In her second annual experiment to track national charities’ reactions to unsolicited donations, communications consultant Kivi Leroux Miller once again finds “a pitiful response.”
Writing in her Nonprofit Communications Blog, Ms. Miller describes how she gave 10 big charities $20 each online in December through Capital One Giving Site, an online donations portal, and agreed to share her e-mail and mailing addresses with the recipient organizations.
After confirming that the donations were transmitted to those charities on January 15, Ms. Miller settled in to await thank-you notes and acknowledgments from the 10 charities. Ms. Miller says that she does not count the automated e-mail response she receives from the online payment processor. “I’m looking for communication from the charity directly,” she writes.
But by February 18, more than a month later, she had heard from only three organizations. “I’m so discouraged by the results that I decided to name names this year,” Ms. Miller wrote in an e-mail announcing the experiment.
She described the three responses she got from Ashoka, the National Parks Conservation Association, and Girls Incorporated. “None of these thank-you notes wowed me, but hey, at least they exist,” Ms. Miller writes.
More troubling, Ms. Miller says, is a complete lack of response from the American Red Cross, Defenders of Wildlife, National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Oceana, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Remote Area Medical Foundation, and the Wikimedia Foundation. She invited those charities to share the reason for not acknowledging her gift by commenting to her blog post or sending her an e-mail.
“How can nonprofits expect to thrive off the kindness of others when the kindness of a simple thank-you note to an unsolicited donation is too much to ask?” Ms. Miller writes. So far, she’s still waiting for answers.
Photo credit: iStock
26 Responses to Fund-Raising Faux Pas: Charities Fail to Respond to New Donors
richard_backman - February 23, 2010 at 3:02 pm
Wow, just wow
traversehcc - February 23, 2010 at 3:05 pm
We would love to share that the Travere Health Clinic in Traverse City, MI is grateful for ALL our donations and sends thank you’s for ALL levels of donations within 1-3 days. We like to keep our partners.
sdrilias - February 23, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Jewish Family Services – Milwaukee, WI. We make thank you calls to our donors (in addition to sending the standard thank you letter). Yes it takes some time out of the day, but what a great relationship builder.
peter_panepento - February 23, 2010 at 3:35 pm
This seems like a great opportunity to share some examples of how nonprofit groups are thanking their donors.If your organization has examples of effective “thank you” communications, we’d love to highlight them.You can send your examples to me via e-mail at peter.panepento@philanthropy.comThanksPeter PanepentoWeb editor
cchambers - February 23, 2010 at 3:46 pm
Going off of Peter’s comment, I’d be curious what groups are doing for these relatively small (but of course important) donations. Are we talking a hand-written letter, a personal phone call, a form letter with a real signature? Equally interesting to know would be what Ms. Miller was expecting to receive.Colin Chambers
janaki - February 23, 2010 at 4:10 pm
I gave $100 a couple of years ago to a local environmental group. I never got any sort of acknowledgement at all. I have not given to them again.To Mr. Panepento: Examples? If your mama didn’t teach you how to write a thank-you note, it’s easy. You get some nice thank you cards, pull out your pen, and say something like “Thank you so much for your generous contribution to [name of organization]. We appreciate your support, which makes it possible for us to continue to [whatever it is that you do].” There are also books available everywhere that can help you write effective thank-you notes.
rdeveau - February 23, 2010 at 4:11 pm
Holly, I recently had a very similar experience to yours. Shortly after the Haiti earthquake, I went to the website of a Christian first-responder organization and made a $100 unsolicited online gift. I have yet to receive an acknowledgement of any kind, including a thank you. What makes this experience a bit more painful is not only the size of the gift, which for most organizations and ministries would place someone in a major donor category, but that this organization was also once a client. I find your experiment very telling and it leaves me very sad to see one of the most basic rules of fundraising so blatantly ignored.
lindagarrison - February 23, 2010 at 5:38 pm
Sadly enough, it doesn’t surprise me. In my years working as a consultant, I’ve very often seen puzzled development directors who couldn’t figure out how or why they’d alienated a donor. Surprise! Try not thanking, not thanking soon enough, or sending a long-time major donor a cursory form letter. Sigh.
kivileroux - February 23, 2010 at 5:44 pm
Thanks to the Chronicle for picking up the post!I want to be very clear that I don’t expect a paper thank you in the mail for on online donation of $20. I do, however, think a well-written email thank-you is a reasonable expectation, along with a promise of future updates via an e-newsletter. Of the 22 charities I gave to in this experiment in the last two years, only one of them put me on their email newsletter list. This just seems crazy to me — and has botched my original reason for the experiment, which was to learn from the ongoing donor communications of national organizations and share what I saw there with small nonprofits!
sirotam - February 23, 2010 at 5:46 pm
Did Ms. Hall send her gift to a local American Red Cross Chapter or to the national office of the ARC? At our local Chapter, we respond to every gift with a personalized letter within a few days of receiving it. letting the donor know how her gift will be used. I’ve been a professional fund raiser for more than 30 years, and learned the importance of a speedy and heartfelt acknowledgment in year one.
peter_abell - February 23, 2010 at 6:53 pm
Neat story, but not really on point. The real issue here is charities need to rewrite their recognition policies to meet current forms of giving.Not recognizing donors properly is a big problem that always needs to be addressed. That’s not exactly what occurred here though. The Capital One payment gateway, while a great service for the donor and the charity, is not a traditional pipeline for receiving donations. It can be hard to deal with an out of the ordinary situation, which is what the consultant chose to use for her “test”. Recognition processes are very structured – check comes in, copy is made and original is forwarded to finance, donor record is updated, letter is generated and placed in the ED’s box for signature, letter is placed in envelope and a stamp is put on it and it is dropped in the outgoing mailbox, copy of letter and check are placed in donor file – bam, like clockwork. Hundreds of donor relations employees are doing this every day all over the country.The problem here is that these charities do not have processes for getting the Capital One Gateway donations into the recognition pipeline. She said she checked the box that shares the donor’s email with the charity. If she wants to test their recognition policies and processes, give directly to them through their payment processor that they have built to funnel into these processes and collects other helpful info, like say, their address.Our agency was having a problem with this as our payment processor, which had a very expensive and fancy connector built into it to link with our database, was holding up transactions until a duplicate check was made. This step was never mentioned to the donor relations staff so they were unknowingly not recognizing certain online gifts.The Red Cross appreciates the gift, as did all of the other agencies. Consultants and professional fundraisers need to be able to adjust these processes for new streams of giving, like facebook, twitter, etc. If she just didn’t call out these 7 agencies, she could have had some good business helping them fix these processes.
leapingstone - February 23, 2010 at 7:03 pm
I head up a small nonprofit — LeapingStone — http://www.leapingstone.org. We acknowledge our donors with a quick email, followed by an “official thank you”. It’s impossible to thank the people who are helping you too much.
kivileroux - February 23, 2010 at 7:40 pm
In response to Peter_Abell, I’m not looking for more consulting clients. The gifts were processed through Network for Good, which is processing nearly $400,000 in gifts per DAY for charities. Even if it is not the processor of choice for online gifts for a particular nonprofit, it’s a big enough player that all charities should take note. Facebook Causes, CharityNavigator and GuideStar all use Network for Good, as does the Capital One site that I happened to use. You are right that this is about process — and nonprofits need to incorporate this kind of giving into their processes.
mona_sydd_yma - February 23, 2010 at 7:44 pm
Interesting thread. I have consistently and promptly rec’d pre-printed thank you letters from the Salvation Army and Second Harvest after any donation. But the one that stands out is one I rec’d this week from Grey Muzzle Organization. It was a blank notecard with a photo of an old dog on the front, and a handwritten note, “Mona–Thanks so much for your generous support to help old dogs in 2009!Your help is much asppreciated! Julie” This was not the first acknowledgement and thank you I received for this same donation. I had an immediate personal email (not something from PayPal) and also a handwritten note on my receipt. This was only a $285 donation, but I will continue to donate to this wonderful organization.
rdeveau - February 23, 2010 at 7:49 pm
Kivi, sorry for calling you Holly!
gradybunch - February 23, 2010 at 9:18 pm
What an enlightening article and experiment. Unfortunately, it is sad that these organizations do not acknowledge contributions of any size. It is more common than this article points out. I just finished working with a local organization over the weekend during a 30 hour Radiothon. As volunteer coordinator of over 90 volunteers, all of them have been emailed or sent written thank you’s by me, not for their money but for their time. Remember, Time is Money. The event raised over $100,000! Writing a simple thank you, either by mail or email, is simply common sense and its part of the “basics” of doing the right thing. As a result of writing the thank you’s I have already secured committments from people for the next event. People want to be involved with people who care about the cause, but also because they care about them.Maybe going public with this and naming company’s is going to be a wake-up call to them to re-think how they do business. For you others who haven’t sent thank you’s….its never to late!
ppcllc - February 24, 2010 at 11:40 am
A good heart or good intentions doesn’t make up for a lack of common sense or common courtesy. The sad reality is that most charities (yes, I do mean MOST), big and small, are rife with inefficiencies, wedded to old systems, devoid of critical thinking, and make no attempt to see their organizations through the eyes of a donor or prospective donor. However laudable the mission, they do not merit our hard-earned dollars.
jaburtch - February 24, 2010 at 11:40 am
When I started in my current position, the org. only thanked donors once each month. Now we thank donors within 48 hours with a form letter. Every 2 weeks a volunteer who has been with us for 22 years (and knows many of our donors) comes in to call recent donors at any level. We also offer online and mail donors the opportunity to receive their receipts by email, which is usually sent faster than the form letter. Finally, we had service recipients write thank you cards which were sent with annual giving receipts for tax purposes in January. The response to that card was very positive.The challenge for our non-development staff is understanding why it’s so important to thank donors. Some of our staff are donors only to our organization and haven’t experienced giving elsewhere and being thanked by a stranger. Those that do give elsewhere have low gift-esteem and have low expectations. I’ve tried to explain the importance of quick acknowledgement, especially to first-time givers.Incidentally, I surveyed friends and acquaintances via Twitter to find out how they like to be thanked. Most say publicly that they expect nothing and in fact keep their own records for tax purposes. I was very surprised by this response!
rprovost - February 24, 2010 at 6:10 pm
I had our board members call the donors from the past year during the week before Valentines Day to thank them for supporting us during a difficult year. We also sent them all a valentine. The board was happy to do it since they weren’t asking for money, and the donors appreciated the call of thanks – and the fact that we didn’t ask them for another donation was also appreciated. I figure that the stewardship will help next time that we do ask and it connected our board to our donors!
jkregen - February 24, 2010 at 6:27 pm
Thanks for your blog post. At Defenders of Wildlife, every donation to through our emails or our website receives a prompt email thank you indicating the difference they are making–typically within minutes of their donation. We often follow-up with more information on the impact of their donation as well, especially if to a campaign. As you point out , we need to develop such systems for alternative giving channels. Unfortunately, we’re not currently getting email or mailing address into our database on donations coming through Network for Good. I don’t believe Network for Good is passing us this data, tho I could be mistaken. We’re looking into it. Many thanks for your donation.Jeff Regen Vice President, Online Marketing & CommunicationsDefenders of Wildlife
catherio - February 25, 2010 at 10:17 am
Dear Jeff,I am the Partner Marketing Manager here at Network for Good and I want to assure you that you have 24/7 access to all the information pertaining to donations made to Defenders of Wildlife through our system. With your Network for Good ID and password, you can access your account information from the “My Account” section of the Network for Good web site at any time (24 hours a day, 7 days a week).This secure password-protected section of our web site provides you with a detailed breakdown of your donation and grant history. You can even download your donor information (name, email, address, etc.) into an excel spreadsheet for easy data manipulation!From the “My Account” section, you can also change any of your account information (donation options, thank you message, button color, etc.) at any time. All of these changes take effect in real-time.Anytime someone makes a donation, we send you a donation notification email, complete with the details of the donor’s gift.At the end of each month, Network for Good will send your organization a single check for the aggregate amount of your monthly donations, less the 3% credit card processing fee.If you are having trouble using your account, please contact us! We are here to make online giving as easy as possible and make sure resources keep flowing to nonprofits doing great work – like yours.Kate OlsenNetwork for Good
catherio - February 25, 2010 at 10:24 am
Sorry – that was less the 4.75% credit card processing fee.
katiebe - February 25, 2010 at 6:36 pm
I agree that one of the most critical takeaways is adapting to non-traditional means of receiving donations, especially as these types of portals increase. We had a situation last year where we did not realize for two weeks that a gift had been made to us via one of these portals. The envelope from the portal with the gift was unfamilar to us and no one realized it contained a check; it looked like third-class mail promoting a business service (I see the irony in that). If you count the time from when the donor first made the gift online to when we opened the check, a month had passed – very embarrassing. We updated our policy that all mail will be opened when a staffer is out, whether it “looks” like a gift or not. (We did not receive e-mail notification from this portal.)Katie
donorresearch - March 2, 2010 at 1:11 am
I do freelance prospect research — http://www.smithprospectresearch.com — and sometimes research clients’ mailing lists. Many times, they added someone to their mailing list because of a small donation and never made any personal contact beyond the one time “thank you.” They are surprised when I show them that a $25 donor has the potential to give much more. Some organizations don’t realize that the “thank you” can be used as a way to begin cultivating relationships for future (and larger) donations.
dbonacci - March 9, 2010 at 9:52 am
Well this won’t be a popular comment but the reality is at some point you spend more in staff time and overhead (the time, people and other recourses like copying and postage) that you can spend MORE money thanking someone then they donated.No one likes to admit this out loud but a gift can be just too small to engage the “thank you” machine. In the process described in the blog the donor got what they needed for tax purposes so if the gift was philanthropic then it should end there — you made the donation which was motivated by whatever prompted you to give (in this case a little entrapment) and (I assume) received the proper paperwork that was legally required.To automatically paint the charity as ungrateful is wrong. Perhaps they’re simply doing a good job at allocating their resources for the most good.People should identify those charitable causes that have meaning to them, do a little research to make sure the overall operations are within appropriate ranges for overhead and actual dollars directed toward help. Then don’t make your donation a burden to the organization — give and then let the organization focus on using those funds to accomplish their mission.
esturgill - March 10, 2010 at 4:08 pm
As a donor and recipient of some elaborate ‘thank-you & wouldn’t you like to donate some more packages’, I have to agree that it is often too much of a good thing in relation to what has been given. In fact, I cringe and think “My gosh, I really wish they hadn’t spent the money on this. It isn’t what I thought I was giving the money for.” Glossy brochures, addressed & STAMPED return envelopes, sheets of return address labels are just a few examples of things I throw away while cringing at the waste of funds, paper, trash, and lost opportunity. A simple thank you and a short list of how funds are allocated on a gross level to illustrate smart use of my hard-earned dollars would be swell.