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TY Thursday: I Thought You’d Be Interested in This

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being interested

One of the best ways you can thank a donor is to show them you know what they’re interested in–and talk about their interests.

How do you do that? Here’s a good example.

A Personal Email to a Donor: Me!

My wife Rona and I are longtime supporters of RESPOND, the Somerville, MA based organization working to end domestic violence. Their Chief Development Director, Danielle Kempe, knows that. So, look at the personal email she sent me just this week:

Good morning Dennis,

Hope all is well!

I just heard a client success story for our programs office that I thought you’d be interested in too.

This August, we moved a resident into her own apartment/independent living. She was excited to have her own space in her own name. As we did her exit interview, she said what she was most grateful for and would remember was RESPOND being there for her as she went through the immigration process.

In these times when immigration reform is at the center of every discussion, families are in fear, and it is one of the reason why people are afraid to report domestic violence, RESPOND was more than just a roof over her head. While at RESPOND, she was able to get a green card, take ESL classes, obtain gainful employment, and is set to start college classes. The safety planning tools will help her keep safe from her abuser, and the empowerment RESPOND provided will keep her strengthened for her future.

All the best,

Danielle Kempe

P.S. Hope to see you at our open house! Details below.

Why This Email Interested the Donor

As Development Director, Danielle has RESPOND’s database at her fingertips. She knows the recency, frequency, and monetary value of the gifts that Rona and I have made over the years: not that large, but consistent.

Danielle also knows we care about the safety and dignity of immigrants. How does she know that? I suspect it’s because she made a point of meeting with me after a a few months on the job, and we discussed it then. She probably went back to the office and made a note in the database of the donor’s interests. That’s what I would do in her place.

interested in immigrants

You can tell Rona and I are interested in immigrants!

Danielle and I have followed each other on social media for a while, too, and she’s seen some of the posts I’ve put up, and my photo with the words “#HeretoStay-I Support DACA” on my personal Facebook page. If she’s really good, and her database allows it, she has my feed at her fingertips too.

Show Your Interest to the Donor by Recognizing Theirs

Can you do as well as Danielle at RESPOND did? Ask yourself:

  • Do you know the names of your loyal donors?
  • Do you understand what they’re interested in, besides your organization?
  • Are you taking steps to find out? And,
  • Are you unselfishly giving them information they will enjoy that makes them say, “That organization really knows me”?

The more the donor believes you are paying attention to them as a person, the more they will feel you’re not just looking at them as a wallet. You have a relationship.

Now, that’s interesting!

TY Thursday: Thanking Donors Makes You Happy

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grateful happyWe’ve been talking about the hows and whys of thanking your donors, every Thursday for over a year. But we still haven’t mentioned the best reason to say “thank you.”

It will make you happy.

As reported in Inc. magazine, “A team of researchers out of Indiana University led by Prathik Kini recruited 43 subjects suffering from anxiety or depression. Half of this group were assigned a simple gratitude exercise — writing letters of thanks to people in their lives — and three months later all 43 underwent brain scans.”

The results?

The participants who’d completed the gratitude task months earlier not only reported feeling more gratefulness two weeks after the task than members of the control group, but also, months later, showed more gratitude-related brain activity in the scanner.

And their attitude of gratitude is linked with happiness, optimism, calmness, willpower, and other psychological benefits. Saying thank you is good for your mental health! Click To Tweet

“Something as simple as writing down three things you’re grateful for every day for 21 days in a row significantly increases your level of optimism, and it holds for the next six months. The research is amazing,” Harvard researcher and author Shawn Achor told Inc.com.

Be good to yourself: say “thank you”

Writing thank-you letters is a way to express gratitude. We know donors want it. We know nonprofits benefitHappy grateful from it. And now, we know it’s a work task you can carry you that will actually be good for you.

So, why not try it? Write three thank-you letters every day for the next twenty-one days. You’ll be making your outlook brighter AND making donors feel appreciated. A happy result!

TY Thursday: Did You Forget Something?

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