Reaching Donors at the Base of the Fundraising Pyramid

February 5, 2010 at 9:30 am Barbara Talisman, CFRE Leave a comment

In the previous post, I posed that donors at the base of the pyramid are more important than ever. And if EVERYONE in your organization doesn’t understand the importance of fundraising now – they should.

Reaching the base of the fundraising pyramid will take all hands on deck – no time like the present to involve staff and volunteers!

So here’s how we are going to reach these importantdonors:

Annual Giving Staff – Ask them to create a plan to call, email, create an e-news or email program to these donors and to engage other staff and volunteers. When we ask staff to step up and empower them to succeed they will.

Executive Director – In addition to making major donor phone calls – add some of your regular, monthly annual donors

Board Members – add some base of the pyramid donors to the calls Board members make to thank donors

All Staff – Organize a thank-a-thon involving all staff – take a couple hours a month and ask everyone on staff to call donors and say thank you (give them a short script they can follow or ad lib from – training is a good thing!)

E-News – Create a special e-news to these donors – What do these donations do for your organization? Equate $25/$50/$100 to programs, people, how they are helping you change lives and share lives.

Donor Recognition – List only donors at the base of the pyramid in this e-news – think how special they will feel at the TOP of a donor list instead of the bottom!

Staff can call/email donors with special updates, successes, news – when they happen.

Remember to celebrate successes with everyone. Especially those who made contributions.

Try this for six months. Track donor comments and responses in your donor software or excel spreadsheet. Talk about the results and responses at staff and Board meetings. At the next fundraising campaign – think about how you can use all this good will you have generated to move the donors at the base. I’ll give you some ideas in the next post!