Can Every Touch Be An Ask?
Jul 28th, 2010 by David Svet
I get asked this question a lot. When I talk with a community benefit organization about their marketing for fundraising, probably 4 out of 10 times I’m asked whether everything they send out should include a fundraising ask. In my opinion, the answer is quite simple — no.
Your donors and prospects are valuable but different from one another. They all have their own motive for being interested in your organization. They are all at their own point in the philanthropic cycle and need to be treated accordingly — as individuals. Communicate with them separately.
Marketing brings prospects to your door. It tells your story and lights the fire of passion. But it is an expense. Its role is to attract prospects so that the few who will become donors can see the path to giving and become motivated to take it. Once they give and the check clears, they’ve become a donor and you can begin to cultivate an appropriate donor relationship with them. Thank them for their gift. Confirm what they gave and where it will be spent. Then show them the results of their gift and thank them for making it happen. Now you can ask them again. Everyone else is still in the attraction phase of the relationship with you. Asking them for money at every touch is at best futile and at worst offensive.
Instead, cultivate a relationship using your marketing efforts to interact with your prospects and score the results in your donor database. Use the scoring to drive your interactions and over time you will be working with a lot more donors on their own terms with greater results. If you continue to include an overt ask in every communication that your organization sends out you will probably see a steady decline in donations. That’s usually what happens leading up to my being asked this.
[Pic: Flickr]: licensed under a Creative Commons License
