As a volunteer-led organization, I take great pride in hearing comments from friends and neighbors about how present and active EGH is in the community. Over lunch this weekend it was heartwarming hearing from a family friend how impressed they were with the amount of engagement and investment EGH has made in our community.
That conversation was a nice reminder that even though we are only a three-year-old, lean nonprofit our impact is felt by so many.
With that said, I also receive constructive feedback on the topic of donor management and donor engagement. A couple recent examples of what donors want to see were related to comparing our donor outreach to that of a well-established, staffed nonprofit who sends physical mailers with freebee gifts such address labels with the donors name printed on them.
We also have gotten feedback for more say in how your dollars are spent by EGH. With the healing garden being such a large part of our overall funding needs, but also immediate impact helping people through our programs, donors want to let us know where to direct their dollars. People want to help with immediate impact but also with our long-term goals.
Our donors are looking at EGH as a growing, maturing nonprofit. It is a compliment to be compared to national nonprofits with donor management technology and staffed teams.
Scalability, options, and data are the first topics which we are looking to explore as we tackle these valuable pieces of feedback. Print mailers are a major financial investment, so we will explore those down the road, so for now, here are some updates we wanted to emphasize.
Scalability – With the baseline understanding that EGH is not a staffed nonprofit with payrolled teams dedicated to donor management, there are actions and investments that can help EGH scale. This starts with investing in a more sophisticated donor / contact management system than we have today. We are looking into options to allow us to better understand our donors, event attendees, newsletter subscribers and more. Technology will help us understand more about who is buying merch in our online store and also coming to events. For this, our recent small grant from The Community Foundation was awarded with the purpose of helping us improve our tech and backend support of donor engagement for EGH. More to come as we explore options.
Options- If you have visited our donation page recently you may have noticed some changes.
NEW – Donations now include the option to make recurring monthly gifts. Many people have asked for this option, so we are thrilled to finally offer recurring gifts!
NEW – donor directed gifts allow you to tell us how to apply your donation. Pick between areas of interest to you or apply your gift to the general fund. You tell us where your investment in EGH goes!!
Data – To better respond to our donors seeking more physical touchpoints, first we must collect data. When we started 3 years ago our goal was to ask as few questions as possible in the donor forms to ensure an easy experience. As we evolve and hear your feedback for a more sophisticated donor experience, we need more data.
Moving forward a phone number and address are new fields on the donation form.
This is so important as we work on the first topic of scalability. When we work on our donor management system, it should have the ability to see the whole donor more clearly. Currently each donation, sale from the shop, and event registration has individual, disparate data managed on our website. Collecting addresses and phone numbers will allow us to engage in new ways in the future. Currently the only address data we have for our donors is collected by The Great Give externally, and those donors receive mailed thank you cards, and our online pop-up shop customers who have items shipped.
Data will help us evolve. If you would like to proactively provide your address and phone number, please email me at growers@elisgardenofhealing.com
Of course, on the topic of data, privacy and security of information is important. Investments in a donor management system will help us maintain protection of your trusted personal information.
Lastly on the topic of donor management, we recently completed a consulting project with Quinnipiac University MBA students who provided EGH with tons of valuable ideas, feedback, and best practices. Those recommendations + your feedback are fueling our path to a more mature organization.
I am thrilled to see EGH on this journey to improve our donor relationships, while strengthening our ability to perform as a trusted community nonprofit. Please keep the comments coming. We wont always be able to put everything into action, but at minimum we will evaluate the idea and explore the value change brings.
Thanks for reading this update,
Crystal Zukauskas, President EGH