Thank-You Letters – Critical Donor Cultivation Tool
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Thank-you letters are a critical part of your overall fundraising strategy. I devote two articles (so far) to this on my website.
One article goes over what donors are expecting of you, and the price you pay when you don't do what they expect.
Many donors are offended if you don’t send a thank-you. This hurts donor cultivation and could contribute to declining donor retention because they view these letters as common courtesy.
Now if donor retention isn’t declining . . . congratulations. But that’s still no reason to ignore timely thank-you letters. The odds are if you ignore this tactic you’re hurting your fundraising results one way or another.
You'll find all this and the basic elements of a good thank-you letter in the "Fundraising Courtesy" article.
Just in case that article didn't convince you on the value of sending sincere thank-you letters to your donors in a timely fashion . . . I wrote a second article titled "Why You MUST Send Thank-You Letters – The Missing Link in Fundraising Appeals."
You’ll find at least 10 reasons why this is advantageous to you, your organization, and to your fundraising results.
Remember, donors have no idea how challenging the logistics are of sending out thank-you letters. They really don’t care and that’s just fine.
Employ the tactic of sending thank-you letters in the right way, and I believe you’ll get better results with your fundraising and strengthen donor cultivation at the same time.
And finally, here's another tool that also help donor cultivation . . . adding video clips to your website. This is a great way to add interest, draw attention to a special event, build donor relationships, and it’s also easy to do.
On my website you'll find an example of a video I recently created. Granted, my video has a different purpose than yours will - I outline what the advantages are to you when enlisting the help of a professional copywriter - but it still illustrates the point.
Something short and to-the-point like this may be all you need. If you need help creating such a video, look below in Hot Tip #2 for a great resource.
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Just for fun - a quote for you
"It is more blessed to give than to receive" (Acts 20:35)
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