Cultivation & Engagement: Beginning A Strategy

I have been volunteering for the Hoboken Shelter for the past two years in a development capacity and it has been a great pleasure to help and advise them on putting their donor information on paper and track it, create concrete and initiatives as well as an operational plan, and develop communication/new media efforts.

One of the initiatives was to implement a strategy for donor cultivation and engagement as well as tracking.  This required the help of volunteers and board because the E.D. is incredibly knowledgeable about donors but also always time crunched.  I mentioned in a previous post that we were holding an upcoming meeting where we could discuss our top donors/supporters.  We pulled together a small group to discuss how to engage and cultivate donors.  We chose this small group because they were interested in doing cultivation and engagement rather than just events, they knew many of the supporters and we thought the group would be manageable and would help us keep on top of sensitive donor information. 

I plan to keep a log of how our strategy proceeds to share with others who may be unsure of how to make the leap to cultivation and engagement with a bare bones staff.  We've taken the steps to:

1. Go through a list of high-level donors and identify donors who've given recently and we don't know why or who they are and donors who've been giving regularly but we've not taken the opportunity to get to know. Now we just need to narrow down the list. We had about 40 people who were highlighted.

2. Create a Donor Contact Report. We will put all donor information in a database but additional we'll prepare background on donors (much of which is in the E.D. head) inc. employment, education, hobbies, affiliations, foundations, assets, partner and family information, why they give to us, as well as the results of any meetings and what the next steps are.

3. We identified an initial approach to talk to our donors about how their donation was used and find out why they give to Shelter as well as talking with them about the Shelter's future and what programs they know about as the Shelter turns 30 this year.

4. Identified ways to thank our donors and cultivate and engage them:  cultivation events, friend-raisers and in-home parties, newsletters, invitations to special events, personalized notes, etc.

5. Agreed to hold a next meeting to begin to discuss the narrowed down list and start to find out what we know about our donors and plan who will make initial contact.

This is all very exciting and will hopefully mean that more donors feel a part of a family of donors who are well aware of where their dollars are going and will help rally more people to give. 

New Facebook Page Cover Image for the Shelter

Last week I made a change to the Shelter's cover image on Facebook. I wanted to share what I had done.

I slightly "stole" the idea from images I saw used by other shelters/food pantries nationwide.  If I had a number one piece of advice for learning social media - it would be follow your friends and follow your enemies. I had meant to update the cover image after the event but never quite seemed to find the time until now. I would like to identify more images we can use for the Shelter in the future and definitely want to check and make sure they have a digital camera at their disposal.  I don't think we (or anyone else) need anything to fancy.  I think some images can be simple. I had asked Jaclyn (who probably thought I was nuts - trust is a wonderful thing though and I love her for it) for images of food piled up and she said she had tons of bread. We have been finding ways to thank donors since our May event and I thought this was another good way.

What are some good images you've used and do you feel it's important to rotate the cover image on your page?

Tri Point Support: Year End Already?

Sometimes it's great to get a reminder about a task.  As a fundraiser, you wear so many hats it's often hard to remember what foot is going in front of the other.  (Especially not good for someone who is also a runner - albeit a slow one). 

I just got the email from Amy Eisenstein regarding year end fundraising. My first thought was, "is it really that time?"  But really, it is.  We've already started a conversation as to how we'll approach year-end giving but it may be time to kick it into high-gear. Fortunately, it seems we are on the right track with our brainstorming. Also, read Amy's post - she and it are fabulous.

1.  Get in touch with donors:  Our upcoming meeting is a great time for us to identify our donors and start a conversation, tell them where they investments in the organization went this year and remind them about upcoming fundraising goals.

2.  The letter:  The Shelter sends out three newsletters each year as their only snail mail communications with donors.  Prior to this past newsletter, the only newsletter accompanied by a note or letter was end of year giving. They are pretty committed to this type of communication; however I got them to agree to put a note in the summer newsletter and we'll see how that plays out.  It had stats on how many people served to date, referenced a story in the newsletter about a client and told a little about her, and made an ask directly. And it said thanks in advance.  We have already started talking about gathering client stories, pictures, and more for the winter newsletter. Our last meeting we talked about a particular volunteer we'd like to highlight for the newsletter.  I think a few more testimonials couldn't hurt and some great stats.

3. Online: I usually don't donate to them online; however I donate everywhere else online.  I think this means their website could use some work and are we featuring the donate now in EOY emails?  That's usually when I get reminded to donate to my favorite organizations. I like things to land in my inbox. I am certainly an advocate for emails on the 27, 29, 31 or some combination of dates.

4. Social Media: I had spoken with one of the chairs of our holiday event about upping our holiday exposure via social media by collecting stories on Facebook about volunteering at the holidays. More than 400 residents from near and far gather at various holidays from Nov-Dec to help the  Shelter and we should be sharing their stories and getting some great photos. We should also see if we can get the video of Buddy of Carlo's Bakery online to repost. His popularity is certainly not waning. There had been talk of creating a video and if we cannot get a video done from an outside source I think we should do a rough cut video created with my mac to show pictures and what funding has done this year. I also think we need to have pictures taken at the holidays so we can post immediately to tell funders their dollars feed people and maybe a new picture for our Facebook page with people eating at Thanksgiving that says "thanks be to all." 

5. Tooting our Horn:  We'll have to make sure we share our stats in the newsletter.  I stated some ways to toot our horn via Facebook and video. We'll be having a holiday fundraiser, which would be a great place to share a mission centered video.  We'll be doing press releases leading up to that but we can do a post release on all we accomplished - we have some pretty great press contacts.

Unique ideas (off the top of my head):

• For our 30th event in May we created little cards (3x5) with our donation needs - perhaps we can have those reprinted with our statistics. 
• The ED is such an ever-present face for the Shelter - it might be nice to do a EOY video with her thanking the community and asking for their support, which we could also use as a press release. 

If anything else pops up in this tired ol' brain I'll be sure to post it.  I also plan to post a copy of the note we worked on that I mentioned above.