Comments on: The Dismal Results of My Online Giving Experiment

By: Frank

Frank — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 19:05:38 +0000

You never know how a relationship with a one-time $20 or $25 donor might blossom into something more, especially if the organization puts in the effort to get to know the donor and give that donor a sense of connection to the nonprofit.

Did you ever communicate to the organizations you didn’t hear from? I’d think those organizations would want to know if there is a breakdown somewhere between receiving the donation, and acknowledging the donor. At the least, they might want to take another look at their acknowledgement policies.

By: Kivi’s Nonprofit Communications Blog » Blog Archive » 10 Donations. 3 Thank-Yous. 7 Failures to Communicate.

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 22:01:40 +0000

[...] It’s been a month, and I’ve heard from only three of the 10 organizations. This is the same result as last year, when I got four thank-yous in response to 12 gifts. It was a pitiful response then, and a pitiful [...]

By: Terri

Terri — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 18:04:17 +0000

Thank you so much for this article and for including it in your top 10. I also am responsible for sending thank you notes and I pride myself on doing it in a timely fashion. However, I was always about a month or more late for those who donated via Network for Good. I would have to manually go into the account each month and find the donors. It was embarrassing to send them so late!

Thanks to Rachael Pena’s comment, I found that the old Development Manager’s email address was still active in the Network for Good system and that was why I received no notifications! I changed it yesterday and today I had three donations in my Inbox! These were large and I would have really been upset if they didn’t get thank you notes right away. Thank you so much.

By: Kivi’s Nonprofit Communications Blog » Blog Archive » How Many Thank-Yous Will I Get This Year?

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 22:02:49 +0000

[...] this the “What I Got When I Gave” experiment, and when I did the same thing last year, the results were dismal. I heard back from only a third of the charities and the follow-up even from the ones I heard from [...]

By: Sasha

Sasha — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 03:06:16 +0000

Just curious what everyone thinks is a reasonable turn around time for a thank you letter. For example how soon after you send the check do you want to receive a letter back?

Just to keep it real here’s some facts… first class mail takes 3 to 7 days… that’s both ways from the donor to the organization and again from the organization back to the donor. Once the mail arrives it has to be sorted, the deposits created and the batches sent to the processing volunteers, then the volunteers enter the batches and a staff member checks them. Once that’s done the letters are processed and printed up. Then they have to be stuffed into envelopes and then they have to go to the receptionist to be stamped and picked up by the post office.

So… keeping all that in mind along with the fact that several hundred come in each day during busy times… what is a reasonable time frame? I’d really like to know because I work for a non-profit and I printed out 400 thank you letters today… I had to laugh at the person who said they wrote personal hand-written thank you’s at the end of each day… there’s no way I could have done that. Great if you can but… just not possible.

As you can tell this is an important topic to me (and I have to tell you that we would have acknowledged your donation if you had selected us) Thanks for the blog… it’s wonderful!!

By: Charlotte Fong

Charlotte Fong — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 12:13:52 +0000

It’s awful when people don’t acknowledge you for your hard work but charities! They would probably say that they’re too busy and they have too many people giving to them so they can’t keep track of all the people who give.

Even so they should at least write a generic email that thanks their fund raisers so that they can then send the email to you after receiving your donation. It wouldn’t take long to copy and paste a message and change a name or two.

I’m working at a company called Thanksto and they’ve set up a site http://www.thanksto.com where people can thank each other and acknowledge one another. We have managed to get a few charities on our site which I think is great because this shows that at least they care enough to want to thank their sponsors and fund raisers!

By: The problem with online donations? We’re doing it wrong. « LipmanHearne Commons

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 13:59:52 +0000

[...] so it did. Many online donors, meanwhile, receive not so much as an electronic acknowledgement, if one blogger’s experience is any [...]

By: Sharon

Sharon — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:02:55 +0000

I just took over a development manager position in a medium-sized non-profit, and one of the first things I changed was the end-of-the-month form thank-you letter, opting instead for personalized, handwritten thank you notes. It just takes a few minutes at the end of each day, and I actually look forward to it. It also familiarizes me with the donors, that hopefully will result in larger and more frequent gifts in the future.

By: Janet

Janet — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:04:31 +0000

Since some of the responses complain that acknowledging donations through NFG is too tedious, but say that donating on their websites would get an immediate response, perhaps they should reconsider being on NFG’s list. If it’s too much trouble to thank their donors, they should take their fundraising efforts elsewhere. Honestly. I’m disgusted.

By: Jen McKnight

Jen McKnight — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:20:11 +0000

I wonder if part of the challenge has to do with some non-profits stuggling to keep up with technology and the ability to utilize it well. As a fundraiser I have received Network For Good contributions, and we always prompty acknowledged them. I think your comment about Network for Good not being thier online method of choice is probably true. It would be interesting to repeat the same experiment but send in checks of $25 and compare response rates as well as donate directly through the charities’ websites.