Build Donor Trust and Inspire More Giving with Consistency

The Donor Attraction Letter

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Consistency: The unsexy but super effective way to attract and keep your donors.

If you’re interested in cultivating loyal, lifetime donors, I hope you’ll settle in for a few minutes with me to soak in some thoughts about the importance of consistency with your donor communications.

Simply put, donors look for and love consistency.

Why?

Because it helps build one of the most important drivers of giving:

Trust

Trust, of course, is fundamental to any successful, longtime relationship—–particularly for relationships that involve money. It’s an important feeling that your donors must have to keep moving forward along the giving continuum.

Each donor you have right now has developed some level of trust with your organization based on the communications she’s received. If you’ve been consistent with factors like messaging, frequency, type, tone and visual style, chances are good that this consistency has played a strong part in developing increased trust with your donors.

And when your donors have a high level of trust, they feel confident, comfortable and put at ease about their decision to give. And they’re some of your best prospects for repeat, up-leveled and major gifts.

But, what happens when consistency with donor communications drops off?

How do donors feel when:

They notice that a charity’s website hasn’t been updated in awhile

Email and postal mailings giving regular updates stop flowing

Social media messages are sporadic

Different marketing pieces have different visual presentations

Donor relations and stewardship communications get sloppy or lag

Well, donors start to feel:

Skeptical
Worried
Doubtful
Uneasy
Uncomfortable

This then creates a discrepancy for donors.

At one point, your donor felt fantastic about her giving experience. She had a high level of trust and confidence about her relationship with your wonderful organization and what you were doing with her donations.

But, when your communications became inconsistent, that positive experience began to fade, stirring up in your donor a need to make a change and take away her uneasy feelings.

So, your donor stops giving.

After all, she’s being asked by so many great nonprofits to give. She figures she’d be wiser to donate to an organization she trusts and feels more comfortable with.

HOW TO BUILD MORE DONOR TRUST WITH CONSISTENCY

To avoid feelings of skepticism, worry and doubt bubbling up in your donors, there are many things you need to do to build donor trust over time with consistency.

Today I want to focus on two TOP strategies I think are among the most important:

1. Create a donor communications calendar.

First, let me ask: When you think about a donor communications calendar, do all of your annual appeals and special event invites come to mind?

If so, you may be suffering from over-soliciting and under-communicating.

Yes, your solicitations are important—–absolutely!

But, remember: All of the communications that touch your donor in between your appeals and asks have everything to do with:

How she’ll respond to your next ask

Whether or not she’ll increase her next gift and by how much

Whether she decides to get more involved and encourage her friends to give

Whether she’ll designate your charity to receive a bequest or other estate plan gift (or if your nonprofit gets taken out of her will)

That’s why it’s so important for you to create and execute a well-planned, systematic, month-by-month donor communications calendar that does a phenomenal job of consistently showing your donors how much you appreciate their support, in addition to giving them more opportunities to donate.

So, how does your donor communications calendar look?

In addition to your fundraising letters and emails, are your donors consistently receiving plenty of warm, engaging, personalized communications including:

Multiple thank you touch points via letters, emails and videos that create that “warm and fuzzy” feeling of donor love

Print and email newsletters that provide regular news and updates about what the donor’s support is helping your nonprofit accomplish

Personal letters and calls that show your donor sincere, heartfelt appreciation for her choice to support your work

Social media posts that share quick snippets of stories, news, gratitude and heart-tugging photos

Holiday greetings and birthday well wishes

Gratitude and impact reports that share beneficiary success stories highlighting how the donor’s gift is positively changing lives

With the terribly high donor attrition rate many nonprofits are experiencing these days, creating or tuning up your donor communications calendar to achieve more consistency is really a MUST for attracting and keeping more lifetime donors.

2. Create an editorial and visual style guide.

One of the most effective ways you can build your donors’ trust and comfort level is by presenting a consistent editorial and visual style across your communication platforms.

By creating an editorial and visual style guide that can be used organization-wide and shared with outside partners, you’ll help ensure clear, consistent, error-free communications across all channels. The standards in your guide—–including things like proper logo usage, typefaces, sizes and colors—–will go a long way in creating trust-building consistency. And it will save everyone a great deal of time and effort while increasing the impact of your communications.

Take a look at these style guide samples for inspiration:

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital

Rotary International

These are on the longer side for larger, more complex organizations. No matter your organization’s size, these can serve as helpful models for your own as they give you a comprehensive look at everything typically contained in a style guide.

If yours is a small or mid-size nonprofit without a guide, you can start small with just a few pages that capture the most important standards for logos, names, fonts, sizes, images and colors.

The most important thing is to get one in place if you don’t already or refresh yours when needed to keep it current.

The big takeaway is this:

To attract loyal, lifetime donors, you need to create consistent, reliable, joyful donor experiences through your communications. If you don't, it's only a matter of time before you lose donors' trust and their support.

Start with the two strategies above to capitalize on the power of consistency in motivating your donors to keep giving and giving.

Dedicated to helping you attract and keep your donors,

Jen Viano
Nonprofit Writer/Consultant
Editor, The Donor Attraction Letter

PS: Need some help creating or enhancing your donor communications calendar? Get in touch and let me help you do a better job of delighting your donors with consistent, compelling communications they'll love. Email me at Jen@JenViano.com to take first steps.

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