How to Show the Impact of Annual Gifts to Busy Donors

Raising money for annual campaigns takes creativity and a deep understanding of what motivates an organization’s supporters to give. Increasingly, donors want to know in detail the impact of their gifts. And more than ever, everyone’s busy, busy, busy.

Last spring, as the California Symphony began fundraising to support its 2017-18 season, the organization unveiled a new infographic to replace some of the arts group’s communications to donors. The graphic was the brainchild of the symphony’s new director of marketing and patron loyalty, Theresa Madeira. “It came into being after I looked at campaign materials from the previous year and found them text-heavy and quite confusing,” she says in an email to The Chronicle.

The goals of the new visual presentation, she says, were to create something appealing, easy to understand, and easy to repurpose in emails and on social media. Also, she adds, “It was about catering to time-pressed patrons whose attention span is increasingly limited.”

The graphic, titled “What Does Your Gift Support?,” spells out exactly what contributions pay for, up and down the financial scale, from the $50 it takes to transport a guest artist from San Francisco to the symphony hall to the $20,000 it takes to pay for one rehearsal. “I tried to use examples of items that were meaningful and appealing to donors and at price points that correlate to donor benefit levels,” Ms. Madeira says.

The piece, available here as a model for other charities looking to convey impact easily to annual-fund donors, helped the symphony meet its fundraising target during a campaign in May. The graphic is being repurposed for the group’s fall campaign, and Ms. Madeira says giving is also on track to meet the symphony’s annual goal. Plus, 20 percent of donations this year have come from new supporters.