Challenging Ingrained Thank You Practices

It’s been true for a long time now- when the thank-you call is made, who makes the call, and what is said during the call are all critical components that affect renewal rates and lifetime donor value.

If you want your calls to have meaningful impact on giving behavior, they must:

1. Be made promptly-ideally within 48-72 hours of receipt of the gift;

2. Be made by a senior leader of the organization, like a member of the board of directors, and

3. Express genuine and specific appreciation for the help it is providing.

All too often, we’re asked to help organizations that wait 3-7 months (or longer) before they make calls or use a team of phone callers with little or no training in how to talk with recent donors. Or, worse yet, send out new appeals right after a phone call. Under these circumstances, it’s no surprise that donor retention suffers.

To be clear, thank-you calls conducted long after receipt of a gift, and without the involvement of a senior representative, are very unlikely to have any kind of positive impact on a donor’s future giving decisions.

There are many tactics and programs to consider when trying to build relationships with donors and everything you do as a fundraiser takes time and must be within your budget resources. That’s a given.

Truly meaningful thanks that inspire loyalty and increased giving needs to be immediate and personal. And they should be from someone who is a highly-ranked individual at your nonprofit—someone who is genuinely grateful for what donors make possible.

If you’d like to talk with us about your thank-you process, please reach out. We’re eager to help at 708-974-2600, 105 or ron@rescignos.com