Sir Thanksalot...at Your Service!

There are two kinds of people in the world, those who read the title of this blog, Sir Thanksalot, and immediately thought of Sir Lancelot and those who immediately thought of Sir Mix-a-lot. 

I gotta admit that I couldn't stop thinking about that scene from Friends when Rachel sings Sir Mix-A-Lots inappropriate "I Like Big Butts' song to get her baby, Emma, to laugh. It's so funny! I laughed. And so did Emma!

Either way, whether through words or music, your nonprofit has a great story to tell. And telling that story in a thank you note, where your donor is the hero, is a great story to tell.  

As this email goes live, you officially have two weeks before Thanksgiving 🦃. Heck, Hallmark has already started playing Christmas🎄movies! So, it's officially year-end-giving season for us, right? But how do you do more than an old-fashioned Elvis '𝘁𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗸𝘆𝗼𝘂𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝗺𝘂𝗰𝗵' and still have the energy to enjoy your own family and friends over the holidays? Remember, they're your holidays, too! #selfcare

Good thing I was able to attend the 𝗡𝗼𝗻𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗶𝘁 𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 last week to grab some new ideas to add to my old favorites; ideas that will help you spend less time and raise more money. 

Here are a few Dos and Don'ts I learned about thanking donors at the 𝗡𝗼𝗻𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗶𝘁 𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲:

✅ Do this - Say 'Thank you for your generosity'. (That's about the person.)

❌ Don't do this - Say, 'Thank you for your generous gift'. (That's about the money.)

✅ Do this - Say, 'Thank you for <<insert mission here>> in <<insert geographic area here>>'. (They did it.)  
❌ Don't do this - Say, 'Thank you for helping us <<insert mission>> in <<insert geographic arear here>>'. (They didn't do it, you did it.) 

✅ Do this - Thank before you bank. Don't cash their check until you express proper gratitude.  
❌ Don't do this - Wait more than a week to thank them or ask them for another donation before you thank them. 🙈

Other ideas for your Thank You Toolbox 🔨 could include making phone calls, using photos or videos, adding a voice of impact via testimonials or even their handwriting, or hosting a thank-a-thon. All these are great ideas I picked up at the Nonprofit Storytelling Conference.

But an attitude of gratitude has always been my jam. So, I'm passing along TEN (I know...that's 🍌🍌🍌!) of my faves as well.

1. Your best left brain marketing method here is scale! Oftentimes we don't properly thank our donors because there are so many of them--great problem to have by the way. But that doesn't mean we can't thank some of them. It's all about scaling down to what you can manage.

2. Using technology 💻 can certainly help, but so can engaging your team--that includes Board Members--to help. Each of the ideas below can be scaled to a number that fits your bandwidth. Doing something is always better than doing nothing. 

3. Once you have followed the brilliant advice of Seth Godin and agree to scale your thank you's to a minimum viable audience, you'll be able to execute some right brain marketing moxie that'll get your donors to (a) open your mail, (b) potentially act on it, and (c) tell their friends all about you. Gotta love that secondary marketing department that is your donor base.

4. Famous Duos:  You already heard about our small donor event where we paired wines with Girl Scout cookies in my post Vegetarians and Carnivores Unite Against Chicken, so I think you'll really love this. We just recycled it! No, we didn't have another event, but we decided to repurpose the idea into a direct mail piece. We only sent it to 50 people--the scale we could manage with our time, money, and energy budgets.  Then we mailed the wine list with a box of the Girl Scout cookies as a thank you! Our. Donors. Loved. It. (Of course, we didn't send this to anyone who attended the event, so it wasn't recycled for our donors, just for us!)

5. The famous duo of cheese and crackers was a special delivery. Again, we chose 50 donors, and we delivered these packaged to their homes the week of Thanksgiving--although anytime would be great. We chose this because it is a great duo, but also because a local charity makes and sells these cheeseballs annually. Can you say that cheeseballs are amazeballs? Because they are! My point here is that you can steal this idea as is, or think about something in your community that's just as special as these are in mine. Nothing like our donors telling their friends and family at Thanksgiving that the cheese and crackers were a thank you gift from us. 🧀 

6. Just Mail Merge It: Nike almost went with this tagline but switched it up at the last minute...or at least that's the way I heard it. This is proof that you don't have to buy cookies or cheeseballs or anything else to thank your donors. Maybe you have far more than 50 people you'd like to thank, and you need technology to help you scale it to a do-able task--that's cool, too!

7. Searching online for 'free <<fill in the blank>> clipart' will help you discover countless ideas that will bring a smile to your donor's face. The world's been rough this past couple of years, so going for a thank you with humor would likely be welcomed. Regardless, just shoot for remarkable--meaning your donor will want to make a remark about it later--a remark to someone else that might not know and love you just yet. The example I shared this week was found by typing in 'Free clipart and Superman and Wonder Woman Thanksgiving'. I was pleasantly surprised to see that this clipart existed in the universe--not everything I Google does! Even nicer was that we had often said 'Not all superheroes wear capes', so to take that sentiment to our donors with this mail-merged card was perfection.

8. The Things We Are Thankful For card was simply made using Excel--three nerdy cheers for Excel! I think our donors liked knowing that they beat out donuts, rainbows, and summer in our thank you pie chart! Pictures really do say a thousand words, but they don't have to be Picasso's or even actual photography to make a statement--they can be simple.

9. T.HANKS is one of my faves! The .gif above is just one simple idea. You could email this .gif or even print it on a card or letter--that's what we do, and donors have commented on it time and time again! Plus, everybody 🧡 Tom Hanks...I mean T. Hanks!

10. Most importantly, please let your thank you be just that--an authentic thank you. This is not a Gift Acknowledgement Letter (GAL). It's a Surprise Them with Gratitude sentiment. So, you're not making an additional ask. You're just saying Thanks! That's what being Sir Thanksalot is all about. After all, we like big gifts and we cannot lie, right? LOL!
 
Finally, if you're reading this, you deserve a ginormous Thank You. Seriously. You're a nonprofit ninja doing noble work. That means you're wearing a lot of hats, spinning a lot of plates, and likely trying to figure out how to do a lot less and raise a lot more--all in the spirit of improving your little corner of the world.  As a small token of my appreciation, I hope you'll 'borrow' these thank you ideas and use them as your own. Consider it a donation from me to you--because you make the job look easy...and I know all too well that it's not! 

All My Best,

dawn