Long lost donors? Don't fret.
There could be a solution.
A green juice, a yoga mat, 3-6 hours in someplace really, really warm. A book of old maps, three unread issues of The New Yorker, and a stroll through an enormous, well-kept garden.
If this sounds like a really nice afternoon, you and my wife have a lot in common.
But it also sounds eminently doable, right? Something you could pull together and deliver to a person you care about, without reciprocal expectations, in what - an hour?
A visit to LensCrafters takes longer.
As a fundraiser, we constantly review lists of lapsed donors, cases lost, and sometimes donors that are long, long gone. We even have absurd names for them: LYBUNTs, SYBUNTs, NADTYEs.
(I just made that last one up. It stands for “Not A Donor This Year Either”, but that’s not a thing so whatever.)
But what if there were a way to bring back the best of these lost cases, without complicated contortions or grand gestures, but through sincere, intentional, heartfelt outreach? And no, I‘m not talking about your lapsed $100 donor. I’m talking about the Trustee who left the board a decade ago. The major donor who finished his/her/their Campaign pledge but had a relationship with the prior Executive Director so it’s been tough to bring them back.
What if the solution to bridging this distance was to offer this person or their family a personalized afternoon, hosted by friends or leadership at your organization? In other words, your organization’s equivalent of the afternoon outlined above?
Rekindling these lost, lapsed, or even mildly forgotten relationships takes intent, deep sincerity, and the ability to reflect on what the donor/leader’s absence has meant to your organization. So instead of giving up and relegating the individual to the alphabet soup of lapsed donor lingo, try showing them how much they are missed, how their past contributions were valued, and attempt to create the conditions under which they might fall in love with your orgnization all over again.