Winter Wonderland Clairity Click-it: Nonprofit Links, Free Resources
Click-it!
It’s the last Friday in January, which means Valentine’s Day is right around the corner. That’s a great day to send your donors some love – and that’s what Monday’s post will be all about. So… keep your eyes peeled!
Meanwhile, today I’ve got stuff to get you in a giving and sharing mood. Today it’s all about telling stories and saying thank you. Both are ways of offering your donors gifts. And I hope by now you know that if you want to get gifts, you must first give them.
Thank You
Click-It: Donation Thank You Letter [sample]. Alan Sharpe offers a great template and analysis for a thank you letter that will leave your donor feeling warm and fuzzy. Thanks to the Fundraiser Help blog for sharing this!
Click-It: 10 Thank Yous That Delight Donors. Liz Ragland guest posts on the Network for Good Nonprofit Marketing Blog, bringing us lots of real life examples of nonprofit thank you letters. These go above and beyond your basic prosaic thank you, and include hand-written notes, photos and videos. Check ‘em out!
Click-It: Steal This Thank You Letter! A Sample Donor Thank You Letter for Your Non-Profit Want some more? Joe Garecht offers his own example; then exhorts us to stop thinking of thank you’s as “gottados” until you get to the real work of fundraising. There’s nothing more real than saying thank you. Promptly, personally, and often.
Click-It: The Dos and Don’ts of Donor ‘Thank You’ Calls. Pamela Grow reminds us that the most recent Penelope Burk survey indicates 91% of respondents said thank you calls are their #1 preferred method of gift recognition. Are you calling your donors?
Storytelling
Click-It: Next Frontier of Storytelling in the Nonprofit Sector. Network for Good brings us this article by Vanessa Chase with two storytelling trends for 2015: (1) Storytelling in stewardship, and (2) Community storytelling. Check it out. And if you want more on storytelling, register for The Storytelling Nonprofit’s Virtual Storytelling Conference – Febrauary 23 – 27 – with free webinars from a host of experts including me and Vanessa, Marc Pitman, Sheena Greer, Natasha Golinsky, Brady Josephson, Andrea Brody and Mazarine Treyz.
Click-It: Nonprofit Storytelling: Seven Tips for Sharing Stories About Your Work. Lori Jacobwith, master nonprofit storyteller, posts on Nonprofit Hub with some important rules to keep in mind when telling your compelling tales.
Click-It: The power of storytelling: What nonprofits can teach the private sector about social media. We’re used to borrowing from the business community, but here comes an article in the McKinsey Quarterly about what they can learn from us. The article offers a super interesting case study excerpted from The Dragonfly Effect, by Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith. I’ll wager you can learn from it too!
News to Use: I recently had the pleasure to speak about “The Anatomy of a Successful Fundraising Letter” at The 2015 International Fundraising Summit. If you missed the Summit, there were over 40 great presentations on just about every fundraising topic you can imagine. And guess what? You can still purchase all of the great webinars in one fell swoop. If you figure out the cost per webinar, it’s a huge bargain. And the webinars are yours to keep for whenever you may need them! Why not buy yourself a talking library of experts for a song? You may never find all these folks together in one place again.
Photo: Freedigitalphotos.net
