Hi. I’m Jane Pfeiffer, founder and president of Fieldtrip. Last week, we talked about that enviable situation where you’re about to acquire a new donor. They’re getting ready to write that check and you should have a list of questions ready. Of course, you can’t attack them with questions, but you or someone on your team should invest the time to ask questions.
Ask about why now, why me and why are you giving? What other causes did they consider? How does our mission impact their world? And what stood in the way? How could you have made it easier?
Investing this time is really important to marketing and communication strategy because it’s often the questions that we don’t ask that have these insights that can open up an incredible new world of understanding how we can go from receiving a gift to creating an ongoing investor and that’s a much stronger position than gaining a donor and a templated thank you note with a little sentence and a smiley face just really isn’t going to cut it because you’re indicating your appreciation, but not that you’re open to learning from them.
We believe in this so much we’re investing in a custom research study to understand the attitudes of donors, why they give, why they don’t, and how can we get through? Because talking about what we do isn’t enough. We have to inspire first and then invite others to join. Thanks for watching. See you next week.
