Declining Benefits On Solicitation Materials?

We used to include this across our materials, but began removing it with the logic that the more people engage with us and utilize their benefits, the more likely they are to continue supporting and increase their support. (It also gets a lot more thank you opportunities in front of them)

We track declined benefits in attributes with the thought that once someone has declined, they probably want to stay that way every year (rather than re-checking a box or having to tell us over and over that they decline). When we send benefit materials to donors at the top of each season, we also send a welcome letter to people who've declined benefits, with a couple sentence about how they've declined benefits, but if they want to opt back in, to give us a call. That's been a successful communication and we receive donations in response as well as calls from people who let us know that they do want benefits.

Best,
Megan

Thank you Megan! Very helpful

Hi Sara,

At 92nd Street Y, we use language on both the mailed form and website that says: I prefer not to receive benefits so my gift will go further in supporting 92Y. (See www.92Y.org/Donate)

We track in the household/individual's membership record. There is a "decline benefits" checkbox that we check when processing gifts should a donor indicate they are declining benefits. When we send mailings with member benefit fulfillment, we suppress anyone who has the declined checkbox checked in their membership record. Hope that helps!

Best,

Melanie Halpern

Awesome, thank you Melanie!

We've recently moved over to a system of tracking benefits preference at a per-gift level (using a custom field in contributions) as a response to some donors expressing different preferences and giving variously through both personal funds and DAFs, family foundations, etc. within a fairly short time period. The outcome is that when pulling any set of gifts and determining benefits eligibility, we can easily separate into two totals of 'benefits-eligible' vs 'not benefits-eligible,' and report this level of detail back to the donor if they're confused as to why they are or aren't receiving something. We also built some basic automated procedures to ensure that gifts not legally eligible for benefits, such as DAFs, get flipped to 'declined' even if there's error during manual entry.

It's a fairly new system for us so likely has plenty of hurdles yet to appear, but we're pleased thus far!