Tonight showed the contestants each working an 8-hour day for a week at the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank. I was so excited to see them there!  Food banking has a special place in my heart – I spent 5 years working as the Development Director for the Food Bank in East Tennessee. If you’ve heard me speak, you know I tell a lot of Food Bank stories!

Tonight, what caught my attention was that 2 of the contestants worked in the Call Center at the Food Bank, calling donors to thank them for their support.  Yay!  The LA Food Bank has it right – donor appreciation is important.  In fact, it’s critical to cultivating relationships.

That got me to thinking – how can you recruit volunteers to help thank donors?  Sometimes a call from a volunteer or  Board member carries more weight than a call from a staff person. If you can find the right person, they might be able to make calls from home,which is attractive to some volunteers.

The important thing is to take the time to connect with donors and thank them.  No matter how you do it, you’ll be glad you did.

The initial Thank You should be timely.  Your quick response to a donor’s gift lets them know that you did in fact receive their gift and that you are glad to have it.  Ideally, you should get an initial Thank You letter out within 48 hours of receiving a gift.  There’s nothing worse for a donor than waiting weeks or months for a gift acknowledgement.

Subsequent Thank Yous may be spread out over several weeks or months.  Letting a little time go by between Thank Yous shows the donor that you haven’t forgotten about them.  And, it helps you build a relationship.

Ideas for the 7 Thank Yous:

• Computer-generated letter
• Hand-written note card
• Phone call
• Email
• Call or note from the Executive Director
• Call or note from a Board member
• Call or note from another staff member (NOT a Fundraiser)
• Note from a client
• Photograph of your organization in action
• Written update about the use of the donor’s gift

So get busy and thank your donors!

Here are a few tips for thanking a donor.

1. Send a Thank You letter promptly.  Ideally, you want to have a Thank You letter in the mail to the donor within 48 hours of receiving their gift.  If you can’t possible do 48 hours, then figure out what you CAN do and be consistent.

2. Personalize the letter.  This is NO time for ‘Dear Friend.’

3. The Executive Director of the organization should sign the letter.  This shows the donor how important their gift is.

4. Include meaningful information in the Thank You letter.  Let the donor know how their gift will be used and what impact it will make.

There are probably dozens of other things you can do to strengthen your Thank You letter.  If you have a good one, hit the comment link and share.  We’d all benefit from what you have to say.

Jerry Panas wrote recently
“Think back to when you were a kid. Remember how excited you were to receive a handwritten note or a letter from relatives and friends. Most of us have saved special ones over the years.

There was something about the pen strokes, the crossed-out mistakes, smiley faces, and knowing that time was taken to write especially to you. It meant you were important to the writer.

Although many think we’re too busy to read (and certainly write) hand-written notes, it’s no different for us as adults. Everyone likes to feel special.”

If you’re tight on time, I suggest you write hand-written notes to your top 10 donors once a quarter. It’s a great way to let them know you appreciate them.

I once worked in a nonprofit where one other person and I shared all the administrative and fundraising tasks, and some of the program tasks.  It wasn’t easy.  But it did teach me that I HAD to prioritize my “to do” list and focus on those things that would bring me the most bang for the buck.  What I figured out pretty quick was that spending most of my time on special events was not the best use of my time.  Making thank-you calls or taking major donors to lunch was a much better way to spend my time.

If you are the only person working on fundraising for your organization, you’ve got to work smarter, not harder.  Make sure that whatever you are doing is worth doing, and moves you toward reaching your fundraising goals.  You’ve got to move to being proactive instead of reactive.  In fact, when you don’t have a plan and you spend all your time putting out fires, there is no time to work on things you should be doing.

Once you prioritize your activities, look for ways to systematize your activities.  Using a donor-tracking software will help you streamline gift-entry processes and easily generate thank-you letters.  Anything you do more than once, you should be thinking about how you can do it more easily.

Thanking donors should alays be a priority, no matter how much time you have on your hands.  There’s no better use of your time as a fundraiser than thanking your donors.

She sent $20 donations to 10 national charities online and waited to see who would thank her and how they would do it.  These were national organizations and you would think they’d have their act together for thanking donors, no matter what level of gift was given.

As you can probably guess, not many responded. By Feb 18, she had heard from only 3 organizations.  Pitiful! 

Come on folks!  No matter what size organization you work for, you should ALWAYS have time to thank a donor.  If you have lots of donors to thank, then create a system to make it more efficient for you.  Not thanking donors is a good way to lose them.  And you can’t afford that.

Every donor deserves to be thanked for every gift.  Appreciation should be expressed promptly, warmly, and sincerely.  Don’t make the donor sit and wonder if you got their gift – get a thank-you letter out to them within a couple of days.

You can read Kivi’s summary of her experiment on her blog at http://www.nonprofitmarketingguide.com/blog/2010/02/18/10-donations-3-thank-yous-7-failures-to-communicate/.

Everyone needs to be thanked.  In the world of fundraising, it’s a critical action.

I remember in one fundraising job I had, the first thing we would do following an event was to write the thank-you letters.  If I didn’t get started on them immediately, my Executive Director would aggravate me until I did.  It was a great habit to develop and I used it throughout my career.

I ran across a resource today that I want to share with you.  Lisa Sargent is a nonprofit copywriter and has a great website with some good resources on it.  One thing she offers is some free thank-you letter samples.  Check out her site at www.lisasargent.com.

 1.       Clearly define each event you hold.

This is so important! Is the event a friend-raiser or fund-raiser?  Are you having the event to raise awareness?  Knowing your purpose will help you set the direction and expectations for the event to ensure success.  It will also help you narrow down the list of donors or potential donors you invite to the event so that you are getting the people that will help you meet your expectations and goals for the event.

 2.      Know how many events you can handle.

Be careful not to overload your staff and volunteers with too many events.  You want your events to be well-planned and effective.  One or two big events that are broad-reaching into the community are much better than lots of little events that use up all your time and energy.  Make sure that the events you do are a big deal to your staff, volunteers, donors, and the community.

 3.  Use special events as a chance to involve businesses.

Event sponsorships are a great way to involve local businesses and corporations in your special events.  If your event garners publicity, particularly through the media, you can probably secure at least one corporate sponsor.  Good candidates for sponsors are banks, communications companies, and other businesses that have broad target audiences.

 4.  Use a planning timeline.

Once you set the date for your event, use a timeline to back up from the event to plan all the details.  You can include things like sending a press release to the local media a week before the event, confirming with a caterer two days before the event, and so forth.  This great planning tool can help you keep track of all the details and avoid letting things fall between the cracks.

 5.  Use a committee of volunteers to plan the event.

Recruit volunteers to help you plan and execute your event.  You can get help pulling the event off and you will probably get some good ideas, too.  It will be much easier tending to all the details with extra hands.  Plus, involving volunteers in the work you are doing is a great way to get to know them and build a relationship.  After all, it’s all about relationships!

Here are some signs that the time has come to retire a special event:

• Revenue from the event is slipping.
• Fewer people are attending.
• Media sponsors aren’t interested anymore.
• Corporate sponsors aren’t interested either.
• If you included labor cost in your financial summary, you would definitely be losing money on the event.
• Everyone is exhausted at the prospect of planning the event.

Unless the event is accomplishing something specific that you aren’t getting through any other channel (awareness or friend-raising), it’s time to shut it down. 

I remember working at the local food bank and the time came to stop doing a 5K race that we had done for several years.  We just weren’t raising enough money to justify doing it, and we had several other events during the year that were satisfying our need for publicity.  It was a tough decision, but we made it, and stopped holding that event.  It was very freeing actually.  And we had time and energy to put into other things.

Think about what else you could be doing with your time and energy that might generate more money, awareness, relationships, and goodwill for your organization.  You may be missing a big opportunity simply because you’re stuck in a rut with a particular event.

After each special event, you should gather the committee members who worked on the event, staff and volunteers who participated, and other key people together to debrief them.  The only way you can make the event even better next year is to uncover what needs improvement.  Don’t trust your opinion to be the only important one – you need to hear from a variety of people about what worked and what didn’t.

Ask some of these questions and record your answers.  This will help you plan for improving the event next year

• Did the event accomplish its purpose?
• What went well?
• What needs to be improved if the event is held again?
• Did attendees seem to enjoy themselves?
• Should this event be held again?

Be sure to put your answers in writing.  I can’t stress this enough.  By the time next year comes, you probably won’t remember all the things you meant to do differently.  If your Lessons Learned are in writing, you can simply refer to the document and get things right.