Thanks a Million

The following post is an excerpt from "Thanks a Million: How to Thank Donors so They'll Come Back and Give More" by Jocelyn Harmon, VP of Sales and Marketing for Network for Good. As your end of year donations roll in, remember, showing gratitude for donations is different than recognizing them. We hope Jocelyn's five recommendations will help you not only recognize your donors, but communicate your appreciation too.

According to Penelope Burk, author of Donor Centered Fundraising, one of the main reasons that people STOP giving to charity is that their gifts are not recognized.  According to Burk,

"46% of donors decide to stop giving for reasons that are tied to lack of meaningful information or to a feeling that their giving is not appreciated."

That's a DISMAL statistic and so easily fixed.

Here are some of my recommendations.

1. Be personal.  Do NOT send form letters.  Get your volunteers, board members, and staff to write a few thank you letters each day, in their own hand.
2. Be creative.  Make a thank you video from your staff.  Write a thank you song!  Watch this video from Charity: Water for inspiration.
3. Be tangible.  The other reason that donors STOP giving to nonprofits is because they don't understand how their gifts are used.  Tailor your thank-yous to the ask or how the gift came in and let donors know they great work you are doing with their gifts.
4. Be donor-centered.  Put your donors in the center of all of your communications, including your thank-yous.  This is not the time to wax on and on about your organization.  Make your thank-you about ME!
5. Be fast.  This is SO important.  Do your acknowledgements within 48 hours of receiving a gift, no matter the size.  Think about it.  If it takes you weeks or months (Yikes!) to thank me for my gift, that plants serious doubt in my mind about the efficacy of your work and does not make me feel valued.

We have a GREAT OPPORTUNITY as nonprofits to provide our donors with an outlet for their altruism and to acknowledge their value as people!

Take every opportunity to lavish your donors with thanks and praise. After all, their time, talent and treasure powers the work that you do.

Cheers!

Jocelyn

2012 Outlook

Father Time has almost put 2011 in the rearview mirror and Baby New Year 2012 is ready to be ushered in. If we take a moment to gaze into our crystal ball, we can get a sense of what to expect in 2012 in the nonprofit sector.

I won’t spoil my video with Convio CMO Sara Spivey, but in a nutshell: There are new rules of engagement for nonprofits. From acquisition and retention to our changing economic and political landscape, the ability to engage constituents will determine the success of nonprofits.

Meet Kenneth Kuhler

Ken Kuhler

This month for the Connection Café podcast series with Convio employees, I had the pleasure of speaking with Kenneth Kuhler, an Account Executive in Convio’s Sales team. Ken is a dynamic team player who enjoys his coworkers and is appreciated by many. I thought it would be interesting for you to hear from someone on our sales team to learn more about how Convio solutions are presented to prospective clients and organizations considering additional services and tools.

I’d love to hear from all of you about who you would like to hear from on the next podcast interviews. Also if you have any suggestions for ways to improve the podcast in 2012, please let us know.

Connection Cafe Podcast 4 - Ken Kuhler

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Designing for the Mobile Web

I have a little secret to share about designing a mobile website... it's easy! As you may have heard, more and more folks are accessing nonprofit sites, taking action and even donating from mobile devices. With rushed end-of-year giving season coming up, it's more important than ever to stake your claim on the mobile frontier.

At Convio Summit, our Art Director, Michael Chang, and I led the Mobile Homepage Design Slam session where we developed some mobile homepage layouts on the fly for audience volunteers. We outlined and demonstrated a simple 5-step process for mobile design:

It's obvious that we need to be even more succinct and direct with a mobile website due to the lack of screen space and the on-the-go nature of most visits. To achieve this, we recommend focusing your mobile web presence on one key message that you want users to take away from your site. This message is likely the same one you want to communicate on your regular website so a simple conversation with your organization's key stakeholders should get you where you need to be with this one. A great starting point for that conversation is filling in this mad-lib: "At [org name] we [verb phrase] so that [constituent group] can [verb phrase]."

2. Identify desired actions

In that same stakeholder conversation, you'll want to discuss the key things you want people to do on your mobile website. We've found it's best to limit the number of actions to 5 and to prioritize your list so that 1 action can take center stage. Think about what people are most likely to do when they're out and about such as donating, searching for something nearby that's relevant to your cause or responding to an action alert.

3. Develop sitemap and allocate real estate

Armed with your key message and list of key actions, it should be a no-brainer to develop a sitemap. Your mobile sitemap needs to be simple with few tiers to navigate through. For nonprofits that may have a news-heavy or information-heavy website, it may also be important to provide a Search feature so users can access news items or other content that isn't part of your main mobile sitemap.

Your key message and key actions should also feed naturally into wireframes for your mobile site. As with everything else mobile, simplicity is key here - less is more! Some dimensions to remember for wireframes are the standard screen size of 320px X 480px and a standard button size of 44px X 44px.

4. Create design

When your wireframes are complete, overlaying a design on top of those should be a piece of cake. Your mobile website should share the same look and feel as your regular site so be sure to pull design elements from the main site to tie the two together. Your color scheme, logo and much of your imagery should stay the same.

5. Build and test

As you build the site, you'll want to be sure to include a browser detect script that can direct mobile visitors to your mobile site without having to click or type a distinct URL. Also, if it's possible with your hosting platform, you'll want to utilize the same content for your regular website as your mobile site so you won't have to make updates in two places. Many Content Management Systems, including Convio CMS, will allow you to create mobile-friendly displays for the same content so you don't have to duplicate things like news items throughout your site. Finally, be sure to check out your analytics data to see what the most common mobile platforms are for your visitors and test on those. There are a variety of online simulators out there that you can use to test it out so you don't have to have one of each device.

Well, that's it! Now there's no excuse not to start thinking about a mobile presence. If you'd like some more detail on how to get started with mobile, check out our Mobile Guide for Nonprofits. Also, feel free to share your own experiences with mobile design in the comments.

Social Media for Stewardship

Everyone is talking about social media these days. Many common questions come my way: How can I get my social media program off the ground? How can I integrate social media marketing efforts with other channels? How can I use social media to raise money? How can I engage my constituents through social media? However, one of the questions I don't get as often is: How can I use social media for stewardship?

Following up on one of Julia's points in her blog yesterday, I'd like to focus in on how you can use social media to show "how their contributions have helped," as she put it. Social media has still not quite yet proven itself to be the best fundraiser. However, I don't think anyone can deny what it is good at; and, that is sharing information. When developing your social media strategies and plan, think first about playing to its strenghts.

The holidays are a fantastic time to thank all of your supporters. Let's say that you send out an email ask this holiday or for end of year. Once all dollars are in and calculated for that particular ask and after the holidays are over and we are heading into January, think about how you can let your donors know how much they really helped. You may be planning an email to go out as a follow up and thank you message. But, think, too about using your social media channels to share your results and thank your donors. This can be as simple as a Facebook post or tweet that says, "Thank you to all of our supporters. We were able to raise $x this holiday that will help us do x." Or, "Thanks to you, we were able to feed x number of people this Thanksgiving".

Now, let's get even more creative. Did your organization do some sort of gift, food drive or animal adoption this holiday? Do you have photos? (Hint: If your event has yet to happen, remember to take photos or appoint a volunteer with the job!) How about posting an album on Flickr, or even turning your still photos into a video slideshow. There are plenty of tools out there - that are free - which help do just this. Check out VideoSpin, for example. If you are putting a video together, and sending out a print piece in the near future, how about putting a QR code on that piece that your constituents can scan and be taken to that "thank you" video? There are many ways you can thank your supporters. I'll leave you with a few of my favorite examples from some amazing organizations:

• AEON Homes Thanksgiving video
• Mobile Loaves & Fishes I Am Here Thank You video
• Homeless Prenatal Program 20 Years in Action - thank you video.

Enjoy and have a happy and safe Thanksgiving!

- Taylor

P.S. Scan this QR code for a special thank you message from Convio.