Change.org donors love receiving "Thank You" compliments!

by Heather Mansfield

Published December 30, 2008 @ 08:16AM PT

Nonprofits have spent the last three months preparing and implementing their year-end fundraising campaigns... and now comes the time to thank your donors.

On Change.org, the "Thank You" process is very unique and unlike any other online donation service. The donation and thank you process is as follows:

1) All donors immediately receive an email from Change.org thanking them for their donation on behalf of the nonprofit. This email does also work as a receipt for their tax records.

2) Nonprofits need to then login to their Admin Dashboard and view "Donor Data". From there, click on each donors name to visit their profile. On the left of their profile, you will see "Send [Person's Name] a Compliment". View "My Compliments" as an example. Sending compliments only takes a few minutes, costs nothing, and makes a great impression upon your donors. In fact, they often become repeat donors for those nonprofits that send them compliments.

After you send the compliment, the donor will receive an email from Change.org alerting them that your organization has sent them a compliment and the message you inserted into the compliment will also be in the body of the email. For those donors that have opted out of receiving your email and print materials, sending compliments is the only way you can thank them for their donation. That's one of the reasons why sending compliments is so important!

3) You can also download the email and snail mail addresses from "Donor Data" if the donor provides that information by opting-in when they made the donation. It is a great strategy to thank your donors often, so in addition to the compliment, send them a quick email thanking them for their donation with a brief summary about your work and a link to your website. Don't ask them to give again in this email!

I would not recommend sending them a print thank you letter. Change.org donors do not want you to spend the time and resources required to send a printed thank you letter via snail mail. This is very typical of the coming Web 2.0 donor... the less print materials you send, the better. More on that in January!

4) You can also post a thank you comment on their wall. Again, requires only minutes to do and costs nothing, and donors appreciate the attention.

That's it. That is the "Thank You" process on Change.org. It's important to note that you also do not need to send your donors year-end tax reports either via email or snail mail. Most Change.org donors donate to numerous nonprofits on Change.org and use our site as an online donation portfolio. They are able to print out annual tax receipts and summaries from Change.org for all the donations they made to nonprofits on Change.org throughout the year.

Finally, there's an old saying... "Flattery will get you everywhere." This is so true in the case of donor appreciation on Change.org.... they love receiving compliments!