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chapter SEVEN
The Very Human Need for Appreciation

Early in my fundraising career, I learned a valuable lesson about thank‐you notes. I had gone to work for an advocacy group working on women's health issues. The organization was run as a collective, with two utterly overworked staff people and 40 activist volunteers. The organization had won recognition for its work to expose and finally remove from the market a dangerous birth‐control device and for championing reproductive rights issues. Several months before I began working there, a woman who had read about the organization's victories in the newspaper sent $25. She did not receive a thank‐you note. She did, however, receive the organization's newsletter, and she heard about them from time to time.

A year after making her gift, she received a form letter requesting a renewal. She threw it away.

Some time later, this woman learned that a friend of hers was a volunteer in the collective. “That group sounds good,” she told her friend, “but they don't even have it together enough to send thank‐you notes for gifts. I can't imagine that they are really fiscally sound or that they use money properly.”

Her friend defended the organization: “We do really good work. We don't send thank‐you notes because we are too busy doing other stuff. It is not fair to conclude that we don't use your money properly just because you don't get an acknowledgment.”

The one‐time donor replied, “It is fair. It is my only contact with them. They claim to want a broad base of support, yet they show no regard for their supporters. But since you vouch for them, I'll give them something.” She sent $15. (As stressed throughout this book, please note the power of personal asking as demonstrated here.)

I was hired during the year between this donor's $25 gift and her $15 one. I had been brought up in the school of thank‐you notes, from thanking my grandmother for birthday gifts when I could barely hold a pencil to writing thank‐you notes for every gift that came into the seminary where I had my first fundraising job. So, without much thought, in response to this $15 gift, I sent this woman a scrawled three‐line thank‐you note: “Thanks for your gift of $15. It's a help financially and also a great morale boost. We'll keep in touch.”

Two weeks later, this woman sent $100. Again, I scrawled a thank‐you note, with an extra line about her generosity. A few months later, she sent $1,500. I wrote another thank‐you note and asked whether I could come and see her. She turned out to be both quite wealthy and very supportive of women's rights. She told me that she usually gave relatively small initial donations to organizations to see how they would respond. She wanted to see how much regard they had for people giving small gifts. She said, “If I send $500 or $1,000, almost any organization will thank me. Many grassroots groups talk a good line about not making class distinctions and everyone being welcomed, but the only people they really care about are the program officers of foundations and wealthy donors.” She had decided to give money only to community‐based organizations that had proven that they valued all gifts. I was flabbergasted that a sign of proof could be a sloppy three‐line thank‐you note, but for her it was better proof than a longer form letter with her name typed in, and certainly far better than no acknowledgment at all.

Since then I have seen over and over that a simple handwritten note or computer‐generated thank‐you letter with a personal note as a postscript can do more to build donor loyalty than almost any other form of recognition. Of all the things you send donors, the thank‐you note is the one thing you can almost be certain the donor will read. Smart organizations use the thank‐you note to describe briefly a program they are proud of or some recognition or victory they have achieved, and they add a personal element. The idea is to thank the donor and to give that person an easy anecdote or interesting fact that they might share with a friend or neighbor.

Unfortunately, thank‐you notes tend to be one thing that organizations are sloppy or even thoughtless about. They either don't send them, send them weeks late, or send a preprinted card or note with no personal note added. These practices are unjustifiable. Sending thank‐you notes too easily falls far too low on people's work priority lists. It has to be placed at the top—hence the title of this chapter.

—KK

PEOPLE NEED TO BE APPRECIATED

Beleaguered development directors often ask me why people like thank‐you notes so much. Why don't they like the action alerts or the website? There is far more content in those places, and a lot more money has been spent on those and other communication vehicles. Probably, reasons vary. Some donors see thank‐you notes as a sign that the organization really does value all gifts. Others may just like to know that their gifts have been received. But most often, people like to feel appreciated, and while some highly enlightened types might be able to get by with the warm feeling that comes from doing the right thing, the majority of us lesser mortals want someone else to have noticed our good deeds. Thank‐you notes are polite and gracious and, most of all, they are the right thing to do. (Moreover, for gifts of $250 or more, an acknowledgment is required by law.)

Build a culture in your organization in which everyone is a donor, and thank everyone. We all value being thanked for what we do.

DON'T DO AS I SAY

What about the donor who claims not to want a thank‐you note, or the one who even more strongly states that thank‐you notes are a waste of time and money?

The donor who claims not to want a thank‐you note should nevertheless receive an email or a thank‐you call. Again, if the donor has given $250 or more you can explain that the acknowledgment is a legal requirement and one you are happy to comply with because you truly appreciate the gift. People who say they don't want to be thanked are usually genuinely trying to save the organization time and money. You will have greater loyalty if you thank them anyway, using a different method than a written note sent by snail mail. When these donors say, “You shouldn't have done that” or “That's really not necessary,” they often mean “Thank you for taking the time. I can't believe someone would bother to notice me.”

Overall, experience shows that, all else being equal, when you thank donors you are more likely to keep them, and when you don't, you are more likely to lose them. Of course, there will be exceptions to this rule, but it is almost impossible to figure out who is really an exception and who is just pretending to be, so thank everyone and save yourself worrying about it.

DO IT NOW

How can you most efficiently thank your donors, and who should do it? Perhaps the most important rule about thanking donors is that no matter who is doing it—from the board chair to an office volunteer—gifts should be acknowledged promptly: ideally within three days of receipt, and certainly within a week in any circumstance. The official thank‐you note coming from the office does not need to be signed by someone who knows the donor, but if a board or staff member knows the donor, they should be informed of the gift so that they can thank the donor personally by phone or email. If you are fundraising properly, you should receive lots of donations from people you don't know. Volunteers and board members can send thank‐you notes to these donors. Writing or personalizing computer‐generated thank‐you notes is a good way to involve board members who are resistant to asking for money, and this activity rightly counts toward their board obligation to help raise money.

LOGISTICS AND CONTENT

I once received a call from an organization I like but to which I had never given. The caller was personable and enthusiastic. They were raising money for a great campaign, and I donated $100 right then. A few days later, I received a form thank‐you note that said, “Thank you for your gift of $___” with $100 written into a blank space. The final line of the note was, “No goods or services were exchanged for your gift,” followed by “Sincerely,” and the name of the executive director. I felt a visceral letdown. What happened with the campaign? Did it even exist? Had I been duped? Was $100 just not enough to be worth one or two sentences about the campaign? In my experience, this is not an unusual occurrence—a great appeal is made and people donate, but instead of building on that enthusiasm, the organization dissipates it as quickly as possible with a thoughtless thank‐you.

—KK

Because the thank‐you note is the only correspondence you can be certain a donor will read, it makes sense to spend time crafting interesting content for it and having that content match the content of the appeal. Most database programs let you automatically generate thank‐yous, but it's important to change the content of that programmed note. Even if the appeal is fairly general, the content of the thank‐you note should be specific and should change every two months. In addition, if possible, add a personal note to the computer‐generated thank‐you. For people who donate online, usually an automatic receipt is generated immediately; and the content of that message can also be changed.

Sample Computer‐Generated Thank‐You Notes

Here are some examples of changing content in a computer‐generated letter. The first is great for giving donors an immediate sense of the kinds of things an organization like this one needs in order to run properly:

Dear Freda,

Thank you so much for your gift of $100. We have put it right to work! As it turned out, your gift came at a particularly crucial moment, as the coffeemaker in our community room (where all our ESL classes as well as our AA and NA meetings are held) had just given its last gasp. We were able to buy a new, heavy‐duty coffeemaker on sale, which wouldn't have been possible without your gift.

I am hoping you will be able to come to our art auction next month. We'll be selling the works of some well‐known local artists and featuring paintings and sculptures by some of the residents of our treatment program. The works are quite excellent to have made it into this juried event. You'll receive an invitation in the next week or two.

Again, thank you so much! I look forward to staying in touch.

Here are some that are more focused on programs:

Dear Annie Mae,

I just came from an eviction hearing for one of our members. I feel really good because we won and we got some damages to boot! Then, I opened your gift of $35. Thanks! I feel like you are a part of this victory.

You wouldn't believe how many people came to our community meeting last night—more than 50! People are hopping mad about this incinerator proposal, and I am feeling confident that we may be able to defeat it and finally get the recycling bill passed. Your gift of $50 will go a long way in helping with community outreach. Thanks for thinking of us at this time.

If you have a matching campaign or a goal for an annual campaign, then refer to that:

Your gift of $100 will be matched dollar for dollar. Your gift brought us to nearly $2,000 raised in just two months!

If the person has been giving for a while, make a note of that:

You have been helping us for more than five years, and I just want you to know that your consistent support has been instrumental in these victories:

Mandating anti‐bullying curriculum in the schools

Providing legal support for whistleblowers at Giant Oil Corporation

Passing legislation to fine corporations with a pattern of allowing bullying or sexual harassment to go unchecked

These were long fights, and we are not done. But you have been there with us and I hope we can continue to count on your support.

Adding a Personal Note on a Computer‐Generated Thank‐You. “Personal notes” from people the donor does not know have become ubiquitous and have lost some of their effectiveness. Part of the problem is that the note is often a generic, bland comment that is handwritten. “Thanks again!” or “Your gift really helps” are not personal. If you do add a personal note, make it interesting or invitational: “If you can come to the Solano Street Fair on Saturday, please find our booth and introduce yourself. I'll be there most of the day.” Or “Check out the new infographic on our website. We have gotten good feedback about it. Let us know what you think.” Or “I notice you live near Green Street. The ice cream store at Green and Market was the first small business to agree to pay a living wage to their employees. If you go in there, you might thank them for that.”

In other words, if you are going to the effort of writing a personal note, try to have it connect to the person.

Handwritten Thank‐You Notes

Because your database can be programmed to generate personalized notes, save your handwritten thank‐you notes (in addition to a formal donation acknowledgment letter) for longtime donors, frequent donors, donors who are also volunteers, or any donors who go beyond what might be expected of a general donor. Some organizations take the time to handwrite all their thank‐you notes, and I applaud that while also wondering what they could be doing for donor development with the time they are handwriting notes. You may want to consider being more judicious in your use of the handwritten note so that when someone receives one, it is really special.

If at all possible, people should come to the office to write the notes, and only the most loyal, trustworthy people should ever be allowed to write notes at home. It is just too tempting to put them aside at home. Also, information about a person's gift, while not secret, is not something you want sitting around someone's living room.

The only requirement for handwritten thank‐you notes is legible handwriting. The format is simple.

The Friendly Form Letter

The least effective option for thank‐you notes, but one you sometimes have to resort to, is the form letter. If you use a form letter, acknowledge that is it impersonal, but explain why you're using this method. Here's an example:

A thank‐you note will double as a receipt (required for gifts over $250) if you include the specific amount of money the donor gave. All thank‐you notes need to have a note: “No goods or services were received in exchange for this gift.” You can have that statement preprinted in small font on your thank‐you cards or notes along with the logo and mission statement of the organization.

Thank‐You Calls

Donors you are very close to, who give often, or who you think have probably stretched to make the size of gift they have given should be called and thanked personally as soon as their money comes in. Generally, this will not take much time, as you will likely reach voice mail. When leaving a message, do not mention the amount of the gift; just say, “We received your donation today and just wanted to thank you so much! We are really close to our goal now. You'll get a formal thank‐you letter soon. Hope all is well.” If you do reach a donor, call when you have a few minutes for a conversation if they want to talk. This is sometimes a nice way to get to know your donors without having a request for money as the motivation.

COMMON QUESTIONS

Can We Thank People by Email?

If you regularly correspond with someone by email, if you solicited the gift by email, if the donor gives entirely online, or if you know they travel a great deal or perhaps spend winters in one place and summers in another, then use email to thank them. Email has already taken the place of much paper correspondence, which means that as snail mail becomes less common, many people actually value a paper thank‐you note more because it will be rare. Send a note by snail mail when you can. Almost everyone complains about getting too much email but rarely do we hear someone say they hate how much personal mail they get.

How Do You Address People You Don't Know?

There are a few salutation options for people you don't know: first name only (Dear Robert), first and last names (Dear Robert Park), or title (Dear Mr. Park). Many people are starting to use the gender‐neutral salutation Mx. (Dear Mx. Park). There is no right or wrong answer on this point and no way to avoid possibly offending someone. One clear commonsense guideline is to write to the person according to the way the person writes to you. A letter signed “Mrs. Alphonse Primavera” should be answered in kind. (Ditto for people who use “Dr.” or “Rev.”)

Don't waste a lot of time worrying about the salutation. People may be put off by an incorrect salutation, but it won't cause them to stop giving to the organization. People who will stop giving you money because you don't know whether they prefer to be called by their first name, last name, Your Highness, or whatever are probably not going to become regular donors anyway. More important is to make sure donors’ names are spelled correctly. People are far more attached to their names than to their honorifics.

Do All Donors Receive a Thank‐You?

The answer is always yes. You have no idea how much a gift of $25 or $50 or $500 means to someone. You need to act as though you would like to receive that amount or more again. You also don't know whether people determine whether to donate again on whether or not they receive a thank‐you note. Why take a chance?

Keep up with thank‐you notes as gifts come in. Each thank‐you is a link to the donor and, in addition to its being the right and gracious thing to do, you should see it as paving the way for the next gift.

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