The Annual Giving Exchange

Pledges are wonderful.  As promises, they represent trust.

In annual giving, we’re pleased if 75% of our donors’ pledges are fulfilled in a year.  Imagine if a baseball player got on base 75% of the time or if a presidential candidate received 75% of the votes.  They’d secure their place in the history books, right?

When someone promises to make a gift, they’ve made an important statement.  They could have said no, but they didn’t.  And while most of them will keep their promises, some of them won’t.  But that shouldn’t negate the fact that they cared enough to make a promise in the first place.

So why is it that the first thing so many of us do after getting a pledge is to exclude that person from future appeals?  More than likely, it’s because we’re afraid of appearing too aggressive or seeming to have forgotten about their promise.

The issue here is not who should receive your appeals, it’s the language contained in those appeals.  Every appeal should be, at its core, a thank you note.  We should always thank people for their support, whether that support came last year or may come next year, whether that support is in the form of money, time, or ideas.

Treat every appeal like a thank you note and it won’t matter who’s reading it.