They gave! Now what?
You want donors to have an ongoing, steadily deepening relationship with both you and the organization.
So you should steward that relationship. Hence, donor stewardship.
Stewardship starts with the thank you
It may be obvious, but bears emphasis: stewarding the relationship starts with a genuine thank you.
For anyone who’s taken the time to meet with you, that means a handwritten thank you. Even for major gifts that otherwise come in, a handwritten thank you is advisable.
The alternative: a phone call thank you when the gift comes in.
Either way, this is an opportunity to show genuine appreciation separate from the formal letter the donor should receive thanking them and including any information appropriate for tax purposes.
Stewardship after the thank you
Good stewardship encompasses three primary goals:
- To strengthen the personal relationship between the prospect and most likely next solicitor,
- To educate the prospect about the work you do and its importance, and
- To help the donor see themselves as part of a community of like-minded supporters.
In designing any stewardship activity, you should always be able to point to at least one of those three goals being achieved or else you should rethink whether it’s worthwhile.
Stewardship Tactics to Consider
What activities accomplish these purposes?
- Sending them information is always a good place to start. Personalized emails or general email updates can help. Many organizations still mail major doors an Annual Report or similar document demonstrating the organization’s impact. It may be a personalized letter once or twice a year aimed at organizational “insiders.”
- Creating a branded program to recognize and generate community among major donors. For example, a “Leadership Circle” or “Presidents Council.” A donor belongs to this when they give annually at greater than whatever dollar figure is your threshold. Those within the program should ideally receive at least a couple communications per year specifically aimed at them.
- Whether or not you have a branded program, major donors should ideally be given one or two opportunities a year to attend a non-fundraising event. The point of these events is to give them opportunities to engage with leadership, community leaders, and each other. If they attend these events, it’s important to use the opportunity to get to know them and learn about what motivates them, rather than just talking “to” them.
- Ask for advice. This can be online, in-person as part of small listening sessions, or in a more formal setting like strategic or program planning.
- Ask them to volunteer. This could be basic volunteering, serving on a committee or task force, or for those most engaged, service on the board.
- Give them recognition. This could be as simple as including their name(s) in an Annual Report along with all similar donors. Or it could be specific to them, such as giving them an award (hopefully for things they’ve done beyond just their donations).
- Provide them a personal, one-on-one opportunity to catch up over coffee, lunch, or even on the phone. As with cultivation, whenever you are engaged one-on-one, use it for an opportunity to ask them questions about why they’re interested, what motivates their support, what specific aspects of your work they find most appealing, etc.
- Send them personalized emails if/when you read about them in the press or come across an article that you feel they would be particularly interested in. (If they have a somewhat unique name, set up a Google news alert to automatically email you if they are mentioned in the news).
In the end, there will almost always be more good stewardship ideas than you have time to do, so it’s important to identify tiers of donors. Some will get basic stewardship. Others will get much more personalized stewardship. When I was an Executive Director, we planned out personalized stewardship for our top 30 donors and all other major donors were folded into a general stewardship plan. What’s appropriate for your organization will depend on the level of development staff time that is being devoted to major donor fundraising, which in turn should be related to what you can reasonably expect to raise from major donor prospects over time.
If you have additional creative ideas for donor stewardship, please do share them with me!