Donor Stewardship 101: Five Things to Keep Your Donors Happy and Raise More Money

1. Donor Stewardship 101:Five Things to Keep Your Donors Happy and Raise More Money

2. Remember the Cycle of Giving Identify Invest Inform Involve Impact

3. Stewardship and Donor Relations • Stewardship is about gift management, including processes such as acknowledgement, making sure that the gift is used as intended, and ensuring donor satisfaction with the giving experience. • Donor Relations includes but is not just about stewardship, it is about developing meaningful deeper relationships with donors who might have the capacity to be loyal or major or planned giving donors.

4. Stewardship and Donor Relations • Stewardship is something which you must do for all donors. • While donor relations is applicable to all donors it is typically focused on a small group who have the capacity to make larger or estate gifts.

5. Stewardship and Donor Relations • Both are about impact • “It’s Almost a Requirement Now to Tell Donors the Impact of Their Gifts” Headline from the Chronicle of Philanthropy, April 2, 2019.

6. How many of you are? • Doing only acknowledgement? • Are taking a donor-relations/stewardship approach? • Both? Anyone want to share an example?

7. R U Using Best Practices? • Sending letters how soon after a gift is received? ____ 48 hours ____ One Week ____ One month • What are you doing to ensure that gifts are being used as intended? ____ Depositing funds into accounts use for specific expenditures ____ Gaining staff buy-in regarding use of designated funds ____ Developing gift agreements for endowed or similar funds • Ensuring a gratifying giving experience? ____ Sending letters, making a call or visiting to say thank you. ____ Mailing an annual “impact report”. ____ Sharing beneficiary stories

8. Impact Story: “Another Year in the Books”

9. Know Your Donors Who are your donors? Age, stage, interests, etc. Why do they care about the library?

10. Stewardship: 5 Things to Keep Donors Happy

11. 1. Recency Acknowledge within 48 hours of gift receipt.

12. 2. Frequency How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43) How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of being and ideal grace. Elizabeth Barrett Browning

13. Showing Donors Some LoveJerry Panas saidthank seven times.

14. Let’s count some ways 1. Letter 2. Handwritten note 3. Phone call 4. Social media shout out 5. Send a picture 6. Welcome package 7. Video

15. 3. Focus Keep this in mind. . . . . .”She is not YOUR donor . . . You are one of HER Charities!”

16. 4. Give Meaningful Thanks “You might not realize it … but you actually DO have something to give back to the donor that’s of great probably inestimable – value for many of them … all those at least with standard-issue psychological software and hardware. Give them … Your love. Your respect. Your admiration.” Tom Ahern, Ahern Communications

17. Examples?

18. 5. Impact Tell the story Tell the Story Tell the Story! About the difference that gifts make in the lives of those you serve (and in the lives of donors as well!).

19. Key Points about Storytelling • Focus on a patron who has a • Problem and describe • How you help them solve the problem and • How gifts enabled you to do so. Adapted from The Nonprofit Storytelling Field Guide & Journal, Nonprofitstorytelling.com

20. Example: Juniata County Library

22. Donor Stewardshipand Your Board

24. Resources • Association of Donor Relations Professionals, ADRP • Intentional Stewardship: Bringing Donors to Their Highest Level of Philanthropy, Julia Emlen • Journal of Donor Relations and Stewardship

25. Thank You Sophie W. Penney, Ph.D. President i5 Fundraising.com sophie@i5fundraising Brady Clemens District Consultant Central Pennsylvania District