Thanks… for nothing?
Howard Lake | 5 August 2009 | Blogs
Last month I was at the IoF Conference presenting on ‘Supporter Wow’ (and that wasn’t my title, I was given it). Part of the session was a quickfire round-up on little things charities had done around the globe to enhance an experience for their supporters.
As part of this I was directed to a US consultant called Lisa Sargent who has a thank you letter clinic as part of her services. This interested me greatly as I would assert that thank you letters are, without doubt, the single most predictable and formulaic communication in fundraising, and have been so for a very long time.
I’ve written and presented before about the use of thank you cards, about handwritten thank yous, and many other aspects of thanking supporters, but never directly about the actual content of the letter. Lisa’s website got me thinking and this single sentence example hopefully shows exactly why:
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Before:
“Thank you so much for your gift of $xx in support of the Ontario Science Centre.”
After:
“Robots whir. Comets streak. Tide pools gurgle. When science comes to life, anything is possible…and all because of you.”
This is just the opening line, but I think it will make a massive difference to the reader. The rest of the letter carries on in the same wonderful way – inspiring, motivating and above all, interesting.
Now I believe, often having seen much evidence with my own eyes, that the vast majority of charities are still approaching thank you letters in the “before” style above. As a test I looked at the thank you letters we have received recently from organisations that we have personally given to, or mystery shopped and sadly the vast majority are virtually interchangeable with each other. Often, you can more or less substitute the name of the charity and leave most of the rest of the letter as it is.
Surely that can’t be the best we can do?
Photo: psd on Flickr.com
I would challenge everyone with any interest in their organisations thank you letters to make the time to think about and review how you can better inspire and motivate with your thank you letters.
We work in the most inspiring environment there is, we must be able to better reflect this in the thank you letters we send.
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.