Communications - Donation Management for Non-Profits
A Major Non-profit company was handling their Donation Processing internally and was concerned about turnaround time. Most of the solicitations were during the holiday period. It created a lot of peaks and valleys and was incurring overtime rates. They wanted to outsource for a fixed fee but most importantly improve their turnaround time since studies have shown people are more likely to contribute a second time if they receive a quick acknowledgement. Our client was faced with the decision to hire extra personnel, invest in more equipment and possibly even lease more space to meet the goal of quicker response times. This meant larger portions of the donations collected would be spent on expenses rather that what they were intended for – Helping Others.
We proposed a solution to help our client reduce overhead and free up staff to focus on higher caliber leads – rather than managing paperwork, fulfilling requests for information and mailing receipts.
We provided a state of the art system for data entry and database management with complete transparency, caging services and customized push reporting to field personnel (area managers and/or directors) to assist with follow up needs.
Since studies showed that organizations that provide an acknowledgement/receipt within 48 hours of receiving a donation have an 85% rate of subsequent gifts from that donor, we addressed the turnaround as a priority. We implemented a process to send personalized acknowledgement letters/receipts within 48 hours of receipt of donation, along with hand-written “Thank You” cards for donations of $100 or higher.
Since we have been managing the process, the company experienced rapid growth in their donations, lower cost per donation and it has freed up staff to do other tasks and increased their repeat donations.
