How to Build a Sustainable Donor Stewardship Program

Your donor’s first gift is his or her invitation to you to engage them in how the organization meets their need to make a difference.

Donor stewardship is much, much more than a thank you note and an IRS gift receipt. It’s about greeting your donors, knowing what inspires them about how they can make a difference in the world through your work – basically deepening your donors’ connections to your outcomes.

Using ideas and materials from many national sources, Anne Peyton showed us how to develop a stewardship program, to flip your internal switch from ‘I know I need to, but I never have time!’ to ‘I’m building stronger relationships with my donors, they feel more connected to why we do what we do, and I’m loving it!’

You can watch the full replay here:

Full Transcript:

Steven Shattuck: Do you want to go ahead and get started?

Anne Peyton: I’d be happy to get started.

Steven Shattuck: All right. Let’s do it. Cool. Well, good afternoon to everyone on the East Coast and good morning if you’re on the West Coast or somewhere in between. Thanks for joining us for today’s Bloomerang webinar, “You Had Me at Hello: Building a Sustainable Donor Stewardship Program.”

My name is Steven Shattuck and I’m the VP of Marketing here at Bloomerang and I’ll be moderating today’s discussion. Today our guest-I’m very pleased to introduce her. She is Anne Peyton, CFRE. Hey there, Anne. How are you?

Anne Peyton: I’m doing very well. I’m pleased to be here.

Steven Shattuck: I’m really happy to have you. This is going to be a lot of fun.

For those of you who don’t know Anne, Anne’s worked with nonprofits for more than 30 years. She is a Certified Professional Facilitator by the International Association of Facilitators and a Certified Fundraising Executive by the Association of Fundraising Professionals. She holds a BA in sociology and in library science as well as an MS in organization and management. Anne serves on the board of the Association of Philanthropic Counsel and on the Upper Valley Land Trust. Her former board service includes the Vermont Community Loan Fund and the Upper Valley region of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation.

Stewardship is kind of her thing. This presentation that you’re going to hear from her today is one that she gives in day-long sessions and training sessions. It’s going to be a real treat. I’ve had a chance to look over some of the content and I’m really excited for it. Anne, thanks again for being here. This should be a lot of fun.

Anne Peyton: Thank you very much. I’m very honored to be a part of it.

Steven Shattuck: Well, we’re honored to have you. Just a little bit of housecleaning before I hand things over to Anne. I just wanted to let everyone know that we are going to do an interactive Q&A session a little later on in the presentation. So, if you hear something that maybe you’d like explained or elaborated or repeated, just type that into the chat room. I’ll see that and so will Anne and we’ll try to get to as many questions as possible before the 2:00 Eastern hour.

If you have to leave early if you want to review the content a little later, I will be sending out a recording as well as Anne’s slides and a resource that she’s going to share with you a little later on. So, don’t worry if you have to bounce early. You won’t miss a thing, I promise.

So, with that, I’m not going to take up any more time. Anne, I’m going to hand things off to you. Why don’t you get us started?

Anne Peyton: Thank you so much. Welcome, everyone. It’s a real treat for me to be here with you and to share what I have pulled together about best practices in donor stewardship. I also want to take just a minute to honor the gifts that Maya Angelou has given us in our culture. I have been listening to several interviews with her on various television and radio programs and I just bring her presence, her depth of relationships in with us.

So, with that, I’ve put together this list of goals for this webinar. I want to guide you in greater appreciation of your donors’ participation in your organization’s philanthropy. I strongly feel philanthropy is about the donors. It’s not about our asking. Appreciate the importance of donor stewardship in building donor loyalty and strengthen the role of board members in your development program. I think stewardship is a wonderful way to get board members involved way before you ask them to ask. Ask them to call a donor and thank them in person, ask them to send a note-a number of ways you can involve the board.

I love this cartoon. It’s from Dilbert. “Our goal is to ship a million units this year.” And then someone else asks, “Do we have any goals that involve making customers happy?” “I’m talking about our goals, not their goals.” “Totally different.” I want to bring in our customer goals, our donor goals into this conversation because in our cultivating and stewarding donors, we are engaging them in their goals in our organization and their goals in making the world a better place.

It’s also part of the organization’s promise to the world. You promise as a 501(c)(3) in some way to make the world a better place or to improve people’s lives. So, donors’ goals are part of your goals in accomplishing what you do.

I want to bring Tom Ahern into our webinar because I think he has some very insightful observations about donors. He’s suggesting donors want to feel good. They want to feel loved. They want to feel smart, needed, important. They want to belong. And they want to see their values in action. So, basically, they want to win. That’s very true for me as a donor and I assume it’s true for you as a donor. So, I want to really get ourselves in the shoes of the donors and think about what their goals are.

I want to bring Adrian Sargeant into our webinar. His book “Achieving Donor Loyalty,” it’s actually maybe “Lifetime Donor Loyalty: The Book.” When I look at his material, he did some research that asked donors hundreds of ways that they can be connected to the organization. Are they connected because they can make credit card gifts? Are they connected because a family member received services? Are they connected for whatever reason?

When I boil down-these are my slides, so you won’t find this in his work-when I boil down the way he weighted all of those kinds of connections, I see these four buckets as buckets that you can fill in your relationship-building with donors. Quality service of product-this is how well you deliver on your mission and your vision. Your shared beliefs-this is your value system and what you put out to the world as your value system. How donors and stakeholders and people engaged with you can trust you, especially trust your leadership, trust your transparency of financials, basic trust of your organization-you deliver what you say you’re going to deliver.

And also multiple engagements-we used to think that donors needed one connecter to the organization. Often in the academic world, that was the director of development or the vice president for advancement. From Sargeant’s work, his research is saying that donors actually enjoy and want and seek multiple engagements. So, that could be the CEO. Donors like to talk to CEOs. It could be the director of development. It could be a program director if you’re in an institution. If you’re in an academic institution, it could be the director of athletics. It could be the dean of whatever.

So, these four buckets, I think, are really key to how we relate and build relationships with donors. These lead to active commitment and Sargeant will tell you active commitment leads to donor loyalty. You’re looking not just at year after year after year one year at a time of giving, but you’re looking at 25 years or a lifetime of a donor’s giving to you.

So, I love this chart. It just makes a great deal of sense to me. If you are ever talking with a board member or a staff member or a CEO or executive director about, “What do I talk with a donor about?” Well, look to these four buckets. That’s what donors tell us really glues them to an organization.

So, in terms of our organization of what we do in philanthropy-this diagram is from Kay Sprinkel Grace, I’m sorry the attribution has been lost here-the big picture, the blue picture of philanthropy are our values, our mission and the impact. Also, how we articulate that impact, the stories of our impact and the outcomes of our work-how we make the world a better place. The board as ambassadors to the organization-eyes and ears.

Within that whole picture of philanthropy is a smaller circle, “development,” that’s our systematic way of how we share values, our marketing and communications, what’s on our website, how we use social media, the database, our gift accounting, our staff development and also in that development part is the board as advocates.

And then there’s a very small circle, a tiny, like five percent of the whole thing might be “asking.” So, when I ask a board member to be involved in development, I’m asking them to be in this area of sharing resources, sharing values and be an advocate for the organization. Often, when I ask someone to be involved in development, he or she will say, “Oh, I don’t like to ask for money.” Well, I’m asking you to do a lot of other things, not ask for money. So, this diagram can sometimes help you shape what we’re actually doing in the development world.

Now, I want to get to the slides. So, thinking about this framework, this Venn diagram, this is kind of the ideal world. I want to look at what we have not been doing very well in here. This leads to two slides that actually are an infographic that Bloomerang itself developed probably more than a year ago. When we look at donor retention over the past seven years, the national average has gone from 50 percent retention to 39 percent retention. That’s terrible. If we were to listen to Peter Drucker, he would say to us, “It’s cheaper to keep a customer than to go buy a new one.”

When we look at new donor retention, new donors will stay with us. Maybe 23 percent of them will stay with us over a year. When we look at repeat donor retention, maybe 60 percent of them will stay with us over a year. The bottom line is for every 100 donors gained in 2012-this is beyond the Great Recession- for every 100 donors gained in 2012, we lost 105.

I want to go to what happens in our relationship with donors-the good, the bad and the ugly. The good is that 34 percent of donors in her study who received a personal “thank you” call said they would give again because of the call. I want to give you a very small sidebar story. I was working with an organization and encouraged board members to thank donors who made gifts to them. I was at the next meeting of the board and someone said, “You know, I did that. I called a little old lady who had made a stock gift of $10,000. Nobody knew her. I called her up. She was so impressed that somebody on the board-a volunteer-would call her and thank her.” Nobody had ever done that before. She asked if she could give again. And she made a second $10,000 stock gift.

The bad: 94 percent of donors say that charities they support never or hardly ever call them up without asking for another gift. We are in complete control of what we send out in communications to our donors. So, if we are designing our communication program with donors so that every time we call them we make an ask, donors are saying back to us, “That’s too much.” 98 percent say that charities never or hardly ever pay them a visit without asking for money. So, the message is the only time I’m calling, I’m going to ask you for money.

Now, my teaching partner, Jenn Hayslett, would say, “Every time I visit with someone, I need to make a move. I need to advance the ball down the field. I need to have some sense of accomplishment.” She will say when you visit with someone, always ask them for something. Ask them to volunteer, ask them to endorse something, ask them to somehow be involved in a project or some part of the organization. She believes she has to ask somebody for something. But what this is saying is that 98 percent of the donors say charities only talk to them when they want money.

Sixty-five percent of donors who make a first gift never make a second gift and they leave largely due to over-soliciting and our insisting on unrestricted giving. So, you can have in your operations fund, you can have several buckets that people could fill. One of my most successful organizations here where I live has taken its operations fund and divided it into four big program areas, like employment, coaching and childcare and education and a number of others. Donors can actually say, “I want my money to go to this program.”

When I asked the executive director how many of those donors actually choose those more designated options, she said about a third of her donors do that and they like to see where their money goes. Still, about two thirds of her donors just leave it unrestricted. But it’s very interesting information to think about how we market our operations fund as unrestricted giving.

Some goals for your stewardship program: Increasing your productivity- that’s the bottom line. Managing your infrastructure-and this is the organization of some of the rest of the slides- managing your infrastructure, setting your goals, managing your time, planning your visit, making appointments, having conversations and follow-up and what’s next.

The purpose of having a stewardship program, in addition to being more productive in terms of your fundraising is, “What do we want from donors? What do we want with this engaged relationship with donors?” We want them to feel about the organization, to be interested, engaged, recognized and appreciation. We want them doing things-volunteering, participating, spreading the message, bringing others along, introducing friends to the organization and giving, giving regularly, giving to priorities of the organization, giving in usable ways, ways that that money can be used immediately and in stretching to capacity.

I want to bring Julia Emlen, who is an Association of Philanthropic Counsel colleague of mine who introduced me to a lot of this thinking, who wrote a wonderful book called “Intentional Stewardship.” It is the single best book that I have ever read about managing large numbers of endowment funds and how do you thank donors and keep them up-to-date with what’s happening with their endowment funds and also how do you actually do these kinds of things.

So, my teaching partner Jenn and I wanted to make sure we had some common language around cultivation and stewardship. We created this Venn diagram to help us understand. Cultivation is a kind of prospect identification, qualifying a possible donor, matching mission and values-what do we do and what< the donor cares about-engaging, illustrating the leadership so that the donor can build trust and early engagement. That leads to donor and volunteer engagement.

As we keep building relationships, that brings us to the stewardship part, the blue circle, of acknowledgement, that’s a “thank you” letter, an IRS gift receipt, it might be a phone call from a board member thanking them, some kind of recognition in public and in person and multiple engagement leading to donor loyalty. So, this particular part brings some of Adrian Sargeant’s work in.

Thinking about that, we then-again, looking at Julia Emlen’s work in intentional stewardship-we looked at what are the kind of-if it’s a three-legged stool, what is the foundation for a stewardship program? What do you need? It’s not enough to simply go out and visit with donors and you feel great because you’ve talked to somebody who’s a donor and they say, “Yes, I’ll give again.” But it needs some management, some infrastructure underneath that program so that it works and it’s sustainable and you can count on it.

So, the three pieces that we’ve put together in this Venn diagram are information management-all of your record-keeping, your database, how up-to-date everything is in your information. You could call it IT if you wanted to, but we call it information management.

The next one for me is message delivery. How are you communicating with your donors at various levels in your giving pyramid? How well do you communicate? This also is not only in your database, but how well do you actually deliver messages through various media, social media, what’s on your website- all of that message delivery.

And the third is relationship management. How do you actually manage the building and engaging of relationships with that donor? So, these three pieces overlap to give you stewardship and donor relations.

So, with that in mind, I then take you to a spreadsheet which Steve has. You will receive this. This is an Excel spreadsheet. It’s a worksheet that we’ve put together. Some people have told me that this is the worth the price of admissions. We put together a spreadsheet of these three-I’ll go back-these three Venn Diagrams. We’ve divided them into the various pieces of what each of these are. So, the colors match these circles. I’m trying to be very in line.

So, the first piece is Information Management. An example of database and record-keeping is your database is accurate and up-to- date. There’s another area of this called Gift Processing, another area called Planning, Policies and Procedures. Next section out of that blue circle is called Message Delivery. How do you deliver your mission in marketing? Your mission, logo, branding tagline are present on appropriate communications and are easy to find on a website. Boy, do I have difficulty finding your mission statement on your website time and time again as an outsider.

So, in the way we’ve designed this worksheet, you can expand, contract, you can change it, you can do anything you want to with it. So, if I were here, I would say, “Well, our database is pretty accurate and up-to-date.” So, I might say we do this well or if it needs improvement or it’s an emerging proficiency, “We’re not very good at it and this is really weak.”

So then, in taking that particular line, you could develop a, “What’s our goal for this coming year and what’s it going to cost us to do that and what’s our goal for the second year and what would it cost us to do that? What’s our goal for the third year and what would it cost us to do that as an estimate for our budget?” so that this worksheet can help you understand where you are and where you want to go to and what that might cost.

So, those two-the third piece is relationship management. One is donor recognition, one is policies and procedures. We wanted to emphasize-this is especially from Julia Emlen-the Donor Bill of Rights is embedded in policies and procedures and is practiced by the staff.

So, let me ask a very quick question of all of you on this webinar, however many there are of you-173. How many of you have built in the Donor Bill of Rights to your policies and procedures to the point where you’re confident it’s acted upon by your staff? You can use the chat room just to say “yes,” “no,” “maybe,” “we have,” “no,” “yes,” “not sure,” “somewhat,” “unsure.”

So, it’s a very good question. It could be an interesting exercise to put the Donor Bill of Rights on your website to see what result, what feedback you get on that. It would also be, in thinking about the Donor Bill of Rights in a philanthropic survey that you might send to your donors on a fairly regular basis. You can do that in any number of ways to survey your donors. But take essence of that Bill of Rights and survey your donors.

What is a Donor Bill of Rights? It is a document that was approved a good 20 years ago, I think, by now, by AFP. It’s approved by the Association of Philanthropic Counsel, CASE. A number of national organizations have put together-I think it’s about 10-12 items in a Bill of Rights-it probably might be ten ways that we can honor donors in our organizations. So, actually, Steve has just put it up there as a reference in the chat room. “Post it in your office,” excellent.

Okay. So, this is just a way to introduce you to the spreadsheet. It’s a worksheet. I would encourage you to add to it. One of the things that one workshop participant did was add the “Who’s responsible for this?” area. They are very detailed. We didn’t want these so broad that you missed the actions. We wanted to keep it at an actionable level. So, everything is something you can do.

So, these three pieces-you see this is number one, number 20, number 36-there are six pages of these items. This is just a sample. It goes up to 50. So, someone added a new column on this spreadsheet to say, “Who’s in charge of this? Who’s the go-to person?” So, I encourage you to use this when you get it from Steve and really make it work for you so that it’s something that can really help you shape your program.

I want to go back. Message delivery-I want to go back to Tom Ahern. He’s here in spirit. When I’ve listened to him talk about how we acknowledge donors or recognize them or appreciate them in our newsletters, he suggests-I’m going to get to the slide-he suggests taking your newsletter and in one color ink circling the numbers of times you mention the organization and programs.

In another color ink, circle the number of times you mention donors. You appreciate donors. You honor donors. He’s going to suggest if you are spending more of your time in the, “We are great,” in our newsletter, “We are such a wonderful organization,” and less time in donors, what you’re doing is corporate marketing, which is great for the organization, but it’s not necessarily doing what you want it to do.

What I read from his advice is market your outcomes and your donors and connect the dots right here. This is donor-centered marketing. It means you’re marketing your outcomes as the purpose of the organization and you’re matching donor goals with outcomes. This is donor-centered marketing. So, I just put this in front of you.

I want to get into managing your time. I’m running through that list of kind of areas of organization-managing you time. I bring in Stephen Covey. What’s urgent and not urgent and what’s important and not important. Most of our time we are seduced into this quadrant. He suggests building this quadrant-what is important and not necessarily urgent. Look at this. Planning, preparations and relationship building in this what is not urgent right now, but what is critically important for the organization. So, I’ve put this in front of you because it is a very excellent guide.

I have a question on the chat room, “Can you go back to the last side and say the concept again?” I’m not sure what that concept, which slide that was. Amy, can you re-do your chat? The slide about what?

Steven Shattuck: I think she was asking about the donor outcomes from Tom Ahern, number 17.

Anne Peyton: This one?

Steven Shattuck: Yes.

Anne Peyton: This one. So, Amy, I hope this is where you want me to be. So, in thinking about what’s on your website, what’s on your newsletters, looking at how you communicate, your message delivery to stakeholders and donors-if you’re spending more time marketing your organization, I think you’re missing the eight-ball. If you’re spending more time looking at outcomes, the real impact, how you’ve changed people’s lives, how the world is a better place, how you deliver on your promise-if you’re spending more time on outcomes and appreciating donors, you’re connecting the dots here between these two circles.

The previous one was you’re marketing the organization. “Aren’t we great?” Well, so what? You’re separating donor from what the donor wants, what the donor is investing in you for. So, this diagram gives you a sense of, “Let’s be more donor- centered, both in who they are and how we appreciate them and the outcomes that they’re funding.”

I want to go to, again, managing your time, getting out of the office. Some suggestions-this is from Joe Tumolo. I don’t know Joe. But this is from his website-pick one day a week for donor visits, block it out, aim for at least two appointments a day. Don’t be a slave to urgency. Turn off your email indication. Go back to that quadrant two in the Stephen Covey matrix and think about planning and taking time to build relationships. Block out time on your calendar every week to prioritize which donors to visit, make appointments and make visits and follow-ups.

Now, what I hear primarily from people in the office is, “I just can’t get out of the office. I’ve got so many meetings. I’ve got so much computer work to do. I just can’t get out of the office.” So, I would suggest-my teaching partner Jenn Hayslett would suggest-find a time management program online for free that works for you. She happens to use TimeTracker. She can put in various projects and she can track her time online live and she can see how she spends her time. She says, “My gosh, I’m amazed at where I waste my time and where I should be spending my time.”

So, if you ever hear yourself say, “I just don’t have time to go visit donors,” take a breath, go find a TimeTracker program of some kind-if you just look for time trackers in an online search, you’ll find a lot of stuff. She uses TimeTracker-to allow you to see how you use time and then figure out how you could arrange for more time.

There’s a question. “Focus these visits on new potential donors or on current donors?” I’m focusing everything here on your current donors. If you can get this solid in your playbook, if you can really build relationships with your current donors-I go back to Peter Drucker-“it’s cheaper to keep a customer than go out and buy a new one.” So, I’m really looking at how you build relationships with the very people who have said hello to you and your job is to say hello back and to build relationships.

Making appointments-these are some tips. This is from Jenn, my teaching partner. She’s the one who’s actually in the office. When you’re calling to make an appointment, give specific choices for times and place. Think through your goal of the visit relative to the location. Do you want to see them in their office or home or restaurant or where do you want to visit with them?

Email and call if you have both. So, a call out of the blue may put somebody off. But if you’ve already emailed them, “I’m here. I’m there. I’m coming to visit. I’d love to talk with you about…” and then you make a call, you may have better reception. Jenn’s perseverance rule: call three times and email three times before giving up with busy working people. She says sometimes four outreaches over a month trying to find somebody over the course of the month.

And set your expectations. You need to plan, “What do you want out of this visit?” What do you want emotionally for yourself and for the donor? What do you want intellectually for this visit? Do you want them to volunteer to come be part of a program or to volunteer to host a party or what? If asked, tell your donor your intentions for the visit. I say what I’m calling for and what I want to talk with them about.

If you’re there to solicit them, if that’s your bottom line goal, you need to be honest with your donors and tell them that. There is nothing more off-putting than taking someone to lunch and spending 55 minutes talking with them and enjoying a great conversation and then bingo, you come in with an ask at the last minute. Donors find that very disturbing.

Who should be on these visits? It’s anything goes. It could be you as a director of development. It could be your CEO and you script your CEO. It could be you and a board member. It could be your CEO and a board member. It could be two board members. It could be one board member. I don’t have any rules about who goes and visits donors. The reason for having an infrastructure is you have a way to design it and manage it and follow-up and keep it sustainable.

Another question is, “Can you provide a link to TimeTracker?” I think if you Google TimeTracker, you’ll find it.

I want to bring-this is from Kay Sprinkel Grace-into our environment here. She has a great story in the book “Beyond Fundraising” from Bertolt Brecht. It’s a great story. He went into a restaurant, had a great dinner, got his bill, paid his bill and walked out. He went into another restaurant, had a great meal and before he got his bill, the chef came out from the kitchen and said, “Did you like your meal?” “Oh, it was a wonderful meal.” “Would you like to come back into the kitchen and see how we do this?” “Oh, I’d love to.” He went back into the kitchen-you’d better believe the kitchen was spotless-had a wonderful tour, came back to his table, the waiter gave him his bill, he paid his bill and walked out.

Which restaurant do you think became his favorite restaurant? I pose that to you. The reason the story exists is that Bertolt Brecht was saying, “The restaurant that invited me into kitchen became my favorite restaurant.” So, I put that phrase in front of you to transform your guests, people who come to your programs into participants, into people active with the organization and transform a donor beyond an annual gift into an investor and an investor in your future. Stewardship-get donors into the kitchen.

So, the concept of “into the kitchen” is a pretty wide metaphor. I’ve had some people say, “But in my organization we don’t have a kitchen.” Well, I challenge you. You do have a kitchen. It’s a metaphor. Having conversations with your donor, prepare the experience for your donors-this is a lot of preparation and planning. Think about the stories. Start with stories and have statistics ready.

Now, another Association of Philanthropic Counsel colleague of mine is Simone Joyaux. She will say, “Most of all have stories and use statistics like spears to really emphasize particular things.” If you start telling me that you serve x-numbers of meals in a soup kitchen, I’m not going to listen as much as I’m going to listen to your telling me a story of a Vietnam vet who came in, started having meals, began to turn his life around, got connected with a case worker, changed his life, now is in an apartment with a job. That’s the story I’m going to remember. If you tell me that you do that with 12 people a month, I’m going to be very impressed with your program.

You need to also appreciate what the donor has done, what he or she has invested in, how they’ve given, if they’ve volunteered, what they know about the organization. You also need to prepare why you’re involved, your passion.

Responses to common questions-if you have a kind of fact sheet, be prepared to know some kind of basic information. You should be prepared to know what your size budget is, what the philanthropic part of your budget is, how much charitable dollars support your work, size of your staff, your geographic region, the numbers of programs you have, things like that-so, the kinds of responses to common questions. If you don’t have any answer, it’s a wonderful opportunity to come back to somebody again, either with a program director or the CEO or someone.

Now, there’s a question from Karen. “How do you bring donors into the kitchen without making clients feel like they’re on display?” I think it depends on the program. I’m not suggesting that you bring donors into the kitchen if the kitchen is literally the employment management program with low-income people. I am suggesting that you have, say, kitchen classes with new moms. Bring donors in and have them be part of the teaching process in the class. They’re part of the educational. They’ve become part of the program.

So, think about your attitude about clients feeling like they’re on display. If that’s what you envision in this, think about another way to involve your donors in the kitchen so that they’re part of the work of the program. I don’t want to get too involved in that because you can nitpick that to pieces. I’m just saying there are ways to get your donors in the kitchen that are honest and direct and not compromising clients or children or anybody else.

Okay, I left off-be ready to invite him or her to volunteer to become more engaged. This is into the kitchen. Again, having conversations, listening to what donors care about. What do you-this is you, a donor-what do you love about the organization? What would you like to protect? What do we do well? How can we improve what we do? How well are we communicating with you? More? Less? Medium? I suggest that you should-should, I don’t like that word-I suggest that you can benefit from conducting philanthropic surveys fairly regularly with your donors.

Ask your customers what they like. You can survey all the way through your donor pool from lowest to highest, from regular to irregular, from people who gave last year but not this year- you can conduct philanthropic surveys. It’s easy to do it through SurveyMonkey or through any other online survey process. That implies that you have emails for your donors. Then you need to be prepared to respond when you get responses from your donors to get back to them to say, “Wow, this is what we learned. This is what we’re going to apply and this is how we’re going to change.”

A critical part of a sustainable program is follow-up. I have an example later of a trip report, something that gets back into the record of the donor, whether it’s an electronic record or a paper file-something that says, “I saw, I visited, we talked about, this is the day and time we talked, we met where, what happened and what’s the next step,” so that follow-up becomes a simply important part of your relationship management with your donors.

I’m going to bring in this again about having conversations and a sense of donor-readiness. Those of you who know Jerry Panas, the concept of “listening the gift” so that if I’m the director of development or the CEO, I’m not asking as much as I am listening for the donor ready to make a gift. So, I attribute that to Jerry Panas. I apologize for not having that on the slide. It should be here.

From Andrea Kihlstedt and Catherine Schwartz of “Capital Campaigns,” these four bullets. Does you donor have an active interest in the mission? Well, I go back to those four buckets from Adrian Sargeant. How well you deliver on your mission is part of how actively they are involved in the mission, how much they know about it. Does the donor have a history of involvement? Are they simply a distant donor but they don’t know much about the workings? They haven’t been in the kitchen? Well, that’s an entry for you.

Does the donor feel a kinship with others in the organization and who? This is that box of multiple engagements from that early Adrian Sargeant slide. Does the donor feel a kinship with others? Who are they close to? What do they like about the way the organization works? Is the donor knowledgeable and engaged about a plan for a future or a proposed project? What do they know? It’s a wonderful entry to, “Let me tell you what we’re planning for the next year or the next five years,” or, “Here’s a synopsis, a kind of public version of our strategic plan and here are some high-level 5,000 foot goals and I want to talk to you about them and I want to listen to your ideas about where we’re going.” Remember, your ultimate goal is to connect donors with your outcomes and what’s going to happen in the future.

I want to bring in this material from AskingMatters.com. It’s a wonderful diagram of how do you script a conversation with a donor? Now, this is clearly a solicitation conversation in the way it’s described in this part. You settle, you confirm, “Can we get to work? May I ask you a few questions?” It’s in this pink explore wedge where you are asking open-ended questions and listening. This is 75 percent of the donor’s voice in this wedge. You’re really having a dialogue. And then if you’re actually to present a project, you’re engaging them in something that you want them to know about. “May I tell you about…?”

At this point, it may be that this is as far as you get in this conversation because a lot of things may come up in these two areas of this conversation. If you can script yourself enough to feel comfortable to manage the conversation to here, you’re doing very well. If you’re in a solicitation conversation, then you’re actually talking about, “Would you consider a gift of…?” Because they’ve already given you, “I’m ready to make this. I’m listening…” They’re ready to make a gift. Then you can explore, “Would you consider making a gift of… and being a part of this?”

I want to go back to Jerry Panas to this slide “Listening the Gift.” When I hear a donor ready to be a participant, I hear him or her say, “Instead of you need to do that, that’s a very important project for you to do,” the pronouns change. “We need to do this. This is important for me.” The small print is the donor is feeling a sense of ownership and responsibility for making the outcomes happen. “We need to do this. I want to be a part of this. What do you want from me to be a part of this?” So, that would be this part of this conversation.

More detail about this-when we talked about having a conversation with a donor, a lot of times this appears as a black box. “What do I talk about? What do I say?” Particularly with board members, “What do you want me to talk about?” This is simply a way to set one, two stages of a conversation. I’m going to settle. “Thank you so much for meeting with me. It’s wonderful that you’re involved in this organization. I thank you so much for you’re giving. Here’s the confirmation of what we’re actually going to talk about. Why we’re meeting today. I believe we have a half-hour of time. I’d like to present A, B and C to you and then I’d like to explore more information with you.”

This settling and confirmation-if I know the donor, it may be very appropriate for me to say, “You know, the last time I talked to you, your grandchildren were very young. Now I’m going to guess that they’re in elementary school. How are they doing in school?” So, I am in this early engagement part of this conversation, but I have it planned. I know what I can know about the donor because I have notes from what I talked about six months ago or a year from now.

The third phase of this is exploring. “Here’s what I actually came to talk with you about. I’m going to save that for presentation. May I ask you some questions? I want to know about how you feel about the organization, about your philanthropy, about other organizations you give to in our geographic area. I want to explore and have a real conversation with you.”

So, the fourth phase of this kind of script, if you will, is, “I’d like to present you some information about what we’re thinking about, about our future. I sent you a copy of the public version of our strategic plan. I want to ask you about it. There’s one particular area that I think might interest you a lot. Can we talk about that?”

So, this is simply a way to say, “How do I manage and phase my conversation? I’m managing this conversation with the donor.” Then if it’s actually a solicitation, then I’m exploring the, “Would you consider making a gift?” and I’m confirming that, “Yes, you have pledged $5,000 to this project. I may not have a pledge card with me, but I am actually confirming what we’ve talked about.”

So, I think that’s-Poppy, thank you very much. Okay. We can move on. Thank you, Poppy. Thank you for asking the question.

This is another slide. I’ve made this up from, again, Asking Matters. I think this is Andrea Kihlstedt and Brian Saber’s if I’m correct. They’ve taken Meyers-Briggs and have adapted it to fundraising. If you go to Asking Matters or if you Google asking styles you can find something like this. It is a way of looking at, again based on Meyers-Briggs, which is not a personality assessment, it’s a how you take in information, process it and put it back out. Are you more extroverted or introverted? Are you more analytic, left-brained or intuitive right-brained?

This comes up with four basic styles of Go-Getters, Kindred Spirits, Mission Controllers and Rainmakers. This is one way of thinking. If you do the survey-go to AskingMatters.com and do the survey-and it will tell you, “Oh, you might be a Rainmaker and you might be a Go-Getter.” Well, if you’re a Rainmaker, you’re a strong asker who rushes to close. Be sure to give the donor time to convince herself.

So, it’s simply saying where your strength is and if you overuse your strength and ask too quickly, you may not be giving the donor enough time. That’s really all I want to talk about on this slide. I want you to dive into this and get a feel for it because this is much more in the asking part. This is beyond the stewardship focus of this workshop.

Karen has asked, “Is this arc representing one meeting?” Yes. So, you could use this structure in, again, settling a third meeting, a fourth meeting, a fifth meeting. You still might spend less time here and less time here and much more conversation about a particular project that the person has said, “I want more information about that.” You may find that you don’t really need to settle, a kind of, “Hello, thank you so much. I’m so glad to be meeting with you. Here’s what we’re going to talk about and let’s explore some questions.”

It may be that these become more condensed. But basically, this is kind of physics without friction. It may be that you don’t need to do all of these things, but it can help you get there. Any time you have a script, I suggest you practice it and put it aside. Practice it, put it aside. Practice it in the shower, practice it in the car so that it’s familiar enough with you that you don’t have to read it. That’s all I want to say about that slide.

A sample trip report-you can do trip follow-ups by email. When I was working at a major gift office, I would go debrief the president from his trips. I would sit down and take notes about everybody he saw so that he didn’t have to do anything, he just had to give me his time. So, some way of collecting the information. “What did you talk about? What does the donor cherish?” Any of those kinds of things. Make up a trip report. It doesn’t matter that it’s this one or another one. Just make sure that you do it, especially follow-up. What are the tasks? Who needs to do what and when should it happen? You’re creating what we call a tickler system in your trip reports.

I’ve given you a list of resources. These are mostly books. We didn’t talk much about donor retention. Oh, let me ask the question right now. How many of you know what your donor retention percentage is? Do you know what your donor retention is? If it’s “yes,” is it above 50 percent? Wonderful. Okay. That’s great.

So, one of you mentioned that Bloomerang helps you with donor retention. Ideally, your software should be able to give you a very easy push-button donor retention. It’s important for you to know that. It is one single measure of how well you are managing your whole program with your donors. Over a period of time, it’s usually about a year. If you have fiscal year, it’s usually that fiscal year. One is a YouTube piece and one is from Lori Jacobwith about how to measure donor retention if your software doesn’t do it for you.

So, I want to close. I want to make a plug for Bloomerang. It is phenomenal. It puts all of the best practices into its software, just like that donor retention piece. I also want to put a plug in for the Association of Philanthropic Counsel. We are a national association of fundraising consulting firms, both small and medium-sized, very personal. And I put in a plug for APC, APC-inc.org, if you’re looking for fundraising counsels to find somebody who’s quite reliable.

So, questions?

Steven Shattuck: Yeah. That was great. Thanks, Anne. And thanks to everyone who asked questions throughout and Anne, thanks for answering those and being a good sport. We’ve probably got about 5-7 minutes for questions. So, if anyone listening was wondering about something but maybe was sitting on their hands, now is the time. We’ve got Anne here. She’s a stewardship expert here at your disposal for the next few minutes.

Here’s a good one from Beth, Anne, it says, “Can you do proper stewardship on the telephone or via mail?” So, does it always have to be in person?

Anne Peyton: I think you can. I think just a phone call of, “Here’s an event I’d like to invite you to,” may have nothing to do with your organization, but it has something that your donor might be interested in. So, I can call. I can email you. I can put something in the mail. I can send you a photocopy of an article from the local newspaper about something going on with the children if the person’s interested in children, something with land trust if the person is interested in conservation. I can just keep sending you things and the bottom line message is, “I’m thinking about you and I’m thinking about how this really connects with your goals.”

Steven Shattuck: Great.

Anne Peyton: Poppy asked if anyone has their retention rates, what’s the reasonable rate? Steve, you may know that.

Steven Shattuck: I will send you that to you, Poppy, I promise.

Anne Peyton: Okay.

Steven Shattuck: Now they’re kind of piling in. I’m going to scroll up here. Here’s one from Angie. Angie’s wondering, “How many people can one person steward?” So, what’s the maximum workload for one person in your mind, Anne?

Anne Peyton: I think when I was involved, I think it was very common to have a portfolio of 50-150 people. I think it depends on your resources, how much time you can make to have this happen. If you can start with your top ten or eleven donors, if you think about the pyramid of your annual fund- God forbid you call it an annual fund, your operations fund-if you think about the top ten or eleven people-there’s a rule of thumb that the top ten or eleven people make or break your annual fund-start with eleven people and visit them, develop relationships with them. That’s a place to start.

The question of stewardship in the world of direct mail-direct mail is a donor acquisition process. It has nothing to do with how you keep donors. If you get a donor in through a direct mail program, you need to realize that you’ve got-I think the rule of thumb is you’ve got three years-what we just saw on the infographic back there, only a fifth of those donors who gave to you one year will give to you again. So, you’ve got a very short period of time to bring those donors in.

An example-I bought a membership in the National Organic Farmers Association because I wanted to order some garden supplies this spring from them. To order from them, I had to have a $20 membership. Well, that was pretty cheap for me in what I was saving in ordering supplies from them. Well, they sent me a “Welcome to the Tribe” package that knocked my socks off. It was about organic gardening and farming. It was about the organization. It was about the organic dairies. It was a phenomenal welcome package that I got from them, like a welcome wagon.

So, I think if you’re acquiring donors by direct mail, you’re challenging yourself in a way to buy donors-I go back to Peter Drucker’s, “It’s cheaper to keep a customer than it is to buy a new one”-you would do much better to use board member contacts and friends of friends’ contacts and engage your donors in bringing new people in the organization. Those kinds of personal contacts give you much more. You can get your arms around it, literally, metaphorically you can get your arms around a donor much more.

“How do you find your top 100? Is there a formula?” Beth, if you have an operations fund, an annual fund, if you will-I don’t like the word annual because it means one gift one time a year- but if you have an annual fund, look at the top sizes of gifts to your organization in that year. Those are your top ten donors. That’s the formula. The formula in an annual fund is about 10-12 donors make or break your annual fund.

So, it’s the 80/20 rule. You may have 80 percent of the people who give and your operations fund give 20 percent of the money and 20 percent of the people give 80 percent of the money. That might be 90/10. But basically, you’ve got a smaller number of people who give the larger gifts. Those are the people that I would suggest you start with. If you need a place to start, start with your top donors.

So, Steve is telling us where you can download the slides and he is going to send out the spreadsheet. I think we might be done. Any more questions?

Steven Shattuck: There’s one here from Rachel. “If you’re speaking to someone with the intent of making an ask and you can tell that they are already uncomfortable with the conversation. What should you do? Should you continue? Should you stop? What advice did you have for Rachel there?

Anne Peyton: I think if you’re getting the information from the donor that he or she is not ready to make a gift, that they’re uncomfortable, I would be in the moment and explore that sense of uncomfortableness with them. If they are hesitant because they don’t believe the program is effective or will deliver the results, take the time to be in the moment with the donor. Put your ask agenda aside because you’re not going to get anywhere with an ask unless you get through or around this uncomfortableness.

It may be that the person doesn’t like to be solicited. It may be that the person doesn’t want to talk about this in person. They may want to have something on paper. They may need to talk to a spouse. They may need to talk to somebody else. It may be that this just isn’t the right time. You don’t know if they’re going through a divorce, if they just lost a child in college and died. You don’t know what’s going on. So, just take the time to breathe, be in the moment and be very truthful and honest and respectful of the person. That’s my best advice to you.

Steven Shattuck: Great advice.

Anne Peyton: I have been in that situation. I went forward with an ask and man, did it bomb. So, it’s up to you to slow down and be with a donor.

Steven Shattuck: I think we’ve all been there. We’ve got a question from Becca. Anne, you mentioned your top donors. Becca was wondering, “Is that top donors in the last year or is that lifetime for the organization? Where are those top donors coming from?”

Anne Peyton: I would suggest it’s a little bit of both. I would start with the top donors in my previous fiscal year because that’s real data that I have. I would also think about, in the planned giving always in the back of my mind, who are the donors who have been long-term donors even at the $25 a year level. Those people have demonstrated long-term loyalty.

So, I might want to go visit two or three of those. This story I told about the little old lady who had given a $10,000 stock gift and made a second $10,000 stock gift based on one thank you call-you never know where there is more money and where there’s more loyalty and where there’s more affection that you can genuinely respect and help grow.

Steven Shattuck: Cool. Well, great. Anne, I feel like we could probably talk about this for days. But I do want to be respectful of everybody’s time. We’re approaching the 2:00 hour. Anne, I want to give you the last word to tell folks where they can find out more about you, where they can follow you online, hopefully they can email you with further questions.

Anne Peyton: You’re certainly welcome to. I really refer you back to the resource list, which is a couple slides ago because it’s very important for you as fundraising professionals to use the body of knowledge that we are developing and have developed through our research. Fifteen years ago, most of our knowledge was kind of anecdotal and seat of the pants and, “This is my experience,” but we have developed a strong, deep body of knowledge about what’s important for our donors. We can use that in how we actually relate with our donors. As I said, Bloomerang is a wonderful software program that does that for you and helps you think the way a donor may want to be treated.

I want to go back to the question-Jim had a question, “If you’re a new 501(c)(3) and you don’t have donors…” You have not-yet donors. So, go through your board, go through any contacts you can to find people through personal connections that may be interested in what you’re doing. I would encourage you to think less about buying lists and more about expanding your sphere of influence and your network through personal connections.

Steven Shattuck: Great. Cool. Anne, this was a lot of fun. Thanks for being with us for an hour. I know you usually do these trainings in person. I really appreciate you making it available online to everyone nationwide. This was a lot of fun. Hopefully everyone enjoyed it as much as I did.

Just some last minute housecleaning-I will be sending out a recording later on this afternoon as well as that spreadsheet that Anne teased a little bit early on. So, you’ll receive that from me a little later on this afternoon. So, look at your email inbox for that.

We do these webinars every week. We have a great one coming up next week, actually. Kivi Leroux Miller is going to join us to talk about “Fun Ways to Say Thanks.” She’s going to talk about videos, infographics, other cool things that you can do rather than just sending a boring old acknowledgement letter. So, if that is interesting to you, check out our webinar page. You can register for that. It’s totally free and will be totally educational and we’ll have a lot of fun. So, check that out.

We’re about out of time. So, Anne, a final thank you. Thanks again for joining us. This was a lot of fun.

Anne Peyton: My pleasure. I’m really honored to be able to share this information with everybody.

Steven Shattuck: I think you may be the record holder for most attendees on a Bloomerang webinar. So, well done.

Anne Peyton: My pleasure, absolute pleasure.

Steven Shattuck: Well, great. Thanks everyone who hung out with us. Look for an email later from me and have a great weekend if we don’t talk to you. See you next week.