{"id":1150,"date":"2016-04-17T19:23:05","date_gmt":"2016-04-17T19:23:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/faganm.com\/blog\/?p=1150"},"modified":"2016-04-17T19:23:47","modified_gmt":"2016-04-17T19:23:47","slug":"when-to-ask-for-more-donations-information-etc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/faganm.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/17\/1150\/","title":{"rendered":"When to ask for more (donations, information, etc.)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Okay, so I haven&#8217;t written a blog post in almost three years. My rants have been going unranted.\u00a0Two fairly recent experiences inspired this\u00a0one.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>I donated some money to a charity (online, of course), and within weeks received by snail mail a request for further donations.<\/li>\n<li>I lost my wallet and had to get new ID and health cards. When they arrived by mail, they both reminded me to inform them if I move and included forms that I could send back by mail with my new address.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>You would think it would go without saying that if I donated some money to an\u00a0organization, I wouldn&#8217;t immediately want to donate more. If I did, I&#8217;d have made a bigger initial donation. You would also think that if I just got a new card (and provided my current address to do so), then a week or so later I probably wouldn&#8217;t have moved. I also imagine that very few people file the form away, and remember to retrieve it when they do move, years later. If so, they&#8217;re far more organized than almost everyone else.<\/p>\n<p>What to do instead<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If your organization receives a modest financial donation from a new donor, wait at least six months before requesting another one.<\/li>\n<li>When you request a new donation, remind them of the amount of their prior one.<\/li>\n<li>When requesting another donation, use the same medium as the donation was made in. If I mailed in a cheque, sure, ask again by snail mail. But if I donate online, and have provided my email address, then ask me by email.<\/li>\n<li>If your goal is to keep track of when people move, you can&#8217;t let them know that upfront, but don&#8217;t ask them for their new address immediately or bother with a form. Instead, ask, infrequently, whether they have or are about to move. No more than once a year. I&#8217;d suggest asking by email every year and by snail mail every five years or something like that. And that&#8217;s if the information can&#8217;t be determined through other means (e.g. tax filings?), and you reset the counter after every move received.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Okay, so I haven&#8217;t written a blog post in almost three years. My rants have been going unranted.\u00a0Two fairly recent experiences inspired this\u00a0one. I donated some money to a charity (online, of course), and within weeks received by snail mail &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/faganm.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/17\/1150\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[739,487,740,738],"class_list":["post-1150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-behaviour","tag-charity","tag-donation","tag-user-experience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/faganm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/faganm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/faganm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faganm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faganm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1150"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/faganm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1153,"href":"https:\/\/faganm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150\/revisions\/1153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/faganm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faganm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faganm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}