Episode #201
Do you know how your donors like to be asked to give?
I interviewed several donors. And one of the questions I asked was “How do you like to be asked for a gift?”.
In today’s video, you’ll hear how three donors like to be asked (and what they don’t like).
The donors in this week’s episode are:
- Mike James – is a Veteran broadcast journalist and is now retired.
- Craig Stewart – is a trustee and the President of the Apex Foundation.
- Ellen Ferguson – she’s been a very generous donor here in Seattle. Interestingly, she used to be a development officer before she became a philanthropist.
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Do you have any stories or advice on asking donors for gifts? If so, please leave a comment. Thanks!
What a great opportunity to hear from donors!
I would caution, however, against development officers taking what any one donor says as a rulebook. One donor indicated he didn’t like phone calls, but having telemarketing in an organization’s development plan is a best practice for many organizations–because it’s effective and many donors do like giving that way.
I’ve worked at organizations where the practice was to mail once a year (yes, really!), because a few board members said they didn’t like getting mail from an organization more than once a year. However, it’s a best practice to mail far more often than that–with good segmentation.
That said, I do find it valuable to hear from donors about their wishes (and if they’re in my org’s database, to code them accordingly). I want to communicate with donors the way they want to be communicated with. And I find it helpful to hear from these three donors in today’s video, because it reinforced the practice of making the request as personal as possible.
I found the video interesting in it’s diversity. I think it’s important to note that some of that diversity has to do with the amount of donation you are looking to get. People making larger donations, I would guess, would rather have the one on one meeting. That detail struck me. I was thinking of going in two’s but I do think I can understand why one on one would work best. People giving lesser amounts might be those that give automatically, each year and mail or email is fine for that.
Finally I thought the detail about incremental giving, interesting. It makes sense that some one might be willing to give a thousand dollars over the course of a year, rather then upfront.
Thanks
Chris, would you mind providing an embed option so I can share?
Done. You’ll find it under the video. 🙂