I have a feeling that some day, fundraisers are going to spend as much energy on thanking donors as we do now on asking them.
We’re going to build up a knowledge of what works and doesn’t work, much the way we have for asking.
Until that time, we have to rely on common sense.
Here’s some of that from the Fired-Up Fundraising blog: How to Craft a Killer Thank You Letter.
- Don’t start out with “on behalf of.”
- Don’t Ask for another gift.
- Don’t use thank you letter jargon: “we are deeply grateful for your continued support.”
- Don’t start out with Dear Friend.
- Don’t ask anything else from your donor right now.
- Don’t misspell their name.
- Don’t Have errors in grammar, punctuation or misspellings.
- Don’t go on and on. Ditch the verbosity. Do be concise.
- Don’t keep selling.
- Don’t re-use copy that you used in the solicitation letter to talk about your programs.
- Don’t be formal. Or lofty.
- Don’t be vague about how the money will be used.
- Don’t sign it yourself if you can get a higher-ranking person to sign it.
I disagree with one of these: “Don’t keep selling.” On the contrary, you should always keep selling. Selling in your thank-you letter does two important things:
- It strongly reaffirms the donor’s decision to give.
- It gives donors an opportunity to give again at the time when they are most predisposed to do so: Donors are most likely to give when they’ve given recently, and they’re more inclined to give again when they feel good about their previous gift. Your thank you is a golden moment.
Thinking hard about thank-you letters is smart. We all should be doing it.
Jeff Brooks has been serving the nonprofit community for more than 35 years and blogging about it since 2005. He considers fundraising the most noble of pursuits and hopes you’ll join him in that opinion. You can reach him at jeff [at] jeff-brooks [dot] com.
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