Charities Use Customized Tools and More to Keep Donors in Touch
By Debra E. Blum
Contributor
October 19, 2014 | Read Time: 8 minutes
As a treat for one of its biggest supporters, this summer the CEO of the Treasure Valley Family YMCA, in Boise, Idaho, picked up the donor at his retirement home and took him to see the Y’s summer camp in action.
The donor, who prefers to be identified only as Bert, took a tour of the camp on an all-terrain vehicle and met campers, many of whom receive the financial assistance that his gift covers.
The Y made a video of the day that it presented to Bert and posted it on its website as a thank you to all its supporters.
Such efforts to keep donors happy seem to be working for the Y. The organization, including chapters like Treasure Valley, raised more than $938.9-million last year, a 13.5-percent jump over 2012, which placed it at No. 13 on The Chronicle’s Philanthropy 400, the ranking of charities that have raised the most in private donations.
Building Relationships
The Y is part of a trend: With major gifts accounting for an increasing share of private support at many charities, fundraisers are putting more emphasis on cultivating top donors.
The idea behind such efforts, called donor stewardship, is to build relationships between supporters and their favorite charities in hopes the donors will remain loyal to the nonprofit and increase their giving. The latest buzzwords for stewardship, fundraising experts say, are customization and personalization.
And while some groups are designating specific jobs in their development offices for the task, many experts say that cultivating donors ought to be part of what every fundraiser does.
“Gift processing? That’s donor relations,” says Debbie Meyers, senior director of donor relations and stewardship at the University of Maryland at College Park (No. 264, $79.1-million raised last year). “Person who answers the phone in the development office? That’s donor relations. Person who gathers the data and writes reports? That’s donor relations.”
And, of course, she says, frontline fundraisers who are soliciting gifts are doing the important work of relationship-building right from the start.
“As the donor-relations profession has matured, we have moved past just being thank-you-letter producers and event planners to being actual partners with fundraisers,” Ms. Meyers says.
A Personal Touch
One charity, the Make-a-Wish Foundation (No. 328 on the Philanthropy 400), delivers an extra personal touch to its top contributors.
Donors who give at least $10,000 get a one-of-a-kind photo book with information about the child whose wish was fulfilled with the gift money, as well as pictures of the activity it paid for. For donors who contribute at least $150,000, the organization creates specialized web pages with videos about the wishes granted and personalized video messages from the CEO.
When it can, the group also uses new technology and social-media sites to give donors a real-time look at wish events, such as through streaming video or updates on Twitter.
“Our mission is very emotive and highly personal in the way we can link donors to the impact of their gift,” says Paul Miles, vice president for development at Make-a-Wish, which raised nearly $58.9-million last year. “Stewardship is about being grateful, and we are demonstrating that more often and in more intentional ways than before.”
Devoting time and effort to such tactics, though, can be pricey. Highly personalized, high-touch programs and events typically require nonprofits to spend more money and staff time.
And the catch, Mr. Miles and other fundraisers say, is how hard it is to prove a specific return on that investment.
“We all know that it is easier and cheaper in the long run to keep the donors we have than to go out and get new ones,” says Mr. Miles. “But who can show the ROI on stewardship?”
Treasure Valley’s YMCA hired a full-time stewardship manager a few years ago but had to let him go after a year when the organization faced budget cuts, says Katherine Johnson, the charity’s director of marketing and communications.
“It’s going to be the first position to go because it’s hard to show the impact,” Ms. Johnson says. The organization took the manager’s duties, she says, and “redistributed them through the whole staff, so really we are all doing some stewardship.”
Breaking Down Walls
Like a growing number of her colleagues at other institutions, Nancy Lubich McKinney, at the University of California at Berkeley (No. 53, $340.9-million raised last year), has added managing her own portfolio of donors on top of her role of overseeing stewardship for all of the institution’s donors.
With such new duties and other lines increasingly blurred throughout the fundraising ranks, Ms. Lubich McKinney and five other people who had been part of the institution’s stewardship team changed their job titles earlier this year to reflect the shared responsibility for keeping the university’s top supporters happy.
“We wanted to break down the walls among fundraisers,” says Ms. Lubich McKinney, the newly dubbed executive director of donor and gift services. “Now we are all more focused on donors and the whole donor experience.”
Personalized Videos
The Nature Conservancy (No. 33 on the Philanthropy 400, with $500-million raised last year) has long taken top donors on trips to spots around the world where the organization works. More recently, it has also been bringing the world to its donors.
In the last year and a half, the group has produced custom-made videos for about 20 $1-million-plus donors, talking directly to them and showing them exactly how their money is being used. In one video made this summer, conservancy staff members stand near the water on the Chilean coast telling Lyda Hill about the sustainable-fisheries program she supports.
“I was surprised and really got a smile out of it,” says Ms. Hill, a Dallas businesswoman. When she clicked on the link to the video in an email, a researcher greeted her by name.
Andrew Reed, the conservancy’s director of donor engagement and stewardship, says the videos are part of a continuing effort “to individualize the donor experience.”
Watch one of the videos below.
Web Portals for Donors
Earlier this year, the University of Washington (No. 54, nearly $336.2-million raised in 2013) became one of the latest nonprofits to introduce donor portals—password-protected, personalized web pages for donors to track their donations and retrieve gift receipts.
“We wanted to say to our donors, hey, we’re there where you are, online, managing your own information,” says Mark Lanum, the university’s director of donor services. “For us, we see this as important, and maybe in 2014 not just a useful but expected tool for us to build up trust and relationships with our donors over the long term.”
The portals include giving histories and customized lists of university contacts based on factors like what parts of the university the donor has supported in the past. Coming soon: a filtered news and events feed based on a donor’s expressed interests and reports on how different types of donations benefit the institution.
Giving Fundraisers Tools
This fall, Boston College (No. 220, $100-million raised) will publish its first Stewardship Kit, a portfolio of information for fundraisers to use when meeting donors and presenting gift proposals. The kits are meant to make communications between fundraisers and donors more consistent and clear, such as letting donors know what they can expect from the college after their gift is made—what giving societies they can join and what events they can expect to be invited to.
Julie Bostian, the university’s director of stewardship and donor engagement, says the kits are part of an effort to “introduce the idea of stewardship at the point of cultivation.” The kits also emphasize within the development office a team approach to fundraising and relationship building.
“It shifts our thinking to be reminded that stewardship does not exist separately, but is and should be a part of the gift conversations,” says Beth McDermott, associate vice president for development.
Making Contact
Partners in Health (No. 260, nearly $79.4-million raised) last year created a new position in its development office, stewardship associate, and since then has introduced a number of small-budget efforts to make more consistent, meaningful, and personalized connections with donors.
Last spring, for example, the organization, which provides health care to poor communities largely in the developing world, started a series of conference calls focused on a variety of issues. It has invited donors who may be interested in a particular topic to call in to hear experts speak and ask them questions. Partners in Health has also been inviting a select group of bigger donors to intimate dinner events with the group’s top staff.
“These dinners are clearly about stewardship, not solicitation,” says Hannah White, the stewardship associate. “We are thanking donors by offering special access and the special opportunity to learn and ask questions.”
Sharing Data
The national office of the Y, which raises money that is largely re-granted to its 2,700 chapters across the country, has been working to keep up with the increasing demand among its donors—mostly foundations and businesses—for data collection and evaluation.
“Impact reporting is a key component of stewardship,” says Kathe Elwell, director of grants and stewardship at the Y. “Five years ago, the level of data or impact stories funders wanted was minimal. Now we create customized individual donor-relations plans that take into account what the funder wants from us, so we are ready.”
For example, the Y has been one of the Walmart Foundation’s grantees over the last couple of years in its program to provide free summer meals to kids. To be responsive to the grant maker’s reporting requirements, the Y has adopted special software and coordinated work among staff members from its development, program, research, and finance departments.
Says Ms. Elwell: “For us, stewardship—donor relations—can be the work of the entire organization.”
