How to Make Every Thank-You More Human: Fix Your Donor Thank-Yous In 30 Minutes

Speaker 1 0:09
Hello everybody, my name is Sean McClellan. I am a training senior training specialist for DonorPerfect. Welcome to Lisa’s session. How to make every thank you more human. Fix your donor thank yous in 30 minutes. A little bit about Lisa Sargent. She is an Read More

Speaker 1 0:09
Hello everybody, my name is Sean McClellan. I am a training senior training specialist for DonorPerfect. Welcome to Lisa’s session. How to make every thank you more human. Fix your donor thank yous in 30 minutes. A little bit about Lisa Sargent. She is an award-winning fundraiser, copywriter, and author, whose work has been called everything from edgy to magical. She’s the top-selling author of Thankology, the new book for nonprofits on the power of gratitude, and a contributing author to the acclaimed decision science book Change for Better. A fundraising storyteller to her bones, Sargent is next level nerdy about deepening human connection through fundraising stories well told with the awe and beauty of direct response. She wears her heart on her sleeve for clients past and present, including Best Friends Animal Society, Merchant’s Quay Ireland, Shriners Hospital for Children, and many, many more. Some housekeeping items: please submit your questions in the Q and A tab, and if we have time at the end, we’ll address them. All sessions are being recorded and will be available on the Donor Perfect website after the conference. Lisa, take it away.

Speaker 2 1:13
Thank you. Thank you so much, Sean. And thank you to everyone out there. And welcome personally from me to this amazing Donor Perfect conference, we We don’t have a whole lot of time together today, just 25 minutes. This says how to fix your thank you, donor thank yous in 30 minutes. We actually have 25 but what it’s about is how to make every thank you you craft more human, and it’s it’s something that you almost can’t underestimate the superpower that gratitude is, that should it can become a true cornerstone of your supporter communications. Now, some of you out there might be thinking to yourself, or maybe you have someone on your board, or in your on your team who is not really fully on board with the whole gratitude thing, and they’re saying, like, well, but what’s the ROI, or it makes people feel awkward, or it’s really just about receding. And so, what I want to do is start off super quick with just like five slides on if you have to make your case, or if you really, really want to understand in your bones the power of gratitude. These five slides will do it. And first, we’re going to talk about what’s at stake. What would we lose? And I’m going to share a quote with you. It’s from a real-life donor, Clara is not her real name, but a real-life donor, and she said this: You’re always thanking donors, but as a donor, without your hard work and dedication, my money is worth nothing. It’s only money you guys translated into love. Now, I left out the little bit in the attribution for her quote, which says that she is a real-life donor who has confirmed a legacy pledge in her will, and as of 2023 according to free will, the average charitable bequest in the United States is $46,000 Now, I don’t know about you, and I don’t know about the naysayers that you may come up against about gratitude, but this quote actually connects the thanking to the hard work and organize the hard work and dedication of the organization that’s been noticed by this donor to her money to love to the legacy pledge, $46,000 legacy pledge. What do we lose? In part, we lose more than dollars and cents, but we also lose dollars and cents. What do we lose? We lose good hearted people, good hearted supporters like Clara, and that’s what we, that’s the kind of supporter that we want to keep through thinking, so I’m going to look at a few arguments that people have, which is thanking is just a receipt, we need to get that receipt out the door, out the door, out the door is good, you want it to be prompt, but what we know is that there is technically an ROI to gratitude, because gratitude grows retention and value. I’m sorry for these weird little sequential pop-ups of icons coming up on the screen. My, my slides had to be reformatted, and so some of these animations, the order of the clicks that I give, they don’t come up actually as I intended them to, but we’re going to forge ahead, because that’s what we do. So you’re going to see these pop up, and sooner or later all will be revealed. So, beyond receipts, gratitude, gross retention, and value. What we know from the work of Adrian Sargent, no relation to me, Professor Adrian Sargent, in a research called Managing Donor Defection, and what he found, he asked supporters, why did they stop giving? These are these are supporters who stopped giving to organizations. He asked them, “Hey, why did you stop? And 21% of these supporters said, “I stopped giving because I was never thanked. More than a receipt, probably not. I was never thanked. I was not informed on how my gifts were used. Used, and 21% two donors out of every 10 stopped giving simply because of that. Now, Sargent also found that if you can keep just one extra donor in 10, that’s a 10% increase in donor retention. It can yield up to a 200% increase in the lifetime value of your donor database. 200% folks. We know already 21% of people stopped giving because they weren’t thanked.

Speaker 2 5:32
If you keep just one of those donors, just one out of every donor in 10, you can see a huge gain now in people often often might say to you as well, oh, it’s just it makes people feel awkward, right? And when, especially in the early days of thinking, and even sometimes you might feel that when you’re first starting to think, you might say to yourself, oh geez, it’s an it’s like an obligation, it’s a perfunctory thing, I kind of have to do it, and I would if I make somebody feel awkward and then they stop giving. What I want you to remember is the work of Nicholas Eppley and Amit Kumar from the University of Chicago, who conducted a series of experiments where they had senders craft gratitude letters, and they had these senders do something important before they sent the letters out, and what they had them do was they had them predict how awkward they would make recipients feel, and what they found was shocking, not to us, but to some people who may say what they found was that senders consistently overestimated how awkward their gratitude letters would make recipients feel. So, someone might say, ‘Well, this makes people feel awkward. In fact, the recipients said, ‘I didn’t really feel awkward at all. I felt pretty good when I got that gratitude letter. They also had senders predict how much that thank you letter would mean. So we think back to the to Clara, correct. We think back to Clara and her legacy pledge, and converting it all to love, and what they found was that senders also consistently underestimated the positive meaning their thank you letter would have. In other words, recipients were saying, yeah, this letter, this beautiful letter that they sent me, it really meant a lot to me. And that’s what’s happening with you at your organizations when you level up. Now, you might also think to yourself, hey, everybody’s probably out there doing it, so really, what difference is it going to make? Well, think again. What we know from the work of folks like Bill Jacobs over at the Analytical Ones, an agency in the United States, he conducted a mystery shopping test where he sent a bunch of donations out to nonprofits, and then he tracked what came in, and what he found was that more than 70% of the 70% I’m going to say it twice, of the organizations that he sent gifts to still hadn’t sent him a thank you three months later. Do you see the opportunity here? So, how do we know? How do we know that this is actually doing, or why is it doing so much magic. Why is gratitude doing so much magic here? Well, we know because neuroscience tells us that gratitude is DNA deep, and I’m not talking about like creating a gratitude journal, right? I’m talking about the work of folks like Epley and Kumar, where they found the University of Chicago, where they found how much it means. So, what we know is that right behind your eyebrows here, there is a little center of your brain that lights up when warm gratitude happens, right? And what it does is it activates emotion, trust, and memory centers. You want to be memorable to your donors. Well, here’s a great way to do it, because it lights up your brain exactly where you want it to, and it activates trust, which is a key component of loyalty. Don’t you sticking around emotion? Emotion is the key to everything, and unlocks all of those centers. It can reduce attrition and turnover. We know this from the work of Adrian Sargent. It can boost generosity, same thing. It increases goodwill and well-being. Remember, oh, I didn’t feel awkward at all. In fact, the letter made me feel pretty good. This is happening. It’s proven neuroscience. Your brain, your supporter’s brain, is lighting up in this beautiful, beautiful way. It increases average gift and speed to second gift. We don’t have time to get into this, but trust me on this. There’s research out there that says that if you send beautiful thank yous, and you send them promptly, you’ll increase your speed to second gift, and that’s when donors really, really become supporters. It can increase your understanding of others, and it can move people to act for the common good. Number six and seven.

Speaker 2 9:36
Really, this is the reason we’re here in nonprofit work to change the world. Gratitude increases something called prosocial behavior, which means we want to help others, we understand others better, and part of it is also because of those gorgeous happiness chemicals that swim in your brain when you experience warm gratitude, oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin, so let’s. Have a look at how you can start, because the question is not why you, the question is not why now, the question is why we, if gratitude is so great, let’s start inspiring for a lifetime right now, ground for ground floor gratitude. If you remember nothing, nothing else from our time together today, I want you to remember four words: warm, prompt, and I really mean prompt, so technically that’s a fifth word, authentic, and human. If you think to yourself, okay, Lisa talked about six blocks, she talked about this, she talked about that. What I don’t even remember it: warm, prompt, authentic, human. I remember that from the very start, that’s where you want to start lighting up your brain with lighting up your supporters’ brains with all these beautiful, beautiful things, and the way you’re not going to do it, I know a lot of you out there do digital, the way you’re not going to do it is by letting this be their first. Thank you. Now, this comes from my own personal shop donation mystery shopping test that I did, where I gave to a bunch of organizations, and I went online, I made a gift, and this was the first screen that I saw after I gave. Your donation has been processed, processed. People really, truly, it happened to me, and I don’t want this to be your organization. This cannot, if you do digital, this cannot be their first thank you. You go to the donate button. How do you figure this out? You go to your own homepage and you make your own gift. What happens? What is the next thing they see after they give? It should not be this, but it could be this. Your donation has just changed the life of a child. You’ve got this beautiful little boy with his dog, try a first thank you that works like this. Instead, this is what we mean by human and warm, and it’s prompt because it’s the first thing that they see. If you’re doing digital, which I know a lot of you folks out there attending are, so don’t get too hung up on all these words and stuff, and what we’re going to say, because I’m going to, in the next few slides, I’m going to just break it down a little bit at a time, and we’re going to walk through how you can make this. What do we mean by warm, authentic human? What are the components that turn it from your donation has been processed to your donation has just changed somebody’s life. Here’s what it’s going to look like. Okay, hold on just a second. I just gotta tap here to make sure. There we go. Okay. Here’s what it’s going to look like when we took that donation. Thank you. That’s called a post gift conversion page, or donation thank you redirect page. We took that and we applied six thank you blocks. They come from my book, Thankcology, but I’m going to give them to you here. These slides will be available to you, as well as some handouts that I have, so that you don’t have to buy the book. You can just look at it here, and we’re going to walk through these really quick, and then we’re going to look at them in practice. So, conveniently, these six thank you blocks, the humanizers, if you will, they spell the word thank you. You’re going to thank the donor and let them know their gift was received. You’re going to help them see what their gift is doing, or will do. For example, a thank you redirect – it happens a split second after they give, so it’s what their gift will do. You’re going to ask the donor if you can for something other than money, not a gift, something other than money. Don’t get too hung up on that. We’ll talk about that in a second.

Speaker 2 13:19
You’re going to notify the donor how they can reach you with questions, kindle good feelings by showing how their gift is helping and updating them, letting them know when they’ll next hear from you. You’re going to put that all in a single thank you. And how does that look? So let’s take, let’s take our post gift. Thank you. Not your donation has been processed, remember. Let’s take that. This is really humanized, as best as we can make it. Let’s take it and see what happens, and we’ll apply those six blocks. Okay, hold on just one second. Let’s get this correct here. Okay, so what’s the first block look like? The first block is thing, right? So, how do I know my gifts was my gift was received? Remember, go way back to Adrian Sargent, and the 21% of the people who stopped giving. Well, we know that if we can let them know their gift was received, that starts to get rid of that and ease that doubt. Your donation has just changed the life of a child with sight loss and other complex disabilities. You can see, thank you is there in the beautiful image, and it’s there at the very end. Thank you. So, there’s your first block, and you’re going to notice that these things don’t necessarily go in order. Either, you can put them in wherever they fit within your copy, so you can see help here. Now, remember, we talked about what you have done, or what you will do, based on the timing of the gift, if it comes right away. So, here, you’ll see, because of you, help special standards and walkers and therapy will help them to reach and walk and stand and do, because of you, tiny fingers will feel for braille dots, and superhero guide horses will help nurture new strength. You can see help there. We’re starting to see. Okay, I made the gift. Now here’s what my gift is going to do as. The donor, for something other than money, you can see the block there in the right column. If you ever have questions, or you want to join us for a tour, give us a call. That’s as that’s as simple as that, to ask them for something else. Another way to invite them, Clay Buck talked about inviting to invite them into the work and the conversation. Notify no notify, super easy. It’s still part of the same little paragraph we’re asking is notify them how they can reach you with questions. Give them a phone number, give them the email with a person. So notice, reach, email us at jane@xyz.org Notify them, kindle good feelings, kindle good feelings. You’ll notice takes up almost the most of this. Thank you. And the reason it does that is because you can really paint the picture for what the gift will do, the feeling of grass beneath your feet, the warmth of sunshine on your face. This is a sight loss charity, and so we’re talking about things you can feel, the excitement of good, good book, life’s richest colors can’t always be seen, the feeling, the warmth, the experience of a book. They are felt with the human heart. You can kindle those kind of feelings. Remember, the warmth of the letter lights up the brain in a really beautiful way. If you want to kindle those good feelings and bring it back to the donor, this is how you’re going to do it. And all because you believe a child’s true potential can’t always be seen, it must be felt with the human heart. This is how you apply those six blocks. Update, super simple, and still part of that same kit. It’s that same paragraph, way at the end, that little hardworking paragraph. Shortly, via email, we’ll send an official record of your incredibly kind donation, that’s all it says. And so now I know you’re setting up and a kind of an expectation for supporters that lets them know what’s the next thing that’s going to happen, right? Six blocks all in that one little post gift redirect. Now the next thing that might come from this is you, you might have an auto reply, and this looks very, very non-fancy, and very, very like formatting your gift details amount payment method in an auto reply.

Speaker 2 17:08
This is actually what we had to work with, but you can still power it up with that beautiful, those beautiful thank you blocks. So you have your six blocks, just like we just did, you’re going to continue to use those, you’re going to continue to use those human humanizers, and also make sure it’s warm, prompt, and authentic. And the way that you’re going to humanize these auto replies is you can use a human sender. Sorry, this is going to light up in a different way than I want it to, so I’m going to just click through to a bunch of them. You can see the first name of a person, usually, usually I’ll say something like it might be like Lisa at Helping Hands, Helping Hands Organization, or something. I don’t often use the last name, but you could do that. Just don’t make it just from your organization. Use a real human sender. You’re going to front load your subject line, so subject lines are usually around 45 characters. You’re going to front load it, so that the real meat of it shows up in your preview pane, and then the rest of it comes after you. Just tap here, there you go, right? And then you’re going to personalize your message, right? So we’re never going to say, “Dear friend, because we know who they are, they just gave, and you are not going to start your letter with on behalf of the board of directors, not going to start it with, I hope you’re keeping well. Thank you, AI, for that little golden nugget, and you’re not going to start with my name is XYZ, and I am the executive director of. Instead, you’re going to start with something like, Thank you so very much for your wonderful donation, or some beautiful lead, which we’ll look at a couple others before we stop, but you have the six blocks that we walked through, and now you know if you have something that has some some format to it, you can do more with that. Okay, and then remember, Kindle, there is no way we can ever express just what your kindness means, even in this little tiny auto reply heavy on the format, you can still squeeze in kindness, and you can squeeze in kindness. I like to say lighting the little hidden corners of the things that you send. You can see down here at the very bottom, there’s a 501 c3 the taxable donation disclaimer, where we talk about in return for your very kind donation. Thank you again for being the heart of our organization. We couldn’t do this healing work without you. Warm prompt, authentic human. Now, here’s an example of an email, and again, you’ll have access to all of these slides, so that you can see this. We talked about the six blocks, we talked about warm prompt, authentic, and human. We’re squeezing everything into 25 minutes and that is always going on in the background, but depending on your format, so in this case, an email thank you, you want to pay attention to a few other things, and in this case, you’re going to pay attention to subject line again, remember, 45 characters or less, or you might want to front load it, sometimes we use emojis. We use hearts, we use thank you hands, stuff like that. You’re going to have a short snappy lead. Remember, no on behalf of no. I hope you are keeping well. So often change can be hard to measure in numbers. Immediately it’s short, it’s one line there, it’s an open door, it’s that thing again that Clay talked about, an invitation into the actual thank you itself, everything can be a kind of an open door, supporter identities, which he also talked up to, talked about. We’re going to get to a little bit more, unpack that a little bit more, but I want to show you what that means. In this case, it’s not just about the gift, it’s about the giver, so your kindness is helping to bring about these changes, the deep care and concern you show when you give. If you can work in supporter identities, and we’ll get to that super quick in a minute. You always want to work in supporter identities, so like a superpower within a superpower. Sign offs and signatories.

Speaker 2 20:56
We always sign it from a person that they can reach, and we always don’t – we don’t usually say things like sincerely. I’ll always try to level that up as well. So, with all my gratitude for your support and your love, maybe love for you is a little bit too much, but you could say with all my gratitude for your very kind support, and that includes a couple of key donor identity words across channels. We know that if people, you may be doing a lot of digital. Do you always want to try, if you can, to cross channels into things like direct mail? So we always ask people to subscribe to their print newsletter. Yes, and emails too. And we always have a PS. It’s one of the most click things, even in our emails. So try to put a PS into your thank you emails as well. And again, there are handouts with this session to checklist better online and email thanking and then there’s another checklist on better thanking. Sorry about the way this is going to come up. So, what I’m going to do is I’m going to click this that yellow box, ignore it for a second, you’re going to see all the things that I want to say come up after that. So, here is our post gift redirect page again? Remember, your donation has been processed. No, no, no, we’re not doing that anymore. We’re saying what a gift you are. In this case, they can actually personalize it, so it might say what a gift you are, Mary or Stephanie or Joe. Thank you. And then here it is. It’s a, it’s the first thing they see after they give, right? So from that we go to the thank you email, which you just looked at a second ago, together with me, and from that, if we have permission, we will always send them a direct mail thank you as well, and it con it conforms to the exact same format that we just talked up, talked about with the thank you redirect with the thank you emails, they all come together, so you can see that first lead every day, the world changes, and here they are in their full glory, everything all at once. Mind your permissions, make sure that you can direct mail people, you can send letters by post, so make sure you can do that. You want to offer choice, right, and let them do that. Honor the choices and use multiple signers. So, in the beginning, we had your choker of family worldwide, and then it went to the donor care person who sent the email, and then the big guns, the CEO sends the direct mail. Thank you. And you can do that warm, prompt, authentic human still. And then once a year we send a full on pack that’s only devoted to gratitude and that comes from the CEO, so remember we talked about your gratitude superpower, and just give me one second, I just want to make sure I have about three minutes left with you, so we’re going to go pretty quickly, so your gratitude superpower supporter identities 1101 when you talk about identities, you’re thinking the giver, not just the gift. And this is, like I said, a kind of a superpower within a superpower. At the Institute for Sustainable Philanthropy, Professors Jen Chang and Adrian Sargent dig really deep into into identity. Who are we? Who are we when we give, right? So, you have a might have personal, relational, you might have a religious identity, a social identity, local, national identity, and what they found was when people were asked in a survey how they felt when they gave, these are the words that they used to describe themselves, and I’ve seen this happen in supporter surveys that I’ve been part of myself: kind, caring, compassionate, helpful, friendly, fair, hardworking, and generous. Isn’t that beautiful? And you can put those into your thank you letters, and I want to give you just a few ways that you might be able to do that because we know when you can tap into them, thanking the giver, not just the gift. Amazing things happen. Thank you for being the kind of person who XYZ, because of your kindness and compassion for our work, because you are someone who believes in standing up for health and.

Speaker 2 24:59
Human rights, you answered the call, even if you know nothing. Thank you for being exactly who you are. You never turn away, you protector of champion of believer in the power of community and a better world. It’s not awkward, you know this now. You can put that into thank yous, so why you, why now, why wait? Start now, and think everywhere you can. You can think in your newsletters, we put these in infographics, you can put these in photo captions. Thank you for helping us be there when we’re needed most, right on the cover of a newsletter, in thank you, phone calls, in email headers, in direct mail appeals. This is the greatest gift of all, warm, authentic human everywhere. Because what’s at stake, Clara, Clara, losing donors like Clara, you’re always thanking donors, but as a donor, without your hard work and dedication, my money is worth nothing. It’s only money you guys translate it into love. You can and you will when you power up your thank yous. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk thank yous with me today.

Speaker 1 26:21
All right. Well, thank you, Lisa. That was a fantastic presentation. I think the chat was echoing that sentiment as well. Got a lot of applause in there. Thank everybody for attending this session. Next up is Mallory Erickson’s session, segmentation that feels good, moving beyond dollars to donor alignment on stage one. On stage two, you will hear about Illuminate Your Impact: How Finance and Fundraising Alignment Builds Donor Trust with Natalie Anderson from Sage. Remember, no matter which session you attend, you will be able to access the recording at a later time. So, we’ll see everybody in a few.

Speaker 2 26:59
Thank you. Take

Unknown Speaker 27:00
care. Bye.