How to Create an Entire Fundraising Strategy Around Thank You Notes

In the nonprofit world, we spend a lot of time planning and writing and generally hemming and hawing about different strategies to implement. “We need a fundraising strategy!” or “How’s the marketing plan coming?” or “Has anyone heard of this social media thing? Do we have a strategy for that?” are all pretty commonplace Silagra phrases for us.

I recently read a post (from over a month ago ) by Kivi Miller about a thank you letter experiment she did with some fairly tragic results. She donated to 10 organizations and only three got back to her with any kind of thanks. And those three were shoddy at best.

How About a Thank You Strategy?

In response, I’d like to propose that we need to add “thank you strategy” to our usual list of strategy phrases. In fact, I would argue that such a “thank you strategy” could probably take the place of those other strategies we talk about so much.

Below, I’ve laid out a blue print for thanking your donors, be they individuals, foundations, or even that old bureaucrat, Uncle Sam. Consider it released under a Creative Commons licence.

I looked at the complaints Kivi mentions in her post and found the best ways to satisfy them. Then I created an actionable strategy for getting prompt, personalized, and generally knock-down-drag-out Thank You’s to your donors.

I’ve also included some free worksheets that you can get by signing up for my newsletter at the bottom of this post. Make sure you take advantage of those.

One more thing before we begin. This is a long post. You might consider Levitra Professional bookmarking it at Delicious or Diigo Viagra Professional to come back to later.

Ok, without further lozol ado…

Step 1: Get the Tools and Start Collecting Donor Data.

[Skip this step if you've got a donor database and you know a lot about your donors. If not...keep reading.]

First thing’s first. You need a database.

There are several ways to do this. If you’re really strapped for cash, use Excell or Open Office’s equivalent if you can’t afford the Microsoft liscense.

If you’ve got a few bucks, head over to Tech Soup and read their reports on donor databases. They sometimes even have special offers on the software.

Basically, GiftWorks for a desktop-based program and ETapestry for a web-based program are your two best bets in the low-cost category. GiftWorks works fine if you only do work on one computer, as long as you make sure you back up your data with something like Dropbox or another hard-drive. ETapestry is best if you work from multiple computers or you want to be able to access your Cialis Online data from anywhere.

I’m personally not a die-hard fan of either. If someone wants to make a killer donor management application that’s actually affordable, let me know. I’ve yet to see one that is truly remarkable and tailored to nonprofits.

On the high-end is Salesforce for Nonprofits. Salesforce is free for nonprofits for the first 10 users at your org and heavily discounted after that. But don’t let the initial “freeness” fool you. You’ll spend a lot of time and money on Salesforce in the long run.

Don’t use it unless you’ve got a lot of moola to invest and you’re committed to completely revolutionizing the way you interact with people and organizations outside of your nonprofit. This one isn’t just for tracking donors, it’s for tracking EVERYTHING. Unless you use it as such, you’ll end up creating a lot of unneccessary work and you’ll probably develop migraines.

You’ll definitely need a consultant to show you what it can do and how to do it. Then you’ll need to spend more money on training. When all is Kamagra Gold said and done, you will have spent a ton of money and you’ll have revolutionized your org’s donation and relationship process. It’s a good investment for about 10% of nonprofits in the world.

Once you’ve got a database, set it up and start Levitra online buy gathering info about your donors. You’ll really need a consultant or somebody to help you along the way. Databases are literally worthless if you don’t have them set up right from the beginning. You could be wasting a lot of time and money and not even know it.

One day, you might need to find all the single, under 30, male donors with dogs to invite them to a Single’s with Dogs Speed-dating Fundraiser. If you weren’t tracking that stuff from the very beginning, you’re out of luck. The point is, you need to think of everything you might ever possibly want to track and have someone help you set up your database so you can get started as soon as possible.

P.S. I don’t reccommend doing a Single’s with Dogs Speed-dating Fundraiser (or any speed-dating fundraiser for that matter) unless you’re the Speed-Dating Association of America.

Step 2: Start Recruiting Volunteers

No. Don’t put an ad on Craigslist or VolunteerMatch or Idealist.

The volunteers you’ll be recruiting to write thank you letters are going to come from the inside. Recruitment should be the task of either a Development Director, a Volunteer Coordinator, or if neither of those exist, an Executive Director or Board Member.

Talk to anyone that’s closely involved with your organization and ask them to join your Thank Kamagra jelly You letter writing task-force.

When I say anyone, I mean anyone. My personal preference for receiving a thank you would be from Clients (the people you help), other Donors, Volunteers, Staff, and Board Members in that order. If I personally got a handwritten letter from five people–one from each of those groups after a donation, you would have me as a donor for life. I can’t really vouch for anyone else receiving that many thank you’s, but I say risk it!

If you’ve got the man-power and no one pharmacy buy online wants to help, either get your Board to make it policy for staff and board members, or read How to Win Friends and Influence People and try again.

If you really don’t have anyone you can turn to for help, buy Todoodlist and start finding ways to be more productive so you have time to write. I once heard a fundraising guy say that he starts and ends his day with a thank you. Sounds like a good start to me.

[Note: Both of these are affiliate links. I threw them in there because I want to make money (like 1 dollar per purchase or something). I haven't read either, but I've heard good things. I'm 99% sure they're worth your time and money. Send me a nasty email if they're not.]

Step 3: Write Some Thank You Templates

Templates always seem to make things easier. Invest the time now to write a few for some of the larger groups of people who donate to you.

A good rule of thumb is to group people by:

• How recently they gave
• How frequently they give
• How much they give

Separate these into as as many subgroups as possible and go from there. I would also recommend doing different templates for individuals, foundations, and government agencies.

Use your donor database to group and sub-group and sub-sub-group your donors. Make as many templates as possible for as many groups of donors as possible. The more personalized your Thank You’s, the better.

In an ideal world, you would hand write every thank you to a specific person you’ve known since childhood. You would write it on the finest paper you could find with the finest pen you could buy and seal it with wax. In the real world, templates will have to do.

Figure out how to do a mail merge with your database software of choice to feed specific donor data into your templates.

Step 4: Gather More Data With Your Thank You’s

Here’s an idea. Why not enclose (instead of a request for more money) a request for more information? A little survey could do wonders for soliciting that person in the future.

You could ask questions like these:

• What made you give to us?
• How did you hear about us?
• What’s Kamagra your favorite flavor of ice-cream?
• Are you under 30?
• Do you have a dog?
• Are you single?
• What do you think about speed dating?

You get the idea. Ask some questions that will help you get to know your donors so you can get them involved. Remember you can’t change the world without their help. Their involvement is much more important than their money.

Slap that info back into your database, and you’ve got some serious firepower the next time you want to ask them for money.

This would be especially effective if you did your thank you’s over the phone.

Step 5: Send Them Quick

Make it a policy to send a thank you within three days of receiving the donation. If you can’t do three days, do a week. Just make it a practice to send it as quickly as you possibly can. Have this in writing somewhere. Seriously. “Thank You notes will be sent no later than three days after receipt of donation.” Do it now and stick to it like your life depended on it.

Step 6: Make Your Thank You’s Remarkable

If you’ve got a head up on 70% of the nonprofit world just by thanking people for their donations, why not take this opportunity to up the ante a little more and make your thank you’s remarkable. Go ahead and watch the 17 minute video below (trust me it’s worth it) and consider how you can apply Seth Godin’s wisdom to your Thank You letters. Here’s one example from Kivi’s blog.

A Few Extra Resources

Subscribe to the FREE newsletter to get a whole bunch of content like this about fundraising online and off.

Here’s some more great resources on thanking your donors:

• Kivi’s Posts Tagged “Thank You Notes” Be sure to follow the links she has in the articles to other great resources.
• Joanne Fritz’s About.com article on thank you letters
• Network for Good’s Fundraising123 articles on thanking donors

Tagged as: strategy, thankyous, worksheets