Thank yous

Photos: Kampus Production and (insert) Vlada Karpovich

This webpage is for trust fundraisers with three or more years’ experience. Beginners should use this page instead.

In Ask Without Fear, Marc Pitman recommends thanking someone seven times before asking them for money again. I don’t know about that (I’ve come across one or two references to trusts being fed up of being thanked too much), but it was interesting enough I wanted to mention it. I’m sure, though, that thanking is much more than a formality.

Academic research into thank yous

Some great work has been done by the Institute of Philanthropy (formerly the Philanthropy Centre). The key report is at the foot of this page. It’s about individual giving, so the usual caveats about translation to trust fundraising apply. They advise that you treat donors differently depending on their depth of involvement with you:

• After people take a first action for an organisation but before they become a donor, short but interactive thank-you’s (e.g., in email) that reaffirm their psychological well-being may double the degree to which they are willing to donate later on in comparison to thank-you’s that reaffirm what they think is important for an organisation to do. So, from the very first action that any donors take for an organisation, thank-you’s should focus on making donors’ feel good about their action.
• After people make their first donation and before they have given as often as the average of the database, sending out communications to primarily thank people for the differences their donations have made. In a database where the average number of gifts made by donors is three, a thankyou letter reaffirming the difference that their donations made increased average gifts by 60% without reducing response rate in comparison to a control group of donors who did not receive this thank-you communication.
• After people give more often than the average number of times of supporters on the database, sending out a letter to primarily thank donors for the long-term relationship that they have with key stakeholders or personalities, or for being who they are. (In a database where the average number of gifts made by donors is 16, a thank-you letter reaffirming the wonderful relationship the donors have with the organisation’s longstanding and beloved CEO is as effective as a thank-you letter reaffirming how wonderful the donor is as a person. These thank-you letters were more effective in comparison to a third group of donors who did not receive either communication. Both letters increased the response rate of the renewal letter sent four weeks after the thank-you by over 10% without reducing average gift size.)

Perhaps as instructive for us is the degree of emotional difference created. The authors estimated that, if these thank-you’s are done in a consistent and lively manner, organisations have the potential to increase the good-feeling in their database by a minimum of 20% over five years.

Giving is an emotional business and unsurprisingly, this comes up in thank yous, including how it’s calibrated:

• If the thank-you communications contain an individual story that is mildly emotional, this will likely be the best approach to generating subsequent behavioural benefits and making donors feel better. 
• When the individual story is highly emotional, thank-you communications are most effective in making donors feel better when they thank the person for the difference they make over a longer period (e.g. a year not a week).
• There’s a very interesting discussion of the benefits of linking into the “big picture” – contributing to the longer term, to the wider organisational mission. However, it’s’ quite subtle and better read in the original than if I try to summarise it.

An interesting point from the interviews with successful fundraisers was that thank yous should be, “memorable, worthwhile, and fun for that person”. Several interviewees shared the power of exceeding expectations (see the pages on WOW-ing donors, if you want to go all in on this, but just unexpected and sweet can be good).

Thank you calls

Goals for thank you calls could be:

• Develop your relations with at least the person on the other end of the phone
• Enable yourself to better understand the funder

Things to get in a thank you call:

• Genuine enthusiasm about the funder and their work. People like people who like them (Aronso et al, Reciprocal Liking, Social Psych Online, June 6, 2015). Also, genuine warmth and gratitude. 
• If there’s any news on the service, it might be worth getting in as small talk.
• Finding out more about the trust, in particular why they gave to your project. I usually ask something like, “Was there anything said about the proposal at the grants committee?” Trusts aren’t as guarded at this stage. Why they gave gives you part of the basis for your update to them and it may turn out to be the basis for your subsequent relationship. So, it’s very valuable to hear.
• It’s one good time to invite the trust to something, because you clearly don’t want anything from them – or, at least, you won’t for a good while. So, they don’t have to worry about being put on the spot: 
  • For example, if the local service wouldn’t mind some PR, you could invite them to do a cheque presentation somewhere to try and generate service users/volunteers/further gifts from local fundraising (as appropriate). This gives you the chance to WOW someone from the trust in person.
  • In the case of a trust with a more professional approach, e.g., where there are staff, you might be able to think of a way that a visit could help their continuous professional development beyond “Come and see one of the projects you’ve funded.” Working at a trust is tremendously time pressured, but staff can enjoy a trip out if there’s enough benefit for them to justify it internally.

A high quality thank you letter

If your thank you letter is going to be glanced at by an administrator before filing, there may only be a little to be gained by writing it very well. On the other hand, you’ve wasted an opportunity if the letter is going to a grants officer or trustee who’s a decision maker but you’ve treated it as a formality. This is a moment when they are 100% behind you and wish for nothing but the best for your charity and the funded work. So, there’s a small opportunity for you to reinforce all their positive views.

A few thoughts about a high quality thank you letter:

• It’s genuinely personal to them. One way to do this can be to thank them for the cumulative value of their past gifts. You’re sincerely recognising them for who they are and their care towards you. (It also chimes a bit with the behavioural economics idea we’re very well used to of “framing” a situation: you’re talking to them as a donor with a degree of commitment to you.) I’ve seen trusts team volunteers do the thank yous and getting the leg work done in this way can work very well. HOWEVER, the letter has to come from the person whose relationship it is and to reflect that relationship.
• One that clearly acknowledges receipt of the grant, with a receipt if necessary. If you’ve sent out a thank you that doesn’t do this to trusts administered by firms of solicitors, you’ll have seen why.
• The letter’s about beneficiaries, not about you or the organisation. If you’ve got a personal relationship with a member of staff, a warm personal email to say that you’re so pleased it’s all worked out is nice. However, your charity is just a vehicle through which the trust is changing the lives of service users. I like to include a line about “on behalf of all the people who this gift will affect, I’d like to thank you”. One of the signs of an overly process-based approach to trust fundraising, rather than one where your understanding is alive of what’s really going on, is that your communication gets overly focused on the charity and its services. These are only a means to an end for the funder.
• If the grant’s for a lot of money, it’s good to get the CEO to sign the letter. Robyn McAllister, a good trust fundraiser I know, gets her CEO to handwrite notes or send personal emails. Especially when her contact is the Grants Officer/Manager but we have (or want) a CEO:CEO relationship too. When you listen to some trusts staff talk, they genuinely seem to identify the organisation with the CEO. (Why them rather than the Director of Services or Chair of Trustees, I’m not sure) Senior people can also have a thing about engagement with senior people. Thank yous are the exceptional piece of correspondence that proves the rule. As a grants officer who used to ask questions of the applicants (a fairly rare event, admittedly) my heart used to sink when I saw a CEO’s name at the bottom of the application letter, because I knew if I called I’d end up speaking to someone who’d have only the vaguest idea what the proposal was about and who might feel the need to bluff it out. However, for thank you letters, it’s flattering and hard to go wrong with using the CEO.
• Something striking that reinforces that the trust has done the right thing funding you. At this stage, having put their money where their mouth is, the trust is 100% on your side. A great quote or 1-2 paragraph case study is ideal.
• When I showed her this page, Robyn McAllister also usefully commented: 
  • ‘I also think it’s worth pooling resources with other fundraisers at your charity – they might have things you can use when thanking a trust, such as thank you cards with lovely photography on them, etc.
  • ‘Also, there are some lovely creative thank yous – like little videos from beneficiaries or frontline staff – which bring a bit of personality and emotional connection to the thanking process.’

Emotionality

As I say on the Genuine Gratitude page, one of the things I’ve observed about fundraisers is that they can lack genuine gratitude. You wouldn’t say to a relative, “I acknowledge receipt of your birthday gift to me”! 

However, in the words of one leading individual giving fundraiser interviewed for the Institute of Philanthropy research, the thank you is, “Not just thanking. It’s kind of loving me.” [Sorry to drop it on you, but this is the world you entered when you took the job! Even if you don’t go all in on loving these rich, privileged people giving a little of their wealth to charity, please do be aware that real warmth and appreciation is the thing. As the Philanthropy Centres interviews indicated, it can turn out to be fulfilling and inspiring for the fundraiser, too.]

The Genuine Gratitude webpage discussed evaluated ways to tap into gratitude if you’re struggling to get beyond the feeling that you’re just processing something. 

Resources

Learning to Say Thank You, by Shang et al, is available online. It’s a profound piece of work and I recommend you read it. Shang and Sargeant also do training on thank yous, if you’ll pay.