Do you have a Donor Happiness Toolkit? If you answered no, then you’re in for a treat today!
A Donor Happiness Toolkit is your personal set of tools that you can use to make your donors extra happy.
As you think about putting together your Donor Happiness Toolkit, a great first step is to get to know your donors better. I talked about how you can do this over at Movie Mondays this week. Check it out the video + a free worksheet here.
After you have a sense of who your donors are and what kind of stewardship would make them happy, it’s time to put together your Donor Happiness Toolkit! These can be physical objects, stories, cards, quotes and more that you can keep on hand to make someone’s day a little brighter.
Here are my top five favorite Donor Happiness tools to have on hand.
1. Thank you cards. No more branded, blank cards! Instead opt for something really fun and special! Sugar Paper makes some of my favorite thank you cards.
2. Confetti. Who doesn’t love to celebrate with a little confetti! Imagine opening up a thank you letter to find a little packet of confetti inside. (p.s. I have Shanon Doolittle to thank for my recent obsession with confetti!)
3. Inspiring quotes. Sometimes we don’t have to rely on ourselves to come up with something truly meaningful to write in that thank you letter. Start a Word document on your desktop and keep a running list of quotes and other ways to say thank you to donors. Check out these quotes to start your collection.
4. Photos. It’s great to have a couple of current photos of your organization in action. You can use these in letters, print them out as postcards and more! Sharing photos is a great way to show them their gifts at work and give them an inside look at your organization’s work.
5. Stories. If you’re looking for ways to show donors their impact (as opposed to just telling them “they’re making an impact”), share a story with them. I like to keep at least 3 stories on hand that I can share with donors. Usually I’ll keep a long form version of the stories in a Word document. Then I can take parts and pieces from them for donor stewardship.
