Advancement professionals must determine their donors' wants and needs before using the latest digital communications tools in stewardship activities, says a CASE faculty member.

"I'm a huge advocate for surveying donors and talking to donors and asking them what it is they want and need," says Angela Joens, executive director of development outreach at the University of California, Davis. "I don't think in today's society we should guess... I think we can make generalizations, but to really be effective in our field, we have to know our donors."

Joens, who chairs the upcoming Annual Conference for Donor Relations Professionals, adds that institutions should carefully plan before using more direct email and social media tools to steward donors.

"The most important thing if you're going to grow your [digital stewardship] program or add new things is figure out how you're going to systematically do this and make sure you can manage it," she says. "Instead of saying we're going to send this [communication] out to everyone and we're going to do this every week, [you need to] really figure out if you can manage it at a small level."

Joens offers in-depth advice on using digital communications in stewardship activities—including several examples of successful efforts—in this month's episode of Advancement Talk, available to those with CASE premier membership.

This article is from the March 2013 issue of BriefCASE.
Please share your questions and comments with Pam Russell via e-mail at russell@case.org or by telephone at +1-202-478-5680.