12 Days of Major Gift Fundraising - Day 8: Stewardship

On day 8 of our "12 Days of Major Gifts" series, Nathan focuses on Stewardship and emphasizes that expressing gratitude is not just a courteous act but a strategic one that can elevate your major gift program to new heights.

He also shares insights on how a well-crafted thank you process can reinforce your donors' decision to support your mission, reassuring them that their contributions are making a difference. You will discover practical strategies to seamlessly reintegrate donors into the cultivation process, ensuring continuous engagement and support.

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Transcript

Nathan Ruby: 0:00

I know you probably didn't wake up this morning excited about getting out there and asking your donors for a major gift. I get it. It's hard work. I have something that's going to help you. Every two weeks, I put out a quick video packed with game-changing content for executive directors trying to learn major gifts. In these videos, you'll get expert tips and proven strategies, practical fundraising hacks, innovative ideas to engage donors, real-world case studies and solutions and, for the first time ever, exclusive access to casual Zoom hangouts with fellow executive directors and me and Tim, who are sticking their toes into the major gift work just like you. Don't miss out on this opportunity to join a community of passionate fundraisers who are committed to excellence in major gift development. Go to nonprofitleaderonline and sign up today to receive your first video newsletter and start transforming your major gift program. I'll see you there. See you there. Welcome to the practice of nonprofit leadership. I'm Nathan Ruby.

Nathan Ruby: 1:34

Here we are at day eight of the 12 days of major gifts. Today, we are talking about stewardship. Now, there are two components of stewardship that we're covering today, and the first is saying thank you, and the second is putting your donor right back into the cultivation process. Cultivation what do you mean, nathan, I just got my first major gift. I'm still celebrating and now I have to start cultivating again. What the heck? Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's cover saying thank you first. Then we'll go back and we'll tackle the whole cultivation thing. It's going to make perfect sense, I promise. All right, here we go.

Nathan Ruby: 2:20

Let's start talking about saying thank you. This is not rocket science. We all grew up with this. If someone gives you a gift, you were taught to say thank you. If someone does something nice for you, we say thank you. If someone does something nice, we say thank you. Now maybe our current culture has changed and maybe saying thank you it's not quite as prevalent as maybe in the past.

Nathan Ruby: 2:53

But when it comes to fundraising and especially major gifts, we are 100% saying thank you. And here's why. Number one it builds trust and loyalty. A sincere thank you shows that you value the donor's commitment to your mission. They just wrote you a check, and probably a pretty good check, and your donor has to know that it meant something, that it was important, and so when a thank you letter shows up in the mail, that is building on that trust and loyalty, that, yes, it was important because they took the time and effort to send me a thank you letter, so it builds trust and loyalty.

Nathan Ruby: 3:37

Number two strengthens emotional connections. Now remember we've said it multiple times. Now remember we've said it multiple times fundraising, and especially major donor fundraising, is emotional. Donors who feel recognized are more emotionally connected to you and to the organization. We want them to have that emotional connection. So a thank you note strengthens emotions.

Nathan Ruby: 4:06

Number three positive word of mouth. A thoughtful thank you and putting your donor into a thank you process often turns your major donors into advocates who will share their positive experience with others, potentially bringing in more major donors. How cool is that If you have your current major donors bringing you more major donors? Yeah, that's what we want to hear. And then number four is demonstrate stewardship. And in stewardship what we mean is donors. They have again. They have just made a decision to write you a check. They have put their hard earned dollars behind you and your organization and what you're trying to achieve. They didn't have to do that. They chose you Right.

Nathan Ruby: 4:55

And when a donor does that, what they need to see and experience is that that decision to invest with you was the correct decision. They needed to be reinforced, because the donor is thinking did I make the right decision? And when that thank you letter appears in their mailbox, it is another piece of reinforcement for them. In their mailbox, it is another piece of reinforcement for them. Now, I guarantee you 100%, I guarantee you that the university that they gave to, or the big hospital that saved their life in the emergency room, the gift that they wrote to them, I guarantee you those organizations are sending them very good thank you letters and that they have a very good thank you process in place. If you don't do something, if you don't have your own thank you process, it will be noticed and it will be negative. All right.

Nathan Ruby: 5:52

So that's why we want to thank our donors, our major gift donors. How are we going to do this? What does that look like? Well, first of all, you're probably going to send, or you should send, the you could let me phrase that back it's okay to send them your standard, regular thank you letter that you use for all of your gifts, and it says thank you for your gift, and it's got the standard tax wording verbiage on it about how they didn't receive any benefit for this your gifts. And it says thank you for your gift and it's got the standard tax wording verbiage on it about how they didn't receive any benefit for this. That's fine. You could do that as part of your standard thank you.

Nathan Ruby: 6:30

But then, in addition to that, we want to do a personal thank you letter of some type. It could be a letter, it could be a card, it could be a note card. It doesn't have to be very big, just something personal, preferably handwritten, that you've written on or whoever is sending the thank you note. So it can be you. You made the gift, you made the gift happen, you've got the relationship, so certainly you would make sense. It could be your board president. It could be the philanthropy chair If you have a fundraising chair on the board. It could be any board member. It could be the last few days we've used the example of the symphony and the trumpets. It could be one of the trumpet players. It could be the first chair. You know the lead trumpet player chair the lead trumpet player. Who it is is not as important as it's somebody connected to the organization. It could be another donor, another one of your major donors that this major donor knows. So the fact that you do it is more important than who sends it? All right, personal thank you letter.

Nathan Ruby: 7:38

Second phone call, I think. If you have your board president, let's say, send a thank you note I would then on a phone call that should be you. If I'm the one that was the lead person in securing that gift, then I want to make a phone call. And the phone call is very simple. It's something like oh my gosh, we're back to the McIntyres. Oh my gosh, mrs McIntyre, I just got your gift today. Oh man, thank you so much. It is gonna make such a difference. It is going to help us do this, this, this and this, and I just want you to know how important it is and what a difference it's gonna make. Thank you, that's basically the conversation. And and what a difference going to make. Thank you, that's basically the conversation. And you can even you can even leave that in a voicemail, leave it in a voice. Actually, I did that a couple of days ago. I had a major gift came in. I called the donor, left a voicemail. Two hours later I got a text hey, thanks for the phone call. Sorry, I missed you. Can't wait to see you know the great things that are going to happen. That is a personalized thank you. So phone calls are great.

Nathan Ruby: 8:42

Public recognition this is something that has actually changed over the course of my career. Used to be the public recognition to be in the annual report, to be in the newsletter. Those were just automatics. Everybody did that. Now it's changed a little bit. It still happens. It's still something that you could do, but I would definitely talk to your donor first and get permission from them. Is it okay? We would like to mention your gift at the gala next month we're going to be recognizing donors. Is it okay if I recognize you and the size of your gift during that time? Let your donor decide. And if they say no, I'd rather not then honor that. So public recognition, if the donor wants it.

Nathan Ruby: 9:30

Exclusive invitations Anytime you can invite a major donor to a special event or a behind the scenes tour, tour, tour, or to see firsthand the work that they're supporting. It's an awesome way to do that, to give them a look at what's happening that maybe other people don't get. That's a great way to thank them. And then ongoing engagement and this is probably as important as anything is this ongoing connection, this ongoing engagement of making your donors. Once your donor writes that major gift, they're part of your nonprofit family. So invite them to volunteer opportunities, send them regular updates, send them an email, send them a text with a picture and say you know if they're, if they're, funding a certain program. Just send them a picture of, of one of your, of one of your people you know, adults or kids, whatever. Of course, you got to get permission to to use the picture. Don't forget that. But just just send them little things every once in a while to keep them connected, to keep them engaged, and this shows a. It just continues to show them how important their gift was and what a difference it's making. So ongoing engagement is an important thing. Now, these things this is not a should do, this is a have to do.

Nathan Ruby: 11:01

If you don't do thank you letters and if you don't put them into a thank you process, the chances of getting another major gift are slim to none. Probably more on the none side In my career man for donors that I made a mistake. It didn't get into a or, before I really learned this, didn't get into a thank you process. I don't know if any of them ever made a second gift. So if you don't have a process for this, it will be noticed if you don't do it. Okay, part one was saying thank you, we got that.

Nathan Ruby: 11:42

Now part two of stewardship is cultivation, and this is the part that most executive directors get absolutely wrong all the time. They see the gift, they see the major gift as a one and done thing or as a finite. You know start, we started the. You know we identified, we qualify, we cultivated, we made the ask. We've sent a thank you card or thank you note. Boom, that is done. We have completed that process. That is wrong. Once they made a guess, the process never ends. You put them right back into the cultivation process.

Nathan Ruby: 12:26

Now is the cultivation exactly the same as last time? No, it's a little different because you have a ton more information about the donor now than you did before. I mean, you are way ahead in your starting point of the relationship with the donor. What you know about the donor, what you know about their passion for the organization, what it is about your program that they get excited about, you've already established a excited about. You've already established a great relationship. You are not starting from scratch. You are way ahead. But the process is exactly the same. You are cultivating to find out how much to ask for when, to ask who should ask all those things that we did in the cultivation process. They're still the same. We're still doing the same thing. We're just now looking for the next major gift, which is, if you do it right, is going to be larger than the gift that you just got. So the industry average for major donors who make a second gift, if they're cultivated to do so, is 50%. That's the number that the industry uses. My experience has been a little higher. I'm, I'm more like 80%. Now I'm not. I don't know if that's just cause I do it better than than average. I I don't. I don't know, know, but mine's been more like 80.

Nathan Ruby: 14:01

Now remember all giving, especially major gifts, major donors. All of this giving is relational, it's personal, it's emotional. Once a donor makes a significant investment with you and your organization in solving whatever problem it is that your organization solves, they are now part of the team. Your donor is part of your team. Stories of how their gift is making an impact. If you connect them to people on the team, people on your staff, your volunteers, people who are benefiting from whatever your programming is, if you are giving them continued stories about how you are impacting people's lives. Your major donor is going to want to stay on the team, and when they're on the team and when they're connected emotionally, they will write larger and larger checks. So if you are taking notes, I want you to put this in bold and maybe even circle it or put a box around it your number one best major gift prospect is the donor who just wrote you a major gift. I'll say that again your number one best major gift prospect is the donor who just wrote you a major gift. All right, we're recapping here. So stewardship has two parts. It has the thank you thanking your donor for the gift they just made by sending thank you letters and putting them into a thank you process. And number two is starting them right back into the stewardship process. Do stewardship correctly and you are well on your way to a thriving major donor program.

Nathan Ruby: 16:15

Tomorrow is day nine and we're going to be talking about something that is incredibly important to a successful major gifts program. So important that if you get it wrong, you'll never get your major gift program started. In fact, you will kill it. You will kill it before you, before you even start it. You know I'm thinking in a, I'm thinking in real time here. Um, I, you know, I was just going to end with that and wrap up this one. And then you know, deal with tomorrow's topic tomorrow. But I don't want you to go an entire day wondering what we're going to be talking about tomorrow. That is just that's just too much stress. So I'm going to be talking about tomorrow, that is just that's just too much stress. So I'm going to give you a clue. Here's the clue. It's in your head. Okay, I feel better. Now you know what we're talking about tomorrow. I feel better. All right, I'll see you tomorrow for day nine. That's all for today, until next time.