As a follow up to last week’s post about maintaining annual personal contacts with your key donors I am sharing a template for tracking your communication. This tool may make it easier for your team to track donor contacts throughout the year, especially if you print a display of the full year once you’ve created it. You’ll be able to more clearly see the communication gap with key groups.
Some guidelines to maintain quality donor communication throughout the year:
- Includes 1-2 personal contacts annually with top donors, mixed with other media. Remember last week I defined personal as in-person or on the phone.
- Keep your mission relevant without being intrusive.
- Maintain some sort of monthly contact via newsletters, e-alerts, annual report, special donor message, etc.
- Whenever possible, send a special message to a segmented group of supporters. e.g. Multi-year donors get an “Insiders” message a couple times a year or are invited to an exclusive meeting with your CEO.
- Don’t let too much time pass with no communication. Especially if you want the donor to give again this year. The “void” of time between asks is especially important.
This tool has been refined and used by many organizations over the years. I first started using a plan like this many years ago as both a development and executive director. Then, when I worked as a senior instructor at Raising More Money, now called Benevon™, we coached organizations to create plans similar to this one.
More information can be found on how to create a donor communication plan in chapter 14 of Raising More Money: A Step By Step Guide to Building Lifelong Donors, by Terry Axelrod.
Notice the red circles on the chart below. Those indicate there is too much time with little to no communication for key supporters on this plan.
To keep this manageable: You don’t have to create the whole year-long calendar all at once. Start with a couple of months at a time. Just be sure that before January 2011 you have a full year completed and ready to guide you.
Scheduling time to complete a plan like this one is invaluable. It allows you and your team to decide which months are too busy, which months need more touches and where to “put” the personal touches with key supporters so they know you’ve noticed them and their gift is special to your organization.
I’d love to hear from you about what kind of plan you’ve created.
Hi Lori,
I just want to thank you for sharing this tool. So often people do not share great resources like this and it leaves others to re-invent the wheel. I love that you have given this gift to all who read your blog. I have written about your generosity on our blog and linked it here so more people are able to find this tool.
thanks!
Nicole Harrison
http://therittergroup.com/2010/07/01/do-you-have-a-donor-communications-calendar/
Nicole,
Thank you for the generous comment and the post on the Ritter Group blog! Glad you found this of value.
This is so
,useful! What 8 like about it, too, is that it can be shared between Communications, Marketing, Development, your ED and board – whoever. Great way to keep donors connected, but not so much that they stop paying attention.
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Alexandra, Thanks for your comment! I agree, one of my favorite things about this tool is that it’s useful for the entire agency. Using this tool the left hand CAN know what the right hand is doing.
Fantastic tool Lori and so generous of you to share!
I was grateful for the opportunity to take the Benevon course with an organization I once worked with and recall that you worked for them. Their focus on the long-term and attention to detail always impressed me.
Thank you!
Pamela, Thanks for the read & your comment and the great tools YOU are so willing to share with us all.