by Natasha Dresner

One Summer seven years ago, a major Jewish philanthropist had a few visits with a Jewish Summer Camp in the Berkshires. Those visits wound up putting nonprofit Jewish Camping on the map and changed its landscape forever. How? Well, for starters, the philanthropist was none other than Harold Grinspoon. But even more importantly than that, the camp scheduled the visit and then showed and told him their story in a way that resonated with his personal and philanthropic interests.

Soon after those visits, Harold created the Grinspoon Institute for Jewish Philanthropy, which at last count provides 74 Jewish nonprofit Summer camps and over 800 of their professional and lay leaders with free consulting services in Strategic Thinking and Planning, Board Development, Fundraising, and Technology, as well as Matching Challenge Grants, which to date have helped raise almost $60 million.

The point I want to impress upon you is that all of this started with a simple camp visit. I hear some camps say they’re too busy during the summer and can’t afford to do it. Well, I say you can’t afford NOT to. Not every camp has a Harold Grinspoon, but every camp has a major donor waiting to be invited, and you need to do it NOW!

Next to the fun, safe, and high quality summer camp experience you promised your campers and their families, engaging your major donors and prospects through special, individually tailored, and well-planned camp visits – whether for cultivation, solicitation, or stewardship – is the next most important thing lay and professional leadership must dedicate their time to. Now let’s focus on how.

The following five tips will help you have a successful visit. To learn more, join us on April 27^th at 1 PM EDT for a webinar, Show and Tell: Successful Camp Visits for Donors and Prospects.

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good - all of the above tips should help ensure a great visit and a desirable outcome; a less than perfect visit is better than no visit at all.

Remember, it all starts with a single visit!

Is your donor database working for you? If you put time in up front, the database can make your life easier. Set aside one week for a fundraising database tune up this April. You and your camp will thank you for the rest of the year!

Monday: LYBUNT report

LYBUNT stands for “Last Year But Unfortunately Not This year.” A LYBUNT report is a list of all your donors who made gifts in the previous year but did not give during the current year. If you don’t know how to easily run such a report from your donor database, email Kevin or Joe right now and set up an appointment to learn how to run this and other useful reports. Learning how to quickly run reports to tap the valuable information in your donor database is invaluable.

The exciting part about running a LYBUNT report is that it points to easy money you can raise right now. Research in philanthropy is finding that increasingly donors don’t remember whether or not they have made their annual gifts. Stay positive and assume that your LYBUNT donors love camp but simply forgot to give in 2009, and would be willing to make a gift right now if asked.

Do it today: Run a LYBUNT report, look it over, and design a mini-campaign (maybe a simple mailing to these donors with some follow-up calls?) and set a dollar amount goal for LYBUNT gifts for this spring.

Tuesday: Deduping

Deduping is lingo for removing duplicate entries from the database, as in “de-duplicating.”  If you don’t do this task, you can lose face with your donors: this winter I got three copies of a mailing from an organization with one addressed to me, one to my husband and the third to both of us. It was very wasteful and unprofessional. I recycled the appeals without reading them. Don’t let that happen to you!

If you’ve never tried to dedupe your database before, or it has been a long time, email Kevin or Joe right now and set up an appointment to learn how to do this, and determine how long it might take. While you are working on this task, Kevin can help you to think about other ways to clean up your donor database while you are at it. If you dedupe once or twice a year, this task will not take longer than a day.

Do it today: Review your database, and estimate how much time you’ll need for deduping. Most donor databases have a duplicate removal function. Use this function to find and merge known duplicate records.

Wednesday: Import Camper Records

Ideally, a camp’s donor database would include all Alumni throughout time, current and past parents, current and past grandparents, current and past Board members, current and past staff, all current and past supporters, and camp business contacts. All these people are the camp’s base for support. At some point information in the camp’s registration/enrollment database needs to be moved into the donor database, especially as kids age-out of camp. 

If you haven’t yet set up decision criteria for when campers get transferred over from your camp database into your donor database, you should email Kevin or Joe right now and set up an appointment to discuss what is involved and how to get started. If you’ve set up your system for data imports and do this each year, then this task can get done in a day. Did you know that deduping (see above) is done again after a data import? 

Do it today: Review your process for transferring contacts from the camper registration and enrollment software into your donor database, be sure you understand it, and make a plan to update this Spring. If you have a documented process that is used each year, data import will be relatively easy.

Thursday: Board Giving Update

Every camp should realize 100% participation in charitable donations by their Board members every year. Run a report right now to see if you have reached this goal this year. Do you know how to flag current Board members in your database? Do you know how to create payment reminders to Board members who make pledges but have not yet made their payment? If not, email Kevin or Joe right now and set up an appointment to learn how to flag constituents or create pledge reminders.

Once you have created your Board Giving Report, give your Board President a call (not an email) and share this information. As you share these results, use this time on the phone to create a Board member-to-Board member strategy to create 100% Board participation in the annual fund.

Do it today: Run a Board Gifts report, share it with your Camp Board President, and have a conversation. Provide assistance in setting up individual meetings with Board members who are not in compliance to remind them to give.

Friday: Stewardship Reports

Every major donor, past and present, deserves a thoughtful personal update on the impact of their gifts.  For example, the lead donor to the dinning hall renovations in 2002 should have an opportunity to see pictures of Jewish campers in the dinning hall celebrating Shabbat and to realize that thanks to their gift 12,000 healthy Kosher meals have been served. Does your donor database help you to track contact with your generous donors and does it remind you to send updates on the impact of their gifts? If not, email Kevin or Joe right now and set up an appointment to learn how to set up reminders and keep stewardship notes.

You can use your donor database to track your stewardship of donors over time, stay in contact with your Legacy donors every year, and/or help you with scheduling donor visits to camp over the summer.

Do it today: Run a report to find out the latest stewardship activity with each of your largest donors. Don’t have any Stewardship contacts tracked in your database? Start today! Have contacts, but none recently? Enter a future planned new contact with each major donor so that it reminds you to re-establish your relationship with them soon.

Later in the year, you can create custom reports for each donor to document the impact of their gifts. Writing a simple page of text together with color photos that focus on results and outcomes will be very powerful. Mail these reports to your donors with a personal note from the Camp Executive Director or Board President. Keep track of this reporting in your database, and set up a reminder for the next set of reports to be sent and to whom.

When you try all (or some) of the above, let us know how it goes. And contact Kevin or Joe if you need any assistance.

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.