Communicate!

Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

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: 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. Share on X

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

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