Turn a One-Time Colorado Gives Day Donor into a Lifetime Supporter

by Lisa Lujan

Whew! We made it. Colorado Gives Day is over, time to sit back, relax and completely ignore everything having to do with Colorado Gives Day until next year, right?

Not exactly.

In fact, Colorado Gives Day is just the first step in a series of steps towards turning that one-time donor into a lifetime supporter.

Let’s start with the basics. Have you thanked your donors?

This very important relationship-building step is vital to letting donors know how much they’re appreciated (read our Don’t Let them Get Away blog or watch our Nurturing Long Lasting Relationships with Your Donors after Colorado Gives Day webinar, both from 2014).

Keep it personal and remember you’re cultivating a relationship; you wouldn’t send your grandma a form letter if she gave you a card for your birthday, would you? So why do that to your donors? Yes, it’s a little different, but you get the idea.

So now that you’ve done this important first step, what's next?

Well, a great place to start is to ask donors who scheduled their gift to your organization on Colorado Gives Day to become recurring donors. These donors already have an account on ColoradoGives.org that they created in order to schedule a donation in advance for Colorado Gives Day. This means that creating a recurring donation is easy to do through their account, a fact you can emphasize in your “ask.”

Most nonprofits operate 365 (366 this year!) days a year and so does ColordaoGives.org. So why not take advantage of that by asking one-time donors to become recurring donors? Whether that be emphasizing a story about a time that recurring donations had a significant impact at your organization or explaining how recurring donations are used on a daily basis, don’t let this opportunity to engage your donors pass you by.

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