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Donor Stewardship—The Job Isn't Finished When the Check is Received

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by Gary B. Grant

     Donor stewardship is a key part of fundraising. In some organizations, stewardship refers to the overall process of fundraising and may embody communication plans for all donors. But for purposes of this conversation, stewardship refers to a collection of activities that generally occur after a major gift is given or between two major gifts.

     Some of the concepts that donor stewardship entails are:

  1. Showing Appreciation: The immediate thank you and display of appreciation from the right persons (board leadership, executive leadership, fund beneficiary, etc.) and in creative, thoughtful ways.
  2. Public Recognition: Making sure the gift is visible to the rest of the community, which serves two purposes—demonstrating gratitude and encouraging future donors to give. Donors are more likely to give when they see how others are recognized.
  3. Remembering: Making sure that the person and their gift is seen for its long-term impact. A gift must be remembered or it doesn’t create a legacy, and again, others are watching.
  4. Accountability: Making sure that you report back to the donor on how the funds were spent and that you dutifully used the gift as intended.
  5. Reporting: This involves regular periodic communications on the gift’s impacts (in the case of an endowment, this may be annual for their life).

Traditional Approaches to Stewardship

     Traditional approaches to stewardship around a very large gift might include one or more thank-you letters and, depending on the size of the gift, a public check presentation or a small event or reception to speak about the impact in front of an appropriate audience. Accountability and reporting require personal communication as the funding is used and meeting reporting expectations in a timely way to show that you haven’t “taken the money and forgotten the donor.”  Remembering might include naming plaques on a room or donor wall and articles in a publication proximate to the gift being made or as the impacts are seen.

Internet-Age Approaches to Stewardship

     In the internet age, how might all of that be expanded upon?

     Acknowledging the gift should still include letters. Don’t switch to email for convenience. The existence of email as an option has only made the personal letter (and better yet, the hand-written letter) more meaningful and special. However, do feel free to enhance acknowledgments with emails. You might invite several others to email their gratitude. Email can allow you to expand the number of people demonstrating appreciation. You can also use an email to extend the time you express appreciation. For example, after sending a formal acknowledgment and a hand-written note from leadership, you can add an extra email a month later showing that you are still grateful even after some passage of time. Here’s an example:

“Dear Ms. Smith, I just wanted to again express my gratitude for your support of our important program last month. After a talk I gave last week, I had a chance to meet one of the students benefiting from your support, and I know they will make you very proud of what your gift is doing to impact their life.”

     In other words—gratitude can be more personal, broader, and deeper by enhancing our traditional approaches with online communication.

Enhancing Online Public Recognition

     Public recognition is readily enhanced by the tools offered online. Again, having an in-person event is still often the right action to really make a donor feel appreciated. The investment of time to plan and implement a check presentation or reception should be appropriate, but makes the donor feel special and provides just the right photo opportunities. Even during the pandemic, check presentations are possible with safety protocols in place.

     You can enhance the feeling an event gives with a brief video of the event or story that can be shared with your entire community by email and over social media. This allows the donor to share the moment with friends and family far and wide.

     In addition, here’s where you can use your website to good effect, especially for remembering a gift over time. Keep a history of events and recognize the gift at your site, perhaps in a special section on lifelong giving. This will encourage donors to come back or to link to your page from their own. Nothing is more powerful for your donor community than for them to see each other at your website.

Assessing Your Website To Increase Donor Satisfaction

     In fact, go to your organization's website today and review it. Is it all about your programs and your own staff and leadership? Or does it also reflect the wider stakeholders who are part of your organization through their philanthropy? Think about how a new donor will feel if they visit your website. Does it demonstrate that there is a philanthropic community recognized as an essential part of your organization? Make sure donors and their gifts are prominent at your website.

     An online donor wall can be visited at your site and can replace old static displays in bronze or plastic. Touch screen monitors are reasonably priced and competitive with any donor wall that might display your leadership giving and historical donors. You will be surprised at how much less expensive this can be compared to bronze plaques, with much longer-term flexibility. You no longer must cringe if you need to correct a name at some point. Errors are easily fixed. Today, such donor walls are managed through online website portals.

     Finally, for accounting and reporting, online options are viable as a replacement for reporting and communicating updates. This can help to increase the frequency of such communications. Just make sure they are not missed by the donor. It’s too easy for emails to be accidentally deleted unread or in a spam box. But the fact that a donor can reply offers the opportunity to take their temperature on their satisfaction with their gift.

     Overall, enhancing your donor stewardship will go a long way to building toward future gifts. Few organizations are fully taking advantage of online stewardship to bond with their top donors. Embracing these ideas and other creative ones you might have can conversely set you apart and build greater loyalty and satisfaction in giving.

Four Tips To Improve Online Stewardship of Donations

     So, to summarize, online stewardship should include:

Gary B. Grant has a BA from the University of Chicago and a JD from Illinois Tech's Chicago-Kent College of Law. He currently serves as Senior VP for Development for Florida Institute of Technology (Florida Tech). Founded at the dawn of the Space Race in 1958, Florida Tech is the only independent, technological university in the Southeast. In this role, he oversees all fundraising and leadership engagement for the University. Gary has authored several books on the use of the internet in nonprofits and fundraising.

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