Why You Must Work with Network for Good and How to Follow Up with Donors

Yesterday in “10 Donations. 3 Thank-Yous. 7 Failures to Communicate,” I shared the results of my recent giving experiment, where only 3 out of 10 national nonprofits acknowledged my gift with a thank-you.

These results mimic last year’s, and in the comments on last year’s post, a few people suggested that the fact that the donations were processed by Network for Good may have been part of the problem, because Network for Good may not be the nonprofit’s preferred way to process online donations or because the Network for Good system is too cumbersome for some nonprofits.

I don’t know if the same issue will come up when discussing this year’s experiment, but I do know this: Whether you prefer to work with Network for Good for your online payment processing or not is a moot point.  Whether you’ve even heard of Network for Good or not is moot.

Full disclosure: I like Network for Good. I recommend their free and their paid services and they provide an incredible amount of top-notch communications and fundraising training to nonprofits for free. Katya Andresen, their chief operating officer, and I are friends. She wrote the foreword to my upcoming book. We sometimes do business together. She’s an awesome blogger.

But even if none of this were true, I would give you the exact same advice, because you as a nonprofit manager don’t get to make all the decisions about how people donate online to your cause.

You can certainly guide them down your preferred path, which may be a “Donate” button on your website connected to some other processing system. But if a donor wants to support your cause through Facebook Causes, Guidestar, CharityNavigator, Change.org, Capital One’s Giving Site (which I used for my experiment), or through Network for Good itself, then Network for Good is processing that donation for your donor and for you.

Some of you are wondering who and what the heck this Network for Good is. It’s a nonprofit itself, founded by AOL, Cisco, Time Warner Foundation, and Yahoo! to make it easier for nonprofits to fundraise online and for individuals to support the many causes they care about. If you file a 990, you are in their system, because the IRS sends your 990 to GuideStar, and GuideStar shares the resulting database with Network for Good. They’ve distributed over $370 million in online donations to more than 50,000 different nonprofit organizations. In January of this year alone, they collected $398,000 dollars for charities per day.

Bottom line: No matter how big or how small your organization may be, some of your donors will contribute to you via Network for Good.

Here is what Katya Andresen says Network for Good is doing to make  information about these donations available and accessible to you:

“Real-time reporting is accessible for organizations that receive donations through our site or our partner sites where they can view donor details (they can also export that information). A staff member can elect to get an email notification with a daily summary of donations made to the organization.

Nonprofits can elect to have payments deposited by EFT. Otherwise a check is mailed, which includes an insert with details about the payment, how to find donor information for acknowledgements, etc. In addition, we have a check website at networkforgoodcheck.org dedicated to explaining how donations are processed and where charities can find more information.

Lastly, we have free training and tips on how to communicate with donors at fundraising123.org.”

You should work with Network for Good to turn these one-time donors into life-long supporters.

Here’s what I wish the seven nonprofits who didn’t thank me for my gift would have done, and what I recommend you do too:

1. Make sure your profile in GuideStar is correct. You can update your profile here. That’s where Network for Good gets your mailing address and it’s what donors see too. Some organizations, especially those with chapters, may be listed in GuideStar under several different names. Make sure your main listing has “headquarters” or “national office” or something like that in the listing.

2. Sign up to get the daily email notification of any donations received for your organization by Network for Good. Sign up here.

3. Send a thank-you note to the donor within a week. Do not wait until you actually get the money from Network for Good! I made my donations on December 9, but because Network for Good only sends the donations to nonprofits once a month, the nonprofits didn’t get the donation until January 15. Now, I know how this system works, but most donors won’t. They’ll think that extra time is you not being responsive. And since you can get the data from Network for Good daily, it really is up to you to stay on top of it. (FYI, donations made through Network for Good are non-refundable in all but a few rare cases, so odds are extremely high that you will get the money. No need to wait to send the thank-you.)

Network for Good does send an automated email on your behalf immediately after the donation, so the donor knows the transaction was successful. It says “Thank You for Your Support” on it, but it’s really just a receipt. It’s up to you to send a genuine thank-you from your organization.

4. Add your new donor to your e-newsletter mailing list. Donors can decide whether to share their contact information with you or not. If they share an email address, put them on your email newsletter list. This person has already expressed support for your work through the donation, so it’s a pretty safe bet that they want to hear from you about the good work you are doing with their money. Communications with first-time donors is what turns them into second-time donors. They can always unsubscribe later if they want.

Of the 22 national organizations I gave to in this experiment last year and this year, only one put me on their email newsletter list (way to go St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital!).

5. Ask for another donation. After thanking your donor and communicating with him or her about the results you are producing, ask for another gift. Treat this person like any other donor.  With the exception of some soft asks in the St. Judes’ email newsletter, none of the 22 organizations I’ve donated to through this experiment has asked for another gift.This is even more mind-boggling to me than the lack of thank-you notes!

Next week I’ll share some tips on writing a really good thank-you letter.

P.S. Here’s what’s coming up on our webinar schedule . . .

February 23: How to Make Your Website More Interesting

March 9: Integrating Your Online and Offline Marketing and Fundraising Campaigns

March 18: On-the-Spot E-Newsletter Makeovers: Get Your E-Newsletter into Better Shape

March 23:  Getting Your Nonprofit Started with Social Media

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10 Donations. 3 Thank-Yous. 7 Failures to Communicate.

It’s time to share the results of my 2009-2010 “What I Got When I Gave” Experiment. The point of this experiment is to see what kind of communications response I get in return for unsolicited donations to national charities. This does not include the automated email receipt that I get from the payment processor; I’m looking for communication from the charity directly.

On December 9, 2009, I gave $20 donations to 10 national nonprofits I had previously never donated to by converting credit card miles into cash donations through the Capital One Giving Site. I agreed to share my email address and my mailing address with the nonprofits.

I’ve confirmed with Network for Good, Capital One’s donation processing partner, that the donations were transmitted to the nonprofits on January 15, 2010. The delay has to do with how Network for Good bundles donations and transmits them to nonprofits once a month. So, while I gave in early December, I’m considering the donation date January 15 for this experiment’s purpose. Capital One covers the processing fees, so each charity received the full $20.

Today is February 18. 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 response today.

First, let’s give a hand to the three groups that made the effort.

This year’s winner for “First Thank You Received” goes to Ashoka. The letter was sent on January 22. The letter is nothing special – your garden variety donation receipt form letter. It says Dear Kivi, but the signature is a blurred scan of a signature. Not fabulous content-wise, but sent within a week, so they get big points for speed.

This year’s winner for “Not Treating Me Like a Total Stranger” is the National Parks Conservation Association, because they treated the donation like a membership. The envelope says “Thank you!” in big letters and “Important membership information enclosed.”  The letter says “Dear Kivi, Thank you for Joining NPCA!” (Joining is capitalized, which I assume is a weird merge thing they should fix). The letter says I can find out how my donation is helping by visiting their website, and has a punch-out membership card at the bottom. The letter also says that an invitation to join their monthly giving program was included, but the only thing in the envelope was the letter and a plain business reply envelope. I assume the absent reply card is a mail-house mistake. I received the letter the first week of February.

The Honorable Mention goes to Girls Incorporated. They sent a plain white postcard with some generic thank-you language on the back along the lines of “‘Thank you so much for your gift . . .  on behalf of the girls whose lives you change with your support, thank you.” The only thing on the front is the mailing label. I think the card probably looked clean when it was mailed, but after postal processing, it’s all smeared and smudged. I received the postcard the first week of February.

None of these thank-you notes wowed me, but hey, at least they exist.

I also made donations to the following organizations and have not received anything in response to date:

American Red Cross (listed as American National Red Cross)

Defenders of Wildlife

National Multiple Sclerosis Society

Oceana, Inc.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

Remote Area Medical Foundation

Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

I suppose there are lots of reasons why a national nonprofit may not acknowledge a $20 gift, some better than others. Who knows, maybe something is lost in the mail or the spam folder (although I looked there). I invite representatives of the organizations mentioned in this post to share their perspectives either in the comments or by emailing me at kivi@ecoscribe.com.

Excuse or no excuse, these results, assuming they hold true throughout the sector (and other experiments say they do), are very bad news. How can nonprofits expect to thrive off the kindness of others, when the kindness of a simple thank-you note to an unsolicited donation is too much to ask? Of course, it’s great news to those of you who are doing thank-you notes, because it means you are head-and-shoulders above your peers!

In a post I’ll publish tomorrow, I’ll talk about why every nonprofit needs to figure out how to incorporate Network for Good into its fundraising and communications plan, whether you like getting donations that way or not, and how to do that, including some tips from Katya Andresen, Network for Good’s COO. Network for Good processes payments for GuideStar, Facebook Causes, and many others. Ignoring them isn’t an option.

Next week, I’ll post some tips on how to write good thank-you notes. Here are a few earlier posts until then:

Stand Out: Write a Decent Thank You Note
Stand Out with Thank You Notes, Part II
Saying Thanks Even When It’s Inconvenient or Time-Consuming

P.S. Here’s what’s coming up on our webinar schedule . . .

February 23: How to Make Your Website More Interesting
March 9: Integrating Your Online and Offline Marketing and Fundraising Campaigns
March 18: On-the-Spot E-Newsletter Makeovers: Get Your E-Newsletter into Better Shape
March 23: Getting Your Nonprofit Started with Social Media

(If you want to comment on this post and are on the blog homepage, go back up to the top and click on the number to the right of the title. Annoying, I know. I’m looking into a new template.)

Tags: net2thinktank

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How Many Thank-Yous Will I Get This Year?

Photo by Orin Zebest on Flickr

I just donated $20 each to 10 national charities via the Capital One No Hassle Giving site, using my credit card miles. Want to guess how many thank-you notes I’ll get?

I’m not talking about the automated emails that Network for Good, the payment processor, sends. I received those immediately. I’m talking about real thank-you notes from the charities.

I call 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 has been limited to non-existent over the last year.

The original purpose of this experiment was to learn how some of the nation’s top nonprofits cultivate new donors through communications over time. That’s hard to do when they don’t communicate with donors at all.

Will this year’s recipients do a better job? I’ll let you know  in January.

Thank you notes aren’t the last step you take after receiving a gift; they are the first step you take in receiving the second gift. If you want some help learning how to write a really amazing thank you note that helps turn a one-time donor into a long-term supporter, join us on Thursday, December 17 at 3:00 p.m. Eastern (Noon Pacific) for our next webinar, “Writing Thank You Notes that Inspire Future Gifts.”

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Saying Thanks Even When It’s Inconvenient or Time-Consuming

Wow – yesterday’s post about thank you notes and the lack thereof got the conversation started! Thanks to everyone who took the time to add some thoughts to the debate.

Several people mentioned that the practical realities of nonprofit management mean that getting thank-you notes out promptly, especially when donations come through non-traditional channels for your organization, can be difficult.  Many nonprofits are chronically underfunded and understaffed and often under-skilled in the technology that could make things easier. I get it — really. Been there, done that. At the opposite end of the spectrum, a relatively small gift of $25 may not produce more than a shrug from the development office. I get that too, although I’m certainly less sympathetic to that point of view.

But here’s the thing. Think about how much time a typical nonprofit spends on generic “outreach,” like newsletters, with the purpose, at least in part, of generating new supporters.  If you are so pressed for time, wouldn’t those precious hours be better spent thanking the people who have taken the next step and given you money, no matter how much or through what method?

Just yesterday, before I wrote the post, I did a webinar on Nonprofit Marketing with Next to No Budget. One of my key points was to focus in on the people who matter most and to get personal with them. I specifically pointed out that saying thank you and doing it well, just by itself, was a major strategy for making your nonprofit stand out in donors’ eyes, because so few nonprofits do it well. If you are going to spend anytime on communications at all, shouldn’t it be with the people who have already demonstrated a commitment to your cause by contributing?

Advice to My Frazzled Nonprofit Friends

Give higher priority to your thank-you notes than to any other piece of communications you work on. The newsletter doesn’t go out, the website doesn’t get updated, your report to your board doesn’t get done, until you have sent some kind of thank-you to your donors. Take control of your work life and make it happen. If you don’t, I can pretty much guarantee that over the long haul, you will remain underfunded and understaffed.

Do what NPR did with my gift. If you get an email address, copy and paste it and shoot out a generic thank-you. This is what they sent me, with “NPR Thanks You!” as the subject line:

Dear Friend:

Thank you for your 2008 contribution to National Public Radio, made through Capital One. Your support helps NPR provide Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Talk of the Nation, Car Talk, News & Notes, From the Top and other news and cultural programming to listeners from Alaska to Florida and many countries overseas.

Again, many thanks for your generosity. NPR simply could not do it without you.

Sincerely,

Annie Callaway Davis,

Vice President for Development

(Sent by)

Dayna Taylor
Grants & Contributions Administrator

Granted, I would not hold this up as the best thank-you note ever, but the point is that they sent it, and they sent it promptly. It was the first one I received. I’m not rushing out to put NPR in my estate plans because of it, but this is good enough for me to donate another $25, should they get around to asking me to, and who knows after that. You can do this – anyone can!

Dealing with Donations Through Payment Services

It doesn’t matter whether you like getting gifts through Network for Good (NFG) or any other payment processor or not – you have to deal with it! The donor should get to make the decision about how they donate. You should certainly encourage them to use your preferred channels and to make that super easy, but don’t dis donors who don’t do it your way.

I happen to think that Network for Good is one of the best things to happen to the nonprofit sector in a long time. Yes, I’m friends with Katya Andresen, the COO, but I became friends with her because I admired so much what she was doing at NFG and on nonprofit marketing in general. NFG makes online giving possible for so many nonprofits who couldn’t pull it off on their own and they have also opened up lots of new ways for donors to fund causes they care about online. Look who NFG processes payments for now:

* Charity Navigator
* Guidestar
* Causes on Facebook
* Causes on MySpace
* Capital One (which I used as part of my experiment)
* Change.org
* And many others!

If you hope to use social media to raise money, you are going to have to figure this out, no matter how big or how small your nonprofit is.  NFG is trying to make it easier for you. They take care of the emailed tax receipt so the donor knows the transaction was successful, but it’s up to you to make the personal connection with your supporters. And right there in the email you get from NFG when they process a donation for you, they remind you to thank your donors directly. Sure, any system can always be improved, and Katya told me today that she and her staff are keeping track of all of the suggestions in the comments.

About Those Eight Nonprofits that Didn’t Acknowledge My Gift . . .

I just did some research on Guidestar. Only one of the eight is truly a small organization with a very limited budget and staff. The others are huge in comparison – they all have gross reciepts over $1 million. Two fall into the $30-80 million range and three are bringing in more than $100 million. These gifts were made over three months ago. It’s not about doing it in a timely fashion at this point, it’s about doing thank-yous at all. These organizations have the resources to acknowledge small gifts contributed online, if they really wanted to.

Keep the conversation going – leave a comment here or on the other post.

Tags: nptech, thank you notes

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The Dismal Results of My Online Giving Experiment

Or, Can a Girl Get a Thank-You Note, Please?

Back on November 24, 2008, I cashed in a bunch of credit card miles through Capital One’s No Hassle Giving Site, converting them into cash gifts to charities. Capital One partnered with Network for Good to deliver the donations to the charities. I specifically selected 12 national charities that I had not previously contributed to, but whose missions I support, in order to see what the communications response would be to my $25 gift. On the form, I opted-in to share my contact information with the charities and provided both email and mailing addresses. I called it the “What I Got When I Gave” experiment.

I’ve been waiting all this time to report back on the experiment in hopes that the results would change, but they haven’t. It’s pitiful. Of the 12 national charities I gave to, only four — a measly 33% — acknowledged the gift in any way. (I also gave to three regional charities where I live and the percentage was the same – only 1 of the 3 acknowledged the gift.)

The fastest response came from National Public Radio, which sent me an email thank-you note addressed to “Dear Friend” on December 10. Personalization would have been nice, but at least they get the Gold Star for timeliness. I haven’t received any other communication from NPR since.

The next three all came within a day of each other, on January 6-7, 2009. Both Interplast and The Alliance for Climate Protection sent paper thank-you letters, addressed to me personally.

The Alliance mentioned receiving the gift through Network for Good on December 15, which would have been Network for Good’s next payment distribution day after my gift. Given the holidays, I have no problem with the date I received the letter. It was a standard form thank-you letter – nothing stand-out about it, but adequate.

Interplast’s thank-you letter was great. I’m a big fan of their blog because of their effective storytelling, and the thank-you letter does the same thing. Instead of a bunch of generic successes (which are better than none at all, I guess), they tell me a story and include before and after pictures! I’m constantly telling people to include pictures in thank you notes (see here and here), so I’m glad to see a nonprofit doing it well. Way to go, Interplast!

I haven’t received any additional communication from either Interplast or the Alliance for Climate Protection since the thank-you letters.

St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital didn’t send a thank-you note, but they did add me to their Hopeline email newsletter list and I’ve received the January and February 2009 editions.

I’m obviously really disappointed in not hearing a peep from the other eight. But, ever the supporter of nonprofits, I have come up with several potential reasons (uh, excuses) why this may be the case:

• $25 is chump change to them and doesn’t merit acknowledgment. I know there is significant debate out there about what you do with low-dollar donors. I hoped that $25 was high enough to generate some kind of response, but apparently not.
• Since I cashed in miles, they don’t think it’s a “real” gift (even though Network for Good sent them real money).
• It was the holidays and the gift fell through the cracks.
• Giving through Network for Good is not their preferred means of receiving online gifts — they’d prefer to get them through their own website — so they are not set up to acknowledge gifts like mine.
• The post office and/or Gmail’s spam filter ate their thank-you notes.

Do any of these hold water with you?

You may also be wondering what I was really expecting. I think each charity should have acknowledged the gift either via email or in print. Either one or both is acceptable, given that it was an online gift. Since I supplied my email address, I would have been fine being added to an e-newsletter list. Or, they could have strongly encouraged me to join a list in the thank-you note (or subscribe to a blog), with very explicit instructions for how to do that and a motivating description for why I would want to. So, none of the four who responded knocked it out of the park for me, but they all get kudos for responding at all.

Right about now, you are probably dying to know who the other 8 organizations are. I’m really torn about naming names, because as I said at the top, I really do believe in the missions of every single one of them and I would hate for their inclusion in this post to tarnish them in any way. So I’m not printing them here, at least not right now. But I definitely thought about it . . . C’mon, people, can’t a girl get a thank you note?!?

What do you think? Do these results surprise you or not?  Are any of the rationales for no response legitimate? What would your group have done with a $25 donation from out of nowhere? Please leave a comment and let’s talk about it!

3/12/09 Update: Here is my follow-up post: Saying Thanks Even When It’s Inconvenient or Time-Consuming

3/13/09 Update: The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s “Prospecting” section picked up this post. Read more comments there.

Tags: nptech, thank you notes

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Just Donated $400 Without Spending a Dime – Here’s How

Photo by TPHolland on Flickr

I went online this afternoon thinking I would cash in some points on my Capital One credit card for gift certificates. Then I noticed the Capital One No Hassle Giving Site – a partnership with one my favorite services, Network for Good. Instead of gift certificates for the nieces and nephews, I ended up cashing in 40,000 points to make $25 donations to 16 nonprofits.

Capital One covers the transaction fees, so 100% of your donation, paid for with a charge to your card or by redeeming points, goes to your charity.

This is a beautiful thing for me because

(1) It’s “free” to me. Yes, I did spend a whole lot of dimes over the last year or two to rack up those points, but I have no out-of-pocket costs now to make these donations.

(2) The donations are fully tax-deductible as cash equivalents.

(3) While I had intended to make a few more charitable gifts before year’s end, I didn’t intend to give to 16 groups. But spending the points was like free money. I couldn’t stop myself. It was really fun.

(4) Always looking for a blogging angle, I’m going to add this to my ongoing “What I Got When I Gave” experiment, where I keep track of the communications I receive from various nonprofits after making a first-time donation. I’ll let you know what happens with this batch of donations.

Now, how can you use this information?

Capital One has about 50 million customer accounts. Odds are many of your supporters have one of their cards in their wallets. Why not include a link to the No Hassle Giving site in your next email newsletter asking the Capital One card holders to redeem some points for you?

Now what the heck am I getting the nieces and nephews?

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After I Give, What Do I Get?

Sometime very soon, I am going to launch an experiment where I donate to 20-30 nonprofits that I currently have no contact with and then see what kind of communications I get back from them over time. I’d like your help in shaping this project.

I’m especially interested in the frequency and content of the communication. How personalized will it be? Will they attempt to learn more about me? Will they encourage me to do more? What will they highlight in their communications to me? What format will the communications take?

I’m still thinking about the right mix of nonprofits and donation levels and methods and would love to hear your thoughts. I’m not looking for a statistically accurate methodology, just a really interesting one.

– Who should I give to and what should the mix look like? I’d like the list to include some nonprofits that I currently know nothing about (although I won’t give to any group whose mission I completely oppose — let’s save that for another experiment). Should I go for a random mix of sizes, age, and missions? Or should I give to some similar organizations to see how they compare?

– I’ll spend $500 upfront on donations, with more to come later in the year, depending how this all turns out. Should I give $20 to 25 groups? Or should I go with $10 to 20 and $100 to 3 groups? Or some other combination?

– I’d like to give in a variety of ways, e.g. snail mail, online, through Facebook Causes, etc. What other methods should I include? Should I give to the same nonprofit in a couple of different ways to see if I’m treated differently?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on all of this over the next week. Naturally, I’ll let you know what happens over the next several months as the results come in.

Tags: communications, donation, Fundraising, marketing, nonprofit

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