Ask the experts: year-end fundraising

Ann Fellman: Okay, the doors are open, and people are flooding in — welcome, welcome, you’re in the right place. It’s Thursday of Fundraiser Focus Week, and we’ve got everybody here today, just like always.

Tell us who you are and where you’re at — what’s your weather? It’s a little dicey for some folks today. Gail, what’s your weather?

Gail Perry: Well, I’m at the Outer Banks of North Carolina — there’s a big thunderstorm rolling in, you might hear some thunder behind me.

Ann Fellman: Hopefully everybody’s staying safe — we’re going to get started in just a second. We’ve got a great group; the engagement with the community this week has been fantastic. You’re in the right place, and we’re going to have an amazing roundtable discussion. Rachel Muir is here with us — if you haven’t seen her in person this week, she’s been listening along all along. Rachel, thanks for hosting today.

Rachel Muir: I’m so excited to be here — like you, Ann, this is my favorite thing we do every quarter, and to be in the presence of these amazing, stellar women, such pearls of wisdom.

Ann Fellman: We’re talking year-end fundraising today, but before we fully jump in, a couple of housekeeping items: we are recording. There’s obviously no slides for this, it’s a conversation, so make sure you’re using the Q&A tab to ask questions — we’ve got a number saved up from this week that we’re going to cover, probably more than we can even get through. But we’re recording, and you’ll get access to the recording and all the slides from the week — thank you for joining us.

At Bloomerang, we love creating content and resources, and creating these community moments where we can come together, support one another, and walk away with insights. Yes, we make technology to help you manage your donors, raise more online, and manage your volunteers and your whole supporter network — but we really believe in forums like this where we can all learn together. So thank you for being with us, and save the date for GiveCon if you haven’t already heard the spiel this week — it’s a great conference to come together with other fundraising professionals.

Rachel, I’ll hand it to you to do introductions — but again, welcome back, Gail, Vanessa, and Alice, and thank you so much for joining us.

Rachel Muir: I’m so excited to be with you all today — this is my favorite, I love Fundraiser Focus Week, it’s so much fun, and getting to be with these three amazing women is such a gift. I’m Rachel Muir — you can learn more about my background in fundraising at rachelmuir.com.

I’m going to kick things off with beautiful Alice Ferris, a CFRE, MBA, founder of GoalBusters, and one of my favorite foodies ever — if you ever get the chance to have a meal with Alice at a fundraising conference, take it, you’ll have one of the best meals, the best company, and the best adventures of your life. She’s an associate adjunct professor in the University of Denver’s nonprofit leadership program, and an associate member of Rogare, the international fundraising think tank. She got her start in public broadcasting as the human bubble machine, blowing bubbles on the set of the Lawrence Welk pledge breaks at PBS Wisconsin — and that volunteer gig turned into a thirty-five-plus-year public media career.

She kicked us off Monday with the year-end readiness check — I’ll pop the link in the chat for anyone who missed it. She covered, month to month, what to do; spoiler alert, right now, August 20th, friends, you’ve got eleven days, so make the most of it. She recommended looking right now at your metrics, your list, your budget, and your strategy — but the most important thing I want to stress that she told you to do is work on your matching gift. This is the time: a matching gift can drive three to four times more giving.

So, one of your questions, Alice — a good one — was: can you explain how you’d segment donors, especially for an org that’s never done this, or is new to it? I hear about segmentation a lot, but where do I even begin?

Alice Ferris: Good question — and my apologies in advance if my signal freezes, I’m on really crappy hotel Wi-Fi right now.

When you’re thinking about donor segmentation, there’s a basic first slice, and then you get more sophisticated from there. We have our lists — people donating to us now, and people who used to. Gail was asking great questions when we were prepping about when you actually purge your list, and the answer may be never. But the first cut I’d make is who your current donors are versus who has donated before but not this year. Gail talked yesterday about LYBUNTs — gave last year, but unfortunately not this year — and that would be my first cut: donors within the last twelve to eighteen months, called “current,” because what we call an “annual donor” isn’t necessarily how the donor thinks of themselves.

If someone gave eighteen months ago, they may still consider themselves an active donor, because they’re just not paying that close attention to exactly when they last gave. So my first segment is LYBUNTs versus current donors — that’s the basic segmentation. Then you go further back — maybe SYBUNTs, gave some year but not this one, a little older still.

After that, you get into more refined segmentation: what do my donors have in common? Maybe this donor cares about youth programs but not your advocacy work, so that becomes an interest-based segment. Or maybe a group shares a common way of responding to you — only via email appeals, say. I have donors like that: every time I send an email for one organization, one particular donor responds immediately, so I know he belongs in an email-only segment. So my approach is: first, recency of the gift, and second, what these donor groups have in common.

Rachel Muir: Love it. I’d add that monthly donors are a really important segment for everyone doing year-end — let them know that you know they’re a monthly donor. It’s fine to ask a monthly donor for a year-end gift, just acknowledge that you know their status.

I’m going to introduce Vanessa — I’ve put a link to Alice’s session in the chat in case anyone missed it. Vanessa Chase Lockshin is president of The Storytelling Non-Profit and author of the book of the same name. You’re in beautiful British Columbia, correct?

Vanessa Chase Lockshin: I am, yes.

Rachel Muir: Jealous — I’m dealing with ninety-six degrees in Austin, Texas. Vanessa kicked us off Tuesday with maximizing digital donor engagement for year-end fundraising. Vanessa’s an email nerd like me, and I loved that she bravely dug into inactive donors — on average, most nonprofits have thirty to forty percent of their email list sitting inactive. We can impress ourselves with “I’ve got thirty thousand people on my list,” but once you look at who’s actually active versus inactive, the picture looks really different.

You defined “inactive” as someone who hasn’t opened an email in three months, and talked about three solutions: resending your best-performing emails, good segmentation, and surveys. One question you got a lot: how effective are resends for engaging donors? We typically resend after a week to anyone who hasn’t opened yet — the idea being that people on vacation or not checking email will eventually see one of the two emails.

Vanessa Chase Lockshin: Fair — I’ll say, that sounds like a lot of resending depending on how many emails you’re sending a month. If it’s only one email a month, that’s only one resend. I’d look more closely at how you want to re-engage donors specifically. As Alice said, there are real differences between segments on your email list and in your donor file — pulling out just the donors, whose relationship to your organization is different from program participants, volunteers, board members, and so on, might call for a specific way of talking to them to re-engage.

Donor-centered language and stories matter, along with anything that pulls at their particular interest based on what they last responded to. If you have the time to go deeper, I like to look at what was the last email a now-inactive donor actually responded to with a gift — that tells you something about the moment in the messaging that resonated, and you can use that to tailor re-engagement. But to gauge resend effectiveness broadly, look at your analytics — I typically see resends land somewhere between ten and fifteen percent of the original open rate. If you’re getting less than that and wondering why you’re even bothering, it’s worth trying a different re-engagement approach.

Rachel Muir: Awesome. I’m going to introduce the fabulous Gail Perry, who I’m excited to see in person next week — I have twins in college, one at Elon, right near Chapel Hill where Gail is. Gail’s a CFRE and MBA, author of Fired-Up Fundraising, and has a new book out called Easy Fundraising and Friend-Making for Board Members.

Gail Perry: Board members — yes, yes.

Rachel Muir: I just dropped the replay of yesterday’s session in the chat. Thanks in advance for putting questions in the Q&A box so we can make sure we cover everything.

Gail, you did an awesome job on end-of-year fundraising do’s and don’ts — I loved how you stressed using this time to warm donors up with real stewardship, and the personal story about not pulling major-gift donors out of the year-end appeal stream. So many fundraisers do that, and then those donors just don’t hear from them. You also echoed Alice’s and Vanessa’s advice on focusing on renewals, and we talked about legacy giving, and how we don’t want to stop talking to donors just because they’ve gone quiet. What are your thoughts on that, Gail — anything to add?

Gail Perry: Yeah, I think it’s really controversial, because the best practice we’ve been given for so long is to keep your list clean — you get higher open rates that way. So you think carefully about people who haven’t opened an email in a year: why keep emailing them, since it drags down your stats? But there’s a lot of new data showing that people change their wills in the last few years of their life — someone might be a longtime donor who suddenly stops, or they have an estate gift in their will but haven’t heard from you in five years and are redoing it. So we’ve got a real dilemma: on one hand we want a clean list, but on the other, these legacy donors are often “sleepers” who haven’t self-identified, and we just don’t know. I don’t know what the full answer is — I think we need to be aware of the issue and be careful. Who knows, maybe there’s a way to append birth dates to our list, somewhere in the big sky of data.

Rachel Muir: And do a physical mail append too, so you’ve got a mailing address for donors who may be older and less digitally engaged.

Gail Perry: A hundred percent — and yet everyone wants to save money by cutting the snail mail budget. Who’s had that fight?

Rachel Muir: A hundred percent. One more question — I want to open this to everybody, but I know you have thoughts, Gail. We had a few people write in about their thank-a-thons, disappointed that people weren’t answering their phones. So, Gail, kick us off, and Alice and Vanessa, jump in — what do you do when people aren’t picking up? Is a voicemail as effective as a conversation? Do you ask them to call back? How do you handle it?

Gail Perry: I’ll start with a quick story. Years ago, back when we had voicemail machines, I walked in one day and hit play, and there was this kindly message: “Hello, Gail, I’m a board member of the crisis center, and I’m just calling to say thank you for your gift, we really appreciate it.” My heart just broke — I felt so important. It was just a voicemail, and he might have been reading a script — I know people worry that a script makes everyone sound the same, but you make it your own. I’ll never forget that. What do you think, Alice?

Alice Ferris: Funny enough, as I was getting ready for your webinar, I picked up a call I thought was something else — you know how it is with unidentified numbers — and it was an organization I donate to, calling to thank me. But they immediately pivoted into a solicitation. They didn’t say “thank you for the gift, how would you like to give again” outright, but they were dropping all those cues — “thank you so much for being a supporter” — and, well, we’re in the business, so I know the setup, I know the questions coming. I told her, “I’m really sorry, I’m a professional fundraiser, I feel bad saying I can’t talk right now.” But the key thing for me is that a thank-a-thon has to actually be a thank-a-thon — your reaction, Gail, was “this was really touching,” but if it’s “oh, and by the way, would you consider giving more,” that cheapens it.

Rachel Muir: Standard ask.

Gail Perry: You begin with an acknowledgment, and then you move forward — let’s move forward together. That’s how you ask properly.

Rachel Muir: Yeah, and I’d add: always leave a message, and smile the whole time you’re leaving it — I may look silly right now, but it makes you sound approachable and warm. Leave messages, people do check visual voicemail. Talk slowly when you say you’re a board member and give your name — I love that Gail had that experience, and we know from Penelope Burk’s research that this is a big driver of donors feeling appreciated by board members, and making bigger gifts after a thank-you call from one.

You can make it fun too — I’ve done phone campaigns for political candidates where we played games and had a great time. And if you’re really stuck — someone asked what if it’s just board members using Zoom instead of physical office phones, so they’d have to use their cell phones — great, do that, that’s even better. Whether it’s a board member’s cell or the org’s line, leave the message. And if leaving a voicemail is eating you alive, send a warm text instead — maybe with a photo — just two sentences: “I’m thinking about you, so grateful for your support, you mean the world to us.” Don’t ask for anything back, don’t give them homework. Anything to add, Vanessa?

Vanessa Chase Lockshin: No, I don’t think so — I’ve made so many thank-you phone calls in my career, I’m a fan. They’re the easiest calls to make, and always such a delight — people don’t always pick up these days, but when they do, they’re excited and grateful for that moment of connection. I relate to Alice being on the fundraiser end of things too — people stop me for street canvassing, and I always know what’s coming. But it’s a hard job, whether phone or street canvassing, so I always tell canvassers, “I’m not going to give today, but can I buy you a coffee or a pastry” — morale matters so much in that work.

Rachel Muir: It really does. I got my start canvassing door to door for an environmental group, and I still get so excited when canvassers come to my house — I give them the names of everyone on my street, tell them to say Rachel made a gift, look at their route, give them tips.

Alice — one thing on the thank-a-thon and phone calls: I get a lot of questions about not having donors’ phone numbers, and I honestly don’t know how to answer that. What do you think, folks?

Alice Ferris: There are a couple of things. One, you could do an append — go to a mail house or service that can screen the list and try to append phone numbers. My other question is: why don’t you have their number? Did they skip that field online on purpose? If so, maybe they don’t want to be reached by phone, and I’d be a little sensitive about trying to track them down.

Rachel Muir: Yeah, I try to give people good reasons to share their number with us in all our communications — you can even say, “we’d love to call you, just to keep you updated on how your gift is making a difference, and thank you warmly — we’d love to deepen the relationship.”

Alice, you got a really interesting timing question: some board members say move the year-end mail drop up to around Halloween to beat other nonprofits, others say donors expect appeals in December and might be put off by a Christmas card before Thanksgiving. What are your thoughts?

Alice Ferris: When Rachel previewed this question, I said I have all sorts of sarcastic comments about pumpkin spice — because to me, this is the pumpkin spice of fundraising. I don’t want to see year-end stuff in October, honestly. If you’re mailing earlier, it needs a genuinely compelling reason, and “we’re getting ready for the year-end campaign, so we’re asking now” isn’t a compelling, donor-centric message. I actually received an appeal like that once — I’ve saved it in my folder of things not to do in fundraising, which are inevitably things I’ve personally received. The organization literally said, “we’re trying to get ahead of all the other mail you’ll receive at year-end, so we’re asking for your year-end gift now.” I have no words for that.

So even though there’s a lot of competition at year-end, realistically there’s not as much as people think — everyone says “everyone’s mailing at year-end,” and yet we saw in the chat someone whose organization was just told they no longer have a direct mail budget. We’ve been predicting the death of direct mail for as long as I’ve known Gail, and that’s been a minute. Part of it is making sure we don’t say “no” on a donor’s behalf — by saying “we want to beat the competition,” you’re essentially assuming you won’t rise to the top anyway.

Rachel Muir: A hundred percent, very well said.

Vanessa Chase Lockshin: I want to pick up on something Alice said that’s relevant to that competition idea — the compelling reason to give. So many organizations lean heavily on “it’s Giving Tuesday, of course you’ll give” — that’s not a compelling reason. You have to think about the impact and the need; Giving Tuesday is really the cherry on top, with matches and community campaigns adding a sense of momentum, but at the end of the day it’s still about your cause, and you still need to make the case for support in that moment. Think about the one really compelling reason to give that particular day — yes, it’s Giving Tuesday, and here’s why you should also give for this specific reason. The season isn’t the reason to give.

Rachel Muir: We’ve got so many great questions in here. Anonymous asked: what’s the best way to limit the scope of a thank-a-thon to major and mid-level donors only? Honestly, I don’t want you to limit your scope on thanking donors at all — get everyone together, do a champagne toast, order pizza, make it fun, run a contest. If you hold back how much you love on your donors, only reserving it for the larger gifts, you’re going to lose donors and gifts, and break all our fundraising hearts.

Gail Perry: I have to challenge that a little — here I am, this beleaguered fundraiser with a goal, and I’ve got twenty people giving me ten thousand a year who haven’t renewed yet. I’m going to start with them first. I know it’s not the ideal or kindest approach, but I have to be practical. And as Ann’s pointed out too, you’ve got major donors sleeping in your smaller-donor files — and per Penelope Burk’s famous point, if you treat them like small donors, they’ll stay small donors. So it’s yet another “both, and” dilemma — I’m going to be a little crass and start with the bigger number, because I’m a beleaguered fundraiser and I’ve got to hit the goal.

Alice Ferris: Can I build on that? Yes — I think Gail’s being very practical: if you’re a small shop, you do have to prioritize the larger donors. But what smaller teams often don’t take advantage of is that it doesn’t all have to be you. Someone in the chat mentioned: if you don’t have a phone number, send a postcard or a handwritten note — and that’s something else on your team can do. For instance, I’m the interim general manager of a public radio station in Yuma, Arizona, plus the development director, plus a consultant with other clients — I don’t have time for all of this myself. But I do have a news team with four reporters, and I can hand them a stack of postcards and say, “write three of these today.” That’s twelve thank-you notes going out today, and the donor might actually like it more, since it’s a voice they hear on the air rather than “the fundraising girl.”

Rachel Muir: It’s the truth — or even a thank-you text. I’m going to answer a quick question from Cody, and invite you all to weigh in — we’ve had so many questions about timing on year-end appeals. How do we stand out on Giving Tuesday? Cody feels like everyone’s doing it, there’s so much noise, and is considering sitting it out entirely. I don’t want Cody to sit it out — even a simple gratitude campaign for Giving Tuesday is a beautiful idea. What would you all suggest, or when do you think is the best time to send year-end appeals? I feel like it really depends on what works for your organization specifically. Alice, any thoughts? Vanessa, go ahead.

Vanessa Chase Lockshin: I have a hot take on this. For four years running now, across our agency’s clients, the best fundraising day of Giving Tuesday week has not been Giving Tuesday itself — it’s been the Friday after. My theory is nobody sends emails on Thursday or Friday that week, so it’s much easier to stand out, and plenty of people still have money they want to give. We tend to think about the whole month of December holistically rather than putting all the pressure on the Tuesday itself, and that Friday especially has proven to be a strong day. It’s counterintuitive — you’d think people are maxed out on giving by then — but that hasn’t been my experience the last couple of years. If you’re looking for another day that week to make an ask or stand out, that’s a good one to consider.

Gail Perry: One of the points I made yesterday was: don’t send too few communications. I serve on a university board at UNC Chapel Hill, and they’re afraid to send too many emails — I could throttle them, though as a board member I have to be careful about pushing my opinions since they’ve already got their plan. But you shouldn’t hold back just because an executive director or board chair doesn’t like it and tries to override fundraising policy. What do you all think?

Alice Ferris: First of all, Gail, you should be a little obnoxious on your board — that’s part of why they have you there. But related to that — something both Vanessa and Rachel have mentioned — “It’s Giving Tuesday” is a lazy subject line, and Rachel, I know you collect these.

Rachel Muir: I do.

Alice Ferris: All the Giving Tuesday subject lines — because it’s just “It’s Giving Tuesday: [something],” and that’s not compelling. On Gail’s point about under-communicating: I think organizations often react to the people complaining rather than the people responding positively — a board member says “we got all these complaints about the Giving Tuesday emails,” when it was really two people, and the org ends up managing for the exception. Personally, I actually agree with Cody somewhat — I tend to opt out of Giving Tuesday myself, or if I do use it, it’s more of a thank-a-thon approach: send thank-yous during Giving Tuesday, and save the actual solicitation for a different day, like Vanessa suggested.

Vanessa Chase Lockshin: I’d add to that — one thing I think about with opinions versus data is discerning three categories of input we get in organizations: people’s opinions, behavioral data on what donors actually do, and stated preferences from when we’ve directly asked donors what they want. Part of our job is figuring out which of that data deserves the most weight. It’s often easiest with behavioral data — “when we emailed people five times in December, we raised a lot that month” is a stronger case than a board member insisting “we can’t email more than once a quarter.” Having that data to point to is sometimes the antidote to all the opinions we deal with.

Gail Perry: Can I touch on that subject-line comment in the chat? I actually think you should mail something on Giving Tuesday that doesn’t have “Giving Tuesday” in the subject line at all — because what are the basics? We’re talking about donor centricity, and is Giving Tuesday donor-centric? No, it’s a mechanism, a marketing campaign. But a thank-you with a subject line like “here’s what you made possible this year” is far more likely to get opened.

Rachel Muir: That’s a warm fuzzy, a hundred percent — I get a headache by ten a.m. on Giving Tuesday just from reading “It’s Giving Tuesday, it’s Giving Tuesday” over and over. I love that Alice brought up a blog post I wrote for Bloomerang — I’ll try to find it and drop it in the chat, and feel free to follow us all on LinkedIn too. One of my favorites had “stretch goal” in it, with the word “stretch” visually stretched out in the design.

I’m obsessed with subject lines — genuinely, literally obsessed. Here’s the thing: there’s no magic bullet. If you want your emails opened and responded to, you have to write good emails and good subject lines, with content that actually delivers value and makes donors feel good. We talk so much about ourselves and our accomplishments, and leave out the donor — leave out the problem the donor can solve. A good subject line can pique curiosity, flatter someone, stir something up in them, or make them feel there’s something tangible they can do right now to solve a problem — or just promise a quick read. But you’ve got to write a genuinely great one.

One of mine — my best-opened Giving Tuesday email of the last four or five years, and also my highest-converting fundraising email overall — had the subject line “Parents can’t keep up with these costs.” It follows the principle I always use: be just vague enough to be interesting. It tells people the gist — there’s a parent, so it implies kids are involved — and “these costs” is vague enough to make you wonder which costs, while still being emotionally specific to a problem donors can solve. Subject lines like that tend to work really well on giving days and beyond, because they engage people with a problem they might want to help solve.

Gail Perry: It’s brilliant.

Alice Ferris: Love it.

Vanessa Chase Lockshin: Love it.

Rachel Muir: Alice, there’s a related question — since we’re on Giving Tuesday, what channels, what content. And Alice, there’s a question in the Q&A from Stacy about the teaser copy on the outer envelope, or what to include inside it.

Alice Ferris: I read that initially as the teaser on the outer envelope, which actually connects to our subject-line conversation — your envelope teaser is essentially the old version of an email subject line, so think about it the same way: what’s going to make someone, as Vanessa said, curious enough to open the envelope? And then, for what to put inside — front-end premiums, freemiums — I like things that are unique to the organization and still mission-driven, because email content and direct mail content really aren’t that far apart strategically, it’s just the delivery method that differs.

Stacy mentioned photos of a family being highlighted — I’d say, think about it from the recipient’s side: are you going to keep a photo of a family you don’t know? Probably not. But would you keep a kid’s drawing illustrating that family’s story? I probably would.

Rachel Muir: I might keep that too. I’m actually in Lexington, Kentucky right now, and one of the best thank-you notes I’ve ever received was from a donor’s children — he’d invited me to present at a conference here, and part of the relationship stewardship was this adorable, hand-drawn thank-you note from his four kids. I kept a scan of it. If it had just been a photo of his kids, that would’ve felt weird.

Alice Ferris: I love it, I love it.

Rachel Muir: Heather typed in a really interesting question — I’ll read it, and anyone can jump in. I’m scratching my head a bit on this one — the Penelope Burk part of me is like, what’s going on here, Heather? She says: I love all the thank-a-thon ideas, and we do this annually for our small org, but we receive about nine thousand donations a year. We’ve been creative with mass thank-yous, but what else would you suggest — we can’t write that many individual cards, texts, or calls.

First off — nine thousand donations a year, and you can’t write thank-you cards, texts, or calls? I’m assuming you want to keep and grow those nine thousand donations, and if so, you need to show these donors you care about them the way they cared enough to give. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, there are tools for this — Handwrytten, where you write the actual thank-you script once, pick your segments, and a machine writes and mails it for you. There’s also the Felt app, which lets you send handwritten-style thank-you notes from your phone, mailed on kraft paper. Plenty of tools exist to help with this at scale.

Alice Ferris: Right — I think this is really an infrastructure and capacity issue, and an unwillingness to invest in proper donor stewardship for nine thousand donors.

Gail Perry: Yeah — if the organization is serious about keeping and growing those nine thousand, they need to invest in the post-gift experience.

Rachel Muir: Gail, didn’t you mention thank-you videos too? Someone asked about that in the chat as well.

Gail Perry: I love this — and it doesn’t have to involve a whole system. There’s good software and platforms for thank-you videos that I’ve used before, but people are also used to seeing selfie-style videos now. You could go through your nine thousand donors, find the most common first names, and record one video per name: “Hey Bob, just wanted to thank you so much for your gift” — and send that one video to everyone named Bob.

Rachel Muir: A hundred percent — I love video email. I use BombBomb, it’s about four hundred and twenty-five dollars a year, and since I’m a terrible typist, it saves me a lot of time and feels really personal. They cared enough to part with their hard-earned money, so I want to show up and care about them too.

I have a question for Gail — how do you set a goal for your year-end campaign?

Gail Perry: First thing: set a goal that’s actually achievable, not one pulled out of the budget figure you need to hit — I’ve worked with organizations, large and small, who set goals that way, and it puts the fundraising team in an impossible position. The goal should be based on a careful projection of your outstanding gifts, your strategies, and what you realistically think they’ll bring in — some real analysis behind it, not just a number.

Alice Ferris: It’s a projection — and I’d add, don’t just add twenty percent onto last year’s number. It needs to be grounded in reality.

Vanessa Chase Lockshin: There are some creative ways to think about goal setting too. I work with clients who sometimes don’t want to publicize a number at all, in case they don’t hit it — which is fine, because we know having a goal creates urgency and tangibility. One workaround: when I worked with Variety BC out of Vancouver, we had donors across the whole province, not just the Lower Mainland — up in Prince Rupert, out in the Okanagan Valley. We looked at how many donors in those specific areas were on the email list, and for one Giving Tuesday, sent a story about a child helped in that specific community: “This Giving Tuesday, we’re hoping ten people from Prince Rupert will make a gift to help another kid like Sam, who lives in Prince Rupert.” That’s a donor-count goal instead of a dollar goal — it sounds small, but the psychology works in your favor, because people see “ten people” and think, we can easily help meet that.

Rachel Muir: Don’t use ten, that’s a great example — I love it. Rocio asked: does the group have thoughts on the best time to send a thank-you video — ninety days after the gift, a six-month “donorversary”? I love a donorversary, but honestly I want donors to feel thanked quickly after giving, and it doesn’t need to be polished — like Alice said, it can just be a selfie saying “hey, thanks.”

I became a monthly donor to an organization in Canada and got a thank-you video of the executive director in her kitchen, making meals for kids in Calgary — “Dear Rachel, I’m so excited... I’m here in the kitchen with our volunteers making these sandwiches, thank you so much for becoming a monthly donor.” She can reuse that exact video for every new monthly donor forever, no personalization required, and just seeing her and the volunteers really warmed my heart.

Anything you all want to add for folks feeling stressed out? We got a lot of feedback like “I can’t write the perfect email, I don’t have time for all this.”

Alice Ferris: I think people like your rawness.

I started my session yesterday saying you have to pick and choose your strategies based on your own sanity, your staff capacity, and who you can bring in to help. Organizing well ahead — recruiting people now for thank-you calls, delegating different tasks — will save you, but you can’t do everything, and the more infrastructure you build, the better job you can do. Be realistic; we all bite off more than we can chew.

Vanessa Chase Lockshin: Building on that — yes, we want to customize as much as we can, but we also need to be realistic. If someone’s using Handwrytten for their notes, can I tell it was probably generated by a machine? Probably. But if the message itself shows real thought, I’m not going to write it off. What I don’t want to see is an invoice literally labeled as a receipt being the only “thank you” I get — that’s not a thank you, that’s a receipt. So, don’t let perfect be the enemy of done.

Gail Perry: I have a little sign on my desk at home that says “done is better than perfect” — because sometimes it just is.

Rachel Muir: I love it, I love it. You’ve all asked such great questions — I dropped my email in the chat since we’re running fast and furious here, and we’ve got a little time left.

Question: does anyone have recommendations for engaging donors who’ve been giving for years but weren’t contacted or thanked before this year — a brand-new development team inherited this. I’m just glad they’re still giving! I’d thank them and celebrate their loyalty — that’s huge, and it shows you know who they are. One of the greatest gifts we can give donors is the feeling of being known.

Here’s one for Gail: who’s the best person for thank-yous to come from — general staff, the CEO, or a board member?

Gail Perry: Donors love to hear from the highest authority available. When I worked for the dean of the business school at UNC Chapel Hill, I had permission to sign his name on all the thank-you letters, and I think it made a real difference — the highest-level signature you can get is worth pursuing, just don’t let that person actually write the letter themselves.

Rachel Muir: I love it. Anonymous asked — Alice, I’ll give you this one — should we send a thank-you letter for recurring donors, since we have an automated receipt in Bloomerang? Should it vary month to month?

Alice Ferris: In public media, I have a lot of sustaining donors, so what I do is: the initial setup of a recurring gift gets a specific “thank you so much for becoming a monthly donor to KAWC” message. Then, rather than thanking every single monthly gift, we send a quarterly follow-up — “thank you once again for being a monthly donor” — paired with a small perk. Since it’s an NPR station, I can offer NPR Plus, ad-free podcast access, at minimal cost to us. Maybe ten percent take advantage of it, and most say “oh, that’s great” and never actually sign up — same with comp tickets to an event. It’s a low-cost, sometimes no-cost thank-you gift that most people don’t even redeem — the invitation itself is the cultivation.

Rachel Muir: I love that Alice has an actual stewardship plan for these monthly donors — sending those little perks, even if unused, is such a great strategy, especially for public radio. I’ve seen orgs write twelve different monthly thank-yous and rotate them, and others that say upfront, “we’ll send you updates every quarter on your gift’s impact,” and then do exactly that. Different approaches work.

I have a question for Vanessa: we’re a team of one, just starting to segment our donors, but for now we only have one big list — since it’s year-end, any suggestions on what segments to prioritize first?

Vanessa Chase Lockshin: Mid-level givers — that’s consistently where I see the highest ROI on email, and I’ve run a lot of mid-level giving programs over the last ten years. I’d look at people giving roughly five hundred to two thousand dollars — that’s usually the sweet spot. There’s a lot you can do with them, especially with a matching gift. I have a client whose campaign lets a thousand-dollar corporate gift sponsor a week of a family’s stay at a home-away-from-home near the local hospital — as we brainstormed what else to do for mid-level donors, we realized a five-hundred-dollar gift with a match could fund the same thing, helping a family through a week of a child’s surgery. It’s a tight, specific offer.

Some of the magic in mid-level giving is looking at your own numbers to see what specific things or roles a gift at that level can fund, then figuring out whether a match makes that reachable for donors slightly below that tier, or a good stretch ask for people who’ve given that much before. My best tip: build a separate donation page for mid-level givers rather than sending them to your general page — give it two or three suggested amounts that match what’s in your email, so a thousand, fifteen hundred, or two thousand dollars doesn’t feel out of place the way it might on a page built for twenty-dollar gifts. It’s not much extra work, and you’ll see real results from that segmentation.

Rachel Muir: I love that. Gail, did you want to add something?

Gail Perry: I just loved how specific Vanessa’s match appeal was — it connects the donor immediately to the actual impact they can make. It’s not really about an amount, it’s “I can make this happen,” which is the best possible fundraising strategy there is.

Vanessa Chase Lockshin: It’s true — I had a client a few years back that helps children with complex health care needs across a wide range of issues. We calculated the average cost to help one child when a family came to them for support — about twenty-five hundred dollars — so twelve-fifty became our mid-level ask with a match, framed as “your gift of twelve-fifty, matched, will help one child whose family turns to us.” It was really successful. So get creative — look at your budgets and your data, that’s where a strong mid-level ask comes from.

Rachel Muir: Awesome. I’m going to let Ann run our poll — if you want to hear more from us and get more fundraising tips from Gail, Alice, and Vanessa, she’s going to put up a poll and pick a winner. What are we up to on the Uber Eats gift card today?

Ann Fellman: Two hundred and fifty dollars — if you’re a team of one, that’s lunch for a couple of weeks, or treat your whole team, or maybe take a donor out, since we’ve talked so much about thanking donors today. Up to you! I’m going to draw a name now... Michelle Casanova — hopefully you’re still around, Michelle, our team will send you a note.

Hopefully you’ve all enjoyed this week. If you’ve got more questions for Alice, Gail, Vanessa, or Rachel, or want a little help from Bloomerang, come check out our blog — the resources tab at bloomerang.com. Rachel’s written a ton on thank-yous and year-end appeals, and Gail, I came across some past webinars we’ve done with you too — so many good resources on everything we talked about today.

Go ahead and get your hands raised in the poll if you haven’t yet, and I’ll close it out. Thank you, Rachel, thank you, Vanessa, thank you, Gail, thank you, Alice, so much for your expertise and your time today — this was a lot of fun, and thank you all for joining us. Have a fantastic rest of your week, and I hope you all have a wonderful year-end fundraising season and beat your goals.

Rachel Muir: Yay, yay, thanks all!

Ann Fellman: Have a great day.

Rachel Muir: Bye, everybody.

Ann Fellman: Bye, everyone.