Ask our Giving Guru: Marnie Webb on the art of the follow through

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Giving Guru Marnie Webb is Co-CEO of TechSoup Global where under her leadership the NetSquared initiative is in its fourth year of helping nonprofits worldwide use innovative web tools to increase their reach and impact. A sought-after speaker and writer on nonprofit technology, she was named the NTEN Person of the Year in 2008 and included in the Nonprofit Times’ list of the 50 most influential leaders in the U.S. nonprofit sector. Marnie will be available to answer your questions about social media for nonprofits on Tuesday, Sept. 21, at 1 PM EST. Submit your question in the comments of this post, or check out the many ways to ask our Giving Gurus.

In fundraising, we often get two things drilled into us: ask and thank. Ask and thank. Ask and thank again. Asking and thanking is not nearly enough. But you know that, right? You know that you have to build your network. You have to use excellent listening practices. In Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky writes about bonding and bridging capital. Basically, bonding capital increases the depth of the relationship between people who already know each other. Bridging captial increases the number of people in relationship to one another. This is an important concept for nonprofits: bridging capital gets you more donors, more volunteers, more support. Bonding capital gets those people to work with you at a deeper level. It seems to me that, as sector, we end up doing bridging activities -- sending outreach emails, getting poeple to sign up with us, worrying about the number of people who visit our website, sign up for our facebook group, follow us twitter, and, of course, give us money. That's good. But we also want to make sure that the people who do sign up have ways to increase their engagement. And that's about the art of the follow through. Here are five simple ways that you can deepen your relationship with your supporters:

1. Write them a note. For no reason at all. Well, not quite for no reason. After all, you have the person in your database for a reason. You've gotten some kind of support in the past. Reach out and send a short note that lets the person know that you know why you have their name and what you're up to, and, against all instinct, don't ask them for anything. Think of it as free range appreciation.
2. Show up at their party. Increasingly, your supporters are probably spreading the word on social networks like MySpace, Facebook or Twitter. Thank them in their streams -- not just on yours -- for their help and support.
3. Give your supporters something special. It doesn't have to be a cup or trip to the local Airplane Museum. It might just be a level of detail about your organization that you don't provide everyone.
4. Give them something else to do. They volunteered? Follow up with a note to ask them to donate (evidence indicates this is a very good thing to do). They gave money? Ask them to send out a note to their friends. Keep them engaged with tasks that genuinely help you and make them more involved in and knowledgable about your cause.
5. Ask for feedback and change because of it. Don't know if your message is hitting home? Ask you key supporters to tell you. And then when they do tell you, change. Ask them which of the two images they like the best. Ask them for their opinions and let those opinions genuinely influence you. Does all of this take time? Yes. But deepening the relationships you already have is time well-spent. You don't know when you'll need the extra capital -- whether social or financial -- that this work will bring you. But you can be confident that you will need it someday. You don't want to then realize you neglected to follow up, and the names you carefully collected have forgetten all about you.

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