Many thanks Kate!
Howard Lake | 14 January 2009 | Blogs
That Winslet girl have given us all a lesson in thanking our donors properly. That is with genuine emotion, no script, no words we have heard a thousand times but straight from the heart. You cannot beat thanking your key donors personally, face to face if at all possible and really meaning it.
Us Brits find all this difficult, we tend to retreat fro m gush into a set formula and pretty soon our donors think “I’ve read this before somewhere. Like the last time I gave and didn’t my other charity say just the same thing?” We can do better than that and if we are serious about donor retention this is the time to overhaul our whole thanking process, pick up the phone, set up those lunches and practice saying it a few times in different ways first. Then when you get to the point feel and speak – the right words will come.
Right now – Gather!
And one more thing: my person bête noir is being asked to give by a person I respect and getting a thank-you letter back from someone else. So, check the system for speed of delivery (3 days max), very the content, vary the delivery and make sure we are all putting the effort into thanking as personally as we can.
Thank you again our Kate…
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.