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Just like April showers bring May flowers, showering donors in love and thanks brings repeat donations and organizational loyalty.
Technology allows us to reach out to our donors/supporters more easily than ever before, especially if you use an online donation platform. Of course, through BetterUnite, each donor receives an automated and customized response and receipt immediately upon making a gift or having an offline donation logged into the system, as required by law for all donations. Even this has been shown to improve repeat gifting by up to four times.
However, to improve appreciation to our donors, and create an attitude of gratitude, we must move beyond merely transactional thank yous to utilizing new ways of showing our donors how much we appreciate them.
A few ideas for recognition of our donors include:
1. Take time at your board meetings to actually hand write thank you notes to your most recent donors.
--Time is precious to your volunteer board members, so by making note-writing a fun part of the meeting, your members are not required to donate even more of their time outside the meeting.
2. Send a video message or text including the donor's name - personalize the message so they know it is for them only. All that is necessary is a smart phone.
--Using their name in the communication captures their attention and makes them feel appreciated. Videos have even more impact and have up to six times the impact of emails.
3. Ask your board members to phone new donors to personally thank them for their generous gift and hear what inspired them to donate.
--You can use the BetterUnite Call List function to manage thank you calls from board members to donors. From a donor's perspective, a phone call (even a voice mail or text message) is much more impressive than an automated email, no matter the donation amount.
4. Send small appreciation gifts occassionally, such as:
- a small gift card
- a bookmark
- a packet of seeds
- an NFT built for your organization
5. Choose a single or a few holidays - New Years, Thanksgiving, 4th of July - and send a holiday card that best represents your mission. This is also a great time to include a personal note to your donor and remind them of your gratitude for their gifts.
6. Collect new donors' birthdates during the checkout process on your Donate Now page, as everyone enjoys receiving a birthday card. Donors who do receive greeting cards such as this are more likely to donate in the year they receive their card. We've seen recovery organizations that utilize their donors' sobriety birthdays to send congratulations as well!
7. Select a day that is appropriate to your mission to celebrate your community - donors, volunteers, staff. It seems that every day is national 'something' day - add your group to the list and celebrate YOUR day!
8. Corporate sponsors or supporters love to have their logos highlighted and an easy way to do this is on social media or have a Supporter of the Month section in your newsletter. Providing intentional ROI to your corporate sponsors can result in additional support for your events and campaigns as well as attracting other corporate sponsors.
Please remember to express gratitude to your donors, businesses and others for their generosity of time, spirit and gifts. Don't thank supporters and donors for donations only, thank them for being personally generous.
However you choose to show appreciation to your donors, don't forget to share that their donation has impacted many and made a significant difference in others' lives. Perhaps sharing a story of a person who has benefitted from your cause or a community impact would be your choice.
As Maya Angelou stated, "...people will forget what you said and what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel."
Thank you for reading! Let's go do some good.