One of The Agitator’s favorite fundraisers, Mark Phillips at London’s Bluefrog, just posted a gem of an article, as usual. [My apologies to our UK readership for boring you; I assume (hope) all of you read Mark’s Queer Ideas blog religiously.]

Mark’s article is about how to handle ‘in-memoriam’ gifts … specifically, how to follow them up. It’s titled How soon does the sorry window close?

Now I’m not picking up on this because in-memoriam gifts make a gigantic contribution to the total revenue of charities and nonprofits in the grand scheme of things.

Rather, what Mark reports gives important insight into how carefully and sensitively fundraisers attempt to understand and shepherd their individual donors.

After a disappointing experience when making an in-memoriam gift in memory of his own mother, Mark decided to look further. As he says:

“To my mind, the more emotionally engaged in-memoriam donors can be some of the best donors that you’ll ever have. They start with a connection to your cause, they have actively searched you out and, when treated well, have a lifetime value that significantly outweighs most other donors.

I couldn’t understand why every charity wouldn’t invest heavily in them and give them special treatment.”

So Bluefrog conducted a mystery shopper exercise where in-memoriam gifts were sent to 67 household name charities, and their response was tracked. The responses were staggeringly poor. Most were totally perfunctory; some merely banking the check and many just sending a single thank you — just four organizations were responsible for 25% of all communications received from all 67 charities over the following ten months.

And that’s why I’m writing.

I regard this as a bit of a ‘canary in the mineshaft’ story. Here are some of the best conceivable ongoing donor prospects, yet most organizations treated them like they were — well — already dead themselves!

I’m willing to wager that those same organizations suck at donor retention … and building significant donor lifetime value. Fundraisers either ‘get’ donor cultivation, or they don’t.

How does your organization treat donors who make in-memoriam gifts?

Tom

P.S. Mark’s post actually addresses a key question that seems to perplex many fundraisers — how soon do you re-approach in-memoriam donors? Hence, when does the ‘sorry window’ close? Check out his advice … and you’ll be treated to a marvelous Larry David video vignette as a reward.