Chapter Activity: Recognize Your Donors

Recognizing donors is a critical part of good community relations. Recognition can be much more than simple “thank you’s”, although saying thank you is the first and most critical element of donor recognition. Getting to know your donors, particularly major donors and your consistent business and civic donors, is key. Tailoring their recognition is an effort well worth the energy as it usually pays both tangible and intangible dividends over time.

· Have business breakfasts or luncheons for your business sponsors during which your chapter officials find a more dramatic way to say thanks for their support – resolutions, plaques, certificates of appreciation, framed photographs, small gifts, etc. Even if the event costs the chapter money, the publicity for the donor and the chapter goes a long way to increasing chapter visibility and viability.

· Have a special chapter meeting, including the chapter’s annual meeting, with refreshments, to recognize formally a chapter’s special donors. This is often more appropriate for individual donors rather than the business community. As with the business event, plaques or other forms of recognition work well in these cases, as does the accompanying public relations.

· Have a small luncheon or afternoon tea for special chapter donors. More intimate settings like this work well with certain donor audiences where cultivating a personal relationship might be an effective way to recognize them.

· Create an “honor roll” of donors to highlight levels of giving, such as a large wall display or paved walkway of donors in familiar categories (patron, benefactor, etc., or scholar, fellow, etc. or Associate, Bachelor, Master, Doctor, etc.). These honor rolls recognize single gifts at certain categories and are often engraved into brass plates affixed to a wall display or are displayed on bricks in a walkway.

Conspicuously absent from these examples are any obvious elements of fundraising. Donor recognition is really about thanking a chapter supporter in a public forum without asking for a gift at that time, and arranging for appropriate publicity to highlight both the donor and the chapter. Finding the funds to plan and conduct these recognition events can be a chal lenge for a chapter and might involve seeking local business sponsors (including those sitting on the chapter’s board of directors) to underwrite the event. Without a doubt, however, making the effort usually goes a long way toward increasing and elevating the chapter’s visibility and the community’s awareness of the chapter’s mission. Ultimately, though, the overall idea is that happy donors return with future gifts and potential donors come forward.

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