See How One Nonprofit Communicates Donation Impact

Just about every blog post, research article and presentation on donor retention places a spotlight on the importance of updating the donor on the use and results of their financial investment in your organization’s mission.

This is becoming more important every year as younger generations, who have a strong yearning to know and understand the exact impact of their donated funds, provide a larger portion of most charity’s funding. Along this vein, the more specific, the better, as far as how such information is shared.

An Outstanding Example of Donor Impact Messaging

Occasionally, I like to make small donations to random nonprofits in order to research and witness first-hand their thank you and follow-up processes. The results are usually poor.

More than six months ago I personally made a small gift to charity: water. Instead of soliciting me weekly (like some national organizations do – a problem highlighted beautifully by my friend Lynne Wester in this marvelous post about several organizations who solicited her after a first gift more than 50 times in the next 12 months!) charity: water chose to delightfully update me. Their gift acknowledgement is always outstanding, but their stewardship exceeded my expectations.

Months after making the gift, I received a simple email follow-up with a short video showing exactly what my donation was able to help provide and the dramatic impact on the people using the fresh water well.

Scarcely anything else needs to be explained on why this is such a perfect example of how to easily share with any donor the impact of their gift.

What Else Does Such Messaging Achieve?

Notice what else this wonderful message is able to accomplish. They further educated me and raised my interest about the country of Niger and they asked for my feedback via a short and engaging survey.

After finishing the survey did they then, and only then, offer me another chance to support via the ability to honor a person close to me with this BRILLIANT landing page.

If I chose to honor someone, they now have a chance to involve that person being honored by communicating to them.

Conclusion

This entire follow-up, a full sixteen months later was not an afterthought! The entire communication is beautifully created based upon proper research and testing, and then executed flawlessly. Their donor retention and recapture rates have to in the rarified air of well above the national averages.

Nice job, charity: water!