You planned, prospected, cultivated and asked for the gift. You even got the amount you asked for. Mazel Tov! Now what do you do? Thank and engage your donor! Forever. Stewardship is all about retaining and building relationships with your donors, continuing to show your appreciation and engaging them in your mission.

Donors, of course, need to be thanked in a timely manner – but stewardship is beyond the formal thank you and doing a good job of “accounting”. Donors need to be regularly apprised of the values that their gift is adding to the camp and be given regular opportunities to be involved in the organization’s life. Stewardship is all about relationships:

• Lets the donor know that their gift has made a difference and the ways in which the camp and its mission are stronger because of their generosity.
• Connects the donor’s values and the camp’s values.
• Demonstrates respect for the partnership between the camp and its donors.
• Is the underpinning for the long-term relationships that lead to increased financial support and personal advocacy.
• Engages the donor in the life of the organization in a first-hand, ongoing way that results in shared aspirations and long-term commitments.

Staff members must support the stewardship efforts by providing proper data maintenance structures and planning donor stewardship activities. It is up to staff to schedule and plan stewardship actions and make sure board members help with implementation. Board members and other key volunteers are critical for their personal involvement in maintaining donor relations.

Stewardship activities are similar to cultivation activities:

• Make “thank you!” phone calls and emails
• Make personal visits with donors – at least once per year!
• Host donors for on-site tours
• Personally invite donors to camp events
• Invite donors to appropriate social or community events
• Be attentive to individual donor interests

Establish personal relations with donors just as you would an old friend or a neighbor. Inquire about their interests and their families. Discuss shared values and camp stories. Connect with them.

Stewardship is not only critical to show appreciation for current gifts, but it enables the organization to clearly establish its position to ask for additional and larger gifts in the future.

I just read about the longtime volunteer who only gave $25 to a local animal shelter’s annual fund, but then left a $1 million legacy gift. How does my camp get that?

Indeed, the largest transfer of wealth in history is occurring NOW!  Legacy giving is the largest source of individual and family charitable donations. Those non-profit charities that position themselves to receive planned gifts will be the most financially stable in the future.

In 2008, the Grinspoon Institute piloted a camp legacy program with six camps, modeled after the San Diego Jewish Community Foundation. Now we are working with nineteen camps across the country, bringing together lay and professional leaders committed to regular coaching and trainings on planned giving tools & solicitation approaches.

We all know the obstacles for any agency wanting to do planned giving:

• Emotional – “We don’t want to talk about death”
• Intellectual – “We don’t want to learn the financial and tax complexity of planned giving vehicles”
• Financial –  “We need to spend our limited time getting donations for this year”

Our legacy training program addresses these blocks. The conversations with donors are not about death, but about the camp mission and the shared commitment to the camp’s future. You don’t need to be a tax attorney; you only need to know the basics as each donor must talk to their own financial advisor for details. And the legacy program offers two annual $10,000 incentive grants so the camp gets some money in the bank now instead of having to wait decades for bequests to arrive. Most significantly, camps in the legacy program have deepened their relationship with their donors as donors increase both their emotional and financial investment in “their” camps.

Image courtesy of Spakattacks on Flickr

Did you have parties before eVite allowed you to invite people for free online? Did you pay your bills before banks offered you online banking? Of course you did. The technologies only made the processes cheaper and easier. Similarly, your organization has been fundraising and building relationships with donors and prospects for years, even before the computer!

Stewardship – like cultivation – is really about relationships. Technology will never be used as the primary channel for stewarding your donors. But, like fundraising in general, technology can be used to make your nonprofit’s stewardship efforts more effective and efficient. The following are a few examples of how technology can help you steward your donors:

• Track donor values and interests

Donor Management Systems are great for capturing and reporting on what your donors and prospects care about the most. Why did they support your last capital campaign? What is their most indelible memory of camp? Are they married? Have kids? What other causes do they support?

All of this information - if it is stored consistently and easily accessible – can help your organization build stronger, more meaningful relationships with your donors.  Think about how much more meaningful your conversations are with someone who really knows you. Or simply with someone who listens and then is able to recall those details at a later conversation. Technology can help you retain those details.

• Track and schedule contacts with donors

A donor management system can track all contacts with donors – personal meetings, phone calls, emails, etc. This allows your organization to easily determine who has been in touch with a donor…and when. If used consistently, your organization will be able to ensure donors are contacted in the appropriate way and frequency.

Remember that a system is only as good as the data entered. Anyone involved in Stewardship activities must be trained to report back with updated contact information, details about meetings, and other information to be tracked in the system.

Most donor management systems will also allow your organization to assign future contacts with a donor to a specific person. This makes it even easier to ensure relationships are being built effectively.

And Board Management tools like Google Groups can help your Board coordinate donor/board member “assignments” and share documents to help them track their contacts effectively.

• Be transparent about how donors’ gifts are being used

Donors expect transparency more and more. They want to know how their gifts have been spent and what your organization plans to do with future donations. Your organization’s website is a perfect place to share detailed financial information, annual reports, and more specific details about donations. For example, for a capital campaign, pictures of buildings in process or finished will go a long way. For scholarship campaigns, pictures of recipients, parent testimonials, and total amounts given to a specific number of campers would be helpful for donors to understand the impact of their generosity.

eNewsletters also offer the opportunity to inexpensively send regular updates to donors about the status of fundraising campaigns and how those funds are being used. These eNewsletters can be personalized in a limited fashion - by including a salutation field with the donor’s name, or even including a short personal note in the text of the eNewsletter.

For example, Herzl Camp recently sent out an eNewsletter with pictures of a new building being constructed at the camp. Information about the construction was offered, as well as another thank you for the donors’ help. Finally a subtle link to give an additional gift was made available at the end of the eNewsletter.

• Ensure timely acknowledgements are sent to donors

Stewardship is above and beyond thanking your donors. However, sending timely acknowledgements is one crucial component of good stewardship. Donor Management Systems can help your organization quickly report on recent gifts, and even track which gifts have yet to be acknowledged. And simple mailmerges with MS Word can allow your organization to easily create and print personalized thank you notes in bulk.

Always keep in mind that the technology is there to help you with these processes. Stewardship can only be successful with the right processes and people in place to build and retain your donor relationships.

How have you used technology to steward your donors?