September 25, 2025  Don’t Make It a Transaction
by Arthur C. Criscillis, Ed.D.
Managing Partner
Many organizations have donor recognition societies for various types of giving—leadership annual giving, planned giving, cumulative giving, and consistency in giving. These societies are set up to recognize giving behavior that is important and to encourage people to make those gifts. While the value and importance of such societies in prompting individuals to make gifts is open to debate, my intention here is not to join that debate, but rather to address what I consider to be a mistake in many of the giving societies that have been set-up: Benefits. In too many instances, these giving societies have specifically articulated benefits for members. So, for example, members may receive quarterly communications, invitations to an event or events, and decals/bookmarks, to name but a few. The key point here is not what is offered, but rather that specific benefits of any type are offered. When benefits are specifically articulated, it reveals a lack of confidence in the power of philanthropy to have an impact. In short, a lack of belief in the actual case for making a gift. Most donors give to have an impact on something they care about. When benefits are specified up front, the act of giving is subtly transformed into a transaction: giving to get, versus giving to have an impact. When benefits are specified, expectations are unnecessarily created. When that specific gift (leadership annual, planned, major) was made, the existing expectation was primarily that the gift would have an impact—no more, no less. By articulating specific benefits, the donor will now have the expectation that “X”, “Y”, and/or “Z” will occur. As a result, all you can now do is fulfill an expectation. If you fail to do it, then you will have (needlessly) disappointed the donor. If those benefits are not articulated but are still part of what you want to do with and for donors of a giving society, you can surprise and delight them. Most of the benefits tend to be “things” either given to the donor or “experiences” offered to the donor. That is fine, but the overarching and overall objective should be to help the donor feel appreciated and to understand even better the impact of that donor’s gift. Rather than an easily defined checklist serving as benefits, we would be better served by thinking about what sort of communications and engagement activities are appropriate. Giving societies have their place, I believe. But in thinking about what membership entails, we should focus more on what we want them to experience, how we want them to feel, and how membership can tie them more closely to us by highlighting how they are furthering our mission. An outlier in this regard can be things like athletics and the arts, which offer ticketing benefits. That is a different kettle of fish because the people involved in that are indeed engaging in a transaction. It’s all about getting the tickets and the associated experiences—it’s not primarily philanthropic. I can choose the seating arrangement I prefer. I can have early access to tickets. I can get favorable parking. In many instances, organizations view this as a model or template for structuring giving societies, but the nature of the gift is often different, i.e., it is transactional.
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“People need to be very careful with how much control they turn over to AI. We used it recently on something and found that the output was using the British spelling of certain words that differ from the US spelling. This was a US-based AI being accessed from inside the continental US, yet it was using the language of a different country. If AI did that in your donor communications and you are not paying close attention, you run the risk of exposing your use of impersonal AI in the relationship process or, perhaps worse, looking illiterate to the donor.”