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TY Thursday: Thanks for Noticing My New Year!

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shofar

Child blowing the shofar to mark Rosh Hashanah

It’s September. You may be looking ahead to your end-of-year appeal and thank-you letter, and congratulating yourself on getting to it early, long before the new year.

But is it already too late? Is the year over?

Thank God, It’s a New Year

This time next week, many Jews will be celebrating the new year, with the Rosh Hashanah holiday.

Wiccans and other pagans celebrate the Autumnal Equinox (Mabon) on Friday, September 22, which Jews outside of Israel consider the second day of Rosh Hashanah.

The Chinese New Year is next year on the Western calendar: February 16, 2018, to be precise. The Persian New Year, Nowruz, will arrive on March 21. The Cambodian New Year? Not until April 14.

And you thought the holiday season was in December!

Yes, You Can Keep Track

Let’s get real. Unless you’re a Jewish organization, you’re probably not sending out an appeal to your supporters timed for Rosh Hashanah. But ignoring the holidays that matter to your donors is not a good idea.

If you notice the new years that your supporters celebrate, they will be grateful. So few people in the majority population pay any attention at all. If you recognize  next week that it’s Rosh Hashanah (or next spring that it’s Nowruz, or Chinese New Year), you will get a lot of credit.

And it’s just not so hard to wrap your mind around the idea that there can be more than one new year. Your nonprofit may already be paying attention to the start of the new year, and the federal government’s budget year, and your own fiscal year. You know how to do this!

Sending Greetings to Your Mailing List

How do you wish people well on their holidays when you may have Christians, Jews, pagans, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and atheists on your list?

Ideally, you keep a record of which holiday each person on your list celebrates. Then, you send personalized email to each one.

(It helps a lot if your email list is in a database instead of a spreadsheet, and if you use an email service provider like Constant Contact or MailChimp and not just Outlook or Gmail.)

If you haven’t kept records of which holidays are meaningful to which of your contacts, now would be a good time to start!

My Holiday Gift to You

While you are putting together those records, I’ll help you send holiday greetings to all. Here’s how: feel free to cut and paste the third, fourth, and fifth paragraphs of this message into your email and social media. Edit judiciously. Add these words: “To all our friends who celebrate these holidays, we send our warmest greetings.”

That’s it for now. Thanks! Who’s looking forward to Groundhog’s Day?

Top 75 Nonprofit BlogWe’re honored that Feedspot has named the Communicate! blog as one of the top 75 nonprofit blogs to follow in 2017. Read more about nonprofit marketing, fundraising, and thanking donors at www.dennisfischman.com

TY Thursday: Let Your Actions Say Thank You

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Action speaks louderAre you trying to come up with more and better ways to thank your donors? Sometimes, what you need is not a new and improved thank-you letter, video, gift, or donor appreciation event.

Sometimes you just have to give the donors what they want.

What do the donors want?

Tom Ahern, the dean of donor communications, says the content donors want is the answers to the questions, “What did you do with the money I gave you? What difference did it make?” And they want the joy of feeling they have helped make the world a better place.

Take Tom’s advice and you’ll know what to put in your newsletter (and on your website, and on your social media)–and what to leave out. Put in stories about real people whose lives are better “because you helped.”

Everything else–the grant you got, the award your Executive Director won, the amount of money you have to raise before your fiscal year end–is what you should leave out. Unless you can find a way to present it so that your donors feel great about themselves! Then, include it. But check with some actual donors first!

Kivi Leroux Miller, who’s always both practical and inspiring, says donors want giving to be easy–and after they give, they want you to know who they are.

Take Kivi’s advice. Giving can be easy if your website has a good landing page and if once they give, you immediately acknowledge the gift (so they know “it worked!”)

Knowing who your donors are is so vital, and yet so neglected! “It’s amazing how little many nonprofits can tell you about their donors beyond their giving history, and that makes good marketing and fundraising tough,” Kivi says. If you know what your donors care about–including interests that don’t seem at first to touch on your mission–you can send communications that make them feel “This was written just for me.”

Joe Garecht, The Fundraising Authority, says donors want non-reciprocated value. In other words, be generous to them, too! Don’t just trade return address labels for a donation.

Take Joe’s advice. Find ways to be helpful to your donors, without expecting anything in return, “such as when you come across two donors who might find value in working together in their businesses, and offer to set up and attend a lunch meeting to introduce them.”

Customer service is the best thank you.

People in business know that their customers’ experience with them is reason those customers come back–or don’t. No amount of advertising can overcome a customer’s interaction with an employee who is rude, inattentive, poorly informed, or just plain unhelpful.

For nonprofit organizations, donors are our customers. Yes, they are “buying” services for other people–our clients! But customer service is still the key to seeing those donors again. Let’s put it in terms that fit the nonprofit sector:

The best way to thank your donors: think about what matters to the donor--and give it to them. Click To Tweet

What have you done for your donors that they will remember with a smile?

TY Thursday: What Nonprofits Can Learn from Facebook about Saying Thanks

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Can nonprofits learn something about thank-yous from Facebook memories?

Facebook memories

You’ve probably seen them on your own Facebook feed. Memories from a year ago, or two, or five, pop up at random intervals. In truth, some of the memories are pretty random, too. (Do I really need to see that on this date in 2010, my email was down?)

But every once in a while, Facebook really gets it right. One day, Facebook told me my niece Fay celebrated her bat mitzvah eight years ago this week. Now she is two years out of college, in California, in her first job.

Seeing that memory put a smile on my face. And it also made me wonder: can nonprofits say “thank you” to donors by sharing good memories?

Memories Make Relationships

Marriages are built of memories. So is the relationship between the donor and your  nonprofit. When that donor thinks back to a time they are happy about, or proud of–and you were a part of it–it’s bound to make the donor associate that pride and joy with you.

What could you do to remind them of that time? Here are a few ideas:

  • Find a photo of that donor volunteering for your organization. Email it to them, or post it on social media and tag them. “Janine, do you remember when you and Joe packed school supplies into back packs for a hundred kids from low-income families who were just starting school? We remember! Thank you!”
  • Find a photo of that donor having a great time at your organization’s event. Email it to them, or post it on social media and tag them. “Randy, remember when you won the safari at our auction? We do! Look at the expression on your face!”
  • Recognize long-time donors by reminding them what they accomplished. “In 2006, you helped prepare Cheri and dozens of other parents like her to give their newborns a healthy home. In 2010, you helped her make reading to her son James a part of the daily routine. With this current gift, you have helped James get free lunches all summer. What a lot you have accomplished with your donations! Thank you!”

I’m sure there are other ways to share good memories with your supporters. Have you tried anything I have mentioned here, or some other approach? How did it work out for your nonprofit?

 

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