Welcome to Creative Australia’s Knowledge Series, a free series of webinars produced by Creative Australia covering essential fundraising topics by leading Australian and international experts. This webinar is entitled The Gratitude Shift, and the presenter is Lisa Sargent, who is based in New Hampshire in the USA. 

My name is James Boyd, and I am the State Manager of Development and Partnerships based in Perth, Western Australia, for Creative Australia. Creative Australia acknowledges Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional custodians of the land on which we live, work and learn. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present and to our shared future. 

A few webinar details before we begin. Auslan interpreters are in the session, and I welcome them and thank Erin and Jod. There will be a Q&A at the end of the presentation, so please type questions during the webinar into the Q&A box. For any technical issues, please send a message using the Q&A box to Crystal, and she will help you out. We are recording today’s session. 

Now to our speaker. Lisa Sargent is the top-selling author of Thanology, the new book for not-for-profits on the power of gratitude. Today, Lisa is going to turn us all into thankologists. And don’t worry, Lisa assures me this isn’t going to hurt. Quite the opposite, in fact. 

Thanking people for their support should be the easiest part of fundraising, but research suggests we are pretty good at falling short of our donors’ expectations. Lisa says appropriately responding to generous supporters is the key to a lasting and meaningful support relationship. A quote I frequently use says that 80% of donors say they would be motivated to make a second donation if the charity thanked them properly. 

Lisa is here to tell us what properly means. She specialises in this area of the fundraising cycle. Lisa is a fundraising storyteller to her bones, a next-level nerd about deepening human connection through fundraising stories well told, and holds a certificate with distinction in philanthropic psychology from the Institute for Sustainable Philanthropy. She has written books and contributed to others such as Change for Better, and her free donor thank you letter clinics were named one of the world’s top 10 gifts for fundraisers by the Showcase of Fundraising Innovation and Inspiration. 

Lisa Sargent, let the transformation into thankologists begin. Over to you. 

Thank you so much, James. I want to thank Matt and everyone at Creative Australia. First and foremost, thank you to everyone joining today for taking the time to learn about thanking with us, and for your belief in the power of gratitude, because it truly is magic. 

There is a Q&A at the end. We will try to leave about 30 minutes. If your question does not get answered, please feel free to connect with me. Feel free to connect with me anyway on LinkedIn or on my website. Both details are there. 

The other thing I wanted to share is that we have a lot of information to cover. It might feel like I am giving you an avalanche of information, but I want you to be exposed to as many parts of thanking, and as many places where you can thank, as I possibly can today. 

We are going to begin right away. I have a question for everyone. What if your thank yous were not a formality, an awkward obligation, or the end of a gift transaction? What if, instead, they were the start of lasting and deeply meaningful supporter relationships? 

The truth is, gratitude done right can become exactly this for you. It all starts when you make what I like to call a gratitude shift. 

To show you how that can feel, I want to share a true story. It comes from my book, Thanology, but you will see a link at the bottom of the page where you can also read the story. I try to do this throughout the presentation because you may not have the resources, or you may not want to purchase the whole book. I hope you will, but if you do not, I try to give you links to everything I talk about. 

At the beginning of the year, not this year, but some year, Food for the Poor in California sent a simple thank you card to 25,000 of its highest donors. The card was sent in an envelope. There was no ask, no reply piece and no reply envelope. If you have ever seen thank you letters, many of you know that often a thank you also includes an ask for more money. You are not going to do that, and Food for the Poor did not do that either. 

By the end of the year, both groups of major givers, those who had received the card and those who had not, had given nearly the same number of gifts. So you might say to yourself, “Lisa, why are you sharing this story with me if they both gave the same number of gifts?” The group that received the thank you card gave almost $680,000 Australian dollars more, or $450,000 US, all from that thank you card. 

What does this mean for you? It means that gratitude is magic when you get it right. When you learn how to make this gratitude shift, when you become a thankologist for your charity, you are going to follow about three steps. 

The first step to the gratitude shift is to know your gratitude science. I want to show you the gratitude science behind why thanking is so effective because, at many organisations, it can be an uphill battle to elevate thanking to the powerful tool that it is. Once you know this gratitude science, and once you understand that thanking properly is literally DNA deep, you can make your case for better thanking to anyone, and you will understand how powerful it is. 

Because it is so powerful and so magical, I want to show you how to start thanking better right now. This is where I am going to share a lot of examples. It will be helpful to expose you to those examples so you can see that gratitude can be applied in so many more places than thank yous, and you can start today before you even end your workday. 

Step three is to show you how to be grateful across all your communications consistently, because that is the secret to those lasting relationships we talked about. 

We are going to dig right in with gratitude shift step one: know your gratitude science. 

The first thing I want to share about gratitude science is that proper gratitude is so much more than just a receipt for a donation. When you get it right, gratitude grows retention and value. We know this from the work of Professor Adrian Sargeant from the Institute for Sustainable Philanthropy in the UK and US. He did research called Managing Donor Defection. 

What Dr Sargeant found is that 21% of donors stop giving because they were either never thanked or never informed on how their gifts were used. What does that mean? In a thank you letter, if you get your thank you letters right, they always thank, and they always show the donor how their gifts were used. So 21% of people who stop giving can be helped, right there, in a proper thank you letter. That is two donors out of 10. 

He also found that an increase in donor retention by 10%, if you can keep just one extra donor out of every 10, can yield up to a 200% increase in the lifetime value of your donor database. You already know that two donors out of every 10 stop giving because they were never thanked or not informed how their gifts were used. All you have to do is keep one extra donor in 10 to get that increase of up to 200% in lifetime value. That is pretty remarkable, and we know thank you has a hand in that. 

You might then say, “At my organisation, a lot of people say that it is just an awkward obligation. It is just a receipt. No one really wants to be thanked. It makes people feel awkward.” I hear this quite frequently. “No one really wants to be thanked, and people do not feel like that here at our organisation.” 

What we know from researchers Nicholas Epley and Amit Kumar at the University of Chicago is that they conducted a series of studies, reported in Undervaluing Gratitude. They had a group of senders compose warm gratitude letters that would be sent to a series of recipients. Before the senders sent out those letters, they had them do two things. They had them predict how awkward their gratitude letters would make the recipients feel, and they had them predict how much it would mean to receive those letters. 

The senders were wrong on both counts. First, the senders consistently overestimated how awkward the letters would make people feel. In other words, the letters made the recipients feel really good, not awkward. Second, they underestimated the positive meaning. They consistently underestimated how much those thank you letters would mean. Feels good, means more. This is the key to better thanking. You will notice that I use the word warm because one of the key ingredients for these letters being so effective was the warmth of the letter. 

You might say, “This is great. Everybody is sending out thank you letters, aren’t they?” No, they are not. Bill Jacobs in the United States and Kathy Truong from the Institute of Community Directors Australia both conducted mystery shopping tests, where they sent out a series of donations. In Bill Jacobs’ case, it was 55 gifts. In Kathy Truong’s case, it was 133 gifts. They found that more than 70% of organisations still are not sending thank you letters. They still are not thanking their donors. 

Kathy’s was, I believe, three months out, and she also found that many organisations did not thank very well. They were perfunctory letters. Remember that warm piece of it. This is the opportunity for you. You know it can keep more donors and reduce attrition, and you know that a lot of charities are still not sending those thank you letters. So where do we go from there? 

We also know that it is more than a transaction’s end. You are now starting to get a feel for this. Gratitude is so magical that it is DNA deep. It actually sows the seeds of legacy. It sows the seeds of all the things you want in fundraising, those everlasting gifts. 

The way it does this is that it sparks neurotransmitters and neuropeptides, and it lights up areas of your brain in this wonderful cocktail that joins up with dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin, which many of you already know as those feel-good chemicals, the happiness chemicals. It also lights up a couple of regions of your brain that sit right behind your eyebrows: the medial prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex. 

All of these are very fancy technical terms to show you that, when you have warm gratitude and you spark these areas of the brain and increase these chemicals in the brain, they activate emotion, trust and memory centres. They reduce attrition and turnover, boost generosity, increase goodwill and wellbeing, and also increase a sense of self-worth. 

They increase average gift and speed to second gift. They increase understanding of others, something called pro-social behaviour, which we know is directly connected to gratitude. They move people to act for the common good, which is also known as theory of mind. 

If you think about it, if you are trying to change people, you are trying to create a movement in the arts and culture, gratitude opens the door to all of that. If you want somebody to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, gratitude helps open the door to that. If you want to build trust and activate emotion, gratitude does that. 

I am going to introduce you to four words that we will repeat throughout this webinar: warm, prompt, authentic and human. You already know your letters need to be warm, authentic and human. We will get to the prompt part in a minute. 

The reason it is so important to know that you want to reinforce gratitude more than once, and more than for that first gift, is because gratitude builds loyalty, and loyalty builds income. We know this from the work of a UK consultancy called About Loyalty. 

They did research with 50,000 donors across more than 30 charities. They found that a one-point increase in loyalty over three years can lead to 20% more income. That is pretty remarkable. 

You might ask, “How do I know that this connects to gratitude? How does loyalty connect to gratitude?” It connects through the key ingredients of loyalty: trust that your charity does what it promises, satisfaction with your charity’s communications, and commitment. Your donors want to stay with you. They have an affinity for your mission and cause. 

Let’s talk about warm gratitude. You send me this beautiful thank you letter, and you tell me how my gift is working. I trust that your charity is doing what it promises. You make me feel happy. You increase my sense of self-worth. You activate emotion, trust and memory centres. 

Am I going to be satisfied with your communications? It is probably a pretty good step towards that. If you make me feel good and I trust you, will I build affinity for your cause? You bet I will. Gratitude builds loyalty, and loyalty builds income. You can start with your next thank you. 

Gratitude shift step two: thank better, starting now. You already know all these magical things that gratitude can do, starting with your actual brain science. If you can start now, starting today, that gets you one step further and one step faster to better thanking. 

We are going to cover a lot of information in this section. I am sharing a PDF checklist with Creative Australia that you can download and keep with you every time you start to work on thank you letters. We are going to start first with the reason prompt is so important. 

What we know from research on new donors from Marcus B and Fundraising and Philanthropy Magazine is that acquiring new donors is five times more expensive than retaining an existing one. If your donors are thanked within the first 90 days, they are up to two times more likely to give again. If you can be warm and prompt, that kind of gratitude is magic. Two times more likely to give again. The second gift is really where it is at. 

What we know is warm and prompt. If you cannot thank promptly, this is part of what happens. Bill Jacobs at Analytical Ones in the United States did some work on the five-year value of a donor based on how quickly the donor is inspired to give again. These are in US dollars, but you do not need to know the currency to understand what is happening here. Single givers, $47. Zero to three months, $511 five-year value of a donor. You can watch it go down as the time stretches out. 

When you thank faster, people are more likely to give again, and that increases the five-year value of a donor. I also want to show you the far end: 37-plus months, and 25 to 36 months. If you say to me, “Lisa, we have not been great at thanking,” this is why I say start thanking better now. Even if you are late, 13 to 18 months or 19 to 24 months, as the chart moves out, it is still not too late for you. Please, for me, do not despair. Start thanking better right now, and even thank some of your donors who may not have been thanked as well as they should have been. 

I want you to start before you write. This is important because a lot of organisations do not do this. If you have ever received a thank you that is generic, has existed since pre-COVID times, or makes no sense to you, this is why. Maybe somebody is thanking you for something you did not exactly do, or maybe it could not possibly have happened yet. These three questions were not asked before the person started to write. 

What is prompting this thanks? Is it a Save Local Artists campaign? Is it a monthly giver campaign? Is it your holiday campaign or year-end campaign? You need to know what you are thanking the supporter for. What prompted that gift? 

Who are you writing to? At the very basic level, are they a first-time giver, second-time giver or monthly giver? You need to know who you are writing to. You need to know the deeper story you are hoping to connect people to. What kind of thank you story do you need to tell? 

Those three questions before you write are almost like a mini creative brief for your thank you. After you have those three questions, you are going to build using six thank you blocks. Remember: warm, prompt, authentic, human. This will help you tick all the boxes. 

First, you are going to thank the donor and let them know their gift was received. Conveniently, these spell thank you: T, H, A, N, K, U. I put them in blocks because I want you to understand that you can almost plug and play these into different parts of your thank you letter, or whatever you are using to thank people. You can combine them in any way, so the variety of your thank you letters is almost endless. 

T: thank the donor and let them know their gift was received. We know from the research of Adrian Sargeant that most people are never thanked, and that this is one of the reasons why 21% of donors leave. Thank them. Let them know their gift was received. 

H: help them see what their gift is doing. Let them know how their gift is working. A: ask the donor for something other than money if you can. Do not ask for money in a thank you. But you might have a special artist night, a poetry reading, a tour of your facility, or something else. You can invite them to something that makes them feel part of your community. 

N: notify them in your letter how they can reach you with questions. Do not give them a generic contact. Connect them to somebody who can really help them. K: kindle good feelings. You want to remember the warm part of the letter. You want to infuse the letter with emotion. This piece is huge, as you already know. Kindle good feelings by showing them how their gift is helping or will help. U: update them on when they will next hear from you, so you can create a sense of expectation. 

How does that look in real life? This is a letter from Merchants Quay Ireland. They help people who are homeless and who struggle with addiction. This is an actual thank you letter they sent out, which contains all six blocks in different order, as you can see. It has everything that a thank you letter needs to do. 

“He cast one look over his shoulder at MQI as he walked away, and he smiled at us. ‘Thanks a million,’ he said.” Do you see how this letter already does not start with “on behalf of”? It is not dry. It starts with a story. “His body and clothes were clean, his hunger and thirst quenched. And on his freshly tended and bandaged feet, he wore new socks and sturdy shoes.” Already you can start to feel that warmth and gratitude. 

Then you can see the actual thank piece: “There is no way I can ever sufficiently thank you for your kind summertime donation.” This was in response to a summer appeal, and the amount is listed. You know your gift was received. You know it is the correct amount. 

As you continue down the letter, you can see kindle: “No way I can ever express what it means to be able to write to you for urgent help and know that you will come through. Forever cherished within our Merchants Quay family.” They are already part of a community. You can see update: “If you have chosen to receive it, your Key Times donor newsletter will continue to reach you via post.” You can see notify: “You are very welcome to call us with any queries you might have.” You might say, “Where is the phone number?” We will get to that in a second. That is down below. 

Then ask. In this case, Merchants Quay would give tours of their homeless centre when it was closed. We would invite donors to that. Emma was the contact person, and we gave the phone number and the dates. All of those blocks are there, and you can do that for your organisation as well. 

The six thank you blocks can also look something like this. This is an email. If you think about it, there is a bit of a delay. These came in immediately after the donor gave a gift, so you cannot actually say, remember who you are writing to and what it is for. You have to think about the logistics of it. In an email, if that is going to come out right away, maybe they have not had time to put the gift to work. 

In this case, this was for survivors of the earthquakes in Myanmar. “This is how your compassion will soon feel to earthquake survivors in Myanmar.” You can see how you can do that if you are thanking by email. If it has not actually gone to work yet, you can say that it will. You can see help in there, so they can see how their gift is working: temporary shelters, clean life-saving water, emergency food, hygiene kits and medical supplies. 

Then you can see the thank elements come into play: “The warmth of your generous donation of…” and there is the amount. They have confidence that you have received the gift and that you are a good custodian of it. You can see the update in the postscript. We do not actually know, and this is important if you do not have a newsletter or if there is no way that you can update them yet. “The full extent of the destruction in Myanmar may not be known for weeks, and I will update you as I can.” You create an expectation that the person will update them when they can. 

There is a call to action. In this case, because some of them would be new supporters, ask them to sign up for the newsletter. You can see how the thank you blocks come into play and how they create warmth just by using those six blocks. 

Kindle versus help is important because I want to help you get your thank yous to the next level. Remember the three questions we talked about before you start writing: what is prompting this thanks, who am I writing to, and what is the deeper story I hope to connect them to? 

If you think about the blocks kindle versus help, help is about saying thank you for the thing that you gave to us for. For example, the shelter, the clean water, the supplies for art, the sponsorships. You can help them see the specific tangibility of their gift. Kindle is about helping them feel good about who they are, who they are as a person, and who they are when they give. 

These are the things that can take your thank you to a whole other level. What is the deeper story that you hope to connect them to? The generous person they are. These are the questions they are thinking about: Who am I when I give? Who am I as part of your work? Who am I as someone who supports you? Who am I as part of humankind? 

You might say this is crazy, but you already know that thanking is not an awkward obligation. You know that it is important to people. If you can help introduce these ideas and affirmations to people, so they can see just how special they are when they give, you will take your gratitude to a whole other level. In other words, thank the giver, not just the gift. 

How do you do that? You can think about the Institute for Sustainable Philanthropy, which has a whole chart of identities that you can start to thank people for. To the right, you can see qualities donors have reported in surveys that they feel when they give. They feel kind, caring, compassionate, helpful, friendly, fair, hard-working and generous. 

We have conducted surveys with other organisations, and supporters come back with these beautiful words. We ask them, “How do you feel as a person when you make a gift to this organisation?” I am going to turn my head away from the screen for a minute because I want to read you another organisation’s qualities that donors reported back personally about how they feel. The words are compassionate, caring, love, justice, help, sharing, empathy, kindness, hope, generosity and support. 

Those are beautiful words. If you can begin to bring those words back to donors, you will reinforce identities and kindle all those gorgeous feelings, neurotransmitters and neuropeptides that we talked about. 

You can also tap into various other levels of identity that people feel. Their personal identity, as we just talked about. Relational identity: mother, father, sister, brother, uncle, aunt, cousin. Group identity, if they have a special group. Organisational identity. Remember we said, “You are a cherished member of our family.” You can help them feel like part of your community. 

There is also religious identity, if you have an organisation that is associated with that; social identity; local, national and international identity; and even global identity, if you want. These are things that you can kindle in people when you write your thank you letters. 

What does that look like? Who are they when they give? It is not awkward. You can use phrases like this: “Thank you for being the kind of person who…” “Because of your kindness and compassion for the arts, for culture…” “Because you are someone who believes in standing up for the arts…” “You answered the call when we asked you to save local artists.” “You answered the call.” “Thank you for being exactly who you are.” 

“You never turn away.” “You protector of Australian arts and culture.” “Champion of artists and creators.” “Believer in beauty and the power of community.” This is how you can elevate a person’s gift because all of these things are true. This is who they are when they give to your organisation. If you can bring those affirmations back to them, you will totally transform your relationship with your supporters. 

This is a sample of a letter. It is actually an appeal letter shared by Derek Patton and Tom Ahern on SOFII, the Showcase of Fundraising Innovation and Inspiration that James mentioned. It is all free resources online that you can access. I want to share it because I want to show you how you can elevate a gift beyond a simple transaction for, “Thanks for giving to our annual fund.” These are people who believe they are more than arts patrons. They are true believers. 

Picture this. You support a generation of young people whose interests are encouraged and honoured. Neighbourhoods made beautiful through public art. Small non-traditional businesses that grow and succeed. An economy made invincible by a steady level of investment in local creative vision. Obviously, you are not going to take someone else’s words, but words like these give you a feel for how you can elevate those thank you letters with the kindle piece of your thank you. 

So it is more than a gift. When someone gives to you, they are the lifeblood of everything you do. This is the Vail Valley Foundation. This is their newsletter that we did for them in Vail, Colorado. Obviously, there is lots of skiing out there, but this is a basic thank you letter that we wrote for them. You can see how you want to put the donor right in the middle of the action. 

The letter does not start with anything dry. It starts with the roar of a concert, fans cheering in the background, the shush of skis speeding towards a jump, the quiet tap tap tap of fingers on keyboards. Then you can pick out the thank you blocks because you know them already. Here is help and thank: “Everyone here at the Vail Valley Foundation owes you a heartfelt thank you for your kind gift. Only through your generous support can this good work continue.” 

But there it is, the beautiful phrase that taps into their identity, even if it is one they did not know they were before: “You are the lifeblood of Vail Valley Foundation. The dancers can dance only because of you. The athletes can compete only because of you.” You can see how this elevates it beyond the simple one-time transaction. 

This is what I want you to get into the habit of doing every time, because it makes a huge difference. It feels so much better than this: “On behalf of our board of directors, trustees…” Nobody wants to read that, and it does not make people feel anything. 

Instead, you can try this: “His words were simple, but from the heart.” A physician says, “When we got Danielle back, I was almost in tears. Thank you for taking the time to give.” You can thank people for their time, which is also precious. “Thank you for being part of this beautiful community. We believe great health care is worth protecting. You believe it, too.” Think about this letter translated for the arts. You could do something so similar to this, and it would be hugely powerful. “We believe that art belongs here at home, and you believe it. In giving, you have shown that you believe it, too.” 

How many of you have given online and been bounced back to a page that looks something like this? Sometimes it looks just like the donation form, only it has this little thing at the top that says, “Your donation has been processed.” That is a bit of a bummer, honestly. It makes people feel sad in their souls for this beautiful gift they have just given. 

Instead, you could create a redirect page that, after the person gives, immediately transports them to something like this: “Your donation has just changed the life of a child with sight loss and other complex disabilities in Ireland.” It starts not dry. It starts with the feeling of grass beneath your feet and the warmth of sunshine on your face. Can you put people into the moment when you thank them? This is the instant after they gave. It is an instant hit: dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin. You are starting to build trust right there. Even if they never read your thank you letter, they will understand what they just did. 

There is also a way to connect with people by phone if they have any questions. You can see the paragraph near the bottom right: “Shortly via email, we will send an official record of your incredibly kind donation.” You are already starting to build trust from the instant they give online. You have already set up an expectation for that email. 

Do not panic, because if you look at the top left of the screen grab, you will see there is a Better Online and Email Thanking PDF that I also shared as part of this webinar. It is a small checklist, just a couple of pages, that will help you make sure you do your online thanking properly as well. 

This last section of this short tutorial on how to thank better with your thank you letter, starting now, is not about a letter, online copy or design. It is about a phone call. Phone calls change everything. 

If you have not thanked donors for a long time, pick up the phone and call donors. It does not matter if they answer the phone. There is a script in my book, but you do not have to get too fancy. You just have to say thank you and use some of the tools that we used for the thank you letters. “Hi, this is Jane calling. I am on the all-volunteer board of XYZ charity, and I just wanted to call and say thank you. It has been a while, and we wanted to update you on XYZ.” Or you might want to invite them to something: “We have a beautiful Christmas carol event coming up, and we would love to have you as part of it.” Leave a message. Make it very simple. 

There is an article on Creative Australia written by Matt Morse. It is superb, and it applies to donors who are not just mid-level either. Research from Bloomerang on 1.95 million donors showed that new donors who get a thank you call within the first 90 days are retained 41% of the time. Without a call, only 33% are retained. 

Thank you calls have also been shown to increase the average of the second gift by double, and decrease the time to the second gift, which is hugely important, by 50 days, from 261 to 217 days. You already know that promptness matters. If you can thank within a week, that would be really good. You will decrease the time even further. If you follow it up with a phone call, that will be even better. 

Gratitude shift step three. You know about thanking better now. You know about thanking online. You know how important it is to make a phone call. Gratitude shift step three is about showing you how to be consistent with your grateful communications. You want to do it across multiple channels. 

Remember the loyalty ingredients: trust, satisfaction and commitment. Remember that it means a 20% increase in income. This is why you do not want to just thank in only thank yous. You want to thank in more places than just your thank yous, because you want to keep reinforcing that trust that your charity does what it promises. Keep people satisfied with your communications. If you thank them again and again and provide good quality communications, they will be satisfied with your communications. It will increase commitment. It will build the reasons they want to stay with you through thick and thin. These are the ingredients of loyalty. 

The way you can do that is with a very simple strategy created by, or made famous by, Steven Screen in the United States from the Better Fundraising Company: ask, thank, report, repeat. 

On my website, I have a free PDF download. It is about 37 pages long and has the whole story of Merchants Quay Ireland and what happened when we took ask, thank, report, repeat and infused it with gratitude. Their retention went up by nine percentage points. I think they started with 2,000 donors, and I believe they are over 50,000 now. That was in a little over a decade. 

When you do this, it really works in practice. We have done it many times across many organisations, and it can work for you. You ask with your appeal. You follow it up with a thank you, using exactly the things we just talked about. You include an invitation to something if you can, either in the letter itself or, as we used to do here, by putting little homespun invitations in. 

Then you report back, whether you have a newsletter, and I hope you will have a print newsletter and an email newsletter, but find some way to report back to your donors. That is important. You want to make sure you thank and report back before you ask again. If you do not show someone what their gift accomplished and you do not thank them for it, how can you ask again, unless some emergency comes up? 

You want to put your thank yous across everything as part of that ask, thank and report. You want to be warm, authentic, consistent and human. This is actually in an appeal letter. I wanted to show you how you can thank in appeal letters and why it is so important. This is to people who have never given to the organisation before. 

One thing I like to do is sit and ask myself: what thing can I actually thank people for that is true? What is true is, “Thank you for taking the time to read my letter.” I do not know if they are going to give. I cannot thank them for past support, but I can thank them for taking the time to read the letter. I can thank them for caring, because if they are reading the letter, then we can say, “Thank you so much for caring.” 

You can thank them even on a reply slip. We send out a full-size reply slip for this organisation. Whether or not they give, they see that thank you. It is like an affirmation to them. 

You can also put them on outer envelopes. This is huge. This is on the back of a newsletter outer envelope. You can see here why we are constantly reporting back to people and consistently thanking them warmly: “8,000 people were able to sustainably grow more food with the help of your support, and through seed recovery programs like the kind you will read about inside, you are reaching people around the world. Thank you.” That is on the back of an envelope. You can put the thanks everywhere. 

This is on the front of a reply envelope. If you have people who give through the mail, everybody sends a reply envelope. Sometimes at your events, you might have remittance envelopes where people can tear off the flap and send in a gift. You can put a thank you on the outside of the envelope. 

Here, I like to use rhyme because rhyme lights up the brain. Texture words, rhyme and poetry. Poetry is like music for the brain. If you can make your writing beautiful in this way, then you can touch even deeper emotion centres in people. “For the joy, new memories and laughter this spring, thank you. Thank you for everything. Your love is magic to us here.” Arts organisations can definitely do things like this rhyming. 

Here is a newsletter. You could put this online. Let’s say you do not yet have a print newsletter, and you want to put something online. “Thank you for a thousand warm welcomes.” You can report back to them on things over the course of the year that they are helping make possible. In this case: 148 pairs of weary feet given care and relief through MQI chiropody, 25,000 lunches, and 19,000 sleeping mats. The more true you can get, the more authentic you can be. 

“Thank you for a thousand warm welcomes.” You can say this even through your organisation. You have symphony musicians, cultural programs, artists painting, and creative people designing. You have things like that all over the place that you can use as a report back. “These were some of the wonders worked by kind support like yours.” This is in a newsletter. “How are your donations working? Let us count the ways.” 

You can see if they make a gift, they get a thank you and then get these report backs constantly. You are reinforcing their generosity as a wonderful, warm, kind-hearted, compassionate person and, in your cases, a person who believes in arts and culture in Australia. 

This is the front of a newsletter where we start thanking and affirming right from the start: “Read how your compassion is helping people build new tomorrows.” Remember how we looked at the Institute for Sustainable Philanthropy and those identities that we want to bring in? “Who am I when I give? Who am I as part of your organisation? Who am I as part of humankind?” Your compassion, generosity, justice, love, caring and kindness. All those words are part of supporters’ key identities. You can keep reinforcing them in beautiful ways. 

In this case, on the inside of a newsletter: “Thank you for helping us be here when we are needed most.” It does not always have to be flowery. It does not always have to be poetic. If you want to keep it more matter-of-fact in some cases, “Thank you for helping us be here when we are needed most.” It is true. You are saying the bravest, truest thing you can by thanking them. 

Again, this is on a newsletter cover letter. We always send a letter included with our newsletter. “Thank you for your visionary support. You make it possible, and each of us here is forever grateful.” You can reinforce that again and again. You already know that you almost cannot thank often enough. You almost cannot thank warmly enough. People love it. 

Online and email are the same thing. When we write for an organisation called Barretstown, we create direct mail letters. They take those letters and put them online. It exists as a long-form web page, and this is a block of the letter. We do not know if these people have given to Barretstown before, but when they go to that page online it says: “I know that this works because generosity and kindness like yours made that same trip to Barretstown possible for my family.” You can see how, even there, you can start to thank supporters all over the place, and supporters-to-be, we hope. 

Email. This is an example of an email that I wrote for Trócaire, the organisation in Ireland. This is the actual copy of the draft that I submit. It looks like this. It is not in email format. You can look at the subject lines: “The wonderful gift you gave,” “For your generosity and love,” “For the hope you gave. Thank you.” You continue to reinforce thanking and emotion. 

It works exactly the same for email as it does for thank you letters. You can see how those same blocks are woven in. You can see how the identity is there: “The light of your compassion,” “the light that you are,” “what matters is you have not turned away.” Everything reinforces the person’s generosity, shows how they helped, and talks about the amount of their gift, so they understand you are a good custodian of their gift. It just keeps reinforcing and reinforcing. 

This is an actual donation redirect page. In other words, someone gives online, and this is the very next thing they see. They do not see, “Your donation has been processed.” They see, “What a gift you are,” and there is their name because we know it from the previous field. “What a beautiful gift you have chosen to give, and what a true gift you are.” You take the time to work identity in there and bring everything up to the next level. 

Every single piece of this reinforces those six blocks. In this case, we will not put the amount of the gift in because they will get that in an email. But you can see all six blocks in there: the thanking, the helping, the asking and notifying. Kindle is there too: “What a beautiful gift you are.” They are all there. 

If you begin to thank properly, and I talked at the beginning about legacy, I want to show you how, when you are responding to things like will planning requests, even that can elevate the thanking. 

This is a legacy guide that we created for an organisation in Ireland. To the right is a basic thank you letter, but it is much deeper than that if you pay attention to it. When you build these, you can reflect shared values. One of the great ways to do that is if you share a really nice quote. Be careful who you attribute it to. Just make sure it is not someone who is going to invite bad feelings or anything. 

In this case, it is Pericles. “What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.” Already, you take a simple request for a legacy planner and elevate it to the next level. You elevate the actions. You thank the giver, not just the gift. “You are today and always the heart of our Trócaire family.” They are already part of a community. 

You tell grateful stories. In this case, the gratitude story is the story they can tell when they leave a gift to charity in their will. We actually say, “You might leave it to us or to any other charity.” That shows a bit of fellowship and humanity, so they understand that everyone is elevated when a charitable donation is given like that. You include affirmations: “Keep safe and well this summer, and God bless.” They are religious, so we say that. You can see how this simple letter begins to elevate it, and you can thank in so many more places, including in-memory giving. 

What I mean by in-memory giving is, and it is a trend that is growing, when someone passes away and they do not want flowers at their funeral. In lieu of flowers, they want the people who attend their funeral, or who want to leave a gift, to leave a gift in memory of them to a charity they believed in. 

There is now also hard evidence to show that an in-memory relationship with a charity may lay the foundation for a legacy gift. This comes from a consultancy in the UK called Legacy Foresight. It is an incredible report, and it shows that people who have left in-memory gifts in the right circumstances have a higher tendency to leave a bequest in their will to a charity. 

Knowing this, and if you think about the way in-memory thanking happens at most organisations, I can tell you that often in-memory thanking is lacking. What happens is you receive a thank you back that might make no sense to what you did. It does not really feel like an act of love and remembrance, that you gave a gift for someone who had passed away in honour of their memory. You can do much better, especially now that you know, first, how powerful thanking is, and second, that there is a connection between in-memory giving and legacy. 

On SOFII, in my book Thanology, and also on SOFII, I have a whole section on how to write lively memorial donation thank you letters. I originally started to do this as one of the first things I did on SOFII. 

I will take a minute and share this with you because I gave an in-memory gift to a hospice organisation in the United States that cared for my mother in the last hours of her life. They were wonderful. They did a great job. 

About a year later, after the first gift I gave, I received this card. They thanked me for the gift I gave, but then proceeded to get my mother’s name wrong. Not just a little wrong, completely other-galaxy wrong. What happened in that moment was that my heart was crushed, and they lost me as a donor because they did not even remember my mother’s name. 

I had thought, as you do, that your mum is special to you. I had thought she was special to them, and they did not get her name right. It was just a database thing, and I should know better than anybody else that it was just a database thing. But this is what I want you to understand. In addition to meaning a lot to donors, in addition to making in-memory giving count, and in addition to maybe sparking legacy gifts, there are also human beings behind it. You want to take great care. 

You will find that workshop online. If you think about thanking as a thankologist, you want to be thanking properly at every stage in the game. This is where you cannot get those three questions wrong. You need to know who you are writing to, why you are writing to them, and what you need to say. 

Instead of sending some perfunctory “on behalf of” letter, you can send something that does not have to be fancy, but can say something like: “Because of you, the memory of the person you love will live on in the smile of each child we help at Boys and Girls Aid. Thank you for your heartfelt donation, which we received on…” All that information is up front, and already you know that the person's memory will live on. In honouring another, you make a lasting investment in the lives of children who are homeless across Oregon. 

The letter goes on. There is a contact. There is tax language because, in this case, we had to put it in there. We just put it in the postscript. If it is a warm letter, you do not have to worry about it. I know in some places you need receipts, but if the letter is warm, the receipt is fine at the bottom. 

Please, for me, in your journey as a thankologist and in your journey to make thanking warm, do not forget in-memory thanking. Elevate that to the highest level you possibly can. 

In these three steps, the gratitude shift, you have learned about the brain science. We talked about some mechanical pieces of how you can take your thank you letters, starting now, how you can use phone calls, and how you can sprinkle great thanking across every communication you have and every channel, including social media. 

You now know that gratitude is not an awkward obligation. It is a superpower for everyone, and I really mean everyone. 

Research from Gallup and Workhuman found that one thank you once a week was enough to cut disengagement and burnout in half. In the same study, less than 40% of people felt adequately recognised for their contributions. This goes a long way to helping us talk about how we can stem the tide of attrition in the fundraising sector. Great people are leaving fundraising every day, and part of that tide can be turned by simply acknowledging the amazing people who work beside you every day. Great leaders share gratitude. Co-workers share gratitude. Great teams share gratitude. 

What happens when we get it right? What I like to call gratitude and generosity everlasting. This is a quote from a real-life donor. But before I share it with you, I want you to look to your left at the thank yous, the little picture of the thank yous. 

What has happened at every single organisation I have worked with, and every organisation I have not worked with that gets gratitude right, is that they start to get fan mail. People will email me and say, “I started to write my thank you letters better, and we started getting letters back for our CEO, our executive director, or the leader of our organisation.” Fan mail from supporters who are so stunned that someone took the time to see their secret heart, to see how generous they were, that they send back fan mail saying, “Thank you for your amazing thank you.” 

I leave you with the words of Clara. “You are always thanking donors, but as a donor, without your hard work and dedication, my money is worth nothing. It is only money. You translate it into love.” A real-life donor wrote this, and she has confirmed a legacy pledge in her will. That is what happens when you become a thankologist. You translate money into love. Thank you so much. I think we can take questions now. 

Terrific presentation. If you are interested in asking questions, we have half an hour or so. Please put them in the Q&A chat box, and I will facilitate that. You would think saying thank you was easy, wouldn’t you? But you have gone into great depth and explained the science behind it, with terrific research and evidence of the impact of really stepping up and doing thank you and gratitude on a new level, which is incredibly valuable. 

I am reminded of a situation where I worked with a foundation and an arts company, and I brokered a small grant of about $15,000. It was the first grant they had received from a foundation, so I suggested to the arts company that perhaps their chair could ring the foundation and thank them for the donation. They did, which was terrific. But then I got an email from the manager of the philanthropic foundation saying that was the first time they had received a phone call from a grant recipient in 10 years in the job. That stayed with me. It demonstrated just how we do tend to fall short in regard to our gratitude to our supporters. 

That brings me to one of the questions that has come in. How do you balance a letter versus a phone call, particularly keeping in mind that most of the organisations we work with are small to medium arts companies? They have limited resources. We do not often have dedicated development managers who have teams of people. What would you say to them in regard to when you use a letter, when you use an email, whether it is okay to use an email, and when you use a phone call? 

In a perfect world, I would try to use all three. I would use all three if the person made their gift online and if you had permission to mail them. A lot of times when people give online, they can opt out of direct mail or post. If they have done that, then obviously you would not send them a hard thank you by post. 

If possible, what happens is this. Let’s say they give online. They get the beautiful thank you redirect page that we talked about, and then it says that you will send an email. So they get an email back that thanks them. Often, what we will say to people who give online, if we have permission to mail them, is that the CEO will send their own note soon, and it will come by post. That is like the icing on the cake for people because they get it through multiple channels. What we know is that if you can cross channels, it tends to keep people longer and they tend to give more. 

If you have to divide it up, I would definitely get your screen done so that, when someone gives online, that thank you redirect is really warm. Make sure you send a beautiful warm email, and if you can, follow it up at some time in the next three months. It does not have to be immediate. If they are new supporters, I would prioritise a phone call as part of an email and a phone call. 

There is an article, and I think it might have been on the page I shared that includes Kathy Truong from the Institute of Community Directors Australia. She was talking about how she gave, I believe by email, but then they thanked her through a completely different channel. You want to be sure first that you follow the channel they gave through. If I give to you through the mail, thank me through the mail. If I give to you online, thank me online. If you cannot send by post because you are small, try to send a hard copy thank you perhaps every quarter, every six months or every year. Try to make it special if you are very strapped, and definitely try to prioritise a phone call, even if all you do is leave a voicemail. 

Would you feel, in regard to phone calls, and Georgina has asked this question, we are now in a situation where people do not pick up the phone if they do not recognise where the call is coming from. They literally just ignore the call. How long do you persist with trying to make that personal call? 

You can leave a voicemail, which is what I would do. I do not know if you have these, but we have things now where we can do ringless messages, so it goes straight to voicemail. If you can do that, you could try that. I read an article today on how that can help reduce monthly giving attrition. If a person is a monthly giver, they tend to stop around, I believe, month nine. The research suggested that ringless voicemail messages at months three, six and nine can reduce monthly giving dropout by about 40%, which is huge. 

If you cannot speak to people directly on the phone, just leave a message, because a message still makes a difference. You can leave your phone number and say, “If you have any questions, call me back. We would love to hear from you.” People are used to receiving poor-quality voicemail messages. To have someone send a beautiful warm thank you, such as, “We are just calling to say thank you. You are amazing. Give us a shout if you have any questions. We would love to hear from you, and we are here for you any time,” is really nice. You could even include an invitation, such as, “We are doing a Christmas carol event on 23 December, and we would love to have you there.” Something like that would be beautiful. 

I am not sure whether we have that message-only facility here. We probably do, but that is a great suggestion. 

Another question has come in about whether the cost of mailing hard copy gets any negative reaction. Is there any research on that? 

It does sometimes. Jeff Brooks in the United States says that if you are not getting complaints, then you are not doing enough. Sometimes complaints are a useful sign. The way I would respond to that is, if your communications by post are valuable, you will not get too many people who feel that way. They are often surprised to receive post, and when the post is meaningful, it matters. 

We had a supporter save all our newsletters in a shoebox, and she would bring them out and read them from time to time. People who do not want to receive post, you always respect their preferences, and you always give them a chance with everything you send to opt out. If they do not want to hear from you again by post, they can tick a box or whatever system you use. 

For newsletters, because we send print and digital newsletters frequently, I need to step aside for one second. What we know about print is that print leaves a deeper footprint in your brain, because of the tangible aspect of it. We know that if you can get people to also receive post from you, they tend to stay longer and give more. Print is hugely valuable. 

If you send out a newsletter that is high quality, donor-focused and donor-centred, and that shows people how their gift is working without taking away dignity from the people you are helping, if that is the case, then print can work well. You have to be careful with that. What we have found is that the return on investment for newsletters can be anywhere from two to one, up to six or seven to one. Every dollar they spend can return six dollars in donations, which is extraordinary for a newsletter. 

That is my little pitch on print. From time to time, on the back of print newsletters, we will talk about that. We might say, “Did you know that print leaves a deeper footprint in your brain and a lasting memory? This newsletter is so important to our organisation that for every dollar we invest in printing, up to two dollars are returned to us.” I think it is important to do that, and we have reinforced that on the back of an envelope. 

If it comes down to return on investment, why would you not do it? 

Another question that has come in is particularly related to the nature of arts organisations that have multiple projects happening over different times of the year, and using funds from different appeals and campaigns. This person asks, how many updates or thank you messages would you say is too many? 

What I like to think about is the ask, thank, report, repeat cycle. If you were starting really small, if I was starting tomorrow and I wanted to do it right, the best results I have seen have been with four appeals and four newsletters in a year. Then, in between, you would have thank you letters to people who gave. 

That is a great strategy, but it is also a lot of work for a small organisation. Even if you send two or three appeals a year and try to do two newsletters, we have started with that as well, as long as you can thank and update people from time to time. It does not always have to be a newsletter that comes back. It could be that every October you turn it into a thank you month, where you send a thank you card to everyone. Create little traditions within your organisation that make it manageable for you. 

I would try to at least, if people give to you, get them a really good, high-quality thank you letter, if that is all you can do, or email, or even a text message if that is what you send. Try to sprinkle that thanks across multiple channels. Then do not ask for more money, unless you have an emergency, until you actually thank them for what they have given. 

If, for example, their donation is to unrestricted funds, it might cover the whole work of the organisation. You can send a broader thank you for that. You can actually say, “Your wonderful donation supports multiple programs here that deliver immense value to the community.” Do not be afraid to say that. People like that realism and truth. 

I love the little model, ask, thank, report, repeat. It is super simple but brilliant. However, I have heard in the past that the best time to ask for a donation is when someone has just donated. Do you disagree with that? Would you stick with ask, thank and report? 

I would stick with it. I have had this conversation with a lot of organisations. There is a story in the book from an organisation I work with in the United States. They always put a hard ask for more money in their thank you letters, and they believed in it. It raised, for a big organisation, in US dollars, about a quarter of a million dollars a year from these thank you letters. 

I suggested to them, “Why do you not just try a nice thank you? Do not put an ask for more money in it, because research shows…” Then I went into my little pitch. They said, “No, we cannot possibly do that.” I said, “Just test it with a few donors. You have that beautiful example from the start, a plain thank you letter with no ask and what it can do for people.” They would not test it. 

Their retention rate was that they were only keeping 20% of their new donors. That, for me, is the answer to beat all answers. If you really want to grow retention, you cannot be asking all the time, because people need to be thanked first. That is how it works. That is how we know it is effective. You might get income in the short term, but you might not keep those donors. You are not going to build the loyalty and affinity that we want to. Gratitude builds loyalty. Loyalty builds income. 

On 23 October here in Australia, we have our inaugural national giving day to the arts, which has been titled AusArt Day. It is one day of the year, 23 October, and arts organisations have been invited to register with Creative Australia to take part in AusArt Day. Have you got any specific tips on how best to handle the thank you for people participating in one-day campaigns? 

By that, do you mean what would be the best way to thank people to stand out? 

One would assume and hope that you would have plenty of donations coming in very quickly over a short period of time. It may not be easy to follow up with phone calls. I think everything you have said helps, but are there any specific further tips on how to handle that gratitude part of a giving day? 

A couple of things that I do when I work on projects like that. When I do my appeal, whether it is email or direct mail, I write the thank you at the same time. You can set all these things in place before the giving day, especially with automated systems. I am assuming a lot of that takes place online. 

If most of it is online, then you can have a beautiful thank you redirect page set up. It does not have to be fancy. It can be like the sample I showed: “Thank you, you have just helped save the life of a child.” They make the donation, they get this beautiful redirect page, and then they receive your thank you email, which would be automated. You could automate it so that it includes their name, the date and the amount, or the receipt. 

If you cannot include that information, figure out a way to get them the thank you first and say, “We will follow up with a receipt.” That creates the update. “We will follow up with a receipt within the next two to three weeks, but we are a really small organisation. We love you. We are so grateful to you for supporting the arts. We are grateful for who you are. We will get a receipt to you as soon as we can within the next couple of weeks.” That is okay because they have been thanked. They feel loved, and they are prepared to wait. 

You could even send a little video update if you are able to do that. You could send it to all your supporters with everyone there, holding the phone out, and just say, “Thank you. We love you.” Very simple things. Think in your head: how can I be as warm as possible and thank as many people as possible, then set the expectation that within the next couple of weeks you will get them a proper receipt. They have been thanked. It feels good. It is warm and prompt. They are okay to wait a couple of weeks because you have done what you need to do. 

The other thing is to really give careful thought to that donor experience. Even make a donation yourself before the day to make sure you know exactly the experience your donor is having when they make a donation on the day. 

That is a huge thing. I am glad you thought of that because one of the first things I always do when I work with organisations is see what it looks like. What is a donor experiencing when they give? Make your own mystery donation and see what happens, and see what the follow-up is. They could even stage a series of emails that would come in afterwards, such as, “It has been a month since your gift.” You could set that up as well, and you can test that. 

Just as a final reminder on AusArt Day, to those participating in the webinar today, please register on Creative Australia’s website for that opportunity. Registration is not compulsory, but it does give you access to a number of assets that will help you run the day. 

Final opportunity for questions. Otherwise, we will wrap up. Lisa, any final remarks from your perspective? 

My perspective is this. Since you are talking about organisations that are small or mid-sized and just growing, remember that often small is its own kind of superpower, and ultra-local is its own kind of superpower. It means you can do things that do not necessarily scale. 

If you have supporters, you can invite people to your organisation or send out little homespun cards. You might say, “We are going to send out two cards a week,” or “We are going to make two calls a week.” Start small, but just start. Do not get too hung up on thinking, “I did not have the ‘you’ in my letter,” or “I did not ask people to something. I have done it all wrong.” The fact that you are starting to thank more warmly and more promptly is, in itself, magical. You will get there. Do not panic that you have to do everything tomorrow, but start thanking now.