Donor Relationship Management

Client success stories must be collected, shared often and treated like gold—because they are! Authentic anecdotes help retain your employees and volunteers when they begin to feel burned out and overwhelmed. Personalized impact stores will inspire your donors to dig just a little deeper for your cause...

True story. Earlier in my fundraising career, I was working in Virginia and putting a trip to Boston together to visit some donors and prospects we had there. I still remember one particular telephone conversation like it was yesterday. I want you to read it and think of three things I did wrong...

Each year, approximately 10 percent of your nonprofit donor base will attrite naturally through death, moving or just not giving any longer. Then, you add lapsed donors on top of that natural attrition, and you are looking at an eroding donor list. Sound familiar?...

When considering giving motivations, most nonprofits turn to their well-tested case for giving or a list of organizational features. More sophisticated organizations turn to recent survey data that provides details about their donor base or a group of donor personas...

When considering giving motivations, most nonprofits turn to their well-tested case for giving or a list of organizational features. More sophisticated organizations turn to recent survey data that provides details about their donor base or a group of donor personas. However, it’s not enough to use either source to determine true donor motivation due to […]

For most people, asking for gifts in person is difficult. And when you are asking for one of the top campaign gifts, it’s even harder because the stakes are super high. Chances are, you don’t have very many donors who would consider giving one of those lead gifts. So, it’s no surprise that when you ask those donors for very big gifts, you are anxious...

I just came back from the International Fundraising Congress, which was held last week in Noordwijkerhout, Netherlands. It’s always a great time to visit my family who live near the German and Belgian border in the south. I was able to attend a great session on donor love with Jen Love of Agents of Good and Simon Scriver. I’d heard of them, but now I actually got to meet them—pretty neat!...

I felt the potential donor’s pain. It was very clear, and their level of frustration high. A friend had long been involved with a college at a major university. Over nearly a decade, the college’s chief development officer had become a good friend to the prospective major donor and their family...

My father, Jack Fulton, died four years ago due to complications from Parkinson’s disease. During the last five years of his life, I was his primary support system, taking him to and from doctor’s appointments, coordinating registered nurse visits, going to the grocery store and helping him with all the other necessities, so that he could live in his home...

Unfortunately, in the nonprofit sector, sympathy is one of the most common feelings caused by sharing a story. We rush to share some facts and leave little room to connect with the person and their conflict. We simply end up feeling sorry for the person. That is not the kind of storytelling that causes listeners and readers to take action...