Annual Fund Solicitation Plan

Good afternoon Heather,

I don't have a formal solicitation plan in hand (since I no longer work in Development now that I'm a Consortium Manager), but I'm happy to pass along some thoughts from when I was in charge of the Annual Fund at Tulsa Ballet.

When I first came into the fundraising position, I'd had no prior experience and previous Annual Fund staff hadn't been particularly good at maintaining a stable approach to fundraising and reaching out to donors needing to renew or recently lapsed donors.

By the time I left, we were doing things quite a bit differently:

• When approaching donors that needed to renew a gift from the last 12 months, I sent them a direct mail piece with information on what their last gift had been, along with a request for a small increase in gift based on how large the previous gift had been. If they were small gifts, maybe it was a bump of $10-$15, while larger gifts could ask for an increase of $100 or so.
  • If that direct solicitation didn't work, I continued including them on larger scale mailing and initiatives and followed up in two months with another direct ask. After three direct asks, I just kept them on my larger scale mailing lists to see if they could get picked back up that way.
    
    
• When approaching donors that were lapsed, they also got a direct mail piece with information on what their last gift had been, but the ask was always just a straight renewal since they had demonstrated some distance from the organization.
  
  • A very important thing I learned here was not to ever let the lapsed people fall off my larger scale mailing lists unless they specifically contacted the organization to ask to be removed from mailings.
    
    
• We did have various levels of giving for our Annual Fund with benefits assigned to each, so once somebody did decide to become a donor, I used Plans in Tessitura to track when I was notifying patrons about their benefits and when they were actually making use of them. If their level of giving got them access to the patron lounge at intermission, I was sure to send out an email or direct mail within two weeks of the performance to remind them to come see me there.
  
  
• As part of the effort to encourage people to switch over to monthly giving, I made a big point of saying that their monthly giving pledge would allow us to recognize the total amount pledged (I had set this program up on 12 month pledges, so $25/month would be recognized as $300 immediately and give the patron access to that level of benefit).
  • I'd love to say that this was very successful, but in reality, very few patrons opted into a monthly giving arrangement. With our patron base being a bit older for Ballet, the majority of gifts still came in as one check a year in the mail.
    
    
• One nice thing that we had access to with dancers in the building was an eager staff to help with in-house telefunding efforts. Every holiday season, we would telefund for 2-3 weeks between Halloween and Thanksgiving to raise money for our special presentation of The Nutcracker which was free for clients of local social service agencies. Interested dancers would be paid to help us make calls, and patrons loved hearing from the people they watched on-stage and it definitely helped the overall performance of the effort.

I'm not sure how helpful this might be, but hopefully, there are some things here to pick out that will help you; best of luck!

Thank you,

Brian

Good afternoon Heather,

I don't have a formal solicitation plan in hand (since I no longer work in Development now that I'm a Consortium Manager), but I'm happy to pass along some thoughts from when I was in charge of the Annual Fund at Tulsa Ballet.

When I first came into the fundraising position, I'd had no prior experience and previous Annual Fund staff hadn't been particularly good at maintaining a stable approach to fundraising and reaching out to donors needing to renew or recently lapsed donors.

By the time I left, we were doing things quite a bit differently:

• When approaching donors that needed to renew a gift from the last 12 months, I sent them a direct mail piece with information on what their last gift had been, along with a request for a small increase in gift based on how large the previous gift had been. If they were small gifts, maybe it was a bump of $10-$15, while larger gifts could ask for an increase of $100 or so.
  • If that direct solicitation didn't work, I continued including them on larger scale mailing and initiatives and followed up in two months with another direct ask. After three direct asks, I just kept them on my larger scale mailing lists to see if they could get picked back up that way.
    
    
• When approaching donors that were lapsed, they also got a direct mail piece with information on what their last gift had been, but the ask was always just a straight renewal since they had demonstrated some distance from the organization.
  
  • A very important thing I learned here was not to ever let the lapsed people fall off my larger scale mailing lists unless they specifically contacted the organization to ask to be removed from mailings.
    
    
• We did have various levels of giving for our Annual Fund with benefits assigned to each, so once somebody did decide to become a donor, I used Plans in Tessitura to track when I was notifying patrons about their benefits and when they were actually making use of them. If their level of giving got them access to the patron lounge at intermission, I was sure to send out an email or direct mail within two weeks of the performance to remind them to come see me there.
  
  
• As part of the effort to encourage people to switch over to monthly giving, I made a big point of saying that their monthly giving pledge would allow us to recognize the total amount pledged (I had set this program up on 12 month pledges, so $25/month would be recognized as $300 immediately and give the patron access to that level of benefit).
  • I'd love to say that this was very successful, but in reality, very few patrons opted into a monthly giving arrangement. With our patron base being a bit older for Ballet, the majority of gifts still came in as one check a year in the mail.
    
    
• One nice thing that we had access to with dancers in the building was an eager staff to help with in-house telefunding efforts. Every holiday season, we would telefund for 2-3 weeks between Halloween and Thanksgiving to raise money for our special presentation of The Nutcracker which was free for clients of local social service agencies. Interested dancers would be paid to help us make calls, and patrons loved hearing from the people they watched on-stage and it definitely helped the overall performance of the effort.

I'm not sure how helpful this might be, but hopefully, there are some things here to pick out that will help you; best of luck!

Thank you,

Brian