Donor Stewardship

Make donor stewardship an integral part of your annual fund to move donors from a transactional to transformational relationship with your organization.

Like most nonprofits, you probably spend hours creating and debating the best way to say please in a personal and impactful way, through thoughtfully designed, multichannel fundraising campaigns, new donor acquisition, and lapsed donor reactivation.

But are you putting the same effort into saying thank you? Here’s why you should: Effective donor stewardship can significantly improve donor retention and shorten the length of time between gifts.

Whether you are just beginning to thoughtfully steward your donors, or you already have a plan in place, these three rules are the basis for all successful donor stewardship initiatives:

Be prompt. Be sure to thank a donor within two weeks of her gift. Sooner is better.
Report on the impact. Let the donor know how her gift made a difference and how her action fulfilled on the fundraising “offer” to which she responded.
Match the level of the gift. Your donor should be stewarded at a level appropriate to her gift amount and frequency.

Begin your donors’ relationship with you with a new donor welcome series.

Most charities don’t break even on donor acquisition costs for 18 – 24 months. Therefore, it is critical that your new donors stick with you over time. Taking the extra step of welcoming a new donor properly will affirm to her that she made the right choice by making a gift to your mission. And that increases the likelihood that she will stay engaged with you and evolve her giving behavior, from that characteristic of a transactional relationship to one that is characteristic of a transformational relationship.

A new donor welcome series includes many of the same features as a donor retention stewardship campaign: a variety of channels and tactics, from emails to handwritten notes to phone calls. However, unlike a retention campaign, a new donor welcome series not only acknowledges her first gift, but it has the added goal of introducing your new donor to your organization.

Your stewardship programs should be multichannel.

Most likely, your fundraising campaigns include direct mail, email, social, telephone, and more. But most campaigns narrow their stewardship programs to a form receipt, delivered in the same channel the donor made her gift. That’s not enough!

Even though your donor might give only through one or two channels, the most successful donor stewardship programs are multichannel. Multichannel communications often prompt engagement in multiple channels. Digital, like social or email, is a low-cost, high-impact way to let your donor know the importance of her gift. Adding telephone to your stewardship plans is a great way to welcome new donors or steward your transformational ones, like mid-level donors or sustainer and monthly donors.

Listen to your donors’ preferences.

Ultimately, the most important part of successful donor stewardship is listening to your donors. You can understand the donors who support your organization by conducting donor research, or even better — ask your donors! With a mailed, online, or telephone survey, you will gain insight into the priorities of your supporters.

More importantly, surveying your donors enables you to ask about preferred channels and how often they want to hear from you. Honoring her preferences deepens the donor relationship. However, don’t ask a donor about the channels she wants to communicate through and/or the frequency she wants to hear from you unless you are prepared to manage those preferences in your fundraising processes.

Love your donors so much they keep giving.

Donor stewardship is a vital part of the donor relationship. Donor fatigue is real. Stewarding your donors can help eradicate it.

Here are 12 tips to keep passion in your donor relationships:

Offer meaningful giving societies
Publicly recognize your donors
Give your donors opportunities for peer-to-peer fundraising
Send handwritten thank-you notes
Ask your donors for their feedback
Celebrate your donors’ giving milestones
Call them just to say thanks
Invite donors to upcoming events
Send a donor newsletter
Provide a sustainer opportunity, or other second gift offer
Be sure your donor’s name and gift amount are correct in your communications
Refer your acknowledgement offer back to the reason the donor gave