You might think that as a fundraiser, I don’t need to think too much about my interactions, but I had cause to think again after reading an article about how we support our donors.
Thanks to some funding linked to our Family Footings project, we have been able to appoint a fundraising consultant to work with us to develop a fundraising plan for MacIntyre. In researching possible consultants I came across an article one consultant had written about donor care.
The article refers to the “Moments of Truth” theory developed by Jan Carlzon when he was Chief Executive of Scandinavian Air Service: (you may remember him from our Great Interactions book?). Carlzon’s theory asserts that “your customer (or donor) will judge you on every single interaction that they have with you, no matter how large or small…. They are the moments when we must prove to our customers that SAS is their best alternative”.
In a world where there are thousands of charities that an individual could give their hard-earned money to, we need to ensure that we get the message across that MacIntyre is their best alternative.
So, for example, we could write a standard thank you letter to someone who has made a donation, but what’s special about that? How have we personalised our communication to them, how creative have we been? Have we listened to the donor to understand why they have chosen to support MacIntyre – and then been able to build on that to encourage them to continue to support MacIntyre? If we get it wrong it’s a missed opportunity for a great interaction, and the donor may even walk away and support someone else.
We want to build a special relationship with our donors, ensuring that they know how important they are to us and how we value their contributions. Thinking about how all our interactions impacts on others will be key.
For those of us who don’t work within MacIntyre’s services it can be easy to think that Great Interactions doesn’t apply to us – but this was a timely reminder that we can all play our part.
By the way – we selected the consultant who’d written the article about donor care. We’re now working with him to develop a fundraising strategy for MacIntyre - and taking the opportunity to review “the way that we do” our donor
communications.
Claire Kennedy
Head of Fundraising