Active, engaged relationships with donors are critical for fundraising success.
If you have a robust development program in place at your organization, you know this all too well. Successfully asking a donor to commit a sizable major gift, planned gift, or other donation requires significant investments in the relationship. You must intentionally grow the donor’s connection to your mission and show them the impact that their gift will have.
Remember that nonprofit development is cyclical—initial prospect research, qualification, and cultivation come first, then the solicitation, but what about after a gift has been secured and you’ve expressed your initial gratitude? This is where the stewardship process comes into play.
Why is donor stewardship so important?
Stewardship is broadly defined as the set of programs and tasks that a nonprofit uses to retain its donors and grow relationships with them. Effective stewardship keeps those relationships warm and engaged so donors will continue to feel connected to the organization and be inclined to make future gifts.
Nurturing your donor relationships is the key to successful development and sustainable growth for your nonprofit. With a solid base of supporters eager to learn more about your recent initiatives and continue supporting your cause, you’ll be able to:
Secure future gifts
Grow your budget and programming with reliable projected income
Leverage donor connections to reach new partners, sponsors, and donors
Source new volunteers and board members
The list goes on—donors can help drive your mission forward in all kinds of ways, but only if you put in the work to make them feel involved and connected. And aside from the potential benefits your organization can see, effective stewardship also shows donors that you value their partnership and involvement with your work, not just their gifts.
Communication Best Practices for Donor Stewardship
Since it’s all about relationship-building and long-term engagement, successful stewardship hinges on communication. Here are five essential elements of a stewardship communication plan:
1. One-on-one outreach
Relationships with high-impact donors are best built on a one-on-one basis. After all, it’s much easier for donors to build a personal relationship with an organization when they have a relationship with the people working behind the scenes.
Although this approach requires much more of your team’s time than relying solely on automated or broad outreach, it’s a worthwhile investment since these donors generally have high lifetime values for your organization.
Nonprofits handle this process by assigning individual major gift officers or development staff their own prospect and donor portfolios. This makes it easier for each team member to keep their work focused, devote more attention to each donor, and more effectively strengthen the relationships over time. The portfolio model means each gift officer will serve as their donors’ designated point of contact for questions and conversations, resulting in a more streamlined and straightforward experience for donors, as well.
2. Personalization
Next, communication with major donors and other high-impact supporters needs to be fully personalized. The one-on-one model will inherently help to make all outreach more personal, but it’s important for development staff to actively learn more about donors. Ask about their lives, families, interests, upcoming holidays and vacations, and more.
It’s also important to tailor your conversations to the ways in which donors have engaged with your nonprofit. For instance, if they gave a major gift restricted to fund a specific program your nonprofit offers, keep them updated on its impact and your organization’s future plans for it. If a grateful patient gave to your healthcare institution, highlight the achievements and developments of the department that cared for them.
3. Standard cadences
Outreach to donors should never come across as haphazard or sporadic. Standardized outreach cadences ensure you stay in touch without letting too much time pass or overdoing it.
Create communication calendars for both your one-on-one outreach and a supplemental automated email stream. Creating a sustainer or legacy society (or some other form of membership for high-impact donors) makes it easy to send automated messaging naturally in the form of newsletters and membership updates.
In your supplemental emails, ensure that donors get to see your organization’s work from all angles, including highlights like:
Constituent stories and donor testimonials
Successes and shout-outs from your broader online fundraising campaigns
Announcements about new programs, secured grants, and leadership changes
Blog posts from organization staff, leaders, and board members
Spread across an annual outreach calendar, these kinds of messages can be later referenced and discussed in personal conversations between the donor and gift officer. Plus, they’re easily automated and can be handled by your communications or marketing teams.
4. Clear records
As your team stays in touch with donors and keeps up active stewardship conversations, it’s important to maintain organized records of who you’ve contacted, how they’ve engaged with the organization, and when.
Modern database or CRM platforms should include moves management capabilities to help keep track of individual touchpoints. An effective process makes it easy to see the state of your relationships, such as identifying who hasn’t been contacted in a while, who’s been solicited recently, and more at a glance. These records should be attached to each donor’s individual profile where you can track important metrics like donation histories and event attendance as well as file notes gathered during stewardship conversations.
Keeping clear records drastically simplifies the process of managing and reporting on your stewardship efforts. It also enables anyone to pick up relationships with donors fairly seamlessly should a gift officer leave your organization.
5. Dialogue and involvement
Make sure your relationship with a donor and the asks or opportunities you present them with are built on an understanding of their preferences and desires. This means your stewardship efforts need to involve true conversations, not just one-sided outreach or small talk that rarely touches on their philanthropic priorities and motivations.
For instance, if a major donor has recently given or committed to a significant gift, you should explicitly discuss their recognition preferences. Although some donors might love to see their name on a shiny new installation, others might not—tailoring your approach will be much more effective than potentially surprising them with something they don’t want.
It’s also important to offer a range of involvement opportunities so that you can continually learn about how your donors prefer to engage with your nonprofit. These might include:
Invites to annual or special events
Inclusion in groundbreakings or awards ceremonies
Tours of your facility and casual luncheons with staff
Networking opportunities with other donors and partners
Hosting fundraising events and mixers on your behalf
Serving as a community ambassador to help promote your work
Participating in a planning study for an upcoming capital campaign
Joining a campaign committee or perhaps your board
A mix of recreational and mission-centric opportunities will be helpful for engaging as many donors as possible and learning more about what they find appealing.
Once you’ve got a firm grasp on these best practices, try tying them all together—offer more engagement opportunities, learn about donors’ preferences, use these findings to inform your ongoing conversations, and keep it all running with consistent, varied communication.
Of course, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to donor stewardship since the point is to personalize your approach to each individual donor. But by incorporating these essential elements into your strategy, you’ll lay a strong foundation for long-term engagement, future gifts, and fulfilling philanthropic relationships.
About the Author: Kristen Fehrenbach
Kristin is a Senior Consultant at Graham Pelton. With her ability to collaborate across teams, forge partnerships, build trust, and match donors with philanthropic opportunities, Kristin manages client engagements with an eye toward elevated thinking and program innovation.