Nick’s post on How Asking Affects the Askedemphasized the importance of requesting feedback directly from the donor and explains why that feedback is so important and so valuable.

There’s another form of feedback and I’m afraid in our highly automated, often impersonal processes it’s been lost: the comments donors write on their response forms or in notes accompanying their checks.  (Yes online fans, a high percentage of donors still use checks here in the US.)

In the age of digital donations and out-sourced cashiering and lockbox operations I don’t know how many fundraisers actually see, or deliberately take the time and effort, to read the comments accompanying contributions and responses to email alerts.  If you don’t, I  urge you to figure out how to do so.

In my early years as a copywriter the greatest joy of my day was the visit to the cashiering operation to review the donors comments that accompanied their checks.  Frankly, I learned more about improving my copywriting from those comments –today we call it feedback—than from anything else.

I’m not alone.  Last night I called my long-time pal Jerry Huntsinger to see how he was weathering the effects of Dorian at his home on North Carolina’s Outer Banks.  In the course of our conversation I passed on to Mary Cahalane’s comment in last week’s Agitator that she “I began learning to write for donors with Jerry Huntsinger’s MAILED newsletter a zillion years ago. Wish I still had them!)” [Note:  Jerry’s Tutorials containing the treasures of his newsletters are now available free on SOFII]

Jerry recalled that his entry into copywriting was made possible by looking at donor mail and comments. In his words:

“I applied for a job with a non-profit organization as a public relations writer. The organization was Christian Children’s Fund in Richmond, Virginia. [Agitator note:  Now Child Fund.]

            “The name bothered me and the salary was only $4,000 a year.  But at last, I was a writer.

             “Or so I thought.        

              “And the first day on the new job, the boss says, Huntsinger, “write us a Thank You letter”.  A what you Letter?

            “I faked it.  Poorly.

            “And the next day when I showed up for work I was assigned to the mail opening room while they decided what to do with me.

            “After about an hour,  I discovered that most of the envelopes were addressed by women with shaky handwriting, and most of the checks were written by women with shaky handwriting.

            “Solution: Grandmother. So I rushed back upstairs and asked the boss for a second chance.  And lived happily ever after.  “

Jerry and I aren’t alone. The other day Denny Hatch, one of the greats in my Pantheon of Fundraising Curmudgeons[posted GONE FOREVER: Marketers’ Sublime Joy of Tasting Blood in which he lamented the lack/loss of personal attention to the fact that there are real human beings on those digital donor and customer lists.

“When I see an online lists of names—with addresses such as aol.com, gmail.com or yahoo.com—I have to work at remembering these electronic blips are, in fact, real people. They are every bit as human as the names of people and companies that make up an old-fashioned postal list—even though they are faceless, stateless and living in some cloud.

“I love being in touch with my readers.  

“If you write me asking to be put on the alert list for upcoming posts—or need answers to a question… or comment on the current blog—you will receive a personal response.    

“Yeah, I could get my computer whiz, Jay, to set up an AI system that automatically responds to incoming correspondence and automatically ads the names my subscriber “database.”  

“However, I type the name of every new reader into my database, because I want to know you and remember you.”

My concern with all this is not born out of some desire to turn back the clock to the “good old days”. Rather it’s to remind us all that it’s well worth the time and trouble to routinely read those return envelopes, response forms with comments, and emails that contain snippets and sentences of valuable information about our donors’ needs, desires and preferences.

Information from caring donors whom we disregard at a cost.

Roger

P.S.  As I was writing this, Nick called on another matter.  I told him I was writing this. “Timely”, he said, and went on to say that at last week’s ANA Nonprofit Conference in Chicago a number of participants reported a marked increase in comment mail.  Read and heed.