The Art of Saying Thank you: Amy Sample Ward, Darren Barefoot, and Michele Martin

My first job in the nonprofit field over 28 years ago was in development office at the New England Conservatory and later at the Boston Symphony.   In those days, I was the twenty-something accidental techie in the office who figured out the IBM memory typewriter.  That cool new tool helped us personalized typed letters and envelopes by letter you manually insert the greeting and it automatically typed out the letter.  (I'm embarrassed at how much paper I probably wasted (we didn't recycle in those days) and it took a lot of trial and error to get it to work properly.)

Those IBM typewriters saved time.  Before they arrived in the office, letters were hand typed and hand signed. And before that personal thank you notes were written, probably for gifts as small as ten dollars.  (Stamps were cheaper)

So fast forward to today.  We have these online tools for fund raising that make it easier for us get the job done more efficiently.   But what about a personal touch?   How do you keep a personal touch ...

I admit I might overdo saying thanks, but it is genuine.  But the new online tools create opportunities for many more donors, and with one little person like me -- personalized thanks are hard to scale.  It brings up the issue of capacity which translates to time commitment.   

All that to day I'm behind two or three days with saying thank you to a couple of friends for helping out with the America's Giving Challenge.

• Amy Sample Ward put the Global Giving Widget on her Facebook profile.   I got to meet Amy when I was in Portland earlier this month and enjoyed the opportunity to talk about social media and nonprofits. 

• Michele Martin of the Bamboo Project Blog wrote a terrific post about the campaign.  She set up the Global Giving fundraiser and donated too.  She also pointed to my facebook cause recruitment video.

• Darren Barefoot also write a post about our America's Giving Challenge efforts.  I've known of Darren Barefoot's work, but he really caught my attention in flickr with his "social media starfish."  That's where I learned about his newly published book, "Getting to First Base."  I have a copy, I'm reading it and will post a review once I'm done.  Of what I've read so far, if you work in social media and are looking for a little holiday gift for yourself,  but the book now.

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Comments

[Darren Barefoot]

You're welcome!

[Michele Martin]

Beth, it's my pleasure to help!

[Amy Sample Ward]

I plan to do more because you are such an inspiration and a joy to help support! Together we can make a difference, that's my motto!