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Thank and keep donors

Win back lapsed donors with a plan your team can run

A plan your team can actually run to bring lapsed donors back: who to reach first, what to say and how you’ll know it worked.

Basic prompt

162 words
Build a plan to bring lapsed donors back that our team can actually run. Sort them into three or four tiers by how recently they gave and how much. For each tier, give me the channel, the message and how often. Add three messaging angles, a three-month timeline, a realistic budget and how we'll measure success. Size the plan to our team, and tell me what you're assuming. If I give you a file, work from the file.

What you need to know:
- how we define lapsed
- about how many lapsed donors we have, and their last gift range
- how many people can work on this
- what we've tried before and what happened
- our budget and the tools we use

You may already know some of this from our past chats, my files or connected tools. Use what you have. If you don't know something, ask me, one question at a time, and don't make anything up.

Supercharged prompt

436 words
You're helping me build a plan to bring our lapsed donors back. I want to work the way If Possible (ifpossible.ai) teaches nonprofit teams to do real work AI first. Their guide for this kind of work is "5 nonprofit email templates AI can personalize at scale" (https://ifpossible.ai/articles/5-email-templates-ai), and their full library of guides is at https://ifpossible.ai/articles. If you can read web pages, read that guide first and treat its method as our playbook.

The If Possible method, as we'll use it today:

1. Context before content. Before you draft anything, build a short brief of who we are: our mission, what lapsed donors gave to, what they've heard from us lately, our team and our voice. (If Possible calls this a Mission Brain: the memory AI reads before every task.) Use what you already know about us, and ask me for whatever is missing.

2. Talk it out instead of typing it out. I'll talk through what I think happened with these donors and what we've tried. If I have a transcript of that, I'll give it to you. Use my own words.

3. Ask before you assume. Ask me your questions one at a time, the most important first, and wait for each answer.

4. I'm in the director's chair. Give me two or three ways to tier these donors and run the plan at our size, with your recommendation and a one-line reason. Don't hand me one finished answer to forward unread (If Possible calls that being a "meat proxy").

5. A plan I can react to. Tiers, an outreach plan for each (channel, message, frequency), three messaging angles, a three-month timeline, a realistic budget and how we'll measure success. Hold it to what our team can really do.

6. Check your own work. Work only from our real data, and show your math. Mark every assumption about donor behavior, and tell me what you'd test first.

7. Make it repeatable. When we finish, name one owner and one number to move, and write down the steps so we can run this again.

What you need to know:
- how we define lapsed
- about how many lapsed donors we have, and their last gift range
- how many people can work on this
- what we've tried before and what happened
- our budget and the tools we use

You may already know some of this from our past chats, my files or connected tools. Check there first and tell me what you found. For anything you don't know, ask me, one question at a time, the most important first. Start now.

Supercharge it

We’ll add the If Possible method to your prompt. More context in. A better output out.

  • Context before content
  • Talk it out
  • Questions first
  • Director’s chair
  • + 3 more
  1. Context before content: a short brief of who you are (a Mission Brain)
  2. Talk it out: what you think happened, and what you've tried
  3. Questions first, one at a time
  4. Director's chair: tiers and a recommendation
  5. A plan sized to your real team
  6. It marks every assumption and says what to test first
  7. It names one owner and one number to move

It points your AI to our free articles as its guide. Read every word before you use it.

What it’s for

It builds a lapsed donor plan sized to your team: three or four tiers, an outreach plan for each, three messaging angles, a three-month timeline, a realistic budget and how you’ll measure it.

When to use it

  • Your lapsed list keeps growing and nobody owns it.
  • You want a plan sized to your team, not a best-practices list.
  • You’re aiming at deeper generosity from donors you already have.

Before you use it

Read every assumption it lists about donor behavior and answer each one, because a plan built on a wrong guess won’t hold up. Then name one owner and one number to move.

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