Stewardship 101 and Humble Pie

For the past two years I have participated in the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life.  "Relay" raises money for cancer research, and uses the team fundraising method to recruit relayers and raise money.  Like most team fundraising events today, you register online and create or join a existing team.  Then you're directed to your personal fundraising page template and you follow the very easy wizard to personalize your page - set your fundraising goal, add photos, etc.  Once you finish personalizing your page, the next step is to send emails to your friends and family asking them to sponsor you by making a gift.

We'll start my story here.  I did all the tasks above and thenI uploaded my Outlook personal contacts to my fundraising page.  I then crafted my own email appeal it to my friends and family asking them to sponsor me as a Relayer.  31 awesome, incredible friends and family gave more than $3,000 on my behalf, with gifts coming in the day of, and even after Relay.  Our Relay event was a great time.  From 7 pm to 7 am, we walked and we walked...and we walked.  And we celebrated with cancer survivors, remembered those who lost their battle with cancer, and raised more than $80,000 for cancer research.  Let me pause and thank two folks who inspired me throughout Relay: Staci Bennett - Blackbaud's chief Relay organizer, cheerleader, and the incoming Relay chairperson; and Jon Card - he and I co-captained a team but he really did all the work and deserves all the credit.

After Relay, I knew there was still one more thing I had to do before I was finished - thank the great people who supported me.  So, back to my fundraising page I went, where I created my personal thank-you email and included all of my supporters as recipients.  I previewed the email, then clicked Send.  That was it.  I was now done.  Or so I thought.

But something happened - an error that was totally my fault - and not a single email got sent.  Zero.  And to make it worse, I didn't discover this until just a few days ago (nearly two months after Relay) because this was the first time I accessed my personal page in almost two months - the last time was when I "sent" my thank yous.  I wondered why my mom didn't really know what I was talking about when I asked her about the thank you email - that should have been a red flag that prompted me to check much earlier.

Stewardship is a topic I regularly present at conferences, and we always have much discussion about acknowledging donors - how should you acknowledge them?; when should you send acknowledgements?; (for the record, I believe acknowledgements should go out within 24 - 48 hours, NOT 24 - 48 DAYS!), should all gifts be acknowledged, even $5 and $10 gifts?  I practically preach about this, and I am mostly unforgiving when I hear excuses about why organizations don't follow this fundraising "rule."  I just so strongly believe that every donor should be acknowledged - especially the small donors, and acknowledgements should go out within 24 - 48 hours.

So, as soon as I finish this, I will be writing personal thank you cards to all of my donors thanking them for their support, apologizing for taking so long to say thank you, and promising them that their donation will be managed better than their thank you.  And I'll slowly eat my Humble Pie one bite at a time.

And, since we're on the topics of stewardship and acknowledging donors, I invite you to share your thoughts about stewardship - share your own horror stories, opinions, or interesting ways you're stewarding donors.

Happy Fundraising!