Make This Improvement Your #1 Fundraising Priority
Debbi Barber at Grizzard, in a post last week titled One Simple Way to Improve Retention, hit the nail on the head. She recommended one improvement that would unfailingly yield higher lifetime value from any nonprofit’s donors.
And it ain’t brain surgery, although it could well require a change to your fundraising mindset and priorities.
Debbi’s recommendation?
Prompt thank you’s.
How big a difference will this make? Check out Grizzard’s data …
If this chart doesn’t tell it all and motivate you to tighten up your acknowledgement process, I give up!
But thankfully, Debbi persists, offering this advice in One Simple Way to Improve Retention on how to turn your organization’s acknowledgment implementation around … if you’re willing to make it a priority:
Nonprofit professionals are great at solving problems if they are a priority. If your organization struggles with timely gift acknowledgement, consider taking the following steps:
- Sit down with your staff and look carefully at the communication schedule.
- Consider what could be modified or eliminated to allow more budget for investment in prompt thank you turnaround.
- Meet with operations and brainstorm how steps in the process from receipt of the gift to the thank you being mailed can be condensed.
- Arm yourself with statistics on the revenue value of a faster connection to the donor’s gift when pushing for faster turnaround.
- Consider outsourcing to a provider who offers a “Rapid Response” acknowledgment solution.
- Meet with volunteer leadership and recruit volunteers to call all first-time donors within 72 hours of receipt of the gift.
9 responses to “Make This Improvement Your #1 Fundraising Priority”
Behavioral Science Q & A
Integrating an individual giving appeal with other communications from a charity can have both positive and negative effects, and the outcome largely depends on how it’s executed. Advantages of Integration Brand Consistency: Maintaining a consistent appearance and messaging across all communications can reinforce the org’s brand identity and strengthen brand recognition and trust among your […]
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I’m not aware of any in-market tests specifically comparing recurring vs. gift frequency language. I suspect the answer might not be the same with all gift frequencies, nor with all people. It sounds like a great opportunity for you to test and find out what works for your audience. Based on the literature, here’s a couple […]
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Based on what we know from existing data, those renewal notices can actually be pretty effective in getting people to donate. They tap into our psychology – creating a sense of urgency, reminding us of past support, and using personalization to make the message hit home. They’re playing on our natural tendencies to feel obligated […]
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Interesting question. I had a quick look at the testing done on this topic. On the positive side, in all cases, over half of donors decide to cover the fee. In some cases, it goes as high as 65%. Not a negligible percentage at all. Here’s another test from iRaiser showing consistent results (see point […]
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There’s just one thing to consider when designing a supporter journey: the supporter. More specifically, you need to take into account: Who the supporter is i.e. their identity, which is the reason they support this cause, and their personality, which describes the way they “see” and process the world. These will determine the kind of […]
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I’m not an expert in this but a quick search surfaced this article on the effect of tax reforms on 2019’s charitable giving. The researchers didn’t find a reduction. Actually, they observed an “increase in charitable contributions in 2019, even with the lower tax rates and the dramatically smaller number of taxpayers who itemize their […]
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Could not agree more. At my last job, I sat down with all staff to run through what happens from the moment a gift arrives to the moment a thank you letter leaves the door. It was amazing how many places there were hold ups. It began with waiting for the postman to deliver the mail, as opposed to going to the post office in the morning and picking it up. That sometimes saved a whole day of turn-around! I recommend finding out where the hold ups are in your organization.
The greatest truths are always the simple ones.
Great message Debbi and Tom!
I’m skeptical about outsourcing this process. Something this important and this personal needs to be done in house.
Sometimes all you haven’t is an address so making a phone call is not always an option. But, if and when you have an email address that is the quickest way to respond with a thank you and then send the acknowledgment receipt later.
Tom: prompt is meaningless and destructive if it means sending, which I see all too often, a boilerplate letter with about as much life as wet cardboard.
To quote from Steve MacLaughlin’s awesome “50 Fascinating Nonprofit Statistics”, http://www.slideshare.net/smaclaughlin/50-fascinating-nonprofit-statistics, 50% of donors would rather receive a personal thank you than a crazy-fast one.
Too many nonprofits have heard for too long that if they don’t send within 48 hours they’re sunk. The fact is, it’s miles better to send a superb, PERSONAL TY within a week (or even up to two) than to obsess over a 48-hour turnaround. And it’s not just statistics: I can think of two clients, one in the U.S. and one abroad, who focus on TY excellence first. Both claim (far) better-than-benchmark retention rates. If you do outsource your appeals/newsletters, very easy at that point to include a thank-you as part of the writing process. If you do it in-house, write the thank-you as part of the project itself: this gives the TY gravitas as an extension of the process itself, which it is. Make it prompt yes, but make it personal.
I have to agree with Tina on not outsourcing. There are clever ways to stay on top of getting thank you’s out right away such as engaging your Board to help write hand written notes to new or major donors, or engaging volunteers or even program staff in the process. It gives the program folks insight into donor relations and why it is so important, breaks down barriers in communication that might exist between development and programs, and prepares program staff to be ambassadors of your organization. You never know who that program officer is standing next to in the elevator, or whose ear they grab at an event. They are our foot-soldiers and ambassadors and far too often we as development folks leave them with no tools – they live mission moments everyday, so who better to help say thanks!
I think if everyone understands what’s at stake, they’ll step up to the plate and get this one. Too often a lonely underpaid staff is charge with TY’s – and nobody really cares about him or her. Making the thank you process a top organizational priority can change everything – I just think people need to understand “why,” and then they’ll be good soldiers.
This includes board members who are charged with thanking too!
Gail
So much I agree with here! Gail’s right – too often the person in charge of getting thank you letters out is the least senior person on the team. It’s seen as clerical drudgery instead of a really important part of the process. So of course, it gets done along with other things – like filing.
I also agree with Tina and Lisa – a great, really personal thank you is what really matters. Within a week, for sure. But personal – and that means knowing at least the record of the person you’re writing to. Hard to do when it’s outsourced.
I’m not sure this is all so much a function of timing (except the awful, two months later form letter stuff) but more of where in the list of priorities thanking your donors falls. If it’s low-level, clerical stuff, that’s bound to start becoming obvious to your donors. They don’t deserve to be low-level clerical stuff!
I’m all for improving lifetime value and all for great thank you letters.
But just to agitate a bit…do you know of any research that demonstrates a direct connection between thank you letters and donor lifetime values? And does that research measure thank you letter timeliness or quality, as others have commented on here?