Here’s the email thank you I got from Concern. Leaving aside the hiccup with the ‘Dear Salutation’ opening, there’s plenty to admire.
For a start it looks great - well designed, colourful and warm.
There’s a good selection of links for further information on Concern and where your money goes. Prompts for their gift catalogue and treks. And invitations to connect on social networking sites.
Technorati Tags: thank you, mystery shopping, fundraising, charity, concern...
Just over two weeks into our mystery shopping and it’s time to do a bit of a overview of findings to date. And the first thing to say is that there has been a marked improvement in how charities are handling online donations over the last two years.
In 2006, 66% of charities sent a thank you email in response to a web donation.
This year, 83% sent an email thank you.
There are also some significant improvements by individual charities in how they accept, process and acknowledge donations. I’ll be dealing with them in detail in the coming weeks, but Irish Cancer Society, Amnesty International, Simon Communities and Children’s Medical and Research Foundation can all take credit for clear steps forward - generally nothing extraordinary, just doing things better which...
It’s the bit you always overlook. You’ve written the great thank you email, thrown in an emotionally resonant anecdote or two (haven’t you?) and signed off with a big, empathetic hug of a thank you. And then you realise you need to stick something in the subject line. So what do you do? Write ‘Donation Confirmation’, because that’s what it is, isn’t it?
Time to stop and start again. Forget the content of the email for a sec and put all your energy, effort and empathy into that subject line. Because that’s what people read first. In fact that may be all people read - at the very least it will determine whether they read any further. You wouldn’t treat a billboard headline as an afterthought, would you? Well, don’t treat a subject...
The two rules of a Thank You are that it should be PROMPT and PERSONAL. We’ll get on to the personal touch later, but we have some clear winners in the prompt department.
Congratulations to Bothar, Cystic Fibrosis Association, Marie Keating Foundation and Trócaire all off whom succeeded in getting me a thank you letter in two working days.
Is your organisation that good?
Technorati Tags: mystery shopping, charity, thank you, charity...
A couple of quick updates on the Great Mystery Shopping Escapade:
1) The charity that I couldn’t donate to online last week was the Irish Hospice Foundation. I’ve spoken to Tim O’Dea, their Fundraising Director, and he’s explained that they were recently subjected to a hacker attack which disabled most of their website, including the donation function. They’re currently working on getting everything back in place, but a useful reminder to keep an eye on your internet security.
2) So far, only 2 of the 14 charities haven’t sent me a thank you. For the record, they’re Amnesty International and St Vincent de Paul. Whatever about Amnesty International, I’m not expecting a thank you from the SVP, as they never bothered to record my email or...
Welcome to the great Mystery Shopping Adventure 2008! We’ve just tried to donate to 15 of Ireland’s largest and most well known charities - but one wouldn’t accept online donations. Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be sharing our experiences of being a donor in today’s Ireland.
But let’s start with the basics - saying thank you. You know, the way your parents taught you to when you were a child.
Of the 14 charities we donated to this afternoon, 11 have sent me a thank you email. Which means nearly a quarter of them didn’t bother (in fact one didn’t even bother to record either my email address or my postal address - more on that later).
Stay tuned for more…Technorati Tags: mystery shopping, charity, nonprofit, fundraising,...