4 Things Even the Smallest Development Program Can Do Well

Without a well-functioning development program, it can be tough to grow as an organization. We often have big vision for the future, but struggle to fund them. Here are four things that even the smallest fundraising program can do well.

1) Thank your donors as quickly as you can.

Thanking your donors is a critical step in building relationships and positive donor experiences. With current online giving, it’s not impossible to thank a donor within minutes of their gift! All gifts should receive some acknowledgment, whether that’s an email that goes out based on online giving, or a mailed thank you note or standard receipt letter to those who give via check or ACH.

But beyond the immediate response, how often should you thank a donor directly? A generally accepted practice is to thank recurring donors 3-4 times a year and a one time gift, of any amount, warrants a personal expression of thanks whenever you’re able.

Here are some potential ways to thank your donors. 

Thank You Response Email

These will often be built into your donor management software. You can immediately send a formulated email that will thank the donor for their gift and send an official giving receipt. You should update these regularly, so they never feel stale. If you have a monthly giving program, it’s a good idea to update your thank you letters monthly so that your donors don’t keep receiving the same email.

Thank You Response Letter

These physical thank-you letters mailed to the donor could take the place of or complement a thank you response email. The point is to make sure every gift receives an acknowledgment of their contribution. If you have an employee whose dedicated job is to process and enter gifts as soon as they come in and you’re able to do in-house printing, try to get these out within 1-3 business days of receiving the gift. If you are unable to do in-house printing and have to send bulk orders to the printer, try to work this into a newsletter format that is sent, at the very least, once a month. Ensure you always update your letter’s content after sending the thank you letters to the printer.

Perhaps you’re like me and you have a shoebox stuffed with all the personal letters and cards you’ve received. I find these notes to be extremely sentimental and significant. When working in development you have the opportunity to create a giving experience for your donors that is sentimental and significant by giving personalized thank you’s whenever possible.

Personal Thank You Call

To the best of your ability, all donors should receive some sort of personalized interaction throughout the year. I would suggest you call monthly donors at least twice a year. Sending direct thank you’s to all new donors and people who join your monthly giving programs is a must. Given that this is a personal call to connect with a donor in response to a gift, try to make the phone call no more than five business days after receiving the donation.

When reaching out to donors isn’t your primary job, it can be easy to push these calls off. But each call should take no more than 1-2 minutes. It’s definitely worth blocking 30 minutes daily to make these personal touches of appreciation.

Personal Thank You Email

Sometimes we don’t have a donor’s phone number, but we do have their email address. An email can be an excellent, non-intrusive way to thank a donor who gives regularly — and it still provides a personalized giving experience. Try to get these out no later than 5 business days after the gift. You can multitask by skimming through recent gifts and sending any emails necessary at the same time you make the calls

2) Have a strategy for tracking donor relations.

I just checked my phone records, and I had a call with my dad three weeks ago, but to be honest, I have no idea what we talked about, who called who, or what was accomplished on the call. 

We like to think that we’ll be able to recall interactions with people further down the line when we are prompted, but in truth, we likely won’t. Tracking interactions with your donors is one of the best ways you can appropriately value the time and resources that they share with you. 

If you meet with a donor and 3 months later find yourself struggling to remember what happened in that meeting, then you should increase your information tracking! Try and take a minute or two after each meeting or phone call with a donor to take a voice memo summarizing the interaction. Many apps and software can convert this directly into text that can be copied, pasted, and saved on the donor profile in your donor management software. What a great way to show a donor that you value the time they are sharing with you! You don’t want to show up to the next meeting having forgotten what was discussed last time you saw the donor.

Tracking interactions also helps a lot with your thank you process. If you call and leave a voicemail, make a note of that. If you call and have a 30-second conversation, give a quick summary of that conversation and save the information. As you grow your organization, you will hire new employees that will greatly benefit from all of the contextual information you have saved over the years.

3) Make it easy for your donors to respond. 

An important part of a good fundraising program is getting good face-to-face time with the right people. Once you find the champions for your cause who are partnering at high levels, how do you make sure you’re meeting with them regularly enough to keep them updated on all that is happening at your organization?

Don’t put the work on your donor.

When you’re setting a meeting, someone has to do a lot of the leg work (i.e looking ahead at the schedules and picking potential dates, times, and locations). Make sure you aren’t putting this extra work on your donor. Be direct in your request so that your donor is able to give a simple yes or no answer. Rather than asking, “When is a good time for us to meet?” say, “Does March the 12th work for lunch? I can be available between 11:00 AM and 2:30 PM.” This shows your donor you have put in the extra work to make the decision to meet with you as easy as possible. Keep in mind that no one really wants to sit and listen to a minute long voicemail—so script one out ahead of time

Example: “Hi John, this is Joey Ott from True Charity, I just had a quick question for you. If you wouldn’t mind giving me a call back, it shouldn’t take more than a minute of your time.” Once they give you a call, keep it quick, thus staying true to your word.

4) Make it easy to give!

Our second version of make it easy is about the actual giving itself. Your donors don’t want to do extensive research to track down your tax ID number, addresses, or other necessary information for non-cash gifts. If your organization is set up to receive stock transfers, provide your donors with the account information they will need to process that transfer. 

Make sure your donation portal is easy to find and intuitive to navigate. If your button says “one-time donation,” make sure the giving portal isn’t automatically set for a recurring donation. Even the most generous of donors will probably not put in extensive work to give you a gift if you haven’t made the process smooth and easy to understand.

It’s also important to encourage donors to consult with their financial advisors and not consider you to be a financial expert. A nonprofit’s role is to give someone a place to make an impact with their money; we are not qualified to give financial advice.

Fundraising can often be a subjective and situational field and, in the end, no one knows your donors as well as you. In the coming months, we will be debuting our True Charity Fundaising Toolkit to help you and your organization’s development program grow. Stay tuned! For now, let this be your guiding principle: Tailor your donors’ experiences in a way that shows how much you value and appreciate each and every one of them.