So do you ever talk to your donors? Or Did you know that your donors are actually people

This isnt applicable to those managing corporate donors and the large individual donors. Those fat cats get a fair degree of face time (how scientific that process is is an altogether different matter). This is more about your average donor who expects little and gets even less.

Its important that anyone who has fundraising responsibilities is proactively communicating with donors. There's a wealth of information that can be gleaned by spending time communicating with these donors - vital insights for creating strategies or designing communication. And each of these interactions ensures that you build a loyal base of donors and ambassadors for your organisation.

The most accomplished exponent of this was (& probably is) Ingrid Srinath, ex-CEO at CRY who never lost an opportunity to insert her mail i.d in key communication pieces and thereby opened direct channels of access to a legion of supporters including donors, volunteers and media persons. The investments invariably pay off and i'm sure that most of those people continue supporting CRY in some form or the other.

Most of us dealing with large numbers of donors prefer donors to be this large faceless mass that should be kept at an arm's length. With the increasing proliferation of outsourcing to multiple agencies, that distance has now grown to more than just an arm's length!

So pick up that phone (no dont use a script - have a real conversation) or take a walk with the FTF executive as she knocks on doors... it can be a pretty humbling experience and also a very enriching one.