Best Practices in Donor Engagement

Although leading foundations have a wealth of information and experience that high-net worth donors could leverage to make better philanthropic investments, few make that information available in ways that invite them to do so.  On the private foundation side, that's because we have found few which see donor engagement as part of their role. When these foundations talk about leveraging additional resources, it is usually public dollars they are pursuing.

Public charities, on the other hand, are established in large part to create bridges between community needs and high-net worth donors whose resources can be attracted to meet those needs. As competition in the philanthropic marketplace has increased, public charities have begun pursuing much more sophisticated efforts to package and communicate what they know in ways that are valued by donors.

From the home of Microsoft and Starbucks, the Seattle Foundation has just released a new report, "Healthy Community: What You Need to Give Strategically" that nails state of the art in this domain. Broken into key issue areas, each page of the report provides information including what community members are saying, first-person blurbs on why donors are giving, promising strategies donors can pursue within each area, as well organizational examples of "what's working." Armed with this information, donors who have a fund with the Seattle Foundation can then view pre-screen grant requests in each area.

This report represents a major step forward for foundations who want to speak to donors rather than speaking at them. This is miles ahead of most of the newsletters and annual reports we see from most public charities.

Welcome next steps will be a.) When the report is live on-line (rather than in PDF) offering donors the ability to shop around and drill through to related proposals, and b.) When donors can contrast and compare performance metrics from giving options in each issue area.

Carla E. Dearing