SPURspectives

Saying thanks is always welcome and often overlooked. You don’t thank your Aunt Betty for her “generous contribution to your wardrobe.” You thank her for the beautiful cashmere sweater. You say why you love it. You tell her where you wore it and how many compliments you got. You might even send a picture. And if she lives nearby, then you thank her again when you see her in person (while wearing the sweater, of course).

Saying thank you in meaningful ways builds relationships and encourages future giving. So use what you know to make donor recognition personal, not perfunctory.

Variable data in action

To envision what this looks like in practice, let’s say your part of a nonprofit that is going to hold a job-readiness event at a community center in partnership with several other nonprofits.

You can use the zip code of the event’s location to pull a list of donors who live or work nearby - a good indicator that they are more likely to be able to drop by the event. Then you can pull a subset of donors who have given recently and who are “ready” for reassurance that their gift made a difference. You could send this group a customized letter, postcard, or email about the event that includes the following text:

“Susie, your recent donation helped make the upcoming XYZ event possible. Typically, we are able to provide assistance to more than 300 low-income individuals through the workshops at this event, and your gift is supporting this high-impact effort. Since this is a great chance to see our staff in action and meet some of our key partners in the community, we hope you can take few minutes out of your day to drop by and say hello. We’d love to see you!”

With just a little tweaking, you can send a similar message to a different subset of donors that you know are highly motivated by child welfare. You might know this is a driver because you’ve asked your donors what matters most to them. Or you may have affinity information. For instance, if you know that someone primarily supports nonprofits focused on youth (even though your organization serves people of all ages), that’s another way to get at this driver.

“Jonathan, your recent donation helped make the upcoming XYZ event possible. We know you are concerned about the impact of ingrained poverty on children in our community. Typically, the workshops at this event reach more than 200 low-income parents who are trying to do more to provide for their families, so your gift is helping make a big difference for hundreds of area children.”

For some donors, you might want to change the call to action from “please drop by” to a request for volunteer help - if your data tells you they have an interest in volunteering, or tells you that they tend to volunteer prior to making a donation:

“If you would like to meet some of the parents this event helps, we can always use extra hands at the registration table.”

While everyone cares about children, that’s not always a donor’s primary driver. If you know that some donors support your job-training programs from a “bottom line” economic standpoint (again, because you’ve asked them or derived the information from affinities) you can personalize the message accordingly:

“Angela, your recent donation helped make the upcoming XYZ event possible. This intensive day of job-training workshops is an important step for hundreds of unemployed and underemployed individuals who are ready to start the journey toward being full participants in our region’s workforce. Last year, more 60% of attendees went on to seek additional job-readiness assistance from us or one of our partners.”

Again, you could ask these donors to drop by or volunteer, based on their history with you and where they are in their personal cycle of giving. Perhaps the call to action with a subset of this bottom-line group - those who are CEOs or small business owners - also plants seeds for future sponsorship and pro bono work:

“We would love for your business to be part of this event in future years. We invite you and your colleagues to join us this year as observers or volunteers. If you like what you see, we could explore how ABC Company could help with next year’s workshops.”

Creating variable text means you will have to think about what you want all the messages to be and how to map them against the data. It requires a different way of thinking. But when you deliver customized messages that speak to every donor based on who they are and what they care about, you’ll be repaid in higher levels of engagement.

Tags: donor, fundraising, non profit, variable data