I’m not proud of this, but I’m obsessed with the Proust Questionnaire feature on the back page of Vanity Fair.  Made famous by the responses from Proust at various ages throughout his life (I prefer age 20 to age 13, for the record), the questionnaire is a smart little treat.  It’s a perfect coda to enjoy after reading the magazine’s take on the whole Colzine travesty, Christopher Hitchen’s last piece (on Dicken’s, with customary affectionate but unsentimental tartness) or, say, a long piece on the lavish life of Valentino (possibly one of my favorite magazine articles- and movies- of all time, if only for the bits about the pugs).  I like the questionnaire not only because it provides essential (read: non-essential) information- Ralph Fiennes and I have the same greatest fear- being eaten by a shark- and the same greatest joy- swimming in the sea- quelle surprise!- but because it makes me reflect on what my own answers to the questions, which are simple but telling, might be.

While the extravagant preposterousness of this feature and of Vanity Fair itself is clear, I started wondering if the questionnaire could be a potentially unifying and clarifying tool for non-profits trying to find their own spirit and voice.  I think that often the most useful tools are the roughest and that’s why I decided to create a new version of The Questionnaire, for non-profits, to take a brief measure of their organizational character.

As with the original questionnaire, this one is designed to help your organization get to know yourself a little better- not just in terms of measuring metrics or creating long-or-short term goals- but in getting a holistic picture of what your organizational values are, how you operate in the world and, yes, what animal you’d be if your organization were one.  The trick here is to think of your organization as one living, breathing entity; your staff, mission, values, and practical work are now one dynamic and vibrant whole and your answers to the questionnaire should be, if nothing else, in the spirit of this unified organizational force.

I’ve linked to a PDF of this questionnaire below, so jump over to it, print and answer away!  To more thoroughly illuminate the intended spirit of this exercise, I’ve also included DonationPay’s responses to the questionnaire  (and adjusted it in two spots to make it relevant to our growing business, rather than organizational status)- we took some time to get feedback from our team on all these questions and the answers are included below.

Faux-Proust Questionnaire For Non-Profits:

What do you regard as the lowest depth of organizational misery?

An unhappy client or an uncorrectable mistake.

What do you regard as the greatest peak of organizational joy?

Helping an organization exceed their internal fundraising expectations, saying yes when other services say no.

What is the greatest flaw in your organization’s leadership?

Disorganization and chronic silliness.

What is the greatest strength in your organization’s leadership?

Love of the work, diligence.

How does your organization define success?

Having happy clients that are effectively fundraising online, happy staff members that are motivated and enthusiastic, and providing an agile service that adapts and innovates.  Also: learning, constantly.

What is your greatest fundraising success, to date?

N/A

What is your greatest fundraising failure, to date?

N/A

What qualities do you most desire in a prospective employee?

Adaptability, humor, boundless capability.

What qualities do you most admire in a prospective donor investor?

Flexibility, an innovative and strategic mind.

If your organization could be represented by the work of one artist, living or dead, who would it be?

Chuck Close.  Each tiny square and moving part has an enormous impact on the whole.

What are the guiding principles of employees of your organization?

Consummate friendliness, fairness and thoroughness.

What are the guiding principles of your mission?

Collaboration, innovation, fairness, support of progressive causes.

What is your organization’s biggest fault?

Impatience.

What is your organization’s greatest expenditure of resources?

Staff energy.

What is your organization’s greatest expenditure of capital?

Staffing.

What qualities do you most admire/desire in a volunteer?

Willingness to stuff envelopes until 3 AM.  Lots of creative energy and ideas, but no mania.

What animal would your organization be if you had to choose one?

A sea otter.  Agile but solid,  playful but potentially fierce!

Who is your organization’s greatest hero of literature?

This was a hard one to agree on, but we are all quite admiring of the tenacious, moral rabbits in Watership Down.  Building a happy and functional community through hardship and adversity is something we really admire.

Who is your organization’s greatest hero in real life?

We have lots!

We truly are lucky to work with so many organizations that are heroic and inspiring to us.  Also teachers (hi, Mom!) and all committed advocates and activists for equality, peace and change.  Also, we think Mimi Silbert (and the Delancey Street Foundation) is freaking awesome.

What historical figure does your organization most strongly identify with?

 August Escoffier (1846-1935).  Everyone here is an avid foodie and we were all in agreement that Escoffier was a total badass whose spirit and verve we’d like to emulate.   He cooked inventive yet basic meals for both the nobility and the poor in London and improved kitchen basics in a revolutionary way (he invented the Soyer field stove for the Army, heightening the chances of embattled soldiers getting proper nutrition and created ovens with adjustable temperatures and refrigerators cooled by water).  He also created soup kitchens for the stricken public during the Irish potato famine and was a generally democratic and creative person.

Your most marked characteristic?

Energy, curiosity.

Where would your organization like to live?

We’d love to have offices in San Francisco, New York, Seattle, and Austin.

What is your organization’s present state of mind?

Preoccupied with forward motion.

What is your motto?

Agility, affordability and adaptability FTW.

If your organization were to die today, what would you most want people to remember about you?

That we provided a terrific service, at a fair price point, and that we positively impacted the online fundraising trajectory of our client organizations.

Where do your see your organization in 5 years?

Giving Network for Good, PayPal, and Convio Blackbaud a run for their money.

If you’d like us to publish your organization’s Faux-Proust Questionnaire For Non-Profit’s on our blog, take a few minutes to fill it out and send it in to us at info@donationpay.org.  With your questionnaire, send in your a brief description of your organization’s mission and practical work and any other info you’d like us to print.

DonationPay Non-Profit Questionnaire

Filed under: DonationPay, Non-Profit News, Stuff We Like by AJ
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2011 is history.  (image from Jalopnik)

Okay, so the holidays are over.  Officially.  You probably won’t be seeing the type of donation volume you had over November and December again until next year’s holiday, but that doesn’t mean you can’t turn your organization’s website into a lean, mean fundraising machine.  Give your organization a fresh start for 2012 with these simple tips for increasing your fundraising power in the new year:

1.) Mind Your Manners.

By this I mean, be sure you send a Thank You to everyone who donated this year.  I’ve discussed how best to do this at length in previous posts here, but it’s different for every organization.  Be sure you send out an acknowledgement to everyone who supported your organization this season (yes, it’s different than a donation receipt!); it’s just about the best and easiest way you can motivate your donors to contribute year round.

2.) And Your Metrics.

Hopefully, you’ll have lots of data from the holiday season this year, so you can see what worked and what didn’t.  Doing some social networking campaigns that didn’t pan out as lucratively as you’d planned?  Pull ‘em.  Donors getting hung up on one of the steps on your donation form?  Change it up.  Do a review to begin 2012 strong and start making changes to your donation page, your site’s funnel, and anything else that’s seems to be in any way impeding the online donation process.  If you haven’t been tracking your donors behavior on your website this year, put some energy into getting it set up immediately.  The results will be enlightening and provide invaluable information how to further optimize your site’s fundraising functionality.  Our service can easily integrate with your analytics program, so if you haven’t yet taken steps to collect measurable data (outside of dollars raised) about your donation page as it functions in concert with your site, do it now!

3.) Incentivize.

So, the idea is that your organization has been building, through a series of interactions (online and otherwise), a relationship with a donor base that believes in your organizational mission enough to put their donation dollars behind you.  But even your wonderful, generous, saintlike donors like free stuff (everyone does).  Figure out something awesome (and cost effective) to give away to your donors in a planned fundraising drive- if you’re a water-conservation group, give away eco-friendly water bottles in your summer fundraising push; it doesn’t need to be something big or valuable and ideally it will also act as a guerilla marketing tool for your organization.  Bumper stickers, mugs, bandanas, those crazy LiveStrong-style plastic bracelets, packets of flower seeds with your organization’s logo (I think these are an awesome giveaway item for environmentally-oriented organzations). . . all these options can be made fairly inexpensively and are a little added perk for donors, especially at non-peak times of year.

4.) Get Some Fresh Perspective

Have a meeting early in 2012 and put your head’s together- get everyone on board with the fundraising plan for the year.  You might find that folks from different departments can shed some light or bring new ideas to the table and even if not, this meeting is a good time to reiterate to everyone (yourself, too!) that online fundraising is an organizational priority.  Online fundraising doesn’t just take a good donation page and good marketing, it takes a dedicated, organized team that manages and enhances donor relationships and has a collective sense of excitement and dedication.  Have a post-holiday re-group session to increase your chances for year-round fundraising success.

5.) Think About Your Ideal Donor.

To borrow a concept from Maureen Carruthers (whose work I love!), you ‘perfect supporter’ is that ideal donor you’re writing and appealing to.  Figure out who he or she is- Maureen offers a fabulous worksheet on the topic and while this exercise may seem simplistic, it’s a perfect tool to help guide your marketing and fundraising asks, as well as a way to shift your perceptions of your donor base.

6.) Best Laid Plans. 

image from Design*Sponge

A lot of your fundraising success this year will come from careful planning and forethought; no getting around or out of it.  The beginning of the year is a crazy time for everyone (we’ve barely taken a breath here at DonationPay since, like, September!), but to get your head wrapped around your fundraising goals for the year, you’ll probably need to set aside some fairly substantial time to plan out your online fundraising appeals and programs and how they fit into the landscape of your year.  Know the exact days in your email calendar when your asks will go out, when your online presence should support specific fundraising events, when you’ll be doing ‘maintenance asks’ (a soft ask reminding your donors that your mission is ongoing), and most of all, who and how this will be executed.  It’s helpful to have an overall picture of your year’s fundraising arc and to consider the how your fundraising methodology will be perceived and received by your donor base, as a whole, not as individual asks.

Knowing how everything will go, to the last detail, is of course not going to be totally possible and much of the reason that everyone involved with the non-profit sector (yours truly included) are closet adrenaline junkies, is that the wild deviations and pivots and improvisations necessary to stay current, are actually kind of fun or at least invigorating.  So, even knowing that much of it may fly out the window at a moments notice, do yourself and your organization a favor and set up a comprehensive online fundraising workplan.  Even if it only ends up acting as the vaguest blueprint for how you’d like things to go, it will help, I promise.

6.) Get Help. Online.

I’ve been browsing the internet quite a bit these days, and lest you think I’m shirking my work duties to do some Ebay shopping, let me clarify: I’ve been surfing the web with purpose.  I’ve been impressed with the Biz Ladies posts at Design*Sponge lately (brief aside: I’ve been obsessed with D*S forever and most recently made an awesome version of this amazing herringbone-painted dresser for my house and I love it!)- they provide a lot of advice that’s not too lecture-y about planning, stress-management and how to integrate your creative life and goals into your day-to-day.  I’m trying to be better organized, better tempered and more connected to the community here in the Bay Area in 2012 and I’m reading everything I can about how other people go about doing what I want to do.  For fundraising advice, do the same: check out the blogs of organization’s you support or are impressed with, read all the expert advice you can find, and think of the web as a gigantic support group for your fundraising efforts.  Because, if you look in the right places, it kinda is.  Obviously, our readers are already on top of this (pat yourselves on the back, y’all), but try to freshen up your online reading list by seeking out some specific information about particular fundraising or organizational goals for the coming year.  My favorite news aggregators for non-profit info are AllTop and Mashable, and there are so many good blogs out there, so many good books. . . find time to do some productive web research about how to freshen up your fundraising approach in 2012 and it will pay off!

Got some good ideas to share?  How is your organization going to effectively fundraise in 2012?

-AJ

Filed under: Fundraising, How-To's, Online Fundraising, Search Optimization by AJ
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Being an extremely avid reader, I spend much of my time out of the office with my nose firmly planted in a book.  While my recreational reading tastes run toward contemporary fiction (in case you’re curious, this year my favorites were Freedom, Swamplandia!, A Visit From The Goon Squad, The Marriage Plot, The Tiger’s Wife and The Uncoupling, as well as a few others I can’t bring to mind off the top of my head), I will read almost anything (though not the egregiously terrible and overtly offensive Twilight series, for the record).  Though I am usually a fiction-or-memoir-reading fiend, I do manage to occasionally sneak in some work-related stuff as well.  I’ve been meaning to write some reviews on this blog of the most useful and interesting NPO-related texts I’ve come across this year, but being almost pathologically busy, I haven’t really made good on many of my best-laid-plans for the blog.  So, instead of doing regular book reviews, as I’d planned, I will instead be condensing the best reading, non-profit-related material into a handy top ten list, though organized in no particular order.  It’s a top 8, not a top 10- give me a break, it’s a half day today.

1.) Guerilla Marketing For Non Profits, by Jay Conrad Levinson and some other folks.  This book is a very quick read and is broken down into management suggestions, tasks and chapters of essential info on building a marketing and media presence on the cheap and in a way that effectively communicates your non-profit’s brand and message.  There are some cutesy flourishes about the writing that I don’t appreciate, but the information contained within is totally solid and I’d highly recommend it, especially to folks that are trying to stretch a tiny budget a very long way.

2.) Social Media for Social Good, by Heather Mansfield.  I have pretty much become a groupie for this book and for the great Heather Mansfield- this book is an agile distillation of many of the most conceptually and practically useful of social media strategy.  It contains not only practical tips, but a very, very persuasive argument for why social media is the tool to use to expand the mission, work and community engagement for your organization.  I really loved this book and I think it’s well on it’s way to becoming an indispensable text for NPO’s looking to make an impact on the web and beyond.

3.) Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, by Chip and Dad Heath.  This book is not strictly for non-profits and I’m usually firmly opposed to self-help books of any kind.  This book doesn’t have a lot of self-helpy language and it’s message about making changes when there are actual circumstantial complications that make things difficult could easily apply to most non-profits I know.  It’s good and no-nonsense and full of very practical advice.  I’d recommend it to anyone looking to make significant changes in their organization in 2012- staff, board, work, mission, anything.

4.) Engage, Revised and Updated: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web, by Brian Solis.  This is great.  Full of interesting concepts, information and good writing- just try to ignore the foreword by professional dunce Ashton Kutcher.

5.) Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today’s Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves, by Adam Penenberg. This one is full of real-life examples, case studies and tips on how to emulate the most successful businesses and organizations, in terms of marketing and social media.  Looking back at my reading list for the year, I realized that I read a lot of books about corporate social media and marketing growth and have been ruminating about how to apply good business principles to help grow non-profits.  This is a very good example of this ongoing trend in my reading habits- lots of good information about how corporations grow, much of which is very applicable to the non-profit world as well.

6.) The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, by Tamar Weinberg.  This is a very persuasive guide that details why it’s pretty much essential for all companies (and non-profits) to join the social web.  Many, many, many amazing tips and stories here and the writing is first-rate.  I read this book in about two settings and afterward felt inspired, motivated and really, really impressed.

7.) The Zen of Social Media Marketing: An Easier Way to Build Credibility, Generate Buzz, and Increase Revenue , by Shama Kabani and Chris Brogan.  Substitute the word ‘Revenue’ for ‘Donations’ and you’ve got yourself a winner here.  More along the same lines, but one of the best of the bunch.

8.) The Networked Non-Profit, by Beth Kanter and Allison Fine.  This is not super new and most of our readers here are likely already devotees of Beth Kanter of their own accord, but just a reminder: if you’re not reading Beth’s blog, you should be.  If you haven’t read this book, you need to abandon whatever you’re doing this lovely New Year’s weekend and get started on it, right away.  Seriously, you’ll thank me.

Happy New Year and Happy Reading!

-AJ

Filed under: DonationPay by AJ
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All photos taken from Chimp Haven’s website

The DonationPay office can be an emotional bunch and we have been known to get . . . worked up, over the awesome work our clients are doing.  We are moved, inspired and amazed at our clients great work, fortitude and brilliant fundraising strategies, every day.  That said, last month as we were setting up donation pages for a new client, suddenly all office work came to a screeching halt as one of our developers called us all over to experience a fantastic video on their site.  The organization is Chimp Haven and the video, no joke, moved me- and every member of our development team- to tears.  I’ve embedded it below, check it out at your own risk . . .

Aside from turning me into a blubbering mess (no easy feat), Chimp Haven is doing some truly incredible work. From their website:

Chimp Haven is The National Chimpanzee Sanctuary. We are an independent, nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide lifetime care for chimpanzees who have been retired from medical research, the entertainment industry, or no longer wanted as pets.

Chimp Haven provides:

• A permanent home where chimpanzees can live out their lives in large, naturalistic enclosures in complex social groups
• An organization managed by concerned individuals who specialize in chimpanzee care and management
• An inexpensive low-maintenance facility design
• Financial and organizational stability to provide lifelong care for each chimpanzee
• Opportunities for education and noninvasive behavioral studies

5 Things I Love About Chimp Haven’s Fundraising Pages

1.) Personality.  Both Chimp Haven DonationPay pages are carefully designed to be clean and user-friendly, but they are framed by photos, information and navigation that is bursting with the personality of the various animals that live in the 200-acre sanctuary.  There is a rotating ‘Meet The Chimps‘ portrait that showcases one of the chimps that live in the sanctuary.

2.)  Fundraising Integration.  The fundraising pages are very well enmeshed in the site aesthetic and functionality.  The Chimp Haven web designers have done a terrific job of making sure that every page has navigation that brings the donor directly to a page where they can either get more information about Chimp Haven (and it’s residents) or donate.  One of the biggest mistakes we see is organizations that have big ‘Donate!’ buttons all over their site that take the user to a page full of text, with another Donate button or link buried somewhere that takes the donor to the actual donation page- this is donor-alienating and simply too many steps to make an efficient donation process.  With Chimp Haven’s site, the fundraising component is built proudly and visibly into every page, letting donors know that the website is a preferred platform for giving.

3.) Specificity.  On both of Chimp Haven’s fundraising pages, they include specific numbers.  $75 will feed one chimpanzee for two weeks, $50 will provide essential medication for two chimps for one month- these numbers are specific, tangible and absolutely understandable to the donor.  They’re not spending time running down the various types of medications the chimps might need to take or exactly what their diet is comprised of (though that info is available and well laid-out in other areas of their site), but they’re giving enough detail to give the donor a solid idea of where their dollars will go.  The Chimp Haven ‘Best Friends’ page also wisely offers the option for donors to sponsor individual chimps, letting the donor feel personally connected to the health and well-being of one animal.

4.) Options for Giving.  I’ve already mentioned here how impressed I am by Chimp Haven’s carefully planned online fundraising strategy but they also present other opportunities for contribution.  The Chimpanzee Wish List, options for volunteering, a terrific store and information about corporate sponsorship- all these options give potential donors an idea of the full scope of ways to support Chimp Haven.  I personally most love the Wishlist because it gives, in and of itself, an idea of what the chimp’s lives are like and what they enjoy.  I’ll be putting together a care package of rubber boots, dog toys, nuts (not peanuts!), fleece blankets and the like as soon as the holidays are over to send to the sanctuary residents.

6.) The Chimps!  The greatest fundraising tool Chimp Haven has are it’s many colorful characters- the site and fundraising pages are full of information about the individual personalities, whims, and life stories of the chimpanzees and they are, every one, fascinating.  The comprehensive information, photos, and other media on the site is incredibly enriching, not distracting for site users, and really makes the website seem to be a vibrant part of the larger organization.  Making a website and fundraising pages that align with and share the stories of Jimoh, Midget, Queenie, Tracy and the rest is quite a feat indeed.

Chimp Haven is an amazing organization, with a dedicated staff, great sustaining donors and a mission that blows my mind- we’ve really enjoyed working with them so far and we look forward to helping them grow their already-great online fundraising presence.  Consider supporting Chimp Haven this holiday!  Also, for anyone interested in this organization or in chimpanzees in general, Chimp Haven will be having several open-house type visitor days over the course of the year, where they let the public check out the grounds and residents of their sanctuary- if we lived closer, we’d plan a full-office field trip to Chimp Haven to meet the amazing animals I feel I already know, from Chimp Haven’s dynamite website.  Keep up the great work, you guys!

-AJ

Support Chimp Haven

Learn More About Chimp Haven

Sponsor a Chimp

Filed under: Fundraising, Non-Profit News, Non-Profit Of The Week, Online Fundraising, Stuff We Like by AJ
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As I was reading the industry news on AllTop today, I came across an article from November that I’d apparently missed.  From Pamela’s Grantwriting Blog (which, if I’ve never mentioned it before, I love and read anytime I get a spare minute, which clearly at this time of year is once every six weeks), it’s an email from a development director at a large non-profit in New York to board members, asking them to place a call to a donor that had contributed $20 online.  A thank-you phone call.  The email is reprinted in full below, as it appears on Pamela’s Grantwriting Blog:

Dear Board Members,

I usually ask you to call and thank those who give donations of more than $500. Today, I’d like to ask someone to call and thank someone who gave $20 to the annual campaign.

Why?

Her name is Mary Smith and she sent a note with her donation letting us know that she is unemployed. She could have chosen not to give, but she didn’t. Her note means that she wishes she could give more. Giving when it is hard to give is an exceptionally meaningful act.

If you would like to call her, please let her know that $20 is an important gift. Last year, nearly $15,000 was contributed by hundreds of people who gave less than $100 each – many of these were $20 gifts. We need each of these people to make that choice to give every year. She is part of our community and it takes all of us together to make our work successful.

If you would like to call her, please let me know and I will share her number.

There are three reasons to make a call like this. First, everything I said above is true. A stretch gift is a deeply meaningful gift, whether a person is stretching to give $20 or $20,000.

Second, a healthy annual campaign is built on a broad foundation of small gifts. (yes, it’s the gift pyramid again!) We want all of our $20 donors to repeat their gifts each year and increase them over time, while many new $20 donors come into the campaign for the first time each year, filling in the bottom of the pyramid as other donors move up.

Third, Mary probably won’t always be unemployed. She has told us that she wishes to give more, and one day she will be in a position to give more. How much more depends on how she feels about us. Also, she is likely to make or revise her estate plans at some point in her life. The single most likely prospect for a planned gift is a long term donor who gave small or moderate gifts every year for more than ten years.

I spent a lot of time writing about one individual who has given us $20. It’s not a waste of time – but it also underscores why it’s so important to have a large team building and nurturing our many relationships, from our $20,000 donors all the way to Mary.

Thanks,

The development director’s commentary (again from Pamela’s Grantwriting Blog about the request described above was as follows:

The Chair responded right away, pleased to make the call. I look forward to hearing how it went.

I share this for a couple reasons. First, does anyone think I made a mistake? Why? Does anyone have a story like this to share? I’d love to hear it.

I have been with this organization for two years. When I first arrived, I was told there were issues with donor fatigue. One of the first things I did was put a comprehensive donor stewardship plan in place and jumpstart our cultivation efforts. My plan had a lot of deep personal cultivation with major donors, and more generic, less frequent outreach with those giving smaller donations. After two years I’ve seen a huge increase in giving in the major donor group, and not much movement anywhere else.

The reason for having a stewardship plan that has more personalized activity at the top of the donor pyramid is not actually that major donors are more important, it’s that there are fewer of them, so a deeper plan is more manageable.

OK.

Before I get started on my reaction to this post and to this matter in general, I want to say that I have the utmost respect for anyone trying something new, developing fresh ways to connect with donors, or doing their best to fix broken or tired methodologies around donor acquisition and cultivation.  It’s exciting to hear non-profit staff as excited, motivated, skilled and devoted to donor acknowledgement as Rene, the author of the email above, from Cinema Arts Centre in New York .  All that said, my strong feeling is that this email and this anecdote are far, far more exciting in theory than in practice.

Because I’ve heard this story before.

I worked as a waitress all through college and I’m quite familiar with this type of inspirational example. It’s the one where the manager tells you to treat every table as if it were they could award the joint a Michelin star.  It’s the one where they tell you that you need to treat the table spending $10 on two cups of clam chowder and the table of 8 ordering a $400 meal the exact same way.  Now, before anyone gets the idea that I was a mean waitress (god forbid and also, yes, I sure was) or that I’m turning up my nose at small donors, my point is not that there is inherently more value in either type of table or either type of donor.  The couple eating those cups of clam chowder likely wants one set of extra crackers, a water refill and to be left alone.  The group of 8 that want their colleague’s birthday dinner to be really special wants to be taken care of, attended to.  Yes, as a server, you make more money off the larger tables- but the smaller tables with less extensive needs give you a needed respite from the constant expenditure of social energy and often end up being an extremely enjoyable experience for all parties.   And Rene is absolutely right: proper and thorough acknowledgement of your smaller donors is what will eventually turn them into large donors.  Treating that table eating clam chowder with respect and attentiveness may bring them back with all their friends the next time a birthday rolls around.

The assumption that both tables-  both levels of financial contribution, both types of donors- want and need to be handled in the same way is in itself problematic. As is the execution.  If you spend the amount of energy required to effectively thank a major donor on small donors, those resources will eventually run out.   Cultivating great relationships with donors of all sizes is about being strategic in the expenditure of staff energy, resources, time and skills.  If there’s enough staff energy to put the same amount of time and resources into a $20 donor as a $20,000 one after you’ve completely developed, tested and proven your email acknowledgement system, then by all means go for it, but as said above:

‘The reason for having a stewardship plan that has more personalized activity at the top of the donor pyramid is not actually that major donors are more important, it’s that there are fewer of them, so a deeper plan is more manageable.’

My issue is not that the idea isn’t good- all donors do count and I particularly appreciated Rene’s description of ‘stretch gifts’ as extremely meaningful. Her point about sustaining donors (lifelong donors who contribute a small amount every year) is another very good one- building solid links with modest donors will help increase the chances that the relationship will be longterm and fruitful.  The objective of the anecdote about the Board member and the $20 donor is to show that organizations should make small donors feel just as appreciated as large donors- this is totally true, of course!  However, being aggressively pragmatic, I think the overall concept fails in the implementation- because this is not a sustainable or realistic way to show appreciation to small donors, it doesn’t hold up well as a confirmation of Rene’s point.   Yes, creating lasting relationships with donors of all financial levels is integral to organizational success.  Yes, acknowledgement is extremely important (in fact, I’ve written about it dozens of times on this blog and will likely continue to harp on it ad nauseum in future posts).  And, also yes, $20,000 can do more financially for your organization that $20.  There’s no getting around it; it’s not a commentary on the quality of the donor or the level of sacrifice necessary to generously contribute to an organization in hard times or good ones- it’s just a simple reality.  And whether the donor has contributed $20,000 or $20, the process of thanking them needs to be customized, appropriate and, above all, replicable.  Focusing personalized energy on the top of the donor pyramid is both befitting and necessary to strengthen and assure longevity in relationships with major contributors.

Well, then what about the small donors, you spoilsport?

For smaller donors, who typically outnumber those who are able to give $20,000, the thank you should be set up the same way: personal, genuine, fun and replicable.  If you’re lucky enough to have a couple hundred or thousand small donors, spend time crafting a thank-you email that will blow their socks off.  I mean, honestly, do I think it’s a terrible idea to have a board member with some spare time call a $20 donor. . . no, not exactly.  I just think the example feels more like an overly-simplified management exercise then a good example of how to be really appreciative of donors of all levels.

Small donors do not matter less than large ones- but they do have different needs.  

Organizations can do, operationally, a lot more with $20,000 than $20 and to me, calling a donor that gave $20 online to give them a profuse thank you from someone high up in the organization seems a little tone-deaf.  Like many people, I give about $25-$100 per year to several organizations and they are absolutely organizations that send appropriate, personalized and concise donor acknowledgement.  I appreciate being thanked, of course, like all donors do, but I think receiving a call from any of the organizations I contribute modest amounts to would seriously throw me for a loop.  I don’t need to be treated like my contribution is the same $50,000 or even $500 gift.  If I gave an organization 20 bucks and got a thank-you call from a board or staff member, I think my reaction would be more along the lines of  a boggled ‘Jesus Christ, get back to work!’ than . . .  warm and fuzzy.

Donors, large and small, are the lifeblood of any organization.  I’m in absolute agreement that all donors should be treated with respect and genuine gratitude, but the reality of most non-profit staffing situations doesn’t look like a management exercise and I think it’s really important to sort fantasy from reality, achievable and measurable from ideal and esoteric.  Having a board or staff member call a $20 donor is a conceptual ‘teaching moment’ about the value donor relationships; setting up a sophisticated, kick-ass, efficient system for donor acknowledgement of all different contribution levels is an achievable, scalable task, the benefits of which your organization can reap for years to come.  Instead of taking the long way around with an after-school special style message, I’d rather hear a rallying cry: ‘We’re going to make this years email thank you the best ever, and here’s how. . . . ‘

No, seriously, here’s how:

- set up a clockwork-reliable internal donor acknowledgement system before you send out your annual or holiday fundraising ask.  It’s likely your receipts are not going to serve as your actual acknowledgements- your receipts should go out automatically when the donor makes a contribution.  Set a system that kicks into effect after the initial payment has been completed.  Send your special acknowledgement email, changing only the name, in the next few days after your email and be sure to send a post holiday email that engages the donor in an ongoing relationship with your organization, maybe with news of what’s on the docket for you this year and some opportunities for non-monetary contribution to the cause.

-Make it special.  Add a link to a video of your staff singing a holiday carol or doing something fun and holiday facing, or just saying a heartfelt thank-you.  Add a staff photo or a picture that illustrates that work your donors gift helps make possible.  Set all these things to be as automatic and as minimally consuming of staff time as possible (i.e. record 1 or 2 awesome videos before the busy season, to be used in all online donor acknowledgement, have your designer or email service create a special template for acknowledgement etc.).

-Write thoughtful, concise copy for your acknowledgements.  Look at donations as a call-and-response type system- your acknowledgement is the second volley in the exchange of information, so it better be awesome if you expect the donor to come calling again.

-Get your whole staff involved.  Before any major fundraising push, have a brainstorming meeting about the message your organization wants to send to donors, as a whole.  Having a united front and incorporating input from everyone on staff will make the donation/acknowledgement system seem that much more personal and comprehensive.

That’s about it for today (exhausted yet?); I want to reiterate again how much respect I have for all practices related to donor acknowledgement and how much I believe all non-profits would be positively impacted by such a motivated and savvy ED as Rene.

Happy Fundraising!

-AJ

Filed under: Fundraising, Non-Profit News, Online Fundraising by AJ
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(photo credit: TheMiddleShelf.com)

As we’re all headed off for the annual collective pig-out, I thought I’d send you off for the long weekend with 5 quick ways to really make your donors feel appreciated.

1.) Make it Personal

No ‘Dear Donor’ or ‘Dear Giver’ or ‘Dear Friend’- use their name, the specific amount and time of their gift.  In my opinion, as long as you have an automatic receipt going out that acknowledges the donors initial gift and gives them a quick ‘Thanks for your donation’ immediately after their payment is made, it’s a better idea to wait until you have time to write up a personalized thank-you email than to send out a form letter accompanying the receipt.  Organizational staff is fraught at the height of fundraising season and as a donor, I’m well aware of that.  I’d rather wait a few weeks or a month to get a handcrafted acknowledgement letter than get something half-assed right off the bat. My point is, if you have to choose, I’d favor personalization over immediacy.  Donors know you’re in the thick of fundraising season, so my recommendation is to send one form email or receipt immediately when the donor gives, then a follow-up after the new year.  If you don’t have time to do it right immediately, do it right as soon as you can.

2.) Make It Exciting

Another way of saying exciting, to donors, is ‘specific’.  Tell your donor what their gift did and be specific, and fun.  Heifer International is an incredible successful organization, with great longevity and a powerful ongoing fundraising plan that’s been effective year after year; much of this, I believe, is because of the specificity of their concept:  pick an animal, let it change a families life.

Specificity does not equal an exhaustive level of detail; don’t be boring, for the love of god!  It’s just much easier, as a donor, for me to visualize one family raising a goat or flock of chicks than to visualize what my $50 did to ‘help stop the world hunger crisis’.  The wording in your personalized thank you letter is important: you want the donor to know they had an appreciable and tangible impact on your cause, but you also want them to feel like they’re part of an ongoing movement.

3.) Everyone Loves Free $hit

Everyone.  No exceptions.  Seriously.  It’s crazy and senseless but I get super excited about branded pencil erasers, t-shirts, bumper stickers and the like.  And I love those NPR totebags.  Not that your organization’s great work isn’t enough to encourage donors to contribute. . . . but, a travel coffee mug branded with your organizations logo certainly doesn’t hurt.

4.) Add Media, and stir!

Charity Water has been much-ballyhooed for their personalized thank-you videos.  And rightly so.  It’s a really cool idea to add media components to your acknowledgements and appeals in particular to younger donors.  If you can find a way to embed a video or give donors access to an MP3 or something similar, do it!  It’s a way to dress up traditional acknowledgement and make your donors feel extra special enough to contribute in the future as well.

5.) Build The Relationship

It’s also important to let donors know what they can do to help moving forward; the assistance a long-term supporter of your organization can provide is not limited to financial contribution.  If your organization utilizes volunteers, letter-writing campaigns, personal fundraising for events or similar, let your donor know that they can be a part of your organization in a variety of ways.  Basically, you want the acknowledgement to bring your donors further into the fold, not give them a brusque thank-you and send them on their way.  Building a sense of community and responsibility with donors will go a long way toward building a sustaining donor and volunteer base that will generously serve and contribute to your organization for years to come.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Filed under: DonationPay by AJ
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This week, we’ll take a look at some of our clients who are offering membership options on their DonationPay pages.  Enjoy!

Filed under: DonationPay by AJ
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A quick look at how some of our clients- the Diabetes Foundation, Cancer Support East Tennessee, the Georgia Conservancy- are using DonationPay to collect payment and registration info for events. Enjoy!

Filed under: DonationPay by AJ
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While I was participating in the Astia Program Week this October, I had the pleasure of seeing a presentation about the importance of social media to growing businesses, by the dynamic and crazy-knowledgeable Rachel Masters, co-founder of Red Magnet Media.  Red Magnet offers digital strategy, business development, digital marketing and community management for creative brands (per their website).  Rachel’s presentation was full of tips and data that really helped illuminate the role social media can play in business or organizational development, as well as the role it’s playing, worldwide right now, a la this mindblowing infographic by Shanghai Web Designs below:

All that is happening in the social media sphere, every 60 seconds.  Seriously.

Rachel was kind enough to let me pick her brain a little bit for some ideas about how non-profits can modify business social media practices to strengthen their donor bases, engage their community and advance their organization’s position as a creative leader in the industry.  Rachel’s answers to my questions are in italics below and our conversation has been edited a bit, to omit my ‘ums’, ‘likes’ and nervous chatterboxing (gad, how horrible is it to hear your own voice on tape, amirite?!).

Me: What are five basic things you’d tell an organization to do to begin getting started with social media from scratch?

Rachel:  What I would tell them is to look at different non-profits and charities they admire and they wished they were more like and see what they’re doing.  The problem is, a lot of organizations just don’t do that great a job with social media, so a good strategy is to look at the ones that are really strong, like CharityWater, UNICEF, the ASPCA-they do an awesome job with their social media- so I would check out first organizations that are well respected in the social media sphere. Also, Mashable is a really excellent blog that’s all about social media and they spend a lot of time on public good and they just had a conference for non-profits.  Get a ton of ideas and inspiration of organizations that are doing it right.  Start with a presence on either Twitter or Facebook first.

Which one is typically better to start with, for organizations that are just making their first foray into social media?

It depends- if you’re trying to build thought-leadership and build your brand and get more people to know about your organization, then I’d start with Twitter.  If you feel like you already have a lot of people involved and you need to focus on fundraising and engaging folks you’ve already developed relationships with, I’d go to Facebook.

How do you recommend organizations use their limited staff resources to focus on social media?

I think that having a process to manage it and making sure that everyone knows it’s an organizational priority and if they can somehow create a framework so that anyone in the organization can participate and give ideas, but there’s one person who’s managing the editorial calendar.  You need to set a process for social media management like any other function within the organization- kind of like how with traditional PR, you have one regular PR person but they don’t know everything that’s going on in the organization.  They need to interact with other people to tell them what’s happening- same thing needs to happen with social media: it can’t be an island off on it’s own.  In order for it to be really successful, there needs to be a controlled way for everyone to give input.  

What are some social media mistakes that you see from organizations that put you off?

 People who only use it to sell, sell, sell, or for constant ‘Donate Now!’.  It’s important to use social media to build relationships, connect with people, and give them a behind-the-scenes look into your organization in terms of the good work that you do.  You need to tell stories and show pictures and post videos and then you can soft sell people to participate with your organization.  

What are some of your suggestions for organizations looking to make revisions to their social media campaigns without being too disruptive to their ‘voice’ in social media?  What if their social media presence isn’t as effective as they’d like it to be? 

It really depends; I think that a lot of organizations don’t use pictures and videos enough.  I think, though, recently on Facebook, one of the Facebook blogs showed that single posted photographs get a lot of response and interaction, so I’d have to know the specific situation to make correct recommendations.  I always recommend having more specific calls to action and asking people questions to get them involved.

What companies or organizations do you think are doing a great job with social media?

Virgin America does a great job with their social media and branding and tying it in with their customer service.  They have a special dedicated area of their social media for customer service.  It’s important to have, for instance, one Twitter feed that’s for branding and one that’s for customer service issues.  You don’t want to mix customer or donor complaints with all of the positive things you’re trying to do.  That stuff needs to go into it’s own bucket.

Major thanks, again, to Rachel Masters for gamely answering all my rudimentary questions and for agreeing to a follow up interview early in 2012, when we’ll dig a little deeper into what makes social media so essential for non-profits.  Learn more about Rachel Masters and Red Magnet Media here.

Follow Rachel on Twitter

Follow RedMagnet on Twitter

Filed under: DonationPay by AJ
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Today, because I’m feeling lazy as sin, I’m going to put up another short video that shows how our social networking features work.  Most of our clients are already including these on their DonationPay pages, but if you’re not and you’d like to, give us a holler!  The demo is on the page of one of our newer clients, Elemental, the Film, which is supported by the Kalliopeia Foundation.  Enjoy and have a great weekend!

Support Elemental

Filed under: DonationPay, Fundraising, New Features, Online Fundraising, Shameless Self Promotion, Stuff We Like, Web Design and Development by AJ
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