is going to accomplish.
  • You’re congratulating the donor on helping you achieve your mission, instead of showing how you are going to help the donor realize his or her goals.
  • When you receive an online gift, you send out an auto-response but never follow it up with an individualized letter or email.
  • You send out the ideal thank-you letter but then don’t communicate again with the donor until it’s time to ask again for money.

Donor love means never having to say you’re sorry. Don’t forget to thank your donors in a way that’s clear, timely, ample, honest, and ongoing. You won’t regret it.

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