Beyond the application and reporting cycle

This webpage was written for people with at least three years’ trust fundraising experience.

Andy Watts has given a number of well received talks and training sessions on “WOW the donor” type relationship cultivation techniques. He kindly wrote something for the site…

Trust Fundraising is much more than being able to write a good application. The most successful Trust Fundraisers are relationship managers. In this article, I share three tried and tested approaches that will help you strengthen your relationships and grow your income. 

Gratitude is the attitude

It can be easy to take Trusts for granted, particularly those that give to your charity each year with little prompting. However, with a little extra effort you can make sure that Trusts feel appreciated and make your charity stand out. 

There are so many simple ways to do this. One of the simplest is using the phone. Making a phone call after receiving a donation can be one of the best parts of our job if we adopt a mindset of gratitude.  

A great way to do this is reading a story of someone your charity has helped before making a thank you call. You might even mention the story in the call to the supporter. This will help put you in the mindset of gratitude and convey that to the supporter. 

This is backed up by science. Professor Adam Grant of Wharton Business School did a study in a call centre of a university with students calling alumni to ask them to donate to the college’s scholarship funds. He found those who read stories of students who had benefitted from the organisation’s fundraising activities raised more than twice the amount of money than those who hadn’t. Reading the story helped focus and motivate the students on the significance and meaningfulness of their jobs. 

Making your supporters feel valued can sometimes pay it forward in wonderful ways. At Sue Ryder, we had a Trust that gave £1k to their local hospice every couple of years. We kept in touch and let them know we valued their support. They decided to spend out and chose to give the balance of £130k to the hospice. 

Look for touchpoints

You are not going to have a strong relationship with someone if you’re in touch only once a year. There are so many opportunities to have meaningful touch points with Trusts. At Sue Ryder, my team and I used a stewardship calendar to map out potential touchpoints.This included applications and reports but we also looked for our own opportunities including social media and memorable gestures.

[Note from Jonathan: I showed the above text to the Robyn McAllister, Manager of the Street League trust fundraising team. She commented: ‘We do much the same thing at Street League – we have a stewardship matrix, which details our menu of stewardship tools, and we use that to create a stewardship plan for each trust.  It also helps us have a good spread of touchpoints across the year, and avoid three touchpoints in August and none for the next six months!’

Response from the Wolfson Foundation CEO to a thank you video shared on Twitter. The 58 second video was filmed on a phone and edited by me. 

I used the professional photos taken from an event we had with HRH Prince of Wales to create a photo book for a Trust who had made a major donation. 

“I was absolutely delighted to receive the beautiful book of photos taken on that very special day.  What a memory to keep!” Trustee of the Charles Irving Charitable Trust

At both Sue Ryder and Maggie’s, a Trusts newsletter worked well in keeping in touch and would often prompt donations from regular Trust supporters. In one memorable case at Maggie’s, the newsletter prompted a call from a Swiss-based Foundation about a capital appeal they had read about in the newsletter. They said they would like to donate to help us meet our remaining appeal target of £250k! 

Create layers of contact

Research by experienced Trust fundraiser Bill Bruty, has shown that the layers of contact a charity has with a Trust is one of the indicators of the strength of the relationship. How many people in your charity has your major trust supporters had contact with? What opportunities could you find? At Sue Ryder, we ran an exclusive webinar for high value supporters in June 2020 with our Chief Executive which was attended by representatives from five of our major trust supporters and prospects. Two of these went on to give £100k grants soon after.

Your Community Fundraising and Services colleagues can be invaluable in helping support relationships with regional trusts. At Sue Ryder, we shared details of Trusts in their area and brief details of Trustees with our Community and Services teams. This helped them lookout for opportunities. When the pandemic hit, the relationship they had built with a Trustee of a regional Trust resulted in a £250k grant, five times larger than their previous grant.  

[Jonathan’s note: again, I shared this with Robyn McAllister, Trusts Team Manager at Street League, who commented:

‘I would take this one stage further and pool resources with your other fundraising colleagues (if you have them) – they’re also stewarding donors, like corporates and individuals, and there’s lots that can be adapted.’]