When you get a thank you card, expectations are fairly low. Maybe a signature. Possibly a sentence. It’s genuinely a nice gesture, then you toss it. I have a friend who is a real thank you note writer. He digs into the reason for his thanks. I look forward to getting them and I soak it in (because he’s telling me why I’m so great).
The AFP and The Urban Institute study revealed that the average nonprofit is retaining only 30% of first-time donors and 39% of ongoing supporters. Your donors are clearly passionate about your mission. After all, they give you their money. To keep their financial loyalty and to gain their trust, you have to remember this is, at its core, a relationship. Relationships grow with nurture.
Could your thank you skills stand some improvement? In the donor world, it could it mean the difference between turning a donation into a donor. Here are a few tips to help beef up your thank you letters.
Be Timely
You should send out your thank you letters no later than 48 hours after a donation is made. I don’t have to tell you how time consuming it is to manually sort through reports of recent donations and send emails, letters, and tax documents. Why not have them sent out automatically? Having a time table automatically set ensures a timely and personalized response to your donor.
Make It Personal
When donors make online gifts in many cases emails are automatically sent to donors after a gift is made. Good idea, right? Here’s the problem: the donor quickly sees they are dealing with a robot. The email may say something like “Thank you for your purchase of $100 on Tuesday, August 12th at 8:00am.” Purchase? Who purchased anything? They made a donation.
Think about customizing your online giving responses. With little effort you can communicate a heart-felt thank you and connect the gift to something in which this particular donor is interested. We’re not suggesting your write a letter, simply state how their donation directly impacts your mission and instantly pulls them into the ongoing mission (i.e. “Betty, thank you for your $10 gift to Spark. Because of your monthly contribution you are helping students like Marcos. We were able to provide Marcos a year of vital education to help prepare him for the future. ‘Before, I could not read. Now, through Spark I am not only able to read and write, I love it.’”).
Email Has Unique Opportunities
In your automated thank you emails, you have the added benefit of using links alongside your words. Not only can you thank them for their participation in the big event but also invite them to the next one, send them to a registration web page where they can register on the spot, fill them in on upcoming events, and invite them to take a next step. All of this with the full support of web and graphics to paint the picture.
Your Cell Phone Also Makes Calls
It’s impossible to call all of your donors and they probably don’t expect it. Instead of deciding it’s overwhelming and you can’t do it choose five each week to call. They will be surprised for sure. The good kind of surprised. In a culture where most communication is done through text, a few minutes set aside each day (or one day a week… you make the schedule) to personally reach out to your donors has a long lasting impact. Remember, this is all part of nurturing your relationships with your donors!
These steps might seem like a lot of work, but fortunately, a customized Salesforce CRM will automate all of these “beef up” steps! Need help getting started with Salesforce? Not sure if you can afford it? (Here’s a hint — you can!) Get in touch with a DonorLynk specialist today and we’ll walk you through it from the ground up.