Most fundraisers work hard and spend a lot of time and money hustling their brands and mission.

Sadly, most fundraisers don’t bother to actually check on what experiences the donor receives at the hand of the organization.

That’s why ‘mystery shopping’ is so important when it comes to determining in real time (rather than your ‘supposed to’ written plan) just how responsive your organization is with its donors.

This is particularly important when it comes to the ‘thank you’ process. One of most important and certainly the easiest step you can take to bond — or lose — donors to your organization.

So we were delighted to see the latest ‘mystery shopping’ results from a study conducted in July by Bloomerang.co. Curious about how quickly the average nonprofit follows up with a first-time donor (those most at risk … remember nearly 3 out of 4 new donors abandon ship in their first year), Bloomerang donated $5 online, at exactly the same time, to 50 randomly selected nonprofits in the Indianapolis area.

Take a look at the Bloomerang Infographic from this mystery-shopping trip. [Click on image to enlarge.]

So here’s what Bloomerang found:

• 96% sent an email response within 60 seconds of the donation. Nearly half of these responses were from the payment processor … 60% were branded by the organization. But only 25% of the organizations bothered to send an email that wasn’t an auto-responder.

• 34% sent a physical thank you letter. The fastest came within 5 days of the gift; the slowest within 13 days of the gift.

• 4% sent no thank you and none bothered to make a phone call.

Clearly, given the data on thank you’s we’ve seen for the rest of the US, the nonprofits in the Indianapolis area are a lot more responsive than the national average. In some studies as many as 60% of nonprofits don’t bother to thank their donors at all!

Check out the details of the Bloomerang survey for yourself. There are lots of nuances I’m not reporting. Nuances to which you need to be alert.

AS A FREE BONUS … you can download a basic thank you letter template from Pamela Grow that can be used as a starting point for crafting an effective acknowledgement. PLUS … after downloading you’ll receive a free subscription to Pam’s The Grow Report which will arrive in your e-mailbox each Thursday.

An Agitator raise for the mystery shoppers at Bloomerang.

What’s your ‘thank you’ response time and content?

Roger

P.S. Tomorrow we’ll tackle the subject of prompt and proper thank you’s again. If you want to hold on to donors you really need to understand the importance of this process and the best ways to say “Thank You”.

P.P.S. And do you remember the kerfuffle when naughty Tom suggested that thank you’s didn’t matter after all?!