Amazing. Thank you all for being here.
I know how busy you are, and. I know that dedicating time,
especially in the afternoon, is a big deal for you.
So thank you, first of all, for your time.
I'm gonna jump right in because I have a lot I wanna share with
you in a half hour.
This is a topic I'm really passionate about.
I'm concerned I'm not gonna be able to share it all with you
in this amount of time.
So let's get started.
Today, we're gonna talk about one of my favorite things,
which is how to write a great thank you letter.
It's such a simple gesture,
but it can make the biggest impression on people.
So let's go ahead and get started.
If you're not familiar with me, my name is Abby.
I'm part of the team at Neon One.
We're an online fundraising and donor management platform.
We work with nonprofits all over the country to build
really great relationships with the people in their community,
and then you we work with those people to fund their causes.
You're gonna see a bunch of examples from Neon CRM and Neon
One today.
So if you're a Neon One user,
all of these things are replicable immediately in your instance.
If you're not, everything that you're gonna learn here today is applicable
to you as well.
All of this will work for you regardless of what platform you're using.
The interface and options might just be a little different.
Okay. Couple really quick housekeeping things.
Please do ask me questions. I do have the q and a box open.
I'm also gonna ask you to talk to me in the chat because I
like talking to you.
I don't like to feel like. I'm speaking into a void,
and you all have already been so kind helping me troubleshoot
my audio today.
But the chat can move really quickly as you have probably seen.
So if you have a question,
I'm gonna have time at the end to answer those,
but please do drop that in the q and a box so I don't miss it.
The perennial question, we are recording this webinar,
and you are going to get a copy of the recording tomorrow.
You'll also get, on the same page that houses the recording,
you'll get the slides, and you'll also get today's download.
So you'll get all of that tomorrow morning.
Alright. Who am I and why am I talking to you?
My name is Abby.
I've been in the nonprofit tech sector for a little over eleven
years now, and I love learning about how people love to
support the causes that they care about.
And I like really understanding how donors prefer to engage
with the nonprofits they support,
and that's why this is such an important topic to me.
So before we dive into how to write a great thank you letter,
I'd like to know, do you send standalone thank you letters?
Do you do this automatically?
Do you just kind of rely on receipts?
Are you thinking machine?
Is this something that you want to get better at?
And do let me know in the chat because knowing where you are
in this process will help me kinda tailor what I'm gonna
talk to you about today.
Yes, Jocelyn.
Love it. Love to see it. A thanking machine.
Every donation gets an executive director.
This is fantastic.
Okay.
This makes me so happy because. I saw handwritten notes. Ugh.
Someone after my own heart.
Okay.
The reason I ask is because, believe it or not,
a lot of folks don't do this,
and it's such a great way to make a powerful impression.
So, what I'm gonna go through today
is all kind of outlined in this resource.
Resource. So I put together a checklist for you.
This is high level.
You can use it
as a guide if you have someone new at your organization and
you want them to help
start writing thank you letters,
if you want to give it to your board members because you want
them to do handwritten thank you notes, grab this checklist.
I'll also let me drop this link in the chat.
Also, you'll get this.
This is linked on that page that we're gonna send you tomorrow.
This is where you can get the checklist.
So it's gonna cover some design elements.
It's gonna cover some content elements,
and then we're going to talk a little bit about how you can
use technology to make the thinking process a little
easier for you and your staff.
Alright.
So does this really matter?
It seems like a lot of you understand how important this is,
but I want to reiterate that that this is a really simple
but very powerful tactic.
A number of years ago,
a group called Impact Research did a study and they surveyed
several hundred donors of all different sizes
and asked why they didn't make additional gifts to a nonprofit
that they had previously supported.
So these are the top five reasons that they came up with.
Donors weren't acknowledged or thanked for their gift,
and they weren't asked to give again was the second most common.
They didn't understand their gift's impact.
They forgot they gave, which makes me laugh,
because I've done that.
And, they decided to give to another organization instead of the
organization they had previously given to.
Now if you do a good job,
if you write a really great thank you note,
you can immediately eliminate two of these reasons for donor churn.
So you'll have thanked your donor for one,
and you'll also have made them feel really wonderful about the
fact that they've they've given.
So that's important.
You'll also be able to tell them a little bit about their impact.
I suspect so we know that these two that I bolded here are
going to be addressed with a good thank you a good thank you letter.
I suspect that you can address at least two others here.
So when you make someone feel really great about the gift
that they've given to your organization,
You'll make them remember your nonprofit and your work
for a long time.
This is because of something called the peak end rule.
The peak end rule is a phenomenon where people will
remember their feelings during the peak of an activity,
so in this case, making a donation,
and the end of the activity,
and that's where the thank you letters come in.
So when you send a thank you letter,
you extend that those positive feelings.
You extend it beyond the end of their donation,
and they'll be more likely to remember you because of that.
You've probably heard that quote.
People won't remember what you did,
but they'll remember how you make them feel.
This is how you make them feel really good.
I also suspect that intentionally evoking those
feelings in your donors,
and deepening that emotional and personal commitment and
connection that they have with your cause will make it less
likely that they will stop donating to you in favor of
donating to another organization.
They may do both,
but if you are really deepening those connections with your supporters,
they'll be more likely to continue to engage with you.
So that's all well and good.
But what actually goes into a good thank you letter?
Here are some elements that you'll probably wanna include in your own.
So the first is a good salutation.
Typically, salutations are only two or three words.
Usually, one of those words is your is your supporter's name,
but those salutations make a huge first impression.
They signal to someone that your thank you letter is for
them and that's regard this is an email or this is in a
handwritten note.
This is, a direct mail piece.. This is for everything.
So in your salutation, use someone's first name or
their their preferred name, in the salutation of your message.
Now there are probably gonna be instances where that's not
possible for you.
Either there's a a mistake or a personalization token didn't work properly.
We'll talk about what that means in a minute.
What you can do is use something else like, something
a salutation or an address,. I guess, I don't know,
a title or something that is unique to your organization.
So one that I've seen personally,
I donated to an animal rescue, and they sent me, an email.
And it didn't have my name, but it said, dear animal hero.
That's one I've gotten in real life.
That's not necessarily as personal as using my name, but
it is much more personal than using something really generic like friend.
Dear friend is the worst.. Or I think well, no.
The I think the worst is dear valued donor.
I got one of those one time. It was a real bummer.
Jill has a great point in the chat.
Their organization uses Hunger Warrior.
If there's no name,
that's a perfect example of the kind of thing I'm talking about.
It's not a name, but it is a lot more tied to that person's
identity than just dear friend or value donor.
So the next thing is possibly the most important,
and this is something that I I know some people have a hard time with.
It's making making your your thank you message sound really sincere.
Something like thank you for your generous donation of forty
five dollars to the Agloe Center.
Your tax deductible donation will support our community's
growing needs is not necessarily
very heartwarming.
It doesn't evoke emotions.
It doesn't deepen that that personal emotional connection to your cause.
So what my tip is, and I,. I do this a lot myself too,
pretend you're talking to a colleague that just donated to
a personal fundraiser,
or pretend that you're writing a a thank you note to your aunt
after she gave you a birthday present.
I do this all the time when I'm writing letters.
It's easier, at least for me, to write like I am
being personable if I imagine. I'm writing to an individual
instead of a large group of people.
I used to be a writing tutor,
and this is actually one of my favorite tips for doing this.
I would always tell my students to read their thank you notes
or their essays or their articles or whatever they were
writing out loud while they were writing.
So when you do that,
you'll start to identify if you are sounding too impersonal or
if you sound very corporate or if you're using a lot of jargon.
It's also really helpful if you're stuck.
I write a lot for my job.
I read aloud to myself constantly.
It's such a helpful way to make sure that you sound like a
human being, and it's a really great way to to identify,
where like the the best word if you're stuck writing.
So just a little tip.
So this is the perfect opportunity for you to tell
your donors some stories that will help them understand the
real life impact that they're making with their support.
So here,
there is a story about it's the the thank you note.
I mean, it's fake.
I wrote this, but it's coming from, a person who is sharing
her experience as someone who benefited from a service
from this organization,
and they're thanking their donor very sincerely and very
warmly in a very personal way.
Not a lot of jargon, not a lot of corporate speak,
not a lot of buzzwords.
So that can be really hard,
especially when you are in the day to day work and you know
all the terminology and you know,
how your organization speaks internally.
So try reading it out loud.
Focus on being warm and personable.
This will make a really,
really powerful connection with your supporter.
And then as you're doing so, remember to focus on, as much as you can,
helping people understand that not only they have they given
to a cause they care about,
but they're actually making a real impact in that cause.
So remember that impact is really important because that
lack of understanding a donor's impact is one of the
biggest reasons that donors churned in that survey.
So when you're focusing on relaying someone's impact,
sharing individual stories if you can,
is really valuable.
So people get very overwhelmed by statistics,
but individual stories can be really appealing.
You can also do a little mix of both if you do have some
statistics you wanna do.
You can do something like. I did here where it says,
you could say something like,
Agua Food Bank helped me when I really need it,
and because of people like you,
we'll be able to do the same for hundreds of others.
I know something that. I encounter a lot.
If you are a fundraiser that is working for an organization
that doesn't necessarily have a lot of individual stories,
so say you're a conservation organization and you don't
necessarily serve people, you're serving the environment.
Or if you are a,
if you work for maybe a a domestic violence shelter or
something where you have to protect your your clients'
identities, you need to be very careful about sharing clients' stories.
Try having your donors or volunteers or board members or
send them write a thank you note and share their
experiences with your group or with your supporters and let
them share stories that way.
So you don't necessarily have to share individual client stories,
but do try to share stories that help people understand
their impact rather than just sharing a lot of statistics.
Alright. This one is one of my favorite things.
So another really valuable element that you can include
is a next step for the person reading your thank you letter.
Now so just we're gonna get this out of the way.
Don't ask, for a gift right now.
I know that one of the top reasons for donor churn in that
slide that we looked at earlier was that someone was not asked to give again,
but this isn't the time to to make another appeal.
Go back to the thank you the thank you card idea.
You wouldn't ask your your aunt for another present as you're
writing a thank you card for the present she already gave you.
So don't do that here either.
Instead, what you can do is give your
donor a way to connect with you some other way.
You can ask them to follow you on social media,
you can ask them to watch a video for you,
you can ask them to take a short survey.
There are a lot of options that you can that you can use that
will help you not only like keep them engaged but also
deepen that relationship between your supporter and your organization.
Here's a fun tip.
This is one of my favorite things,
and I did it accidentally today.
You might wanna consider framing this next step as
asking your donor to do you a favor.
This is because of something called the Ben Franklin effect.
The Ben Franklin effect is the psychological phenomenon where,
people feel a deeper affinity for someone else if they
have done them a favor.
So I didn't mean to do this at the beginning of my session,
but I asked and I asked people,
can you please do me a favor and let me know that you can
see or hear me?
And you couldn't, and you helped me figure out how to fix it.
So I didn't intentionally use the Ben Franklin effect,
but you can you can achieve something similar.
Ask someone to do you a favor, and they will feel more
affinity toward you.
So that's a fun little a fun little hack.
The other thing I would encourage you to to pay
attention to is your signature.
I really encourage you to have an actual person sign your your
thank you letter.
It doesn't necessarily need to be,
staff member.
Maybe it could be a board member.
You could do something where you kind of ghost write a thank
you letter from a client even if they're,
even if they're, like, a composite character,
or you could actually have one of your your clients write a
thank you letter for you.
See and then so the point there is to to kind of you've used a
personal salutation.
You have a personal signature.
You're not connecting,
your your supporter to your your organization.
You're connecting them to people at your organization,
and those person to person relationships are really valuable.
You can kind of take it a step further,
by adding some other personal elements.
Maybe you can add, an image,
like a headshot of the person who's writing the thank you
letter like I did here.
You could even have, like, an image of your signature.
That's my signature at the bottom.
I've seen I've seen. GIFs done like this.
I've also seen just images done like this,
but these little personal touches can really make a
positive impression on people,
and you're you're focusing then you're switching away from
connecting your donor to your organization,
and you're connecting your donor to the people at your
organization, and that's a really,
really valuable way to build those relationships.
Now I saw that a lot of you are sending
emails email letters.
I also saw that a lot of you are sending direct mail and
even handwritten cards.
So for those of you who are using, email to do this,
I would really, really encourage you I keep saying that.
I would really encourage you to spend some time writing a good subject line.
Preview text is also really helpful.
We did some research, gosh, a little over a year ago now
where we, we looked at,
a lot of different subject lines,
several many thousands of subject lines,
and evaluated the sentiment or the
emotions that those those email subject lines evoked in readers.
And what we found is that subject lines that had positive emotions,
outperformed subject lines that had negative emotions or that
had neutral emotions.
Now I can't imagine that you're gonna be sending a lot of thank
you messages that have negative subject lines.
That's that would be strange.
If you figure out how to do that, let me know.
I'd like to see it.
But I have seen some very neutral, subject lines for
thank you letters.
So try to try to evoke feelings in
the people reading your thank you letters.
Use your subject lines to make your donors feel good.
You'll be a bright spot in their inbox.
Everyone loves seeing a little positivity in their inboxes are
kind of overwhelming sometimes,
and they'll be more likely to read what you have to say.
The preview text is also really helpful.
Preview text is just in this case,
it's this thank you Abby for brightening Kayla's day.
That preview text helps people understand what the actual
message of your email is going to be,
and it can help them decide if they wanna open it.
And I'm gonna be much more likely to open an email that
has a preview text like this than I would be if it said something like,
click here to open this this email in a browser.
So subject line and preview text. Okay.
Now we've talked about all of this.
We know that we like sending, personal letters.
We know that making each donor feel like we're talking to them
individually is really really valuable and establishing those
relationships is really important.
But it also sounds like a lot of work.
So luckily, there are some ways that technology can help make this
process a little easier and let it go help it kinda go more quickly.
The first is to use personalization tokens.
So this is, this is something I alluded to when I was talking about salutations.
Personalization tokens are little snippets.
It'll vary based on the system that you're using.
The tokens let you populate specific parts of your thank
you letter with individual people's data.
And that can be personal data like their name.
It can also be transactional data like their donation amount
and and how they've how they've given.
So this, this here is an example
of a personalization token.
Again, this is what it looks like in Neon CRM.
It may look a little different if you're using something,
something different, but,
use a personalization token here.
In this instance,
I'm using a token to populate the salutation with someone's first name.
One thing to keep in mind is that this kind of
personalization is really only helpful if your donor data is in good shape.
Misspelling someone's name,. I think, is almost as bad or
worse, than not using,
someone's token to begin with.
Pamela, I just asked,
do does Neon CRM allow for tokens in the subject line?
It they yes. We do.
I'll show you I'll show you what that looks like in in a
couple of minutes.
But just check your check your data periodically.
The reason this is kind of top of mind for me is I donated to
an organization, and I still do donate to them.
But, I know I spelled my name
correctly during the during the donation process because my
receipts always have my name spelled correctly.
But when I get thank you letters and updates from them,
my name is spelled wrong.
It's spelled Abigail instead of Abigail.
So that's always a little jarring.
Luckily, I love the organization, and I know,
what I I've talked to enough fundraisers to know the data
entry is really tough.
So, it doesn't bother me.
It might bother some people. So just just check.
It is it's a good way to to kinda keep on top of that or
good idea to keep on top of that data cleanliness.
So depending on the systems that you're using,
you may have other tokens available to you.
So again, like in NeonCRM,
you can reference how much someone's donated most recently.
You can, you can talk about how much they've donated to date.
You can also do specific things like,
reference a restriction or a specific campaign that they donated to.
So you can use these tokens in a few places.
This is what it looks like when you add it to an email subject line.
You can add it to the to the body copy.
You should be able to do this regardless of the service that you're using.
But however you choose to use these personalization tokens,
these little details lets you send people
communications that makes them feel like you're
speaking directly to them.
Even even if they know that you're not, they feel that way,
and it keeps you from having to personally write these emails
over and over again.
So just do that.
Elke, I'm so glad you mentioned that you're proofreading.
Oh, yeah.
Proofreading is a big deal.
I love testing emails and testing all these things just
to make sure for proofreading, but I'm I'm a writer,
so I'm I'm always gonna be on the side of proofreading.
Okay. So we've written emails.
We've used personalization tokens to make them feel very
warm and very kind of like a one to one communication.
Now after you've written your thank you letter,
you can try using automation tools to send them after
someone's made a gift.
You can do this also with,
I believe you can do this with direct mail letters.
It depends.
I sent a question in the q and a.
Will you be addressing these? Yes.
I'll get to the q and a, at the end.
So this the automation system will look a little bit
different based on the platform that you're using.
This is just what it looks like in mine.
We call these automation automation systems workflows.
Your system may call it something different,
but you can use these tools to create a whole experience for your donors.
And what this lets you do is it lets you identify a target audience,
it lets you identify actions that will trigger these these workflows.
In this case, the audience is someone that's made a donation,
and then every it will let you schedule these emails that will
send at the right time.
So what you can do then so say,
you know that your system is set up,
so you send someone a personalized receipt that also
has a little thank you message right when they give.
And then, maybe you can set up a workflow that will automatically send,
your thank you letter, I don't know,
three to seven days after someone's made a gift.
And that way, you're not having to remember to manually pull a list of
people who have given to you recently,
load that list into your email service,
and then send it manually.
So automating this task is a really helpful way to kinda
simplify your life a little bit and then make sure that no
one's getting lost in the shuffle.
They're not falling through the cracks.
They'll get the thank you letter, in a timely way.
You can also use these to do a couple of other things.
You may be able to use it to, even create things like tasks
for staff members to follow-up individually.
For those of you that write handwritten thank you notes,
you may be able to to use a workflow to assign a task to
someone to write a thank you note to this donor in particular.
So just some ways you can kind of kind of make the best of the
those automation tools.
These these follow ups that. I've kind of alluded to,
like making making follow ups, make creating tasks for,
someone to write a handwritten thank you note can make your
thank you letter even more memorable.
So once you've nailed your thank you letter,
you can kind of build onto that donor experience to really,
really take advantage of that peak end rule.
So the here are two examples that I see a lot.
Back here is a is an example of a task that I set up.
So if someone,
is a new donor, they are dropped into this workflow.
If they're a new donor, the,
executive director gets a task assigned to them in the system
to call that donor.
Pretty straightforward.
Another that I love,
and this is why I was so delighted that somebody said
you were handwritten thank you notes.
This image is a really bad picture.
Is a postcard that I got after. I made a gift to Conservation
Florida. You can probably see it's a little beat up.
It's beat up because. I keep it on my desk.
It's such a good example of what a simple,
simple interaction can do.
So it's not a long thank you letter. It's not very involved.
Just says good news, and it shared with me a win that the
organization had.
It it's it stays on my desk.
It's it makes me happy every time I look at it.
So I think this is proof.. Like, I I got the receipt.
I got my thank you letter from this organization with this little postcard.
I've had it for months.
It it can make a a really big impression, and it does.
Like, I've donated to them since then.
So just just some things you can add onto your thank you letter.
I saw a couple of you actually mention this,
which is makes me so happy.
Another way you can really make the most of your thank you
letters, is to create a workflow or an
email series for first time donors that is
kind of like a thank you letter plus.
You can send them the thank you letter.
You have that heartfelt message or deepening that personal connection.
You're sharing details about what they do,
but they may not be terribly familiar with your work.
So you can use a series of emails to continue thanking
them and then share a little more about who you are,
what you do, why you do it,
and why you value their support so much.
So this is an especially,
useful tactic because I think you've probably seen some of
the statistics about, first time donor retention.
First time donor retention rate last time I looked was nineteen
percent, which means that only one in five donors comes back.
So really making the most of your thank you letter, automating it,
and maybe even using automation tools to add some additional
touch points after that initial thank you letter,
can be a really valuable way for you to keep those new
donors engaged with you for a long time.
Okay. I just threw a lot of information at you.
I walked through some elements of a great, email appeal.
I shared some writing tips, and covered some tech tips.
So I wanna make sure I do have time for questions,
and I'm gonna move this over here so I can see the q and a
and the chat.
Okay. Oh, this is a great great idea.
So Juliana asked, can we poll who is thanking ticket
purchasers in addition to donors,
and should you include this too?
So if you ever have,
or if or if you if you sell tickets for events,
do you thank people for that purchase?
We do. Oh, Steve. Is it ever too late to thank people?
Steve, I love that question.
My answer is no, but you may want to change
the way you thank someone if it's been a long time since
they have done so.
So what you can do is say say you've just started working for
an organization and they don't really have a process in place
for sending follow-up thank yous.
What you can do is pull a list of people maybe who have
donated, in the last year,
but they haven't donated in the last, like,
two month to two months.
What we can do is say something like,
thank you so much.
You're we know you've supported us in the past.
I wanted to reach out to you personally,
and thank you for your support.
Here's a little bit about what we've accomplished.
We wouldn't have been able to do it without you.
So I think that's a good way.
If you need to if you need to reach out to someone and and
thank them for a gift that they've made a long time ago,
you can do so.
You just might wanna tweak the tweak the language a little bit.
I love that we see all of these people who are sending thank
yous, to guests.
I love Laura's, thank you.. We're excited to see you there.
I I like that a lot.
Alright.
I volunteer at a farmed animal sanctuary.
Can you give me an example of a. Ben Franklin effect asking for
help for my situation?
Yes.
So, if you want to do something like that, say,
here's an easy one.
Okay. Say you just include in your thank you letter.
We know that you're passionate
about, you know, helping these animals.
Would you do us a favor and share share with your friends and family,
a little bit about our organization?
And you can just have a a link to something you wanted to share.
Or,
we know that you're passionate about animal welfare.
Could you do us a favor and tell us a little more about who
you are and why you're passionate about this and then
you can send them to a brief donor survey.
So they're doing a favor for you and you're getting
additional information about your donors and that can be
really useful to you as you seek to understand the kind of
person who supports your work.
Okay.
How can we create an actual letter,
not just an email and workflows?
How does that work?
Kate, I might follow-up with you on that.
What you can do is when you're building the work you can go in
and either select to I believe you can select to build the
email right in the workflow,
or you can build it elsewhere and link it.
I would I'll look into that for you.
Laura had a great point in in their comment here.
Another great favor is to ask them to add your email address
to their contacts to ensure they can get future stories.
I love that, especially because we all know the email deliverability is
constantly shifting and changing.
So that's a really great way,
to ensure that people are getting your messaging and to
get them to do you a favor.
I love that.
Okay.
Is it we sell tickets to shows, but we can take donations.
Should we not do an ask for donations at this point?
I think you might need to I think I don't know.
You all, what do you do?
If you run events and you also take donations,
what do you do in your thank you?
So if you're following up with someone that's purchased a
ticket to your event,
the do you ask them to make an additional gift?
My instinct would be not to do that, but you
might know I've never done an appeal, right after an event.
What you might be able to do is as someone is registering for your event,
ask them to opt into receiving additional communications for you,
and then follow-up with them after the event and invite them
to support you with the donation.
I'd love to hear what the rest of you do and how you approach that.
Oh, I love this question from Vicky.
I realize this is about thank you letters,
but I'm curious about what you think about video thank you
messages to change it up a bit.
Do you have suggestions?
I personally love video thank yous,
and I don't think that it has to be one or the other.
I think it's kind of hard to overthink someone for their gift.
I love the idea of thank you videos,
and there are two ways. I've seen it done.
So one,
that I really like and I've seen this is probably the most
common one I see.
I I'll I'll make a donation.
I'll get a thank you email back,
and then I will say something like,
we made you a little video to to thank you for your gift.
And they didn't make me the video.
They made a video, and they linked it to an email to me.
But I like thinking that it's for me.
And then I click on it, and it takes me over to YouTube.
You can't probably embed a video in an email.
What you can do to get around that, and I've done this before,
if you go to YouTube and you have your video in front of you,
take a screenshot of the. YouTube video with the play
icon visible in the middle and use that image embedded in your
email and then link it to the page.
So people will tap on it to watch,
and then they'll just be taken over there.
The other thing that I've seen,
there are tools and platforms that let you create
personalized thank you videos.
I don't know how they work.
As far as I'm concerned, they're magic.
One that I I hear cited a lot is a a platform called
BombBomb, b o m b b o m b.
I don't I don't know how they do it,
but you can make personalized thank you videos.
I've gotten a couple, and it blew me away. I love them.
I think it's a really cool way to give people,
a way to put not you know,
we talked about having a a a headshot and the signature.
I think the video is a really cool way to put a face to the
people that they're they're helping.
Laura oh, we got some good comments in the chat.
I looked up for it in just a moment.
I love Laura's here.
I think it depends we're talking going back to the can
you ask for a donation and a thank you letter for an for an
event registration?
Laura's is great.
I think it depends on if there's an ask at the event.
If there is, I would say no to including it in the thank you.
I love that. That's really great advice.
Okay.
I think I got
all of these questions.
The Ben Franklin effect. Do you have to say do us a favor?
I don't know that you have to use that phrase, but I
think the idea of asking them to do something for you so you
could say like, hey.
Could you do something for me and let me know a little bit about this?
I think this app making it an ask, not just an invitation,
but asking them to do something for you is important.
Joanne just asked a great question. I love this.
How often do you update your letters?
And I'm curious to hear what the rest of you,
what the rest of you do.
I would personally love to see updates every few months,
depend I mean and the reason I say that,
is because you may have repeating donors.
So Mara, yeah, Mara updates them four times a year.
Laura updates them quarterly.
I think that's a really good rule of thumb.
Laura is killing the game updating the monthly,
But I love this,
and I love that Miley just called out that they're making
an a new thank you letter for each for each appeal,
and there are general ones.
And I love this because
we, again, like, we really wanna focus on that personal and emotional
connection between the person who's giving your cause and you
and the people at your organization.
And when you go to make a gift to an organization that you
supported maybe a few months ago and you get the same email
that you got a few months ago, it doesn't feel as personal.
It's probably still nice,
but it's not it's not gonna give you the the same warm
fuzzies that you're really trying to evoke in people.
So I like people updating it.
I love that some of y'all are doing unique thank yous for each appeal.
That's perfect. Continue to do that. That's great.
And you you guys are on it.
So I would I would encourage you to update them frequently.
I would also especially if you have,
maybe receipts for recurring donors,
or even just system receipts,
I would encourage you to update your receipts periodically also.
Because even though a receipt is by no means a stand in
for a for a solid thank you letter,
I I think updating your receipts periodically,
is really interesting.
How many versions of thank you letters do you have?
We have different ones for events,
monetary donations recurring.
I it sounds like everyone is kind of getting very creative
with their thank you letters.
If you are I I think you need to have a special a special
thank you letter for recurring donors for sure.
Having one for monetary donations is important.
Having for events is really important.
And it sounds like a lot of you are creating new thank you
letters for individual appeals.
And probably, I would suspect you all have a general when I saw someone use
the the phrase general, one for maybe the the default donation
page on your site.
So,
okay.
You all have stuck with me for six minutes over time,
and I really appreciate it.
Thank you so much for for being here and for spending your time
with me, but also thank you for wanting to thank your donors.
I think that is invaluable.
And the fact that you wanna do that is really encouraging
because that that kind of personal and emotional
connection is gonna be what keeps people with you.
And thank you for for sharing your experiences.
I have I don't do a ton of, event fundraising.
And the fact that you all were were able to jump in and answer
questions for each other and share ideas was so, so wonderful.
Thank you so much.
You're gonna get an email from me tomorrow morning.
It will include, again, a link to a page.
That page will house this reporting, the slides, the checklist.
It'll include everything.
Please do let me know.
If you have any questions, you can just reply to that email,
and I'll see it.
Thank you all, everyone, so much.
I will talk to you tomorrow morning. Have a great day.