The single best way to spend your time in 2011
- Fri, January 14 2011
- Filed under: Fundraising essentials
The single most powerful thing you could possibly do this year is to focus your energies and creativity on the people who already support your cause. Quit sending the same thank-you form letters or emails out, over and over, and do something extraordinary FOR THEM.
Any corporate marketing professional worth their salt will tell you it’s cheaper to keep a customer than to win a new customer. The great marketers seek to surprise and delight their customers, over and over.
Yet nonprofit marketing folk and fundraisers often forget it’s better to do the same thing with donors. In fact, many of us focus far more on aquisition - finding new supporters - than amazing and delighting the ones we have. We obsess on the unconverted rather than celebrating the loyal.
Need inspiration?
The wonderful SOFII (Showcase of Fundraising Innovation and Inspiration) has a terrific series of shining examples of “donors first” practices here.
One of my favorites is below (details here). Imagine getting this in the mail as your thank-you.
The Little Book of Change was designed to bring to life a range of outcomes for children that had previously been presented in a statistical report. Individual stories of children and families are shown through letters, poems, stories, magazine articles and drawings. All the words are authentic and show a range of ways in which the supporter’s money has been used to ultimately make children’s lives better. A hard-backed version for donors who had given £100k or more was hand made with materials stuck-in like a scrap-book. The cheaper printed version for other supporters demonstrates the versatility of this product.
Comments
Wow I didn’t expect to find such a touching note on your blog..it could be so inspirational to so many. A heart-felt thanks for sharing - you brightened my day and taught me something! 
Love the post Katya. Iagree, it’s all about retaining the people that are already helping, they will be one of the driving forces in recruiting new people as well.
I wanted to tell you about another tool people can use to say thank you to those that support them called GoodKarmaCash. I work for GoodKarmaCash, and it was created with this purpose in mind; create another way to reward and recognize existing donors and volunteers, raising cause awareness, and injecting new life into the donor and volunteer community. All of this in a quick, easy, and free process for the participating organization. If you get a sec, check out the site at goodkarmacash.com and pass on to those that you think it would help.
I love your blog and will be reading a lot more of it now that I have found it.