The first president I worked for who understood philanthropy was fond of saying, “We can never thank a donor too much.”
I used to believe that and would even repeat the phrase.
But, as I’ve aged in this work, I’ve changed my tune a bit. It’s not that the sentiment hits wrong. . . or at least not all wrong.
It’s that an advancement team can absolutely spend too much time, energy, and resources thanking some donors too much.
If, for example, a $500 or $1,000 donor receives a gift receipt with a typed thank-you letter that includes a handwritten message on the bottom of the letter, and then also receives a phone call of gratitude, and, then, a few days later, also receives a card in the mail that has the signatures of every member of the advancement team thanking the donor for the gift, that donor – from my point of view – has been “thanked too much.”
Yes, it is a nice annual gift, and we all aim to ensure that it is repeated. But, when an advancement team responds through multiple channels, multiple times, to thank a donor for a decent gift – but a gift that isn’t anywhere close to the “top of the gift chart” gift – it welcomes two important questions:
- If the team responds so effusively to a modest annual gift, how would they respond to a truly significant annual gift? What would that process look like to make that donor feel truly special?
- If the team responds so effusively to a modest annual gift, are they balancing their program of donor stewardship with their program of annual solicitations? In other words, are they spending so much time thanking donors that they aren’t investing appropriate amounts of time and effort into inviting donors to give?
Thanking donors is, of course, a cornerstone and fundamental aspect of any healthy advancement program. Not only is it smart to thank donors, it is simply the right thing to do.
But I no longer believe the statement, “We can never thank a donor too much.”
Instead, I believe the most effective advancement teams live with a different perspective – one that says, “We thank donors meaningfully based on their impact on our mission, and not by quantity of our thank yous.”
Donor stewardship should be about our mission and the donor’s support of it, not the number of times we say, “thank you.”
