Working With Aging Donors

As professional fundraisers, we have a duty and ethical obligation to treat our donors with the utmost integrity and care for their well-being. With an aging population and donor pool, more of us are being faced with loyal supporters who are in cognitive decline and impairment. This creates a whole host of questions and concerns about how we work with these individuals. In many cases, these are the most loyal people to your organization who have donated for decades to support your cause and/or mission. Your standard approach not only doesn't work anymore, but many times it is unethical.

Recently I attended an enlightening conference session addressing this issue of cognitive impairment in donors. Little did I know that less than a month after being presented with this information, I would be face to face with a longtime major donor who was obviously impaired.

During this amazing session, the experts, Tony Pomonis and Tara Adams https://www.cognitiveempowerment.com/ gave us a blueprint of how to address this situation. Not only was the timing of their expertise perfect, but it helped answer many of the questions all of us frontline fundraisers are asking ourselves and our teammates on a regular basis.

We learned that we are relationship experts, NOT doctors capable of diagnosing a person with cognitive impairment. However, we can certainly take note of changes in behavior, and then, what to do with it.

The first step was to share everything with my supervisor, and then schedule another face-to-face visit. The donor gave permission for both my supervisor and me to meet, and we asked him to have his wife attend. When we arrived at his home a week later, he greeted us but said his wife was not interested in meeting. This was disappointing, to say the least, but my supervisor was able to confirm my suspicions and now we are in the process of reaching out to another family member to discuss the face-to-face visit and our concerns.

I know many of you are facing similar situations, and this is going to be more commonplace with our aging population. Getting expert training in this area should be a part of your organization's annual professional development plan. I was so impressed with Tara and Tony I would highly recommend reaching out to them.