New Donor Onboarding/Welcome Processes

@Sandra Birchard
We did a ton of research about that somewhere around 7-8 years ago. Some of the key points we learned were that donor retention almost doubles if you can get a second gift in the first 30-60 days, and that donor retention is dependent on donor source (events vs. mail acquisition, etc).

Based on our research at the time and on our own database analysis, we determined that most of our new donors never really understood the full depth of all of our work. So we began tracking donor source as an attribute and put together a 13-step Welcome Program for certain types of new donors. While they are in this program, they are suppressed from our regular mail schedule. We mark them with a solicit code (for mail suppression) and Action Tracks bulk applied the month they come on (for pulling welcome mail lists).

Our series consists of:

• initial hand-signed thank-you letter
• a lovely welcome packet outlining our various programs and ways to engage
• a 60-day ask tailored to reflect their original donation type
• newsletters
• custom-merged spring and fall appeals
• informational pieces designed to engage them with our various programs
• Christmas card
• Monthly donor society invitation

Ours used to be a little complicated because we designed it to be seasonal. For example, March new donors get Christmas cards in month 9 of their action track, while June new donors got those in month 6. Thankfully, we finally realized that we could be more vague in our action tracks and just classify 4 action types each month: the initial welcome packet, the 60-day ask, the “main mailer”, and the monthly donor exit invite.

After the 12 months they are added to our regular mail program. It takes some work but we do it all in-house, and we've seen a definite uptick in monthly donors and second gifts.