Thanks, Then Another Ask?

The finding in its setting

Sudhir, Fong and Roy (2019) varied HelpAge India’s annual thank-you letter to about 200,000 previous donors. Across everyone, adding an explicit request for another donation had no statistically significant effect on giving. Split by giving history, the response differed. Donors who had given recently, often or in larger amounts responded less well to the request, while lapsed, infrequent and smaller donors responded better. The authors estimate that sending the request only to the groups that responded well could raise donations by about 6–11%, a back-of-envelope calculation from their results rather than a separate test.

The letter was a once-a-year thank-you. The study shows that giving history can change how a request inside one is received. It doesn’t give you a permanent rule about whom to ask.

Four messages that all start with thank you

Most teams send several kinds of message that open with thanks. They have different triggers and owe the donor different things. This guide considers an invitation inside the annual thank-you; decisions about welcome messages belong with the welcome series.

Eligibility comes before assignment

Two questions get mixed together in a thank-you test. Eligibility asks whether this donor should receive an invitation at all, given everything else going on with them. Assignment asks which eligible donors get which version, and it should be random if you want to learn anything.

Decide eligibility from facts in the record: the donor’s preferences, how and when they give, whether a payment is failing or a pledge instalment is due, whether someone owes them a reply or a report, and what else is scheduled to reach them in the next few weeks. Don’t decide it from who you think will give.

Then define your comparison groups by date, with a reference date, before anyone is assigned. People who unsubscribe or ask for fewer emails after assignment leave every later send at once and stay in the analysis under the version they were assigned. Dropping them from the count would hide the reaction you most need to see.

Linden’s November letter

Linden Neighbors pairs volunteers with older people who live alone and runs a shopping minibus for them. Each November it emails donors an annual thank-you with a short account of the year. Its year-end appeal on November 24 and Giving Tuesday email on December 1 use the donor list frozen on October 31: donors who gave between November 1, 2024 and October 31, 2026.

This year Tomás, the development director, proposes adding a paragraph to the November 10 thank-you inviting a gift toward a second minibus. On November 2, before any talk of a test, Tomás asks Aisha in donor care for the contact timeline of every donor with open activity. The first one Aisha brings back belongs to Irene Kowalski.

Irene has three messages planned in three weeks, at least two of them requests for money, and an answer that is almost two weeks late. The proposed invitation is about the shopping service, the very thing Irene asked about. Sending it before the answer would tell Irene the organization had time to ask but not to reply.

Tomás pauses the invitation for Irene. Aisha gets the answer from finance and sends it with the annual report by November 6. Irene receives the plain thank-you on November 10. The November 24 appeal goes ahead, because Irene’s preferences allow appeal emails.

From one record to the whole list

Aisha applies the same checks to all 2,400 donors who gave between November 1, 2023 and October 31, 2026. Each donor goes into the first row that applies, so nobody is counted twice.

A decision for each group

Tomás defines the groups before anyone is assigned. Current donors made their last gift between November 1, 2024 and October 10, 2026; lapsed donors made theirs between November 1, 2023 and October 31, 2024. Of the 1,500 eligible, 1,100 are current and 400 are lapsed.

Aisha assigns the lapsed donors on November 3 and saves the file read-only. Gifts from November 10 to December 8 will be matched to the version each donor was assigned, and the team will review on December 15. Tomás uses the completed appeal test linked below to show colleagues how to read the result group by group, against everyone originally assigned.

Check before you press send

Ask a colleague who wasn’t in the planning to pick five eligible donors at random and read each one’s contact calendar for the next six weeks. If any would receive a request before an answer they’re owed, or two requests close together, fix the list before sending.

After the window, confirm that every receipt went out on its normal timing and every reply was answered within the agreed time, in both versions. Development owns the decision sheet, donor care owns open issues and replies, and finance owns receipts.