Eureka

For most of my adult life, I’ve worked out at the gym, and like too many people, ended up doing the same exercises over and over again.  And with some regularity, endured muscle pain, spasms, injuries.  Then the pandemic hit.  I had 10 pound weights, and managed in those early days to snag a pair of 15 pounders.  And a Kettlebell that weights a little over 16 pounds.  My husband bought me resistant and mini bands.  And then two days a week we started doing TRX.  I cycled through my equipment, and learned new exercises.  Arguably, I’m now in better shape than ever.  Then my little toe on my left foot got traumatized (I dropped a heavy rod on it), and I found myself doing the few things I could in my stocking feet—and that centered around my weights.  Within 5 days, I found that I had a lot of upper back pain on my right side—and realized that over the 18 months of mixing my exercises up, I had never had this kind of pain.  Eureka.  

It’s a lot the same with fundraising.  If you only do the same things—and only offer your donors the same few ways to contribute—what you’ll end up with is donor fatigue or, worse, donor boredom, which causes your donors to look elsewhere for more interesting opportunities.

It is critical that you provide a number of different entry points, and that once your donors show a commitment, you introduce them to new avenues of giving. Often, with committed donors, that is an opportunity to make a major gift.

Major gifts are still reliant on personal interactions—though personal has expanded to mean personal emails, phone calls, zoom meetings as well as in person meetings.  And major gifts are generally about specific things.  While the gift can sometimes be unrestricted, the conversations are all about what the donor wants to accomplish through their philanthropy and what about your organization and the work you do appeals to them. Most major gifts, however, are restricted—given for or to a distinctive program or service.

Of course, not all committee donors can or will make a major gift.  For some, the challenge is to keep them as donors, and to move them up the giving ladder as you can.  After all, a gift of $1,000 today is not the same as a $1,000 gift was 10 years ago.  To stay even, you must increase their giving, and to grow….well, it is obvious you will need to move them up significantly.

As with major gifts, the personal interaction is always the best.  But it may not be feasible.  So making sure that mass appeals you send are more personalized is critical.  That means segmenting your lists, and refining your appeals.  “For the past five years, your support has been instrumental in….” Will mean more to a donor who has a 5 year history with you than a more general statement such as “Over the years….” It’s a little thing, but we all know that little things mean a lot.

Providing additional ways to give are also important.

If you continually ask for support in one way, your donor will most likely give you the same gift they gave the last time.  But by being more creative, you can get them to be more creative with their giving.  So add an appeal— many donors will give as often as you ask.  Or reach out to your loyal donors and ask them if they would be part of a peer-to-peer ask.  You can then work directly with them to figure out what that will look like.  Perhaps you can recruit a host or several hosts for salons, where the donors can socialize and learn why their support is so important.  These salons can be information only or they can be ask parties.  

There are so many ways to engage with your donors—and this includes the ways you can say thank you in addition to asking please.