Donor and fundraising letters
Donor thank-you letter examples
A donor thank-you letter is not a receipt and should never arrive looking like one. The receipt is a legal document and can be printed; the thank-you is the thing that decides whether there is a second gift. Send both, and do not let the first one do the job of the second.
Written by Autopen Australia · Updated
First-time donor
[FIRST NAME],
Thank you for giving to [ORGANISATION] for the first time.
Your gift goes into [PROGRAMME], which this month means [CONCRETE THING]. Not a figure of speech - that is literally what the money buys.
We will write to you a couple of times a year to tell you what happened. If that is more than you want, say so and we will leave you be.
[NAME], [ROLE]
Regular giver
The group most often taken for granted, because the money arrives automatically and nobody has to notice.
[FIRST NAME],
You have been giving monthly since [YEAR], which means [ORGANISATION] has been able to plan rather than hope. That is worth more than the amount suggests and it is easy for us to stop noticing.
So: noticed, and thank you.
[NAME], [ROLE]
In memory of someone
Restrained. The donor is grieving and the letter is not about the charity.
[FIRST NAME],
Thank you for your gift in memory of [NAME OF DECEASED].
We will use it in [PROGRAMME] and we will not write to you about anything else unless you ask us to.
With sympathy,
[NAME], [ROLE]
Where the donor gave for a specific reason
[FIRST NAME],
You wrote on the form that you were giving because of [REASON]. Thank you for telling us. Most people do not, and it changes how we read the gift.
Your money is going to [PROGRAMME]. I will write in [MONTH] with what it did.
[NAME], [ROLE]
Getting it right
- What to mention. What the money does, stated concretely rather than in programme language. The donor’s own words back to them where they gave for a stated reason. The amount only where it was a major gift and naming it reads as recognition rather than accounting.
- What to leave out. The phrase "your generous donation", which appears in every charity letter ever sent. A request for another gift, which converts the thank-you into an appeal. Statistics the donor cannot picture.
- How long. 60 to 120 words.
- How personal. Warm without being effusive. Donors give because they decided to, not because they wanted to be thanked extravagantly, and over-thanking reads as surprise that they gave.
Personalising more than a handful
The fields that earn their place here: [FIRST NAME], [ORGANISATION], [PROGRAMME], [YEAR], [REASON].
Never merge a donation amount into a thank-you for a small gift. A letter saying "thank you for your gift of $20" reads as a ledger entry, and it reads worse to the person who gave twenty than to the person who gave two thousand.
Before any run, read the piece with the longest value in your data, the shortest, and the empty one. If all three read as English the merge is sound. Personalising direct mail at scale covers the rest.
Sending these at volume
An appeal that brings in twelve hundred gifts creates twelve hundred thank-yous due within the fortnight, which is the week the fundraising team has least capacity.
Autopen Australia writes each piece individually with a real ballpoint, personalises every piece from your list, written into the sentence rather than dropped into a gap, hand-addresses the envelopes, prints your supplied letter or artwork before it is written on and inserts, collates and seals.
Thanking a few thousand donors after an appeal? How charity runs work
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Writing more of these than you have evenings
Tell us roughly how many and what they say. We will come back with an exact price and a production window.