One of the most helpful donor rapport building strategies for gift officers to employ is to utilize an “assistance theme.”
The psychology of an assistance theme is pretty straightforward.
We know that humans, generally, want to feel useful or want to be helpful if they can. Certainly donors have shown evidence through their giving that they want to be helpful. So, effective gift officers can lean into that human impulse to build rapport with donors.
How to go about creating an assistance theme is similarly straightforward.
First, gift officers should curate simple requests of donors. Then, gift officers, should communicate that the request will be of limited duration. And, finally, gift officers should make sure the request is understood by the donor to be non-threatening.
If we think about the difficulty many gift officers have with securing visits with donors, I’m convinced a significant part of the struggle is based on not having a compelling assistance theme.
For example, a gift officer might contact a donor about a visit and offer this garden-variety invitation to meet:
“I’ll be coming to your part of the state at the end of the month and I’d welcome the opportunity to thank you personally for your recent gift. . .”
As we all know, this type of vanilla invitation to engage has a relatively limited success rate. But gift officers everywhere communicate with donors like this every day!
On the other hand, a more effective gift office might create a compelling assistance theme and say something like,
“I am reaching out to a few generous donors – like you – who have given recently, and asking for feedback on a few strategic visioning concepts our institution is considering. These discussions I’m having only take about 20-30 minutes usually and I can assure you I’m not asking anyone about making another gift. I am simply asking for people’s opinions and perspectives. Would you be willing to help me with this project? I’ll happily buy you a cup of coffee for your time and insights.”
By making the visit about providing assistance and making that assistance simple, of limited duration, and non-threatening, human psychology tells us that gift officers will engage more donors.
It doesn’t take much to be more creative (and more effective) in our work. But, it does take our understanding the basics of psychology, human motivation, and rapport building.
