The good news is that there is a better way to build a supercharged donor communications program - without wasting time and money on letters, social media posts, and e-mails that simply won't work for your organization.

There I was, a newly minted Executive Director for a mid-sized non-profit that was doing great work in our community.  My first order of business was to turn our struggling development program around.  Our programs were doing so much good, but our fundraising had plateaued, and we needed to raise more money to do even more good.

We needed to build a strong donor base that would let our non-profit thrive... but our team was having trouble communicating with our donors in a way that kept them interested in our work.

Our e-mails weren't getting opened.  Our fundraising letters were getting a ho-hum response.  Our website was a ghost town.  We were working hard to send out lots of information to our donors and prospects, but we weren't seeing any real results from our efforts.

The big problem was that we were constantly trying new ways to communicate with our donors... throwing everything up on the wall to see what stuck.  And despite all of the e-mails and letters we were sending out... and all of the time we spent on our website and social media... we weren't getting anywhere.  Does this sound familiar?

We were spinning our wheels, and everyone on our team was frustrated.  That meant that no matter what we did, we weren't able to grow our fundraising... which meant we weren't able to serve more people or do more good in the world.

Instead of focusing on sending out as many donor communications as we could, as often as we could, we needed a donor communications system in place... one that would allow our team to focus on only those strategies which would really produce results.

Over the next few days, it became clear to me how we could build a true system behind our donor communications efforts... a system that focused on only those things that would really inspire our donors to give to our non-profit.

I saw that we could build stronger donor relationships without spending any more money or time on our fundraising efforts than we already were... in fact, we would be able to get better results in less time than ever by systemizing our communications efforts.

Instead of focusing on how many appeal letters went out the door or how many e-mail newsletters we created, we could focus on how effective each of our donor communications were... and emphasize those that were having the biggest impact on our fundraising.  We would draw on best practices and what I could learn from the best minds in fundraising to build a donor communications system that inspired and engaged our donors like never before.

I knew that if we could build a system that would work for our organization, it would work for other non-profits too...