The demand for services is up and the availability of money is down. Foundations are cutting back. The competition for donations and grants is very keen. The increased demand for services and inflation will ensure that costs increase. Do you have a strategy?
A large number of people are suggesting that one should strengthen the bonds with the donors. It certainly makes sense. Is that sufficient advice or do you need a practical suggestion for implementing the advice?
The best way to strengthen the relationship is to know what the relationship is based upon. The only way to establish the base is to ask the donor. However, with a few hundred donors in your database that seems like an impossible number of phone calls.
Step one is to divide the donor base into four tiers. The first tier contains donors who give less than some figure. For most small and mediums size agencies, it will be around $500 per year. The second tier is the group of donors between $500 and $1,000. The third tier is the group of donors between $1,000 and $5,000. The top tier is the group of donors over $5,000 per year. You may decide on a different tiering but you get the point.
The process for dealing with each tier is the same. However, who does the work differs. The first step is to call each donor. The call is simple and takes only 5 – 10 minutes. The caller identifies themselves and the agency. They next thank the donor for their support. They follow that by asking something like, “What is it that our agency does that is most important to you?” The final step is to make a note of the response and ask any clarifying questions.
That is the process. Simple and easy. Anyone can do it. There is no attempt to solicit funds or try to get the donor to move closer to the agency or change anyone’s mind about what is important. No matter how misguided the donor’s concept is it is their reason for giving.
So how do you do that with several hundred donors? The answer is different for each tier.
Those donors in the top tier deserve something more than a phone call. The only purpose of the phone call is to arrange a lunch, breakfast, or coffee with the donor. The top tier donors deserve personal thanks from the top executive and one of the board members. Double team the donor. Make them feel important and truly appreciated. Do this even if the donor is a member of the board or related to someone on the board.
Have a board member, the executive, or the development officer make the calls to the third tier.
Have other staff members make the calls to the second tier donors.
Have volunteers make the calls to the first tier donors. This may mean recruiting several new volunteers.
The goal is to collect the information about what is important within 90 days. If it is impossible to do the data collection within 90 days then restructure the tiers. It is important to ensure the data is timely. This also needs to be done quickly so that it is possible to use the data to improve this year’s fundraising.
There are four important benefits from this approach. The first is it will immediately draw your donors closer. It tells the donor they are important. This will actually have a larger impact on the small donors. Some of them will move up a tier just because of the phone call.
Second, you will have an advantage over other agencies the donor is supporting. It is doubtful that any other agency treats them this way. You make donations. Have you ever been asked about the importance of the mission you donate to? In addition, their expressing the importance reminds them of why they give and it helps strengthen their connect to the mission. All of this helps prevent attrition in the donor base. It is probably more important to retain donors this year than any other year in the past 10.
Third, you will receive valuable information about the importance of your mission to the community. Sometimes what we learn can be surprising. How to use the information will be covered in future articles.
Fourth, you will motive, inspire, and energize your board, staff, and volunteers. As they listen to the donors telling them what is important about the mission, the listener’s passion will grow. The increase in passion will bring vitality to the mission.
It is important that the contact occur through a call. This sounds old school. If you try this through email, only two groups will respond. The highly satisfied and the highly dissatisfied will be the only respondents. It is good to hear from both. However, that means that the bulk of the donors will be silent and they control the bulk of the money. Without hearing their voice how do you appeal to them? In addition, we all get too many emails and text messages each day. Finally, there is nothing nicer than a warm human voice saying thank you.
