Individual donors
What would fundraising be without donors? And what would SOFII be without a special area devoted to nurturing and developing donor relationships? Within this special space SOFII has selected and assembled a glittering array of specialist showcases in which we display a treasure trove of examples of the art and science of donor relationship development.
Centrepoint ‘sponsor a room’: donor acquisition
by SOFII
This exhibit is proof that traditional direct response fundraising can still work in the current fundraising climate. It demonstrates simple yet effective press advertising combined with a clever use of digital technology.
Read moreFarm Africa: a thank-you letter and gift
by SOFII
This is just a very nice thank-you letter that is easy to copy, though perhaps it would be best not to do so directly, but rather to adapt the idea behind it in a way that’s distinctive, individual and personal to your cause.
Read moreActionAid: the welcome to child sponsorship package
by SOFII
ActionAid’s child sponsorship programme has been running in the UK for over 35 years. In 2008, they revisited the enquirer and welcome packs with the intention of making the materials the best that could be found anywhere.
Read moreGreenpeace UK welcome materials, from 1992
by SOFII
This is an important record of an approach to thanking and welcoming donors from back in the days when the idea of sayinging ‘thank you’ and ‘welcome’ was quite new to most organisations and barely understood in the emerging field of donor relationship development.
Read moreGreenpeace Australia Pacific: the welcome process
by SOFII
Think objectively about the experience a new donor has within the first few months of joining your organisation. Greenpeace Australia Pacific has developed a new and simplified process to ensure that new donors receive clear communications that both thank and further engage them. The result is that they’re reducing the number of donors who leave within the first three months.
Read moreGreenpeace USA newsletter: the origami whale
by Matthew Sherrington
If you want to engage your donors give them something interesting and fun to do. This is an example of transforming the humble newsletter, with new energy and purpose, to deliver a real involving experience to supporters.
Read moreTo ask or not to ask, that is the question when saying thank you to a donor
by Lisa Sargent & Sean Triner
Find out what Sean Triner, co-founder and director, Pareto Fundraising in Australia and Lisa Sargent, principal at Sargent Communications, LLC in the USA have to say about this.
Read moreUnited Way: the impact calculator
by SOFII
The calculator allows donors to put in an amount and it lets them know the impact of their donation. This is a simple tool that any organisation with a website can easily do. It’s a great way for engaging donors.
Read moreGreenpeace UK: their cycle of renewal and reactivation mailings, the ‘countdown’ and ‘please and thank-you’ packs
by SOFII
The two mailings shown here form part of Greenpeace UK’s renewal mailings cycle from the late 1980s. Each pack is short, punchy and based around a simple theme, encapsulated in a single word (each of which involves a powerful call to action and which are presented in a very Greenpeace way).
Read moreThe Dogs Trust: sponsor a dog scheme, television commercials
by SOFII
These television commercials are really part of the Dogs Trust sponsor a dog exhibit but they show such good use of DRTV they are worth an additional airing here. Unusually for nonprofit DRTV in the United Kingdom these ads made a profit from their first showing. Quite exceptionally, the early ads achieved a return on investment of five to one.
Read moreFarm Africa: ‘ask for what you need’
by SOFII
How do you ask a maojor donor for $50,000 when she’s at the other end of a telephone line and you’re in a very noisy tapas bar? Do you make ‘the ask’ in the worst possible surroundings? The lesson from this case study is that as long as ‘the ask’ is right, it doesn’t matter where you are.
Read moreWoman’s Royal Voluntary Service: Face-to-face postcard
by SOFII
This is a wonderful example of outstanding stewardship. It shows that developing a strong relationship with the donor at the earliest possible stage can significantly affect loyalty and reduce attrition in a notoriously difficult and challenging type of donor recruitment.
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