How to show donor impact when you aren't on the ground
Organizations not working directly in communities lack the warm, engaging stories needed to show donors exactly what their dollars achieved. Because they must stay neutral and science-focused, their stewardship updates often get lost in a firehose of communications or feel like perfunctory spam. This prevents them from properly connecting with contributors and building a successful donor program.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Writing personalized handwritten notes.Did this help you?
- 2Sending holiday postcards featuring client-created art.Did this help you?
- 3Hosting gratitude phonebanking sessions where staff and participants call donors simply to say thanks.Did this help you?
- 4Sharing short, 1-minute testimonial videos and pictures on social media.Did this help you?
- 5Focusing efforts primarily on grants instead of individual donors.Did this help you?
- 6Managing up by setting reasonable expectations with the board regarding the feasibility of a donor program.Did this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I am feeling good about the amount of money I'm raising, but not so great about our stewardship.”source ↗
“I want to tell them "your dollars made this happen" in a way that doesn't get lost in the firehose of communications.”source ↗
“We are not the orgs on the ground doing the work and so we don't have the stories that help engage the public”source ↗
“There is very little room to put a warm and fuzzy spin on the topic that might appeal to donors as that would move us into less neutral territory.”source ↗
“I’m concerned about the feasibility of building a donor program when we are not working directly in communities, need to stay neutral and “sciencey”, and also don’t have an obvious service benefit in our own community.”source ↗
“Updates that feel perfunctory or disingenuous are starting to feel like spam.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 4How do you start a peer-to-peer fundraiser with zero donor history?
- 2What to write in a wedding thank you card for money
- 5How do I get people to actually read project update emails?
- 6Is it normal for a nonprofit to ask employees for donations?
- 5How do you put a monetary value on benefits and in-kind donations?
- 3How to handle inappropriate donation requests from individuals