The Year of Thanking Donors

By Dana Rinderknecht, Director of Online Giving

I spend a great deal of time talking to nonprofits and donors; it is the best part of my job. Telling complete strangers what I do can result in some truly amazing stories about why they donate on Colorado Gives Day. My favorite was the donor who told me she thought it should be a national holiday!

My least favorite thing is to hear from donors who love giving, but then never receive a thank you from the organization. We need to celebrate and appreciate these donors who take the time to go to ColoradoGives.org, search for their favorite nonprofits and make a gift. Community First Foundation sends each donor their receipt, but it is still the responsibility of individual nonprofits to thank these donors. It is the nonprofit’s responsibility to cultivate relationships with donors to turn them into long-term supporters.

As we move into 2017, let’s all set the goal of making this the year of thanking donors. The #GivingTuesday movement has started a new hashtag, #RetentionWednesday, and I love the sentiment. What if every nonprofit on ColoradoGives.org took 30 minutes each Wednesday to connect with individual donors in unique ways?

This could start with a thank you to donors and an update on what’s being done with the money they donated on Colorado Gives Day. What is the impact of their gift?

The next step is to continue to keep donors involved. Nonprofits need to craft a plan that goes beyond adding donors to newsletter lists.

What if in the middle of the year nonprofits did something to thank these donors again and update them on how much their donation has impacted the organization? What if this update was sent on July 6 – six months after Colorado Gives Day? What if each nonprofit had its board make phone calls? Or sent a simple one-page letter telling donors about something that was accomplished specifically because of them. This is the kind of thing that makes donors feel like part of an organization’s mission.

I heard recently that donors aren’t giving to individual organizations, they are giving through organizations to solve issues. They are outsourcing their public good to nonprofits. Let’s all resolve to not only help these donors outsource their good but appreciate them for it!

For more ideas, watch our webinar on retention fundraising: Strategies for Keeping Your Colorado Gives Day Donors

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 organiza...

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 conc...

Meeting Space Celebrity Sighting: Natalie Portman

Valerie Brown, Meeting Space Administrator I met Natalie Portman in the Community First Foundation Meeting Space yesterday. Natalie Portman (L) and Valerie Brown in the Foundation's free Meeting Space Okay, not the Natalie Portman of Star Wars , V for Vendetta and Black Swan . This Natalie Portman is a top-notch meeting facilitator who was working with a group advancing Mental Health First Aid in Jefferson County. Led by Jefferson Center for Mental Health, the group met in our largest meeting room to discuss training community members on how to identify persons who may benefit from mental health resources. Jefferson Center for Mental Health is one of the dizzying array of nonprofits to have come through our doors since we opened the Meeting Space a year ago! February 2016 saw one meeting lasting four hours with six people. February 2017 saw 37 meetings for a total of 250 hours with 799 people through the door! In fact, in the first year we have hosted 269 mee...

ColoradoGives.org

Search This Blog