Don’t Make New Donor Introductions Meaningless
Include An Outreach Strategy for New Donors in Your Event Wrap-Up Plan.
There’s no reason your organization can’t form a meaningful relationship with a donor that was brought to your fundraiser by someone on your volunteer committee or, invited by a board member. Is there?
It’s an important growth move to make the effort to reach out to new people to your organization upon the first introduction and let them know their attendance was noticed and appreciated.
Board members that invite their friends to your gala fundraising event need to know they will be well taken care of afterwards. (Click To Tweet)
Most importantly, people don’t just use their personal contacts without thinking twice about it first. They think long and hard about it, actually. Bringing people and introducing them to your organization at your event is a gift. One that ought to be cherished and nurtured by your leadership and development teams.
It’s not the volunteer or the board member’s job to keep repeating the invitation, or the ask. It’s yours! (Click To Tweet)
So, in the download session, after your event, where you talk about everything including that went well and what didn’t, include a discussion around important new guests that came because someone specifically invited them. First, identify whether it was a board member, a committee member, a donor, or a staff member that invited them to come. Then, assign the follow-up to someone on your internal team.
Here are 3 ways to begin a relationship with new potential donors:
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- Call them to thank them for attending. Ask them for any feedback about the event, the speaker, or even the meal. Offer the chance to ask you questions. Have a phone conversation.
- Invite them to coffee or lunch. Face-to-face donor engagement will bring a younger demographic into your donor family. This has the same agenda: thank them for attending, ask for feedback, let them ask questions. Have a face-to-face conversation.
- Email them a nice note, using the same outline. Mention something specific about them (that you’ve learned from the inviter) that makes sense with regards to either their attendance or their gift. Start an email conversation. The only way to make it a conversation is to personalize it. No templates or form letter will work here.
Doing this important follow up will make it easy to include them on your invitation list for the next event or send them your next appeal.
