Fact: First time donors are much less likely to give again if they don't feel appreciated.
Fact: The #1 thing a donor wants to know - across every age bracket - is the impact of their gift.
Express sincere thanks and connect donors to your ministry by using a Workflow to automate communication to first-time givers.
Creating this engaging Workflow is simple and steps are laid out below. Modify this to fit your church setup as needed.
Find the left navigation menu and select Workflows.
Give the newly-added Workflow a name that makes it easily recognizable. (Ex: Giver - First Time Donor Thank You)
Add a brief description that reviews your goal or what the workflow will do. (Ex: Send an automated email to all first-time donors. Assign an Interaction to send a thank-you note). This helps bring clarity when reviewing at a later point and focus on the goal of the workflow while building it.
Now, add triggers to start building the actions of your Workflow. Since we are working with donations, the Giving-focused triggers are what we want to use. Specifically the Giving -- Amount trigger.
Select that trigger and then the Group(s) that the workflow should look for. In the example, we will look for anyone that is in the Guest group. Then we want to look for anyone that has given over $.01.
Note: The workflow will fill in the details of the trigger parameters. You can see here the details along the top are A member of -Status - Guest gives $.01 to any fund in one gift.
Next, add actions to take when the trigger is activated. For example, you may want a pastor or volunteer to send a brief hand-written thank-you note. Use an Interaction to assign this to the correct person with details of what needs to be followed up.
For an immediate response to the donor, send an email expressing appreciation for the gift! Again, make sure to express sincere gratitude as well as include the impact of their gift. For some ideas and pre-created templates you can use, see our tips below:
How to Write Thank-You Letters to Donors
How to Write Thank You Letters and Emails to Donors
This will let us engage the donor right away and you can add a personal touch by automatically filling in their name using the '@' placeholders. Options are found at the bottom of the message field.
NOTE: Make sure the placeholder is CAPITALIZED or it will not work.
The last important item to add for this simple workflow is the Update Progress action. This action makes sure that after the other actions have completed, the database will not run this workflow again for this person. It declares, "I have already run this and don't need to again."
All our triggers, actions, and customization have been added so we need to save the work done. Use the DONE button to save your Workflow!
Your new Workflow is now set up and ready run. Click the SAVE button to add the Workflow to the list.
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