Recognition events are repetitive, boring and simply too long. In fact, being kept personally informed of what the gifts were achieving is the most important and valued form of donor recognition. That’s what feedback from a donor recognition survey of 108 charities and 60 donors, individual and corporate, has told Penny Burk, Burk & Associates, who recently shared a few nuggets from her massive research project with the Greater Toronto Chapter of the NSFRE.

Among a wide range of questions, Burk asked about Thankyou letters, newsletters, and other correspondence, to what extent charities report back to donors on the use of their gifts (42%), what happens to plaques and certificates, the relative value of staff vs volunteer communication, memberships as recognition tools, and most memorable recognition experiences. The feedback she received was both sobering and a warning not to underestimate the intelligence of our donors. They can and do see through insincerity and gimmicks.

By and large, said Burk, the turnaround time reported for Thankyou correspondence was quite good. About 14% of the reporting charities got back to their donors within 2 days, another 36% within a week, and a further 25% within two weeks. Interestingly, the letter was more important and satisfying for major donors than for annual fund donors. About 60% of donors want confirmation of the use of the funds and a receipt, and over 80% don’t want to be asked for another gift in the Thankyou letter.

Need to recognize vs appearance of wasting money

Given the negative feedback on recognition events in general, Burk concludes that the challenge is to balance the very real need to recognize with the need to avoid creating an impression that you are wasting money. Some of the key success factors for recognition events highlighted by her survey were:

• Demonstrate the gift at work.
• The location should be suitable and fit the occasion and the gift.
• The entertainment and food need to be appropriate, up to an acceptable standard, but not overdone.
• The ambiance must fit the occasion and the mood.

When it comes to newsletters, Burk reports that donors appreciate good content and brevity. Make them shorter and simpler, she said. Send less more often. Tell them what you’re doing with the money, and its impact. Use appropriate language, and spell their names correctly! Consider doing some reader research, she said, to segment your donors into readers and information junkies on one hand and skimmers and speed-readers on the other.

Donors love informal recognition

Yet another piece of donor feedback that perhaps shouldn’t surprise is that they place a high value on informal recognition. Over three-quarters of the charities responding to her survey told Burk that they regularly call donors to thank them. Over 40% call with information on the use of the gift, and another 40% make personal visits of appreciation for significant gifts. The donors mostly agree that it’s not really necessary — but they love it.

As a follow-up to this interesting information, Burk organized a test of the effectiveness of telephone Thankyou calls to donors to the Canadian Paraplegic Association. Out of 1965 donors, a randomly-chosen test group of 222 were given a Thankyou call by a board member, ideally, but not always within 24 hours. When the calls went out within 24 hours, the impact on the donors and their response was very dramatic, Burk reports, although the surprise factor fell off quickly when the calls were stretched out to a week later.

The objective, however, was not so much to measure the short-term response as it was to see if subsequent donation levels were affected by a prompt and personal indication of appreciation. The results were impressive: the value of the average donation of the test group before they were called was $26.28; one year later, their average donation in response to the CPA’s regular direct mail campaigns had risen almost $10 to $34.24. The rest of the original 1965 donors remained virtually constant, at $24.57. In addition, Burk pointed out, a large number of the test group moved more quickly than usual into increased gift ranges.

These results, of course, are very exciting, but Burk asks, “How can we possibly do this? It consumes huge amounts of both staff and volunteer time.” Many organizations will never be able to muster the internal commitment to such an immense program, but those that do, Burk says, will have to organize and control it very carefully, maintaining a paper trail, and keeping the operation in-house and on-site.

Personal contact is always best

The complete results of Burk’s donor recognition study will be published soon, she said, but she offered some important fundamental conclusions from the research that all charities should live by. “Avoid anything that separates you from your donor,” she stressed. Personal contact is always best, and remember that donor recognition is the core function of fundraising.

Outsource all of your technical-based fundraising programs, she said, to free your organization to spend more time talking to donors. Instead of creating a highly-structured and relatively inflexible fundraising team, make it everyone’s job to continuously transfer information from inside the organization to the donor. “Spend your time with your donors. In the end, that’s all that really matters.”

For more information, call Penny Burk, Burk & Associates, (905) 332-9695.