Communicate!

Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

TY Thursday: Grateful for Online Gifts? Show it!

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Did your nonprofit get a lot of online donations at the end of 2018? Congratulations!

ungratefulDo your donors know how grateful you are? Maybe not. And there’s something you can do about it.

What My Donor Experience Can Teach Us

On December 27, I gave fifteen donations to nonprofits by whipping out my wallet and punching in my credit card number. Here’s how they responded.

Headlines

First the good news: when I made a gift, I knew it had gone through. Why? When I hit Submit, I landed on an acknowledgments page. So far, so good.

But in bold letters at the top of each page, I saw too many messages like “Transaction Successful,” “Your payment was approved,” or “You’ve donated $36 to” the name of the organization.

Those are not thanks. They’re credit card receipts.

(In one case, the first thing that caught my eye was “You do not have an active membership.” So much for gratitude!)

I hope your nonprofit was one of the ones who did better:

  • You explicitly and enthusiastically said “Thank you!”
  • You called me and my wife by name.
  • You restated the difference our donation would make.

If not, do better next time. Rewrite the headline on your acknowledgments page today.

(If your system for accepting donations won’t let you write better headlines, then get a better system. Now.)

Messages

Below that headline, most often the nonprofits I gave to did use the words “thank you” somewhere. Sometimes, that was practically all they said, with the assurance that an acknowledgement was in the mail (or email).

I felt bad for these nonprofits, because they  just missed an opportunity.

I hope your nonprofit was one of the ones who did better:

The first thing you tell a donor after they make a gift is thank you--but along with that, you tell them why they made the right decision.

What just happened as a result of their donation? Did somebody get a meal, a place to sleep, new dance shoes for the dance class they could never afford on their own, a vaccination that will protect them and their family all year?

If you merely restated your mission, that was better than nothing. But if you told me the impact of my donation, that was even better. And best of all would be telling me a story. If you do that, I will really remember it!

Calls to action

I was glad to see that none of these acknowledgments include the dreaded “thask” (the thank-you that asks for another donation).

But it cheered me when you asked me to take some other action right away besides donating. For instance:

  • Telling my friends I’d made a donation
  • Asking my employer if they’d match my gift
  • Signing up to receive more information throughout the coming year (which means trusting you with my email address)

As your donor and your supporter, I hope your nonprofit was one of the ones who did better. And as a communications consultant, I can help make sure you do. Let’s work together in 2019. Drop me an email to [email protected].

I’ll be grateful.

TY Thursday: Torn Between Two Donor Lovers?

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two lovers

Which one deserves your #donorlove?

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 get your love?

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: What Have You Done for Your Donors?

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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. Share on X

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

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