Episode 282: A Physical Stewardship Matrix: Creating, Having, and Using One
It's an honor for me, Randall, for you to take any of your time to join me on this edition of Around with Randall. I want to slip back into something that I have found popping up more and more often around the thought process of stewardship. And really, the issue involving how do we do it in a way that is organized and really allows everyone to kind of know what we're intending to do and whose responsibilities they are.
And what we're really talking about is creating a matrix for stewardship. When we talk about stewardship. Looking back into the episodes of around with Randall, I've covered the basics in different ways, but it's one of the most important things that we don't do well in terms of engaging our donors once they've chosen to give in to us, hoping to deepen that relationship.
So you can go back to episode 24 for the basics. You can go to episode 182 for questions you should be asking yourself in stewardship and how to do it more effectively. 216 episode 216 deals with automation and AI. How do you have additional resources to help you do it? 231 really deals with anonymous donors. How do you steward those who don't want recognition?
And episode 225 is how do you create feedback loops? So you're not just telling people things in the stewardship process, but you're actually asking their opinions. Today that focus though, we're going to shift towards that matrix. And here's why. I've got a couple of organizations that I work with who are going through different levels of engaging donors at higher levels.
And when I ask the simple question, do you have a donor stewardship matrix, i.e. they make a certain kind of gift? We do certain kind of things. It's amazing. The answer seems to be no. And for small shops, that's creating challenges as it pertains to how do we use limited resources, limited people, limited budget to most effectively do it?
For large organizations? It's asking the question, what should we do? As well as the question, who's going to actually do it? We need to create a kind of a repetition, a programmatic, a understood, really a consistent way of identifying how we steward our donors. And that's what a matrix is really all about. Some of you may be saying, well, that's the third or fourth time you've said that word.
What is it? Make streaks is no more than an x y axis graph chart meaning on maybe the y axis going up and down. You list maybe the types of gifts that have been given, or the level or the amount, and across the X across the top. What are the things that we're going to do when people make the gifts?
And we'll get into this matrix in a little more detail here in a second as options that you can apply with. Why is this important? Well, I'm not going to relive if you've listened to me at all, the all the conversation around transformational gifts that fewer people make a bigger difference. You know those things. If you've paid attention to anything that I've talked about in the past six years.
But what we can say is, is that which we haven't talked a lot about is, is that donor expectations are increasing and the sophistication of some nonprofits is getting high enough, or we have to really take care of our donors, because data is telling us that the retention rate, when we have long term standing donor relationships is only about 40 to 45%, which should be an indication that we're letting a lot of people leave the organization either after one gift or multiple gifts, which probably speaks to at least to some degree or some level, the level of our own stewardship efforts, being organized, being effective, being what the donors want.
We also, as we've discussed on several episodes, talked about staffing reductions, resource reductions that many organizations don't have a unless they're quite large and actual stewardship officer or office or department. And so it's being left to kind of a haphazard, what do we do? The other thing is, is that stewardship is becoming more meaningful because it's more than just sending a thank you letter.
What is it that donors want to know, and how do we inform them of what that is? The risk is that without structure, without a matrix, what we get is, is that it becomes reactive and uneven. It's not consistent, and that we may miss out on opportunities to really deepen those relationships to the levels that they should be.
This makes it a matrix, if done correctly, creates clarity, creates prioritization depending on what you're trying to accomplish. Accountability internally without adding a lot of headcount or resources. Again, you can do it in Excel. It's or spreadsheet. It's just x axis across the top. As an example, things that we do down the right side, the type of gifts and where they meet.
That's what we execute. So let's, as we tend to do, start working our way down to the tactical and we'll end with six things that you can do that are execution recommendations for your matrix. Let's start with what a matrix kind of maybe looks like. So there's lots of different ways of looking at this. But if we define the dimensions the x y axis as let's say in a simple organization, meaning you're just a couple people and so you don't have a lot of resources on the x axis, you could have just dollar amounts, i.e. gifts up to 100 gifts from 100 to 1000, gifts from 5000 to 2500, 2500 to 10,000, 10,000 or above.
So real simple. And down the left you're really small organization. Did we get to thank you letter out in 24 hour or 24 to 48 hours. Are we sending a personal note from somebody, a board member, the CEO, a staff member? If their gift gets to higher levels, are we inviting them to certain events, and are we including their name in some type of publication, or are they receiving a newsletter or any report or whatever we want to call it?
That's really easy. So down the left side or down the y axis or all those things I mentioned, the thank you letter, the personal note, things of that nature. Across the top is the gift level. A more sophisticated place is probably going to add categories. So they're going to talk about acknowledgment and recognition and reporting and ongoing engagement.
And those activities can include things like special invitations to specific events. As you get a little bit bigger, you might do certain things. You might do donor surveys, you might have holiday cards. There's all kinds of different layering that you can include. And remember, the best stewardship is authentic. You don't have to create new. Just invite them into what you do.
Then there is the most sophisticated which you see in most academic medical centers, universities, things of that nature, larger nonprofits where we break down gifts by the type, maybe the restriction, meaning it's like a chair or an endowed scholarship. We then break it into things that maybe supporting different areas, like the law school versus the med school, or if you're in a hospital, this service area or versus that service area.
And that then pushes into the types of things that we do in terms of acknowledgment, recognition, reporting, where we're actually which we're going to get to start looking at very specific things around who is sending the note. We sending multiple notes, what kind of reporting are we doing for scholarship funds in terms of investments, or in terms of the students who maybe received a scholarship fund, or if it's a chair, what is the chair required person in the position, like let's say a chair in the law school teaching constitutional law required to give some type of report or inviting them into the classroom.
All of this is based on the size of your organization. But again, if you don't have the matrix, you don't know who's going to do what and what you do. And so you just kind of guess all of this, depending on the size of your organization, is actually fairly simple, because if you think about an Excel spreadsheet or any kind of spreadsheet, I use Excel down the left side is maybe the things that you can do across the right is maybe the recognition or the dollar figure, or whatever it might be in that box where the two meet.
Usually there's going to be some type of person who's responsible for that. So if we go back to our real simple matrix, you know, just 4 or 5 things with dollar figures, a couple columns, somebody has to mail the thank you note, create the thank you note. Who is that? Somebody has to inform the board member and have the board member write a handwritten note.
If it's above a certain dollar figure, or we're going to invite them into the list, or we're going to call them and say thank you. The real success in these matrix is not only really defining what's appropriate X and y, what you do, dollar value, or where the gift might go, but is assigning accountability for who's going to do the work.
If you're a small shop, you may have 3 or 4 things on your list every day of different areas of a philanthropy effort that you are responsible for. You're not solely doing this in a large organization. There's a lot of people who often we hear, well, they're going to do it, and they are over there saying, well, I thought he was going to do it.
And then he's saying, well, I thought she was going to do it. The accountability piece is critical because when you put people's names in there and then work their jobs into that matrix, or at least that part of the job, they know every day or every couple of days or whatever your rhythm is in terms of timing. I got to do these things, and there's nothing worse than building out a matrix like this to help you build stewardship, to make the relationship more meaningful, to really engage donors where they want to be engaged and then nothing gets done.
You got a great looking matrix, but there's no accountability or responsibility. The accountability component can be tracked in the CRM on a simple spreadsheet. I recommend the CRM, but what it does is it removes that ambiguity. It ensures proportional allocation of time and effort. The bigger the opportunity, the bigger the gift, the more time we're going to spend, and it aligns with our overall stewardship, hopefully values and obligations to treat the donor with the respect and with the dignity and with the appreciation we should have for them engaging us by making a gift.
So let's start moving right into that tactical before we get to the six things. Just some bigger picture items that I would keep in mind if you're looking to develop this kind of opportunity, this kind of tool. The first is, is that I would not overengineered it. It is better to start smaller and build into it. If you're a small organization and you've got 50 things that we can do at 25 gift levels, you're never going to get it actually done.
So number one, keep it simple. Number two, this is kind of the high level stuff. Before we get into the really tactical is use standard donor segmentation rather than trying to create new ones. It could be a simple segmentation as dollar level where maybe you've got multiple divisions of your organization law school versus a school of ed versus medical school.
Don't try to over engineer the donor segmentation pieces. Third, make sure that you have a baseline set for each one of them for each level and that you roll up, meaning that if you have the easiest, simplest thing and thank you letter within 24 hours, everybody gets that. And then you may skip a level of, let's say below $25.
And if it's above 100, they get a board member thank you. Note it builds, they get both. And then the third level they get something else you want to build into this. The third, as I've mentioned when we talk about Grandview before we get to the tactical, is, is that you need to assign individual responsibility. Clearly, even if one person owns multiple tasks, you can't have holes.
Well, I thought they were going to do that. I thought they were going to do that. A matrix is a matrix, if done correctly, is a prioritization tool. It protects limited time and limited resources from being consumed by really low impact things that don't really make a difference, to focus on the things that are at the highest possible levels, that donors value, that build a relationship, that give them the appropriate attention if they want it, they so deserve.
It's not meant to be more than that, but it certainly can frame. It's actually what gets done every day. And so the question before I get to the six tactical things, can you put your hands on a donor stewardship matrix in your office? I think I'll have people who will listen to this go, oh yeah, we do these things.
And I'd come back to, well, that's great, that's wonderful. That's what we want. Can you show me The Matrix to show me the Excel spreadsheet or the spreadsheet with all these things? And or is everyone assigned? Is everyone got something to do? And so as a part of this process, I come back to where we started. Do you have a physical document?
Print it out or potentially print out if it's on a computer that you can use as a template so everyone knows exactly what's going on. So let's go all the way down to the tactical. What are the six things I would recommend that are quintessential to creating the right donor stewardship matrix? Number one, create clear gift. Here's to start.
Try to avoid excessive segmentation. The reason why is, is that if you create a matrix that's way too detailed, way to segmented in less, you're a major academic institution or major health care academic medical center that you have, you know, 4 or 5 people in the stewardship office. If you make it too complicated, you will work against yourself in terms of compliance or the idea of getting it done.
Simplicity increases compliance. So number one, keep it simple, which sound like the broad strokes I was talking about a moment ago. Number two, there will be a natural reaction or natural inclination to want to customize a lot of stuff. And if you remember back to episode 216 where I talked about automation and AI and stewardship, I said, this is one of the areas that we can create more customization.
If we have AI or automation tools. But a lot of places who don't even have a matrix that's like way down the road, which means you need to standardize the deliverables. Simple things, building in templates that can be used over and over and over for acknowledgment and reporting, and you only customize where it's absolutely required to. Often we think we have to create something for every individual donor that's unique.
That's great if every donor is a $5 million donor, I'm not opposed to that. But what ends up happening is it burns staff time. It burns our limited, most limited, and important resource time. The more you standardize these deliverables and then do very individualized, limited, customized things for the very highest either donors or potential donors, the more likely you are to be successful with it.
Number three is document donor expectations at the point of the gift. Meaning, when you get notification that someone's either going to make a gift or that they've made a gift to, often we don't ask what we what they think they should get in terms of stewardship. Now, a lot of the time, I think we're afraid to ask because we think they're going to ask for a lot.
The reason we should ask, though, is, is that that's going to help us frame the matrix. Meaning if you have a $100 donor or let's say, a whole bunch of them and they all say, well, I want X, and it's easily standardized and can enhance their connection to who we are and what we do. Why in the world wouldn't we add that to the matrix?
So things like communication preferences, do they want email? Do they want a letter? My mom does not want to read something on her phone or her iPad. When it's important, she wants to see it on paper. I, on the other hand, am kind of 5050. My kids, I can tell you I don't even think they know how to spell paper.
All this is to say is that when you gather this information, it's going to help you inform what the matrix should look like, what's included, and then be able to deliver things in meaningful ways. So number three is document donor expectations. Number four, as I mentioned a couple of times, you need to assign responsibility where the x and the y axis meet i.e. if we do personal thank you notes to board members of $100 or more, who's going to be responsible for putting that note in front of the board member?
Because I don't think they're just going to show up and write it without some direction. And this is where one of the times we really don't want a shared responsibility. This is a militaristic to steal from my father. Understanding of responsibility. You do that. It's not meant to be punitive. But all too often, if we don't assign the responsibilities in these matrix, who's exactly going to do the work, then everybody literally looks at me and goes, well, I'm really busy.
I thought they were going to do it, put a name, even if it's a small team, even if you've got multiple responsibilities in the matrix, put a name to it. Specific number five, get it in the CRM. Now this one seems a little blasé, so to speak. Or simplistic. Yeah, we put the thank you letter in there. Great.
Do you take a copy or make notation that the board member sent a particular individual note? Do you have an attribute that allows people to know that they were invited to a special event that we do every year? And I'm not talking about like the gala and they pay for it like you do something special. Do you like, do you have like I used to take we the medical center would have M&Ms made with our logo on them, and I just took them all over the country.
Everybody loved them and they were different sizes depending on the gift. Do you say I dropped them off at the house? I did. Do you need to document all of these things when you send out donor surveys, when you provide some type of stewardship report, i.e. like an investment report or scholarships in who got them or whatever it might be, you need to ensure that information is in the CRM so that when run, we can run reports.
We know exactly what's being done and who's being done to. And are we actually getting any bang for our buck in the investment of the matrix of delivering what we say we're going to do? Number six. This is a living document, meaning you should review it and adjust regularly. I would say annually we're at least going to review it.
If you're a really big operation, maybe you could do it semiannually. But we're going to change the x y axis depending on the sophistication of our particular philanthropy. Meaning in a campaign, I'm going to add more things. If I lose a staff member or two because of whatever, I may have to adjust. You need to evaluate about what's being executed, what's successful, how many staff members are, what kind of fundraising you are doing, and refine that matrix based on that capacity, time, people and what you're looking as outcomes.
If only if you do it once and it lives for ten years and the organization changes, you haven't adjusted your stewardship to what's meaningful. So six things clear tiers, standardized deliverables were possible as much as possible. Document the experiences of or document the donor's experiences of what they want in stewardship so you can move the matrix appropriately, which kind of ties number six about reevaluating and redoing it or at least adjusting it.
Number four is assign ownership militaristic. Somebody's got to own the responsibility. Number five is get it in the CRM so we can run reports a disciplined process. And the last one is review it, make it a living document. I know this sounds elemental, but every time I seem to ask, can you show me a donor stewardship chart matrix?
They can't. Or too often they don't or won't. They don't have it. And I hear too often all we're doing stewardship. This will help dramatically increase the compliance that you want with stewardship to elevate donors to higher levels of giving. And at the end of the day, that's really what we want, isn't it? To build deeper, more meaningful relationships.
Donor bill of rights. We want to ensure that we are we are responsible to the donor to report and to engage, to let them know their gift made a difference. And a donor matrix chart does that. If it's used every day or every week, and we adjust it and we do the things that I've recommended as kind of the six tactical ones that allow us to better our relationships with people who've already given us money, which should be the next major conversations about them being the next donor at higher levels.
But that doesn't happen without stewardship. Think about spending just a few minutes putting that matrix together. And you might realize, because I've done this, you weren't actually doing all the things you think are they're being missed because we don't have the matrix to assign responsibility and know what level we want to do it. Don't forget to check out the blogs at Hallett Philanthropy two per week.
Quick reads, just things I see feel read two a week probably 90s maybe two minutes max. If you read slowly blog posts. These are not meant to be dissertations or books, just quick posts about different things that are going to challenge your thinking about leadership, about life, and about philanthropy. And if you'd like to reach out to me, it's podcast at Hallett Philanthropy.
Com I always end the same and sometimes I think it's too repetitious, but I do believe it's important. Philanthropy sits in the gap in the hole between free enterprise and government, where free enterprise on one side won't do certain things so they don't make money, and on the other side, government, which isn't that efficient at times they can't do everything.
And as a result, philanthropy, nonprofits, charity, being someone who wants to make the world a better place fits into that gap between the two to help those who have fallen in that gap. Which brings me to my all time favorite saying. Some people make things happen. Some people watch things happen. Then there are those who wondered what happened.
Interestingly enough, I don't say often enough the difference that the people I have the privilege of working with are making for their nonprofit, for their community, and I need to do that more often. So I'll start as a reminder to you here today. You're making a difference. Is it perfect? No. Are there challenges? Yes. Are there headaches? Yes.
Are there sometimes you just shake your head and go, what are we doing? Yes, but you're someone who's making things happen and you find other people in your office on boards, donors in the community, community leaders who are also wanting to make things happen for the people at the end of this equation who are wondering what happened. Who need a helping hand?
Maybe even organizations or parts of the community or aspects of community that need help as well. Don't ever underestimate the importance of the basics of philanthropy and the definition which we all too often forget. Love of mankind. Love of humankind. It isn't about money. It's about making a difference. And people who choose to be people who make a difference, people who choose to engage are changing lives.
And that's you every day. And if someone, no one else says it, I'll say it. Thanks for being a difference maker in the community in which you live. I'll look forward to seeing you the next time. Right back here on the next edition of Around with Randall. Don't forget. Make it a great day.