Thank You – perhaps of the most important words in anyone’s vocabulary and undoubtedly the most important in the fundraising and donor management realm. It’s gratitude in it’s simplest form and an acknowledgment for a donation or contribution whether in cash or in kind and no matter how big or small that contribution is, the “thank you” is key to getting it right.
Yet somewhere in the process of managing donations, overlooking transactions, collection and accounting it’s easy to forget to thank a donor for a contribution. It may not be intentional but how difficult is it really to lose track of donations when they are made and forget to thank someone over the phone, email or through a letter? It happens to the best of us.
Rather than leave the Thank You part as an afterthought we decided to build it in as an important part of the donor management process. The neat thing about having all your donations managed through a simple web application is really two fold:
1. It’s easy to track who have made donations daily, weekly or at any given time and pull up their names
2. With a few clicks you can draft thank you letters and emails instantly through the same software
Instead of setting aside a time to write out thank you letters and look through the records to see who made recent contributions that need to be acknowledged, you have a quick and efficient way of doing this built right into the system which ensures it’s done right away.
So it’s just another feature among others …who cares right?. How much difference will a few additional features like that make anyway? I would rank this among the most critical features to have in your donor management system. The way I see it they are the two words that separate an organization with basic fund raising skills and one that really values their donors and know how to show it! Think about it… how valuable is a Thank You note for a non-profit organization that relies on effective donor management skills?
