Ops Insights #051 - 3 Things Donors Do Not Say
October 22, 2024 | Read Time: 3 minutes | Written by Jenny Kleintop
You don't hear donors say:
I gave because you have a clean database.
I gave because you have timely reports.
I gave because you have streamlined processes.
You certainly do not. Rather, you hear donors say:
I gave because you made a difference in my life.
I gave because I want something changed for the better.
I gave because I want to leave a legacy.
How does this happen:
Because you have a clean database to know who to ask.
Because you have timely reports to tell you when to ask.
Because you have streamlined processes to tell you what is meaningful to them.
Because you asked the right person at the right time with the right message.
All this happens because of clean database, timely reports, and streamlined processes.
Take Action
It’s about the donor experience. How they see you. How they see the difference they can make.
➡ Add and complete 2 high-impact data integrity projects this year. First, schedule a meeting with key stakeholders which should include leadership, frontline fundraisers, and data/ops. Second, look at your goals and targets to close more gifts or get more names in the pipeline. Third, work backward to say if this is our target, then cleaning and improving our data in a certain way will help us get closer to achieving those goals. Lastly, get to it and go implement those 2 projects.
Three examples:
Acquire 25% more phone numbers and/or emails on donors who gave this year so thank you calls and emails can be completed. Show donor love, thank over and over, and watch how that helps retain your donors.
Run a process or get a volunteer to help add employment information on all prospects in qualification and cultivation. This will help gift officers with prospecting, plus it could help identify matching gift opportunities.
Wealth screen any new donors who gave this year and surface 10% additional prospects to add to portfolios. It will take longer to see results as these names are in the early phase of moves management, but it’s a start to have an impact on next year’s targets.
➡ Automate and make available the most frequently used report by leadership. Ideally, this can live inside your database and be real-time, as CRMs have improved over the years. If it’s not possible, look at the report. It may be too complicated and time to have a conversation about reconfiguring coding and simplifying metrics.
➡ Streamline one process within the next two months. I know, no time, too busy, other priorities, and the list goes on. However, if you take the extra time to do it now, it will save you hours each month, week, or day depending on what process you pick to streamline.
For example, at one nonprofit I’m working at, we run 4 files monthly to send to the mail house for upgrade asks and second touch acknowledgements. I set up a Queue to automatically refresh the merge queries and then automatically export the files to a hosted FTP folder. Now, we no longer have to click Refresh or click Export and wait for those processes to run. Instead, the files are in the folder ready to go each month. It took a day to figure out how to get the Queue, FTP, and hosting folder to work properly, but now it saves half a day each month of running files.
You’ve got this!
👋 See you next time,
Jenny
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