Building NonProfit Relationships Equals Success
The Forgotten Element = Relationships
On a phone call today I was asked what I believe was the most important factor in the success of a nonprofit that most forget. For me that is an easy question and one I believe is also the same for any business. In this day and age of email addresses, usernames, and twitter accounts many forget that relationships are golden. Whether you are in business for profit or not-for-profit, if you are not devoting a large percentage of your business toward building relationships, you are missing one of the most important aspects of marketing. If you build the relationships with your volunteers and donors and forget the rest, the finances, programs, and success will fall into place. Read on and let me show you how to build loyal relationships that can make all the difference in your business. I will start out with explaining the why and give you practical how to at the end.
The Missing Puzzle Piece
In this day and age more than ever people want to be known. It is a need that we are all born with, that we want people to know who we are. Think about it for a minute, when you walk into a room of strangers, doesn’t it feel great when someone knows you? Sure it does, it feels awesome. It does not matter whether you are in a room of strangers, in the cyber world, or walking into a restaurant for lunch. When someone knows you or wants to get to know you it makes you feel really good. Imagine what it must feel like when you are in one of those venues and everyone in the room or restaurant knows you. Everyone wants to be known and it feels even better when they know you because of something good you did.
I believe it was the main reason that the sitcom “Cheers” was so successful and intriguing to America. The tag line was “Where everyone knows your name.” When I used to watch “Cheers”, I too wished I had a place, even if it was a bar, where everyone knew me and I could share life with them. In the age of suburbs and cyberspace, it is getting tough to get to know people and for them to get to know you. We get up in the morning, jump in our car, drive out of our neighborhood to work without encountering even one person we have to say “good morning” to. We arrive at work and spend most of our day in a cubicle, eat lunch at our desk and have few conversations even emailing the person in the cube next to us. At the end of the day we jump back in our car, drive into our neighborhood and into our driveway, walk into our house and still rarely have to encounter another human being outside of our immediate family. Sure you say “hi” to the neighbor across the hedges, which will be tall enough next year that you can ignore them, while you’re cutting your grass on the weekend. However, it is possible to go an entire week with very little interaction with others. It is one of the huge reasons that facebook, twitter and online chat rooms are so popular. People are searching for a way for others to know them. Do you really think that people would put up personal profiles with all types of information and jot 140 characters about their lunch fare on twitter to thousands of complete strangers if they were not screaming out for someone to know them? Those that are involved in your business or nonprofit also have a need to be known and it is your job to see that they are. I will give you some tips below on how you can attract and keep loyal clients and donors by simply taking an interest in them more than the other guy.
Building Relationships that Stick
Building relationships can be simple. However it is an art that is quickly being forgotten, especially in the business world. Starting from the premise that most people in this world want to be known, we can focus a majority of our attention on building relationships, even if it is through social media, to form strong loyalties. Relationship building should start immediately when someone shows interest in getting involved with your nonprofit/business. Each person is different in the level in which they want to build a relationship and respect should be given to them to build that relationship to the level of their expectations. True, if you have thousands involved, there is only so much of you to go around but there are easy ways to make more of you go around than you may have thought. The key is to extend yourself out to others in as many avenues as you can and let each individual choose the level and avenues that are comfortable to them. However, most of your volunteers, donors and grantors of funds want to be acknowledged at some level and most likely want to form more of a relationship than you will ever realize. Now your challenge is how can you acknowledge those involved in your business enough while still having enough of yourself and organization left to do the projects that you are involved in. If someone does not want the acknowledgment or relationship, they will make that apparent by giving an anonymous gift or letting you know up front.
Likewise, the amount an organization or individual gives should not be a consideration for how much they need acknowledgment or desire relationship. For many a little is all they have but is proportionally bigger in their finances that the large gift from a wealthy individual. Everyone should be treated equally regardless of their gift or the time they donate to your organization. When the “rubber hits the road” the person that is willing to donate their Saturday to you may be worth all the finances your nonprofit has in the bank when you really need the help but have few to turn to.
Gloat!
A good rule to apply and hardly ever go wrong with is gloat continually on your donors and volunteers. If, by some strange reason, an individual want you to rant about them less they will let you know. However, in all my years in business I have rarely had someone say to me that I needed to notice them less. People love when you notice their efforts, donations and involvement and by doing so you secure people falling all over themselves to do things that you will gloat about.
Some things You Should Know
I will give you some basic things you should know about all your donors and then some ways that you can make yourself more accessible to them to allow them to decide for themselves the level of relationship they want to establish with you. You can never know enough about your donors and volunteers, period. Asking about these things I will list below will establish that you care enough about those that get involved in your nonprofit work to build relationships with them. Granted this is only a few things you can know and do to begin to establish rapport with them, but it is a fantastic start.
Things you should know about your donor and volunteers:
- Spouse and Children’s names and ages
- Birthdays- Spouse and children’s birthdays and acknowledge them on or before the date
- Special Interests – When you come across those hockey tickets you can’t use, give them to the one it means the most to.
- Special Skills- You may need to call on their special skills (construction, fundraising, scrap booking, making blankets, computer).
- There are a ton more but that will get you started.
Open the Relationship Avenues
There are many levels that relationships can happen on. Your responsibility is to open as many avenues to relationships that you can, then let your donors and volunteers choose the ones that best fit their lifestyle, technical skills and comfort level. Below are a few to get you started and then add more as they become available or you are comfortable with. Remember, you are now a public figure and when serving your community you are going to need to be somewhat open with the public about who you are and what you stand for. It may get scrutinized, but hey, how important is the work to you that you are doing? You will find that by being open you will gain loyal supporters and allies that will help you accomplish your dreams.
Avenues you should make available for your donors and volunteers to get to know you:
- Quarterly get-to-know-you lunch where people can “touch and feel you”
- Ability to “Follow you on Twitter” if you don’t know what this is, see http://oceangrand.org/tweet-or-not-to-tweet
- Ability to be your friend on Facebook- yes if they give blood, sweat and tears they are your friend
- Ability to subscribe to weekly or monthly email updates- yes, you need to have a monthly email newsletter
- Ability to subscribe to RSS feeds about your nonprofit
- Ability to give you feedback either by email or forum
- Consider consistently blogging about your nonprofit on your own blog
Your Touch
Now that your volunteers and donors can “touch and feel” you there is a minimum touch that you should extend to them. These are only minimum guidelines and the more you get to know them and they know you the better the support for your nonprofit you will have. Don’t put these primary “touches” off until the end of each month but do them immediately each time you have the opportunity.
Ways to reach out and touch your supporters when they have donated or put forth and effort to help your nonprofit:
- Personal handwritten thank you notes for any donation or effort to help your nonprofit
- Public acknowledgments for donations and efforts to help your nonprofit
- Periodic person-to-person lunches and meetings with each donor and volunteer
- Simple thank you gifts go a long way – nothing fancy just small inexpensive gifts
- Ongoing acknowledgment in newsletters of donations and volunteer efforts
Building Relationships is Easy
The ability to build relationships is something that we are born with; however, many times while growing up we forget the fundamentals. Relationships are the life-blood for your nonprofit and to dismiss them as unnecessary is a fatal mistake. Everybody wants to be know to some degree and it is the nonprofit’s job to cultivate the relationships and bring value to those people’s lives who are involved and giving their hard earned time and finances to it. No matter how hectic things get or how bad the economy becomes, when all the cards are down, if you have good relationships your going to be OK.
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