Beyond the ask: stewardship that scales

Ann Fellman: Hi, everybody. Welcome, and thanks for joining us. Our esteemed speaker and presenter today, Lynne Wester, just had her Wi-Fi go out as we were in the prep, so we are going to wait for her to join us. But you are in the right place. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Fundraiser Focus Week. I’m Ann Fellman, chief marketing officer at Bloomerang. Let’s just give it a minute. When you’re joining, come on in the chat and tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell us where you’re at, what city you’re in, what’s your weather today. I’m in Minneapolis. It’s sunny, but a little on the chilly side. Probably 40 degrees. So at least the snow is gone, and that’s exciting.

So we are just, yeah, I know. Rachel, totally, a huge fan of Lynne. We were having an awesome conversation, and then her Wi-Fi went out. I was like, you froze. So we are waiting for Lynne to get her Wi-Fi back to be able to join us. We might just start this a couple minutes past the hour once Lynne hops on. Fingers crossed she can get here, and then we can get started, and we’ll just go over a couple minutes and hope that’s okay. This is being recorded.

While we’re doing that, I’m going to go ahead and share my screen so you can take a look at a couple of slides, and I’ll do the housekeeping items while we’re waiting for Lynne. Okay, let’s see here. Tell us your weather. Oh, there’s Lynne. Even better.

Lynne Wester: Lynne’s on her phone because the Wi-Fi at the WeWork is not working. So we’re going to make it work today.

Ann Fellman: Lynne, on that, do I need slides to share? Do you have visuals that I can drive for you?

Lynne Wester: I want to see if I can do that for you really quickly, because they’re in Dropbox, so that would be great. We’re all just working in a world, y’all. We’re all just working in a world.

Ann Fellman: Yep.

Lynne Wester: So sorry I could not get back online.

Ann Fellman: That’s okay. I gave everyone a heads-up that the Wi-Fi went out.

Lynne Wester: Yeah. It’s out. It’s out.

Ann Fellman: So I’m going to just keep us here, and I will go through the housekeeping items right now, just verbally for everybody, so I can watch my email to get Lynne’s deck while we go. Today’s session is Fundraiser Focus Week. We do this once a quarter. It’s a jam-packed Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Thirty minutes, you are going to learn a ton. We are not going to do Q&A, but I want you to put your questions in the Q&A tab within your Zoom console, and we’re going to save those for Thursday. Our host, Rachel Muir, will guide us through an engaging conversation with all three speakers this week.

Today’s topic, you are in the right place: it is Beyond the Ask: Stewardship That Scales. And Lynne here, she is the founder of Donor Relations Group. So, Lynne, thanks for joining us. A couple other housekeeping items here. Thanks, Sharon. Yes, we’re recording, so you can get the recording. If you want to get a copy of content from our speakers this week, just go ahead and message or connect directly with Lynne on that front. And while we’re doing that, okay, I’m doing two things at once here, so just bear with me while I grab slides. Okay, I’ve got this. I’m going to download those just so they’re local.

Lynne Wester: Thanks, everybody, for your patience. I am in a WeWork, and apparently their internet decided to stop working four minutes before the webinar. So that’s okay. We all have dealt with things in our lives, and so we’re just going to roll with the punches here.

Today I’m going to talk to you a little bit about, we’ve got a fast-paced 30 minutes, about having a giving day or an event. My slides are particular to giving day, Giving Tuesday, whatever you’d like. And I will tell you that I think the most important part of your giving day is actually the follow-up and what you do after. We know that these are wonderful ways to acquire donors. Maybe it’s not an in-person event; maybe it’s an online event or remote event. But that is a really great way to acquire a donor. What do you do after you acquire a donor? You have to retain them. So we really want to think about that and how we can retain those donors, and I want to give you that opportunity. Ann is going to show us some slides, hopefully. But if not, I can walk you through the steps here. Oh, she’s got them.

Ann Fellman: And you see, this is going to be a little bit crazy. Ignore all my tabs.

Lynne Wester: Yeah. No worries.

Ann Fellman: Can you all see the keys to giving day stewardship?

Lynne Wester: We just need you to close a window to accept all, I think.

Ann Fellman: There’s an Accept All, you’ve got it in case.

Lynne Wester: Okay. And they’re great. I’ll just say “next slide, Ann.” Someone suggested I should connect my phone as a hotspot, and I’m worried that would take four minutes of your time, and I want to value everybody’s time today. So we’ll do it this way. There’s always a solution, just like in nonprofit work.

So we’ve acquired our donors, and we’re going to head to that next slide, Ann, and I’m so grateful. I have a friend here. The first step is that we need to send them a tax receipt. I think this sounds very basic to some of you, but I will tell you that you’d be surprised. There are still organizations that don’t receipt all of their donors. And yes, the IRS and the CRA say that it’s $250. But in all reality, I think it’s important to receipt every gift. Ann is going to flip to the next slide and show you some examples. The receipt is the first step in the relationship that we’re going to have with our donors, and that receipt really should have the dollar amount, the date the transaction was made, and IRS, CRA, or other tax entity language for you. So that is good news. That’s step number one. If we go to the second slide, there’s another receipt sample for you.

This is from the Hawaii Community Foundation. I hope every one of you keeps Hawaii in your thoughts right now. They are undergoing another disaster. In August of 2023, the Maui fires happened, and now there’s tremendous flooding across different islands in Hawaii, Maui and Oahu. We were asked to come in and help the Hawaii Community Foundation retain their donors because, as you can imagine, when the Maui wildfires happened, over 250,000 new donors were acquired through that event. So an event doesn’t have to be a gala. It doesn’t have to be an auction. What we’re talking about is that an event could be a disaster. An event could be a giving day. It could be Giving Tuesday. I don’t want you just to think about traditional events, because as we know, the hard part about traditional fundraising events is that we don’t raise a lot of money for the amount of time and effort that’s spent. So broaden your horizons to what post event follow-up could be.

We know we’re going to send out a receipt. Ideally, we would do that within 24 to 48 hours of the time of the gift. If we can’t accomplish that, then maybe less than three to five days. But donors need to know that their gift was received, that we processed it, and that they have their receipt. So that’s a really important step. On our next slide, step two. Step one is receipt. Step two is a personalized thank you.

The best thank-yous are sent in the way in which the donor gave. If you’re having a giving day, a lot of your gifts are going to come in online. It is perfectly okay to receipt, thank, and communicate with donors in the way in which they give. In fact, donors tell us often that nonprofits cause confusion when I give online and then you mail me a tax receipt. A lot of people don’t like that. And instead, if I write you a check, mail me a tax receipt or mail me a thank-you.

Why is this step two? Because our goal with donors is to get to seven communications per gift, per donor, before we ask for more money. That’s utopia. That’s happy land. But we want to strive to do many touches with donors over time before we ask them to give again. A thank-you and a receipt are separate. The receipt can have thank-you language, but the receipt is for the transaction. It has a dollar amount in it. A thank-you never has a dollar amount in it. The way I would like to relate that is thanking and receipting are like a restaurant. The bill you get that says thank you at the top, that’s your receipt for the food, the drinks, whatever you had there. The manager stopping by the table and saying, “Ann, I really appreciate you being here. You and Rachel come in every Thursday night, and we know we can count on your business,” that is a thank-you or an acknowledgment.

These are some samples. This is one from Tennessee. A video also would work, but I love this one because they gave you a discount to their on-campus bookstore. Let’s hit the next slide. Thanks, Ann.

You could also send a text. Team Rubicon, along with Charity Water, are kind of my nonprofits I look up to when it comes to donor communications. Team Rubicon texts donors during disaster fundraising, so an event, right, to say thank you. Folks text. Ninety-plus percent of texts are answered within three minutes of receipt. They’re answered, they’re seen. If you’re not yet embracing text as a channel, I highly encourage you to embrace text as a channel for your donors. You can send updates, you can send links. What you don’t want to do is only text donors to ask them for money. So thank-yous can come in all different formats. You can do email, video, text. You could write a handwritten note or send a letter. Either way, that personalized thank-you is really important. Next slide.

You can also use social media. How do you do that? Well, you work on the idea that donors like recognition, and they like to be part of communities. Social media is part of their community. So if you’ve had a Giving Tuesday or an event, they might want to show off that they’ve given to your nonprofit. Again, we’re not talking about dollar amounts. We’re not talking about public walls or anything like that. But you can have people submit their social media handles, and then you can thank them directly. If you go to the next slide, I can show you the mechanics of what that looks like. Right here, at the end of your giving form, you can add a cute little form that says, “Hey, what’s your Twitter handle, or X, or whatever you want to call it today? What’s your Instagram? What’s your Snapchat? What’s your TikTok?” They submit that at the end of their gift, and then you can thank them individually for their giving using social. It’s opt-in only. We would never do this to people who didn’t want it. But I will tell you who really loves social media thanking, and that’s corporations. Thanking a corporate donor on social media gives them social currency, right? They love hearing shout-outs on social media. So if you’re not yet thanking your corporate donors on social after an event, that’s another great way to have a big lift with a little bit of effort. I just want you to think about that.

So we’ve hit step two. We’ve got a receipt, and we’ve got a thank-you that’s personalized. Now we’re going to go on to step three on this next slide, and that is a wrap-up piece of your event. I find that so many people miss the mark on these, or have opportunity, that I want to show you some samples here on the next slide of a good wrap-up piece. I’ve given you three different samples, one from Lit World, one from the University of Queensland in Australia, and one from Virginia Tech. A video is always a great idea, and you can premake the video and then just drop in the numbers that you total. In my mind, all of these touches are things that you would have ready to go, written before your event, and then you would drop in the pertinent numbers or details that you need. You want your messaging to be donor-centered, so thank you for what they’ve made possible, and you want to express your gratitude. Eventually, we’re going to get to the next one, which is showing the impact. But this is just a wrap-up. So, “Because of you,” right, this is the wrap-up of the day, of the event, of the time period, of the disaster, things like that.

Step four is that we’re going to report back what we did with the money. Penelope Burk, who wrote Donor-Centered Fundraising, and I and many others have done tons of research, and donors say they need two things in order to give again. So you’ve had your event, and they need to give again. We need to thank them, ideally seven touches, without an “s,” and then we need to tell them what their money did, the impact. We can report back the impact of their support. On this next slide, we’re going to tell them not only was their money spent, but here’s the good that we did with it. Here’s an example of that. There it is: “Your donation has made a lasting impact. Here’s what we raised, and we appreciate your generosity.” Then if we go to the next slide, we can actually show a story of an individual, an animal, the environment, whoever was impacted by that giving day. That’s the story we want to tell.

You can’t do this right after your event, because let me tell you something. I know nonprofits. I’ve been doing this 25 years. You can’t spend the money fast enough to report back right away. So, again, this is step four. We’ve done a tax receipt. We’ve done a thank-you. We’ve done a wrap-up of the event, and now we’re reporting back: here’s what we did with your money. If you go to the next slide, there’s also an opportunity for additional engagement. I got this from the University of Michigan, and they do a six-month hallmark. I love it because the subject line of the email says something along the lines of, “We know what you did six months ago, and we’re very proud of you.” A university cycle might be a bit longer than your cycle at a nonprofit that’s not a university, but they then say, “And here’s what we’ve done. Here’s what you’ve helped accomplish.” And more importantly, “Be on the lookout for next year.” So, again, you’ve got your wrap-up piece, and now we’re reporting back. Next slide, please.

The next thing you may do after events is get feedback from your donors. There’s a famous adage that says, “If you want money, ask for advice, and if you want advice, ask for money.” Nowhere is it truer than in fundraising. How many of you survey your donors after every event? I’m a big fan of micro surveys, three to five questions asking about how they felt. Getting feedback from your donors is a massive donor relations and donor experience touch. Think about all the brands you interact with on a daily basis. I just traveled to Chicago, and Delta was like, “How was the flight? Did you like the snacks?” And I was like, “Everything was great, but I waited three and a half hours in TSA. That was not right.” Delta didn’t have to do this, but brands are consistently surveying their customers. Why? One, because it works. Two, because they want feedback, and we need to be open and welcoming to feedback as well. And three, it makes their customers stickier. They stay longer. So consider a survey as part of your reporting back, and then tell them what you’re going to improve on in the next year.

All right, we’ve hit step four. Now we’ve got step five. Our next slide is, oh, yes, I forgot, because I can’t see the slides. The other thing you can do, all of us, I’m sure you are, I’m hoping you are, is building our monthly donor base. If you’re not building your monthly donor base, I want you to look up Erica Waasdorp, W-A-A-S-D-O-R-P. She is the OG, the wonderful teacher of monthly giving. I want you to look her up and build your monthly giving program. What are you doing for your monthly donors on those event days? We’ll ask them to increase their giving. That’s a great one. I know Rachel will drop Erica Waasdorp’s name in the chat, because she’s a legend. There are other people who claim to be monthly experts. Erica’s the GOAT.

So that’s what we want to do when we think about our steps after an event. We want to instantly receipt. Again, regardless of dollar amount, we want donors to know that we’re responsible for their giving, that they are going to get a prompt receipt. If you’re using Bloomerang, Bloomerang makes it super easy to do that. Then we want to send a thank-you. Ideally, we want to thank in the way in which a donor gives. If I give on my phone, if I give you Apple Pay or Google Pay or Venmo, then you might want to text me. If I give on my computer and I fill out your giving form and give with a credit card, you might want to send me an email. If I write you a check, and I don’t own a checkbook, my bank won’t give me checkbooks without paying for them and I’m not doing that, but if I did, then maybe I want a letter or a handwritten note.

Speaking of thanking individually, I have a super hack for all of you, regardless of whether you’re doing event-based follow-up or non-event-based follow-up, and that is your board. I travel all over and help nonprofits. If I hear it twice a day, I hear it 10,000 times a day: “My board hates fundraising.” I don’t know many people whose board jumps at the chance to fundraise. I train boards, and I say to them, “I don’t need you to ask for money. No problem. What I need you to do is be a gratitude ambassador. The way that you can be involved in fundraising, dear lovely board member, is to thank donors.” What do I have them do? At the beginning of every board meeting, I have them write five handwritten thank-yous to first-time donors. Maybe you schedule time after every event you have, whether it’s in person or digital, to have your board members record videos, send texts, write handwritten thank-you notes, but be involved and engaged in the gratitude process. That is one of the best things a board can do, and it builds great habits for your board members. I don’t need you to ask for money. I need you to make asking for money possible, and the way to do that is by thanking donors. If you have a board member who says they’re not comfortable thanking donors, that’s a different conversation for a different day. Not ideal, but we can work through those things. But you’ve got to have your board really get involved in the thanking.

Then you want to send a wrap-up piece. Here’s the thing I want to hug all my nonprofit friends who would like a hug and say to you: do not let perfect be the enemy of good and done. I try to have all of these communications prepopulated, prewritten before the event, because you know that in addition to being tired from the event, your feet burn on the bottom if you’re doing an in-person event. You’re just exhausted, and the follow-up doesn’t happen if you don’t preplan it. So I preplan my wrap-up piece. I try to use social as much as I can. Social media that’s shareable, that’s fun, that’s light, that if I can mechanize it and thank donors individually, that’s great. But at least talk about and have a plan for social media and the relevance of that social media after your events, not just to advertise the event, but after the event. I really want you to think about that.

Not only do you have to spend the money that you’ve raised, then you have to tell donors what you did. The number one reason donors give to a nonprofit is to make a difference. They want the before and the after. So what I’m going to do is write or video or chat with them that process of, “Here’s what we did with your money. We put it to work, and here’s the impact it had.”

And then finally, if a fundraising event, a giving day, a Giving Tuesday isn’t right for you, I want you to be strategic about what giving days mean for your organization, or what events mean for your organization. I find that far too often, nonprofits are overdoing it with events, far too many, far too much effort, and not putting that effort into retaining the donors. So I’m going to challenge each and every one of you that if you have events where you are acquiring donors, take time to plan in the follow-up. Take the time to figure out what your retention strategy is. In an ideal world, take a look before you do the event and compare event retention to your regular everyday retention of your direct mail donors. Because the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, the data that we’re getting from other partners out there, is telling us that our retention is sliding. And, folks, let me tell you, the key to retention is being nice to the donors after they make their gift and doing these touches. We can’t just treat them like ATMs and transactions and expect different results.

I’m going to go to the next slide, which should have my contact information on it. Please feel free to connect with me. There it is: donorrelations.com. Here’s the good news, and Rachel is a good friend, and she’ll tell you this: there are over 15,000 samples of these communications. So if you didn’t find what you were looking for in today’s slides, you can go there for free and download any of those samples. You can reach out to me, Lynne Wester, on LinkedIn. And then on Thursday, I will be somewhere with better Wi-Fi, I promise you. Please go ahead and submit all your questions into the Q&A, because Rachel is going to filter through them all, use her genius brain, and find out which ones you want us to answer with my co-panelists to make this great.

Just a small note before Ann comes back on. I just appreciate the grace. I think all of us need to have grace and understanding for each other, patience. You’ve got to pack your patience some days. And also know that if it doesn’t work out, it’s going to be okay. Some days you’re the windshield, and some days you’re the mosquito. And the Wi-Fi just said, “You know what, Lynne? You’re being a little pesky, so quit flying around.” And of course the Wi-Fi comes back up at 1:27 p.m. my time, because why would it not? But I appreciate all your grace, and I hope at least every one of you got one good nugget out of today’s fast and furious 30 minutes. I’m just so grateful for Bloomerang and Rachel for inviting me. Ann, what would you like to say to close this out?

Ann Fellman: Well, Lynne, thank you. You know what? Sometimes you just gotta roll with it, but she knows this stuff inside and out, and I appreciate it.

Piece of cake. I’m going to stop sharing really quick, but if you want to learn more, I’m going to launch a poll quiz for you all to answer, because we want to support you. At Bloomerang, we’re here to help you make fundraising easier and help all nonprofits thrive. We have great content and resources. If you want to learn more from Lynne, raise your hand here. This is a great way to do that. We can get you all linked up with Lynne. If you want to learn more about Bloomerang, you can even do surveys of your donors within Bloomerang. You can communicate with them, you can manage them, you can put in monthly giving programs and watch that grow. We’ve seen a lot of success. There’s a lot that we can share and teach you, too, in terms of technology that makes it really easy for you to focus on the relationship and do all the thinking and all that good stuff. We want to make it really easy for you.

While you’re raising your hand or completing the poll here to just let us know, also, if you’re interested in a copy of the slides from today, or throughout this whole week, make sure you’re back here tomorrow at the same time. We’ve got another great session tomorrow, and again, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, join us, and we’re going to have a lot of fun. On the panel on Thursday, we’re going to come back and answer all the questions that you asked. So make sure you get those questions in there. I’m going to go ahead and end the poll, but I’ll leave it open for a second because I want to, really quick, get Lynne’s LinkedIn on the screen for everybody to see. Forward slash Lynne Wester. Hopefully you all can see us. Let me choose my desktop. Can y’all see us? There you go: Lynne, donorrelations.com. You can find her on LinkedIn. Just look for Lynne Wester and go ahead and take a look at that.

Lastly, if you want to connect with other fundraisers, I’m going to go back to the slide. We’re getting fundraisers together in Saint Louis, so save the date. If you’re looking for a conference to go to, if you want to connect with like-minded folks, this is a great place to do that. We put on GiveCon, and it is about helping the sector learn more. We bring in excellent thought leaders, people like Lynne, like Rachel Muir, who you’re going to hear from later this week, and others who are there presenting on these types of topics and much more. If that’s something you’re interested in, join us in Saint Louis this year. With that, I think we are done. So, again, remember to put the questions you had today for Lynne in the chat so that we have a record of that. If you put them in the Q&A, great, and if you put them in the chat, we’ll be able to pull that too. So we will see you tomorrow. Thanks to everybody.

Lynne Wester: Thanks to you, Ann, for being so wonderful.

Ann Fellman: And you know what? We’ll just roll with it, and we have a good time. Lynne, thanks for your insights. Thanks again. Loved it, loved it, as always.

Lynne Wester: Thanks. Thanks.

Ann Fellman: Have a good one, everybody. See you tomorrow. Bye-bye.