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TY Thursday: Keeping Gratitude Fun with Gamification

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A guest post from Taylor Burke, courtesy of TechnologyAdvice

Practicing gratitude can actually change the chemical makeup of your brain. When you give or receive thanks, production of dopamine and serotonin in your brain increases. The more you do it, the easier it becomes to trigger those feelings of happiness again. People who practice regular gratitude actually begin to look for the good over the bad in the day-to-day.

Gratitude has a scientifically positive impact. That’s one of the reasons it’s important to thank your donors. And there is a little trick that you can use to capitalize on that neurochemical release even further — gamification.

The Effect of Gamification

Like gratitude, gamification also has an effect on the brain. During game play, dopamine is also released. That feeling of winning is what makes games addictive and is exactly why marketers, human resources leaders, content creators, and others are introducing more and more gamification into what they create. It’s an excellent tool for engaging employees in training, getting readers to come back to your website, or creating positive feelings associated with your brand.

When gamification is used for donor thank-yous, it can double the positive experience for your donors and make them want to donate again to recreate the feeling. Here are six ideas for how to incorporate gamified experiences into your donor thank-yous.

  1. Friendly competition

Creating a little friendly competition between individual donors or between your nonprofit and others can be a great way to both amplify engagement and thank donors for each action they take along the way.

Take Brackets For Good, as an example. They allow nonprofits to compete against one another like basketball teams do in tournaments, in order to take the top fundraising spot. Donors who participate feel a boost from the gratitude and reward that comes with the celebration of a win.

  1. Increased Understanding

Your best donors deeply understand your mission in a way that allows them to become your ambassadors. However, thanking for them for that understanding can be more difficult than thanking them for a donation — how do you know who has the most knowledge?

This example from Greenpeace shows how gamification can help. Donors are educated by taking a quiz and when they accomplish it well, praised for their understanding.

  1. More Referrals

Speaking of donors as ambassadors, gamification can be used to thank those who refer friends and family to become supporters of your nonprofit. Using referral software or your own in-house tools, each of your donors can have a dashboard that shows them how many people they’ve referred, as well as a leaderboard comparing their success to other donors.

  1. Level Up

Too often, small-gift donors don’t get the recognition they deserve. Gamification is a great way to change that.

Create a system where donors earn badges or stickers as gratitude for various actions : making a donation of a certain amount, attending an event, sharing something on social media, and so on. Donors will be encouraged to accomplish the next step in order to earn their “reward.” Plus, donors are likely to add those badges and stickers to their own social profiles (which creates its own kind of marketing).

  1. Set a Goal

A great way to push donors during a short time period is to set a specific campaign and goal. You can then create a progress bar or other dashboard– like the example below from San Diego Zoo–that donors can collectively track.

Once the goal is complete (and the “game” over) thank your donors who participated with a celebratory email, social media badge, or event.

  1. Make it Experiential

Everyone loves to take on a challenge because accomplishing it makes us feel good. Plus, being able to share our progress with others gives us a social boost.

You can thank your donors by giving them an opportunity to show off their engagement with your organization through a gamified challenge, like Cancer Research UK’s Dryathalon, which encourages donors to fundraise by abstaining from alcohol for a month and getting donations as they do. Be sure to celebrate each milestone participants reach and have a big show of gratitude at the event’s conclusion.

When it comes to making your donors feel good, games and gratitude go hand-in-hand. Add some fun to your donor experiences and reward them for their continued support. They will reward you in return.

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Taylor Burke is a contributor for TechnologyAdvice.com and former nonprofit marketing director. She writes about marketing and communications.

TY Thursday: Which Donor is Your True Love?

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Who's your true love?

Which should you love best?

If you’re going to go out of your way to thank a donor fabulously, creatively, as many times and as many ways as you can, which donor should it be?

Do you single out the person who gives you the most money, or the person who gives most loyally over the years?

Let me tell you two stories to help you decide.

The Sudden Passion

The receptionist at the anti-poverty agency where I worked brought me the day’s mail. I opened a handful of reply envelopes from our most recent fundraising appeal. Then I gasped. A woman who had never given us a penny before had sent in a check for $1,000!

For our little nonprofit, $1,000 was a fortune. It was ten times the amount of the average donor’s gift. And it was the first time that Jean had donated. We had great hopes for the future.

As far as I know, we did all the right things to let Jean feel the #donorlove. We

  • Sent her a thank-you letter with a personal note from the Executive Director, the same day we received her donation
  • Followed it up with a voicemail
  • Listed her in our newsletter and annual report
  • Invited her to special events

Yet we never heard from Jean again. I still don’t know why. Perhaps she meant to give to an organization in town with a similar name, and she was too embarrassed to tell us she’d made a mistake? Or perhaps we’d touched her heart just that one time, and the morning after, she realized she loved some other organization better?

I’m not sorry we had our brief moment of passion with Jean. But I’m glad we didn’t run away with her, thinking it was true love, and forget about the donors waiting at home.

The Love of a Lifetime

John was a client of our agency. He couldn’t give much at a time–certainly not $1,000! But he had volunteered or served on the Board for twenty-five years.

Whenever we sent an appeal letter, he gave what he could. And when we had our twenty-fifth anniversary gala, John went around town (walking with a cane) and solicited gifts from local businesses. Back at his subsidized elderly housing, he went door to door and asked his neighbors to donate.

Over a lifetime, John raised $1,000 many times over.

Because John was shy, we couldn’t applaud him in public the way we would have liked. We sent him thank-yous and listed his donations, but we never toasted him or sent him gifts.

At Board meetings, however, we thanked him and held him up as an example. And our agency went above and beyond to make sure he  (and later, his daughter) would keep his housing and benefits, even when he was hospitalized for months at a time. That was another way of saying thanks.

If You Have to Choose Your True Love, Here’s How

Ideally, of course, you’d thank every donor fervently and frequently. Aim to do that! If you have to choose, however, pick your most loyal donors at every level.

Don’t just thank your major donors. If your newsletters are full of pictures of people who pay for whole buildings or programs, then your average donor will think, “This organization doesn’t need people like me.”

Show the love to the donors who, over time, show the most true love to you. Share on X

TY Thursday: When You Say Thanks, Steal from the Best!

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steal from the bestAre you trying to come up with an original way of thanking your donors this year? Don’t worry too much about that. Instead, follow comedian Milton Berle’s advice: “If you’re going to steal, steal from the best.”

(It must be good advice. Other people stole the quote from him!)

Steal These Top Ten Thank-You Ideas

There are lots of models for saying thank-you out there. Here are my top ten.

  1. Michael Rosen shows you how to thank your most loyal donors. (You should certainly make your supporters feel as appreciated as a big corporation like Marriott does with its guests!)

2. Ann Green tells you to create a thank-you experience that begins with the thank-you landing page on your website and goes on through email, mail, and phone calls.

3. If you’ve ever considered using video for your thank-yous to donors, take a look at these examples presented to you by Bloomerang.

4. Joe Garecht says you can take the classic thank-you letter to a whole new level. Take a look at his sample letter. And Pamela Grow’s thank-you letter template, too!

5. While you’re at it, take a look at my blog The Ideal Thank-You Letter Went Out Today–one of the most popular I’ve ever written–because you want to know the single most important thing about thanking your donors.

6. Gail Perry gives you a checklist of do’s and don’ts if you want to write a killer thank-you letter.

7. It’s a lot easier to say thanks if you develop an “attitude of gratitude” in everyday life. Mary Cahalane shows you how thanking donors can make you happy.

8. A thank-you can win the trust of your donor. Kivi Leroux Miller says your TY can be specific about how the gift is being used and show results: two things donors say they want above all else!

9. Rachel Muir tells us about The Best Thank-You Letter I Never Got, in her guest post on John Haydon’s blog. Do you donate? Can you put yourself in the shoes of the donor? Follow the golden rule of nonprofit writing.

10. Does someone at your nonprofit say, “Let’s just send out the same letter we sent before”? Lisa Sargent suggests you do a thank-you letter audit–and she provides a 17-point checklist to help you show the skeptics where you could be doing better.

Because Your Donor is Worth It

Are you as good at building loyalty as an airline?

pilot thanks you

Thank you for flying our nonprofit!

Every time I’ve flown in recent years, I’ve heard the flight crew say something like this upon landing. “We know you have many choices for your air travel. Thank you for choosing North-South-East-West Airlines.”

Your donors have many choices about what to do with their money. They could give it to another nonprofit in your field. They could give it to a completely different cause. They could blow it on pizza and beer. They could leave it to their grandchildren.

But they chose to make a gift to you. You are better off because of it. And you want them to make that same choice next time.

So, it’s worth sending that donor the best expression of thanks you can. Especially when you have so many good ideas to steal!

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