TYThursday Archives - Communicate!

TY Thursday: Your Favorite Posts of 2021

January 13, 2022 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

Thanking your first-time donors turns them into repeat donors.

Thanking your repeat donors turns them into loyal supporters.

Thanking your loyal supporters makes the lifetime value of their donations multiply. It’s the most important thing you can do to improve your fundraising!

Here are your favorite posts from 2021 about expressing an attitude of gratitude and #DonorLove. Please write me back and tell me which of these you are going to put into practice in 2022!

TY Thursday: How to Thank Recurring Donors

Recurring donors give automatically. When you thank them, though, it should be anything but automatic. You need a deliberate and thoughtful approach to showing donor love to this special group.

TY Thursday: Your Board Will Thank You for Doing This

Getting thanked by a Board member helps donors think, “I made a good decision when I gave.” But it helps your Board of Directors, too.

TY Thursday: A Toast to You, Generous Donor!

The essence of a toast is not the liquid you drink. It’s the words you say. What can you say to make your donors feel extra special–right now?

TY Thursday: Thank You, Donor–You’re Welcome!

A welcome kit (also called a packet or package) tells the donor, “You matter to us. You’re not just a cash cow. We’re in this together for the long haul.” What should go into a welcome kit?

TY Thursday: The Ideal Thank-You Letter

I have seen the ideal appeal letter. I haven’t yet seen the ideal thank-you letter. But it went out today. Did you send it?

TY Thursday: 3 Ways to Make Sure You Get the Name Right

October 28, 2021 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

Nothing matters more to your donors than getting their name right.

Don’t just take my word for it. Ask other experts in nonprofit communications, and they’ll tell you the same thing. Or ask the donors. You’ll get an earful about how annoyed they get when a nonprofit is happy to take their money but can’t be bothered to remember their name!

It can be simple to call the donor by the name they prefer. If you have a good CRM, it will offer you fields where you can enter the full name of the donor plus the name they’d like you to use in the salutation of your appeal letter (or the To: line of your email).

But first, you have to find out the right name.

How do you do that? Ask.

Ask about Names When You Ask for Donations

When BAGLY, the Boston Alliance of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Youth, asked for money, they included this language on their donation card.

Did we spell your name or address incorrectly?

We’re so sorry. We try to maintain an accurate database of our supporters, but we need your help on this one.

Correct Name Spelling: _____________________________

Correct Mailing Address: ____________________________

Correct E-Mail Address: _____________________________

BAGLY is quietly allowing people to say “My name is Albert, but you can call me Al” or “I used to go by Sarah, but now my name is Carter” without making any fuss about it.

Ask about Names When You Say “Thank You”

Keshet, the organization for LGBTQ equality in Jewish life, found another good way to ask which names to use. When they thanked us for our donation, they checked how my wife and I would like to be listed in their annual report.

As I said when I congratulated them in a post in 2020: “Keshet asked what we wanted to be called. They saw the way the names were listed on the check we’d sent them, but they didn’t assume that was exactly how we wanted our names to appear.”

Because everyone knows what happens when you assume!

Ask about Names and Give the Donor Control

It’s probably no accident that the first two examples came from organizations that serve the LGBTQ+ community. Names given and names chosen matter enormously to queer people, especially people who have made a gender transition. These organizations know that and tacitly act on their knowledge. But all nonprofits should follow their lead.

Just recently, I saw a different approach from an organization that is not specifically LGBTQ+, one that impressed me. Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ) emailed me to let me know that the control over my name was in my own hands.

Here’s why they made the effort:

We know how harmful misnaming is and we want to do everything in our power to not do it. We want to thank those of you who have come forward and spoken up about the harm being misnamed causes in our community, especially for our trans, gender non-conforming, and non-binary members.

Here’s what they did:

“The heart of JFREJ’s new policy is our self-reporting portal which gives you control over your personal data,” they told me.

When you click on the link, you will be asked to submit the email address we have on file for you (i.e., the email address that this email was sent to). You will then be emailed a new link, which will show you the private information we have on record for you and will give you the opportunity to change any or all of it, including your name, phone number, address, email, and recurring donation.

You can make those changes any time. Your data, your choice.

And if the portal doesn’t work for you, and you prefer to update your information by connecting directly with a human, you can email our Development and Database Associate at [email protected]. He’ll kindly take care of it for you, anytime.

And here’s why you should consider doing the same!

As we’ve seen over and over, names are personal. Getting a person’s name wrong sends the message that you don’t care who they are, as long as they give your organization money. That’s a slap in the face to anyone who’s fought for their identity, and it’s insulting to anyone, period.

Names are not just an LGBTQ+ issue, any more than curb cuts in the sidewalk are just a wheelchair user issue. The curb cuts make it easier for everyone to get around: workers carrying loads, parents pushing strollers, grandmas using canes or walkers, people whose legs are tired that day!

If you give everyone control over how their names appear in your database, it’s like installing curb cuts. Pretty soon, everyone will use them, and the only thing that people will notice is the backward thinking groups who have stopped them short, by continuing to call them the wrong name. Don’t be that group!

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 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.

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

Partners 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

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!

That 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.

Like 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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