Donors Aren't ATM Machines

During my tenure leading charitable organizations, there is one thing that I quickly noticed. It was happening in my organizations and when I looked around, I saw it happening in other mission focused organizations as well. The “it” I’m referring to is that we sometimes treated our donors like they were ATM machines. When we needed cash, we’d hit them up and then dutifully give them a receipt and then the next interaction we had with them was when we wanted money again and we would hit them up again – expecting that they would reliably spit out cash and then we would respond again with a beautifully written tax donation receipt.

In fairness, I can’t take credit for the analogy, I borrowed it from my Chief Development Officer, but I have continued to use it over the years in countless staff meetings in several organizations where I would emphasize the need for creating a customer experience. Our donors are, in fact, consumers. They are consumers of our missions and they contribute to help support that mission, and unfortunately, all too often only hear from us through our financial appeals.

I firmly believe that today’s donors want to have an “experience” with us. They want to know what they’re investing in and that requires us to communicate the impact that we are having as organizations. It means we need to do better story-telling and we need to use new technology to connect with and engage our donors. But at the end of the day, I assert that equally, and perhaps more importantly, what matter most is how we make our donors feel in the process. In the words of Maya Angelou, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

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