So which group do I focus on?

• Subscribers?
• Individual ticket buyers?
• Prospects suggested by the board?
• The segment with the highest dollar value out in asks from the last appeal?
• The segment where we have the deepest relationships?
• How do we judge that last one anyway?

I think the answer is obvious: I shouldn’t guess.

For context, I began this job a couple months ago. I don’t have important institutional knowledge that longtime development directors do yet. But I still have to do the job and raise the money.

I should not guess at which segments to focus on.

If I had more time, I would interview my organization’s best, longtime donors – and my organization’s best new donors. I want to know how they became donors. Is there a common pattern or two that will emerge and help me figure out the most successful methods of identifying and developing donors for this theater – and in tough times, choose who to focus on and how to make the approaches?

I want to know:  Did they subscribe or buy tickets before donating? What was the vehicle for their first gift?  Their most recent gift?  How have they been involved since donating that first time?

I don’t have time to do interviews, analyze the results, and implement a course of action between now and June 30. But I can ask my other resource – my executive/managing director, who is a fount of institutional knowledge, to brief me on the answers to the questions above for 15-20 major or longtime donors, and make sure I’m not missing anything huge. I can’t get stuck in analysis paralysis right now. It’s too costly, especially for fundraisers, where time literally is money. I must do.

But interviewing my donors is now something I plan to embark on as a long-term project – and now that I have time to flesh out the concept of the donor interview, there’s so much more that I want to ask. Like:

What angles or marketing approaches that we use appeal to them? Is it the ones that staff and board think are appealing, or is it something else – something that we’re too close to the organization to see? Do they respond to our messaging about the art, or weathering the financial storm, or neither? Do they even care what we’re doing to fight the downturn? Are they annoyed when we ask for money by email if they usually write checks?

I think the answers to these questions could have implications for our fundraising far beyond the current economic crisis. I spend so much time trying to figure out how to motivate donors that sometimes I forget that some of them like us enough to let me flat out ask.

And you know that old fundraising adage…”If you want advice, ask for money. If you want money, ask for advice.” So maybe my long-term strategy will pay off in the short-term after all?

Fundraisers: what would you ask your donors in an interview about their giving – and how would you choose which donors to ask?

Maybe it’s just a function of working at a theater with a really playful brand, but it makes for a happy development gal when the leadership uses their authenticity so naturally like that. That’s how you build relationships – it starts with being real and accessible.

While it sounds like a big “DUH,” personalizing solicitations or acknowledgments can be a harder than it seems, and I’m glad that it comes easily to my current leadership.

More importantly, problems in effective personalization often point to more systemic problems at the organization. Let me end with an example or two.

Example #1: A former boss at a past organization would agonize over what he/she wrote on the acknowledgment letters and try to be really strategic, referencing life events or that their kids went to the same school, etc. He/she spent too much time trying to engineer relationships where they didn’t exist yet – and because he/she wasn’t being authentic, I thought many of the “personalizations” fell flat  or otherwise felt faux. It was too much, too soon for most of the donors – which was the story of our development efforts.

Example #2: Another former manager who was chief development officer thought he/she ran a tight development ship – but acknowledgments were never hand-signed, much less personalized by anyone in staff or volunteer leadership. It was a matter of volume – an organization with thousands of annual donors. But if volume keeps  you from being effective or taking minimal strides to create good relationships, then you know what? You don’t have enough development staff. And if you asked anyone in development at that organization, where the development staff numbered in the teens (versus four at the org above and just me at my current job), 80% of them or more would have told you they felt overwhelmed by their workloads.

I like what the organization does. I’ve given to them before (in fact I still have a balance on a pledge I’m supposed to be paying). But when I stepped back from my knowledge of direct mail tactics and shed the fundraiser identity, and just looked at it as a donor – I felt insulted. Yes, I have limited time, and you want to use bold and italics to call my attention to THE MOST IMPORTANT STUFF in case I decide to skim. I get it.

But the letter made me feel like they didn’t trust me to read it – or care. Now, trust is the single most important thing an organization can establish with its donors. But it has to start with the organization – showing that you’re trustworthy, but also that you can extend trust right back.

Donors are your investors, not playground kids who you can condescend and trick into giving you money with strategic bolding. We don’t blithely throw money at you, especially in this economy. So treat us with respect. If I have enough affinity towards your organization that I opened the letter, trust that I will read it and make an informed choice.