Should a Donation Thank-You Letter Ever Ask for a Donation?

By Alan Sharpe, CFRE
I got a big surprise the day I closed my direct mail fundraising consultancy and started working for a national charity. I discovered that my new employer used its gift acknowledgement letters as a way to raise funds. With every donation thank-you letter it mailed to donors, it included a reply device and business reply envelope.

At first, I was incensed. Then, I was embarased. You see, for the longest time, I have advocated in my workshops, books, handbooks, newsletter and blog that a charity should never use a thank-you letter as a chance to ask for another gift. Doing so was tacky and alienated many donors, I said.

I held this position largely because of a fundraising consultant and researcher called Penelope Burke. In her book, Donor-Centered Fundraising, which I recommend, Penny Burke presented the findings of her surveys of donors and their attitudes towards giving. Forty percent of respondents to Burke’s surveys said that asking for a donation in a thank-you letter is rude. A further 20% said they would stop giving if a charity treated them that way.

But during my first day on the job in the real world of fundraising, I learned that my employer raised over $150,000 a year with its thank-you letters. Thousands of donors responded to the reply device in their thank-you letters by returning it with a cheque in the enclosed business reply envelope.

I figure you can see the predicament I was in. Should I stand on my principles or let the donors decide what was rude and what wasn’t? I did the latter. I allowed the charity to continue using their thank-you letters as a way to raise funds.

Donors are a strange bunch. Gather a number of them into a small room for a focus group and they will tell you not to solicit them, however subtly, in a gift-acknowledgement letter. Ever. But do that very thing in their mailbox and they will respond. What donors say they will do and what donors actually do are often two separate things.

So should you ask for another gift when thanking donors for their last one? I recommend you test and find out. Surveys only prove what donors think they will do, or what they think they should do. Testing proves what they actually do. Sometimes the difference between the one and the other is more that $150,000 in net annual income.

Those are my thoughts. What are yours?

Learn More
Read 51 Ways to Write Original Donation Thank-You Letters, Boost Your Revenues and Donor Loyalty
with Effective Donation Thank-You Letters and other resources on donation fundraising letters.