The underlying idea of successful fundraising is that the same number of people working the same amount of time can raise more and more fund each year. The way to make this happen, you have to understand that, is by strengthening relationships with your donors. People give the most to those organizations with which they feel the greatest connection. It is your job to build that connection, and that means getting to know your donors.
You have to know about one first step: a donor survey.
To get donation you have to know about the donors through donor survey targeting the certain contributors that you cab define as your “Donor pool”.
Maybe you can’t get certain desired donation from donors yet. Perhaps the concept of “Donor pool” still gives you snort a windy and shake your head. Even if that is the case, you can still use the information to construct your own survey. The survey can be one of a series of simple steps that are useful for building relationships with donors of all ranges in organizations of all sizes.
The suggestion of the survey idea is based on previous experience as other NGOs pitched the survey to their donors as offering them a way to tell them how and how often they would like to be approached for funds. However, here also included some questions that provided with information about their specific interests and level of commitment to the organization.
The survey itself, and the many ways they followed up on it, gave them a multitude of opportunities to learn about their donors and to take steps to build their personal relationships with them. The experience was so positive that they continued another survey.
What is to be Asked
After a short introduction entitled, “Tell us your preferences!” the first survey is to be contained certian short sections. As much as possible, survey respondents can give a series of possible answers that they merely have to check off. These are the sections and their content:
- What information would you like about the work? You can ask donors if they hear from you too much, not enough, or the right amount. You can also ask what areas of your work most interest them, and if they would like to receive more information, attend events, meet with charitable program staff, or visit the offices. Including the complete list of program areas for them to check off reminded them of all of the exciting work you do. You can also give them the chance to raise any questions or concerns about your work.
- What brings you to the Charitable work? You can ask donors what concern(s) best describe why they became involved in your organization and give them a list of possibilities to check off.
- Tell about your preferences for giving. You can request to donors that your plan is to be sent them occasional updates plus an appeal letter certain times a year, and asked if you could continue to mail to them on this schedule.
- When you use the Internet. You can asked for donors’ e-mail addresses and plugged your Web site.
- You can ask to donors – May we call you? If you could call them at work or at home and, if so, to provide their phone numbers. They could also indicate if they preferred not to be called at all.
- Will you help us mobilize funds? You can make a one-sentence pitch outlining your intent to expand and solidify your funding base, then asked if they would be willing to increase their giving, provide names of potential NGO supporters, and contact any of the people they named.
- Use your will power! Let donors know that you have a planned giving expert available to assist them with their will or other planned gifts. You can recruit volunteers for this purpose. You can ask donors if they would like to take advantage of these services or if they have already named the NGO in a Society or Trust or Nonprofit Company.
- And finally, You can offered donors the chance to receive a copy of your general support proposal, which you can submit to many of your NGO funders.
- Comments and suggestions. The final section provided space for them to give us their general feedback.
To ensure that you can be able to identify survey responses, you put a mailing label at the top with the donor’s name and address. You can include a short note from your president reinforcing your request that the donors tell us their preferences, and included a return envelope.
The response rate can be tremendous! After a single mailing, you can receive more than expected surveys. YOu can decide to mail the survey one more time to non-respondents and can receive additional surveys. The response rate can be an astonishing! The response that will be confirmed the fundraising axiom that donors value and enjoy having the opportunity to interact with an organization.
The Real Relationship Building:
How You can Follow Up
As you will see, after initial survey you can learn a lot about how best to do follow up as you will go along. First, immediately sent each respondent a short note thanking them for filling out the survey and saying you’ll get back to them soon with ‘the results’. For your second survey, as described below, you can decide to skip this first note.
The aggregate survey results can give you a good sense of your donors’ motivations for joining the social work servive and their overall support for different programs. You can used this information in choosing topics and messages for your special appeals and occasional updates. However, the real value of the survey will be the individualized information on your contributors. You can quickly prepare individualized responses to each donor who can reply.
Your first priority is suggested for donors to feel that they had been heard. You can right sentences to match different responses, such as “We understand that you would only like to be mailed once a year, and will honor that preference from here on out.” You cam code all donors either MD: regular mail schedule; M1: one appeal only; or M2: two appeals per year. Another example: “We have taken note of your preference to be called at home but not at work, and have updated our records accordingly.” Then simply cut and pasted these sentences into a short cover letter, again thanking them for their response.
For those who is expecting for additional information on a particular program area, you can include a short memo from the appropriate program director, thanking the donor for their interest and giving them a brief update on the opportunities and progress in that area. You can take consultancy to drafted these in the development section, then have them to be edited and approved by the program directors. You can also notify program staff to be prepared to field mobile calls from interested donors who receive these memos; your communications and program director can receive a few calls.
For donors who indicated a willingness to share names of potential supporters, you can send three or four forms (they could photocopy them if necessary) to fill out and send back in a return envelope. Each form has space for the name and contact information for the prospect and boxes to check to let you know if you can use the donor’s name in contacting them or if they would prefer to contact this persons themselves, who can indicate willingness to share names, about half actually did. You can write a timely letter to each of the individual prospects, with a copy to the donors who provide the name to show them that you have to made use of the information. You can also let them know when any of those prospects became donors, and can thank them again for sharing the names.
The donors can indicate an interest in naming you in their will and received a short letter from your planned giving expert inviting them to call if they have any questions or required help. Both have since named you in their will, one with help and one without.
The handful of donors who will provide e-mail addresses were thanked for doing so, and in a couple of cases you can use e-mail to contact them with a short update or other note. You can also send these people an invitation to receive occasional e-mail updates, once you’ll establish a system for doing so.
A number of donors indicated that they did not want to be called at all. As you haven’t will make it clear that you like to call donors to thank them for donations, you can’t tell if they mean that they don’t want to be called to be thanked, or will be indicating an aversion to being solicited by phone. Because of the ambiguity of your question, you are honoring their responses, writing a note to thank them when they give and indicating that by doing so you are honoring their request not to be called. They may not get the benefit of a personal call, but they will definitely feel thanked and respected!
Most donors say that they hear from you just the right amount, but some complained about receiving too much mail. Several asked to receive only one appeal a year. For these donors, you can open your year-end appeal with something like this: “You have requested that you only ask you for a contribution once a year. That time is now!” The donor’ll indicate that she would be “happy to increase my gift, but only as a single, annual gift rather than several gifts a year.” Once a year you remind her of this, and her giving will indeed increased. You can learn lots of other valuable information about your donors.
Second Survey: Simpler, but Equally Effective
You can decide to repeat the survey, but to simplify it considerably. See below for the questions you included. One reason you can made it shorter was to streamline the response process. For example, to save time you can decide not to send the individualized memos on each program area.