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Giving Back E-Tips
- Volume 1, Issue 5 - February 24, 2009
- High-Payoff Campaigns for a Tough Fundraising Environment
- Give Major Donors the Royal Treatment Online
- Back to the Archive
Give Major Donors the Royal Treatment Online
“Major donors” and “online fundraising” are two concepts that many nonprofits see at opposite ends of the spectrum — feeling that e-appeals should only be directed at their low-dollar donors. In fact, many organizations suppress higher-end donors from their e-communications plan entirely.
But some illuminating statistics about the online preferences of major donors from a Convio report, The Wired Wealthy, show that could be the wrong way to go.
- 51% of those surveyed said they prefer giving online.
- 74% of those surveyed said it was appropriate for the charity to send an email reminding them to renew an annual gift.
- 74% of those surveyed said an e-mail from the charity about how their donation was spent and what happened as a result would make them more likely to give again.
- 65% of those surveyed said they always open and glance at emails from causes they support.
But that doesn’t mean that you should send your leadership donors the same stream of email everyone else gets. Instead, create a special e-communications strategy based on their specific needs and desires.
For starters, I’m sure that you have a special print letterhead with a more upscale design that you use for your leadership circle. It’s a simple matter to “cut and paste” this elegant treatment into an email template to send to your higher-end donors.
It’s also important to track how your leadership circle is responding to your email and direct mail. Once you know what they respond to most, you should only send e-appeals on those issues.
I think you’ll be pleased at how well this custom approach works. I’ve actually seen email statistics for one organization that showed that their highest open rates and clickthroughs for key email campaigns came from their leadership donors. And that trend will only continue as today’s tech-savvy Boomers grow older and give more.
If you’d like to see samples of successful major donor email campaigns, contact Karen at 718-680-1627 or at kg@karengedney.com.