{"id":1281,"date":"2015-06-17T14:02:55","date_gmt":"2015-06-17T18:02:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.qgiv.com\/blog\/?p=1281"},"modified":"2021-05-24T13:19:19","modified_gmt":"2021-05-24T17:19:19","slug":"donor-lessons-holden-caulfield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.qgiv.com\/blog\/donor-lessons-holden-caulfield\/","title":{"rendered":"Donor Lessons from Holden Caulfield"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Look, mom, my English Literature degree is good for something! I\u2019ve always loved <em>The Catcher in the Rye <\/em>and Holden\u2019s rants about phonies. Here are a few Caulfield-inspired lessons about donors, straight from\u00a0the pages of classic literature.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>\u201cIf you do something too good, then, after a while, if you don&#8217;t watch it, you start showing off. And then you&#8217;re not as good any more.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>So you had a great campaign, sent out a fabulous thank you letter, and commenced the tooting of your own horn for a few months. Okay, well\u2026you have to keep coming up with good ideas. Just because you had one (or a few) highly successful campaigns full of rich content doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re suddenly a fundraising Jedi Master. Keep collecting stories, pictures, and videos from donors and those whom you help, and keep coming up with ways to emotionally engage your target audience. You\u2019ll need to change and update your campaign content from time to time in order to keep the attention of donors and really showcase how they\u2019re (oh yes, I said <em>they\u2019re<\/em>, not <em>you\u2019re<\/em>) making lives better!<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>\u201cYou never saw so many phonies in all your life, everybody smoking their ears off and talking about the play so that everybody could hear and know how sharp they were.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur organization makes a difference in the lives of so many\u2026.we\u2019ve done amazing work this year\u2026\u201d Using organization-centered language sounds like a bunch of blah, blah, blah to your donors. Instead of focusing on yourself and how wonderful you are for doing such fantastic work, flip your language so it talks about your donors doing the work, because, really\u2026they are. If you don\u2019t have donors, you don\u2019t make a difference. The end.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>\u201cI live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go? I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Don\u2019t leave your donors scratching their heads after a campaign or event! Follow up with them so they know what happened to that rather large sum of money you just raised. Even better, show them \u2013 send them a thank you video featuring real people who\u00a0benefited (because actors are phonies!) offering statements of appreciation and showing what the money did.<em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>\u201c****** money. It always ends up making you blue as hell.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>No one likes parting with their money. Make it worth your donors\u2019 while by ensuring they feel good about parting with their hard-earned duckets. They don\u2019t want a \u201cThanks for your donation!\u201d email and zero follow-up. They want to see pictures and videos of your organization in action! They want to read stories told by people your organization has helped! They want to feel loved and important! Send them that hand-written note signed by your Executive Director, make that \u201cjust because\u201d phone call, even if they haven\u2019t given in a while. People like to know they\u2019re appreciated. We\u2019re selfish like that.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>\u201cPeople are mostly hot to have a discussion when you&#8217;re not.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Donors don\u2019t always want you to talk about money. Send them a friendly thank-you note or a nice update email\u2026without including an appeal! It\u2019s guaranteed to make them feel warm and fuzzy. Keep \u2018em feeling good and they\u2019ll make a gift when they\u2019re ready. I recently received a delightful <span style=\"color: #008000;\"><a style=\"color: #008000;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.qgiv.com\/blog\/how-to-ask-for-donations-over-the-phone\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">phone call<\/a> <\/span>from one of Best Friends Animal Society\u2019s founders simply thanking me for making a difference. He did a pretty good job of boosting my ego by telling me how wonderful I am, too. Yep, I immediately made another donation.<\/p>\n<p>Seems like some pretty sound advice, right? Just remember to maybe not curse as much as Holden did. I&#8217;m pretty sure donors don&#8217;t like that.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Look, mom, my English Literature degree is good for something! I\u2019ve always loved The Catcher in the Rye and Holden\u2019s rants about phonies. Here are a few Caulfield-inspired lessons about donors, straight from\u00a0the pages of classic literature. \u201cIf you do something too good, then, after a while, if you don&#8217;t watch it, you start showing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1282,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[265,261],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Donor Lessons from Holden Caulfield - Fundraising Blog for Nonprofit, Educational, and Faith-Based Organizations<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We can learn a lot from classic literature -- here are some donor lessons from The Catcher in The Rye&#039;s own Holden Caulfield.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.qgiv.com\/blog\/donor-lessons-holden-caulfield\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Donor Lessons from Holden Caulfield - 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