How to Avoid Potential Pitfalls When Giving Donors Their Due

Displays that honor donors by name sometimes do double duty for charities:

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They thank people who gave to a specific fund-raising campaign, and they help motivate additional gifts long afterward.

The National Science Center/Fort Discovery, in Augusta, Ga., for example, came up with an innovative solar-system design to list the names of donors who gave $1,000 or more to its capital campaign. But the museum has also used the device to entice others to give after the campaign ended.

The solar-system wall lists donors’ names at varying distances from the sun, according to the size of their gift. The names can be moved to a higher gift category if the donor makes a repeat donation, and there is plenty of space for new names.

“We needed a wall that could grow,” says Phyllis Hendry, director of the science center.

Even displays that honor a limited number of donors can help promote additional gifts. The Polytechnic University, in Brooklyn, N.Y., constructed a giant abacus with 100 polished wooden beads, one for each donor who is part of an exclusive group called the Poly 100. The giving club was created during a campaign to persuade 100 donors to pledge $50,000 or more to a scholarship fund.

Once their pledges are fulfilled, the donors are asked to make a repeat pledge of the same size or larger. If they agree, the abacus bead bearing their name is engraved with the Poly 100 logo — a flaming torch.

No matter how many gifts can be traced to such recognition devices, experts who help design donor displays say that charities often make costly mistakes and engage in poor planning when using them. To avoid such pitfalls, they offer the following advice:

Be prompt. “The biggest mistake non-profits make is bringing a project to us after the campaign is over,” says Bernie Epworth, vice-president of B & D Marketing, Contributor Recognition Products, in Cherry Hill, N.J. “If recognition is planned in conjunction with a campaign, you can stimulate interest. You should never wait until two years after the campaign is over, when donors have already forgotten about it.”

Even if a donor-recognition piece is unfinished by the end of a campaign, experts say, charities can provide an artistic rendering or a model to show to donors at parties, tours of new buildings, and other events to celebrate reaching a fund-raising goal.

Using such models can also help charities avoid another common mistake: rushing too much to finish a donor-recognition piece in time for a campaign celebration, which sometimes leads to costly and embarrassing gaffes such as misspelling prominent donors’ names.

Don’t ignore old donor displays. In creating a new display to publicly acknowledge donors, many charities fail to consider what will happen to the older plaques or other such pieces they already have, says Larry Greenwald, co-founder of Recognition Resources, a Sarasota, Fla., company.

Charities often design a new recognition piece that makes an older one look shabby or outdated by comparison, he says. Or the charity sometimes forgets to take the donor display along when the organization moves to new quarters.

In both cases, even when the older recognition piece is decades old, the charity risks offending donors or, equally as likely, their families, says Mr. Greenwald. “All of a sudden, you turn a friend into an enemy.”

He describes one client, a national youth charity that had a wrecking ball demolish its old building with decades-old donor plaques still inside. That, he says, alienated some of the original donors’ children and grandchildren, some of whom were also donors to the institution. One family told the charity that it should have at least sent their relative’s plaque back to the family rather than destroy it.

That is not a bad idea, says Mr. Greenwald. He says he has also seen charities incorporate older recognition pieces into a new display or, when that isn’t feasible, refurbish older pieces that seem outdated or pushed aside by the newer recognition effort.

Honor promises to donors. Fund raisers should be careful not to mislead donors about what sort of structure will bear their names, says Charles Bieler, director of development at the San Diego Zoo. In one project to raise money for a zoo exhibit, he recalls, a married couple who gave were promised that their names would appear on a bench for zoo visitors; such benches are common throughout the zoo.

The donors were taken aback, however, when they visited the new exhibit and found their name on a log instead. “We were trying to be unique and create a certain type of natural seating in that exhibit,” says Mr. Bieler. “The donors understood what we were trying to do, but they said it would have been nice to know it was going to be a log.”

Charities also need to make sure that donors understand how long their names will be publicly displayed, says Mr. Greenwald. When it’s clear that a name will not appear forever, he says, charities should consider guaranteeing that donors will be honored for a minimum number of years and making the policy known.

“The word ‘permanent’ means forever,” he says. “If you do not want it to be forever, then don’t lead them to believe that.”