DEP is an Action Verb Blog Series

Part 1: Why “DEP”?

If you’ve been following Veritus Group for a while, you have likely heard of the tool we recommend for planning and accountability: the Donor Engagement Plan (or DEP). The DEP is a spreadsheet template that allows you to view your caseload at a glance, build out goals and annual touch point plans for your caseload donors, and hold yourself accountable to your plans and structure.

At Veritus, Jeff likes to say, “DEP is an action verb.” Even if someone isn’t using our spreadsheet tool for planning and accountability purposes, we still, somehow, want them to be “DEP-ing,” perhaps using their CRM or some other tool. It is the act of planning and holding yourself accountable that’s important.

In our next few blogs, I’ll walk you through what you should be thinking about as you are working through your own version of a DEP, whatever that may look like to you.

An important tenant of the Veritus Way is structure. We build out structure around major gifts or mid-level programs, including qualification, goal setting, and annual communication plans. All of those activities should be based on what we know about the donors’ communication preferences, passions, and interests. That’s a lot of info to retain, so it’s important to have some kind of system or tool to help you stay on top of that structure.

No one goes into a fundraising job with the intention of ignoring or neglecting their caseload donors. But it still happens. And that is because you have a busy job. Things get in the way. Those quiet donors—those who don’t require as much attention—can fly under the radar and be forgotten. And what we’ve found is a lot of basic database views in a CRM do not make it easy to view your full caseload at a glance, which makes it easier to miss people.

You can combat this by intentionally building an annual communication plan for every single donor and building systems to hold yourself accountable to that plan. Doing so allows you to get out of that reactive style fundraising and really focus on a proactive strategic approach. Making a plan for every donor is how you combat that value attrition that we see on every donor file. It takes time on the front end, but we know that if you invest the time and energy to thoughtfully build a strategic communication plan for every donor on your caseload, you will see it pay off in higher engagement and improved value attrition.

Some people worry that building a Donor Engagement Plan is going to take away from your time with donors. In fact, it’s designed to do just the opposite. Whether you’re using our spreadsheet or you have your own tools, taking the time to build your goals and plans for your donors is a critical element to the Veritus Way. Once you do the work of planning, it makes implementing those plans so much easier — and you’re guaranteed that no one gets missed. If you block calendar time and build DEP-ing into your schedule and routine, I promise you’ll get to a space where it becomes a tool working FOR you.

Whether you choose to use the Veritus spreadsheet or your own tool, a DEP is NOT meant to replace your database. Your database is still the source of truth and where all completed actions and activities should be captured. We value the importance of a database at Veritus. Any DEP system you develop should really only be for planning and accountability, not tracking details or completed actions.

While we love our Donor Engagement Plan template, what we love the most are gift officers who are able to find a system that helps them implement the Veritus Way successfully. So, we’re happy if you’ve found a system that works for you.

Once you’ve committed to building out a DEP of your own, you can check out my next blog for some strategies on how to build out your donor plans.

Part two will be available later this week, be sure you’re subscribed to our blog so you never miss a new post!