Education Day

Growing your Annuals into Perennials: Steps to Successfully Keeping and Cultivating Existing Donors

Presenter: Margie Taylor, CFRE

CFRE Credits: 4.25

There’s no mystery.

Research shows that current donors are often your best prospects for major and transformational gifts. Your charity may not be “top of mind” in their thinking. Not yet.  But for a cohort of your donors, losing their annual support often costs more than the $100 in the return envelope. And longtime annual donors add to your prospect list in a major gift or capital campaign.

Whoa! Hold on. Who has the time? They aren’t major prospects, right? Their $100 gifts really don’t get me to our $100,000 annual goal, do they? And I’m not supposed to spend my time on small gifts, right?

Maybe.

Join us to learn how to:

• Keep it simple
• Carve time and commit
• Identify the best donor characteristics
• Select
• Do it every week (except Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanza, vacation)
• Expect that your board and colleagues participate
• Document, document, document
• Evaluate

You’ve already spent time and dollars acquiring them. Don’t lose them or you’ll lose ground over and over again and again.

Agenda:

• 9:00 - 10 a.m. Registration/Breakfast/Networking
• 10:00 – 11:45 a.m. Morning Session: Steps to Successfully Keeping and Cultivating Existing Donors
• 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. Lunch Break Out Discussion Topics:
  • Making the case for time to my board, CEO, colleagues
  • How to shut my door, turn off the phone, and put the computer to sleep
  • How do I hone my donor list to make this all manageable?
  • What do I say?
  • Saying thank you all year long
• 1:15 – 2:45 p.m. Afternoon Session: Steps to Successfully Keeping and Cultivating Existing Donors
• 2:45- 3:00: Questions and Answers/ Evaluations/Wrap Up