Stewardship Is The Next Step

By Vickie Wilson, Vice President of Development, Community First Foundation

Colorado Gives Day offers a wonderful opportunity for nonprofit participants to attract new donors. These new relationships can be strengthened and deepened through a focused, intentional stewardship plan.

But prepare your plan now, before Colorado Gives Day. Make sure the plan includes the basics:

Thank You: Acknowledge gifts in a timely manner and, when possible, personalize your thank you. Use the donor’s name, reference the gift’s purpose and include additional information that helps connect the donor with the work of your organization. Make your thank you is heartfelt and simple.
Mission: Don’t assume that your new donor knows about your organization. Have letter, e-mail and website templates ready for communicating your mission, past successes and future plans. Stories and photos that describe the impact of gifts are particularly effective. If you have a newsletter, make sure your new donors are added to the list. Subsequent communications can include a phone call, an invitation to an event or to a face-to-face meeting.

Data: Collect, maintain and analyze information on your new donors, their relationships, charitable interests and their giving history. This will enable you to tailor messaging and match donor interests. And if you find that you can’t provide the same level of stewardship to all of your donors, prioritize based on the gift size or the information that you have gathered.

Ask: Creating stronger, deeper donor relationships will improve your chances to attract larger gifts from repeat donors. Whenever appropriate, solicit your donors for their continued support.

You may now be wishing that you had taken the time to steward last year’s Colorado Gives Day donors. If so, go back to last year’s new donors list.

If they have not been stewarded, contact them by letter, phone or e-mail and thank them again for their past gifts. Share what their giving has enabled the organization to accomplish and remind them of the upcoming December 8th deadline. Most importantly, ask them for their continued support.

Whether the donor is new or not-so-new, it is never too late to steward.

Comments

Blog 1: Tips on How to Read Form 990

By Angela Bevacqua, Senior Communications Specialist Have you ever been advised to look at a nonprofit’s Form 990 before making a donation? Then you look at it and wonder how to make sense of it all? If you aren’t an accountant or nonprofit administrator, you may avoid the daunting task. On our online giving website ColoradoGives.org, we require nonprofits to provide several documents, including the Form 990 as appropriate, to encourage transparency about their programs and finances. We don’t evaluate nonprofits on the website; we require nonprofits to share information to help donors make informed decisions about giving. I asked Community First Foundation’s finance department to help us interpret this useful document. We will do this in two blogs: Blog 1 shares the basics of Form 990 and Blog 2 delves deeper. Q: What exactly is the Form 990? Form 990, called the Return of Organizations Exempt From Income Tax, must be filed with the IRS each year by charitable organization

$36.1 million raised on Colorado Gives Day!

Marla J. Williams, president and CEO, Community First Foundation Thank you, Colorado! I appreciate the opportunity to reflect on another year of extraordinary giving. As you know, earlier this week on Colorado Gives Day people from across our state and around the country opened their hearts to give. Their generosity resulted in $36,129,285 million in donations to 2,309 Colorado nonprofit organizations. This record-breaking amount surpassed last year’s Colorado Gives Day total, which raised an impressive $33.8 million. Since its debut in 2010, Colorado Gives Day has raised more than $181 million for Colorado nonprofits. One thing is clear: generous donors and the nonprofits that inspire them are the heart of Colorado Gives Day. Although Community First Foundation provides the giving platform, participating nonprofits have taken ownership of this event and spread the word far and wide, which is the main Colorado Gives Day success story. Through your efforts every year, mo

Colorado Gives Day: Reflections from Nonprofits

By Angela Bevacqua, Communications Specialist Two months later and we’re still learning from Colorado Gives Day 2010. As we pour through data and listen to the experiences of our nonprofit friends and donors, we gain new insights about fundraising and philanthropy in Colorado. At a recent gathering of our Nonprofit Advisory Committee—a varied group of GivingFirst nonprofits that help us improve the program—we heard these reflections about The Day: Dan Hanley, director of development for Boulder County AIDS Project , said that 45% of their donations on Dec. 8 were from new donors. The agency raised more than $20,000 from 178 donations after a whirlwind of events. Dan said there are limitless ways in which you can promote your agency for Colorado Gives Day. They began soliciting support in the late-night hours of Dec. 7 at a bar in Denver, then moved on to the Denver Diner in the a.m., then several coffee shops in Boulder, and ended with a standing-room-only concert at the Boulder

ColoradoGives.org

Search This Blog