Mary Weingartner
Managing Director, Donor Relations | UNICEF USA
Individualized Stewardship Plans in Principle and Practice was a virtual workshop focused on creating strategic individualized stewardship plans (ISPs) for donors and partners. Last month, six diverse facilitators brought experience from higher education, healthcare, community service, environmental, and humanitarian organizations to a three-hour professional development course consisting of a presentation, panel discussion, Q&A, and small group discussion. We shared best practices, ideas, ambitions, and challenges with 30 donor relations professionals from across the U.S. and Canada. Together, we explored the very real ways donor relations professionals can propel our relationships with individual donors, and we discussed how to establish ourselves as strategic partners.
Before
In the planning stage, the facilitators repeatedly returned to a few themes, and ultimately, we developed a workshop that emphasized the following:
- There is no “right” way to build an individualized stewardship program. Each organization is unique in size, donor base, staffing, and data quality, etc.
- There is no “right” way to build an individualized stewardship plan. Each organization, donor, and relationship is unique.
- Individualized stewardship plans should be rooted in data and strategy with the intention to help an organization reach specific goals.
- Donor relations professionals bring expertise, knowledge, and a valuable strategic perspective to individualized stewardship planning. We are not the “deli counter.” We are consultants, strategists, consensus-builders, subject-matter experts, and much more.
- Individualized stewardship planning programs are challenging to scale and sustain. They must be built cautiously and avoid putting donors in “permanent stewardship” with no strategic objective.
During
The three-hour workshop truly flew by, and we packed in plenty.