How can you build a successful donor stewardship strategy?

1 Define your goals

Creating a successful donor stewardship strategy begins with defining your goals and objectives. What are the desired outcomes of your donor stewardship efforts? How will you measure success? What is the alignment between your donor stewardship and mission, vision, and values? Examples of possible goals include increasing donor retention and loyalty, satisfaction and trust, engagement and involvement, referrals and advocacy, upgrades and renewals.

2 Segment your donors

The second step to building a successful donor stewardship strategy is to segment your donors into different groups based on their characteristics, preferences, and behaviors. This will help you customize your communication and interaction with each group, allowing you to deliver more appropriate and personalized messages and experiences. Common methods of segmentation include grouping donors by donation amount or frequency, giving channel or method, program or project interest, involvement or affinity level, and demographic or psychographic factors.

3 Create your plan

The third step to building a successful donor stewardship strategy is to create your plan for each donor segment. This plan should detail the activities, channels, and resources you will use to engage donors throughout their journey with your organization. Additionally, the plan should specify the frequency, timing, and tone of your communication and interaction with each segment. Examples of donor stewardship activities include sending thank-you letters or emails, making thank-you calls or visits, sharing impact reports or stories, inviting to events or webinars, asking for feedback or input, recognizing or celebrating milestones or achievements, and offering opportunities for volunteering or advocacy.

4 Implement your plan

The fourth step to building a successful donor stewardship strategy is to implement your plan according to your schedule and budget. You should use a variety of channels and formats to communicate and interact with your donors, such as email, phone, mail, social media, video, website, etc., as well as a consistent and authentic voice and style that reflects your brand and values. To ensure success, be timely and responsive, sincere and grateful, clear and concise, informative and inspiring, respectful and courteous.

5 Monitor your results

The fifth step to building a successful donor stewardship strategy is to monitor your results and track your progress. To measure the effectiveness and efficiency of your efforts, you should use different metrics and indicators, such as donor retention and attrition rates, donor satisfaction and trust scores, donor engagement and involvement rates, donor referrals and advocacy rates, and donor upgrades and renewals rates.

6 Evaluate and improve your strategy

The sixth and final step to building a successful donor stewardship strategy is to evaluate and improve your strategy based on your results and feedback. Analyze your data to identify what is working and what is not and make adjustments accordingly. Additionally, solicit feedback from your donors and staff, incorporating their suggestions and recommendations into your strategy. Ask yourself questions such as: are you meeting your goals and objectives? Are you delivering value and impact to your donors? Are you building trust and loyalty with your donors? Are you creating a culture of philanthropy in your organization? By doing this, you can ensure that you are making the most of your donor stewardship strategy.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?