Thank your donors before you ask again

A guest post by Dennis Fischman, Communicate! Consulting

First-time donors and repeat donors. Average size givers and major givers. People who give annually, quarterly, or monthly. What do they all have in common?

They love to be thanked.

For first-time donors, a prompt and personal thank-you helps reassure them. It makes them think, “Yes, I did the right thing,”—and wards off donor remorse.

For repeat donors, thanks make them feel seen, heard, and appreciated. Because you took the time to thank them, they feel like a person in a relationship, not a number or an ATM.

Whether they give $25 or $25,000, each donor wants to feel they made a difference.  Not so much to your organization, mind you, as to the cause that they care about. Your organization is a means to their end. But when you say thank you, it confirms that you are the right means to the end…and it makes them more likely to start giving to you more often, or even leaving you a lump sum in their will!

Thank early and often
So, let’s say you did the right thing when the gift came in. You recorded the check right away, and you sent out the ideal thank-you letter or email within 48 hours.

If the donor donated online, your auto-response was warm and personal: less like a cash register receipt and more like a “Wow.” And you followed up the auto-response with a letter, an email, or a phone call. Good for you!

But your attitude of gratitude shouldn’t have an expiration date.

Thanking the donor only begins when you receive the gift. All year, there are opportunities to say to the donor, ” You’re my hero. Because of you, this wonderful thing is happening!”

I like Ann Green’s idea that, just like you have a plan for your fundraising, your nonprofit should plan for its thank-yous. I’ll recommend you go a step further: please create a communications calendar for the year that includes a way of saying thank-you every month.

How often should you ask, and how often should you thank?

Most small nonprofits should ask more often than they do. If you are only asking for money at the end of the year, you are letting your donors’ generosity go to waste. Even twice a year is too few for most groups. Try asking four times this year and see what happens!

Most nonprofits of every size should say thank-you more often than they do. Upon receiving the donation, one thank you is not nearly enough. If the next thing the donor hears from you is another “ask,” you won’t seem grateful at all!

But that poses the question that our host Robin Cabral tells me you’ve been asking her:  How often should I thank my donors before asking again?  The wisdom in the field is seven times.

Before you choke and sputter at the thought of thanking a donor seven times between quarterly asks, please listen to what Linda Wastyn has to say to us about it: The rule of thumb is that you want to thank a donor seven times.

That doesn’t mean thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Instead, it means to have seven opportunities to say thank you to the donor between the time of the gift and when you ask them again. That might mean sending the tax receipt and the thank you sent immediately upon receiving the gift. It might mean a phone call. It might mean a letter that you send six months later telling them what a difference their donation made in your clients’ lives.

And those are just the first ideas that come to mind! Think to yourself: “Could I…

1. Send the donor a thank-you video by email?
2. Have a Board member call them up to thank them (as a fellow donor)?
3. Write them a poem?
4. Share stories that will make them feel happy?
5. Share information that will make them feel smart?
6. Hold a fun event where they can meet other donors?
7. Notice something happy or sad going on in their lives and celebrate with them, or offer them support?”

There are dozens of ways you can say thank you to your donors, individually and personally or as a group.  Here’s a list of twenty. Which of them fits your organization the best? Pick as many as you think you can do, put them into your communications calendar, and you’ll be surprised how easy it is to make gratitude a habit.

Guest Author:  Dennis Fischman

Dennis Fischman is the owner of Communicate! Consulting, where he helps nonprofit organizations make donors into loyal friends.

Read more of his posts on nonprofit communications and fundraising at the award-winning Communicate! blog, or follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

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