Still not sending personal thank-you’s to “small-dollar” donors? Then you better read this from fundraising bloggers Richard Perry and Jeff Schreifels…
“Miss Josephine Conrad loved animals. One day, Josephine received a letter in the mail from an animal rescue shelter. Because it was a local shelter and she herself rescued animals, she gave a $25 gift and mailed it in. Within a week, she received a very nice thank-you letter.
“This continued to happen again and again. Over a period of 10 years, her gifts became larger and larger. Then, something happened. She gave her first gift of $1,000 to the shelter and she never heard from them again. Well, she got the standard thank-you letter she always received, but that was it.
“Several years ago, Josephine died. In her will, Josephine, having had no family, left her $50 million dollar fortune to care for her 4 cats, 2 dogs and 3 rabbits.”
The next time you decide it’s just not worth the time, trouble, aggravation and expense to send a thank you to a $25 donor – let alone something significantly more substantial if/when such a donor gives you a large contribution – think about Josephine Conrad.