Donor Stewardship: Educating and Engaging Your Supporters in a Habitat 2.0 World

Habitat International has always operated in our service areas, but with Habitat 2.0 in full swing the need to communicate this complex relationship to our community is more important than ever before. 

Of course, it’s complicated….

Where does the local mission end, and the global mission begin? And more importantly, how can donors trust that their donor intentions are being followed?

It’s our job to educate and communicate this new reality. As complicated as it may be, maintaining local relationships is the lifeblood of our mission. Now is the time to be transparent, consistent and clear about how donors can support your local work.

In this guide, we’ll combine what we’ve learned from community conversations with affiliates, and overlap those strategies with industry best practices and tools to help you navigate this tricky time.

Why Should You Care About Explaining the Local vs. International Relationship?

Respecting donor intent is the golden rule of fundraising. 

If a donor feels their money isn’t being used the way they expected, you risk losing their support.

I recently heard a nightmare from a local affiliate about a donor who, after 10 years, realized their donations had been going to Habitat for Humanity International, not supporting the affiliate’s local work. 

The donor was frustrated and upset by the lack of transparency and felt misled. In the end, they stopped donating altogether—both to Habitat International and the local affiliate.

This is a clear reminder of how critical education and transparency are when it comes to explaining the relationship between Habitat International and your local office. Misunderstandings like this hurt everyone involved.

As we know, most donors want to make a difference in their own communities.

Regardless of your Habitat 2.0 path, it’s our job to make sure they understand how to do that, and how their donations are being used locally. The more clearly you can explain the relationship, the easier it is to build trust—and trust is what keeps donations coming.

Explaining the HFHI Relationship: Talking Points You Can Use

If communicating this complicated relationship is so important, how do we get started?

We need to find clear, consistent ways to explain it.

Below are a few talking points that you may be able to use to describe how things work more clearly.

Note that none of these talking points take into account your specific Habitat 2.0 collaborative communications path or tier. So, be sure to customize these to your needs.

We Operate Independently, But Share a Mission

Habitat for Humanity International is the parent organization that provides local affiliate offices with operating support and resources, but our affiliate operates as an independent organization. Our local community members know best what our communities need to thrive. We listen to those community needs and allocate our resources to help serve the unique needs of local residents.

Local Donations Stay Local

Donations made directly to [insert your organization name] stay right here in our community to help support local residents. 

Global Reach, Local Impact

We are part of a network of Habitat for Humanity organizations fighting for safe, decent housing in over 70 countries. We’re proud to be part of that global mission while focusing our resources, programs and impact on the needs in our local communities. When you donate locally your funding work in our local communities.

Shared Mission, Local Solutions

We share the same mission as Habitat for Humanity International—to create a safe, decent place for everyone to call home. But, we carry out that mission locally in [insert local service area]. Whether we’re building new homes, repairing existing homes, serving veterans or offering financial literacy classes, we focus our mission work on the needs of our local community members.

A Support System for Local Affiliates

Habitat for Humanity International acts as a support system for local affiliates like ours. They help with national initiatives like advocacy, organizational training, national funding partnerships, mission awareness and more. Habitat for Humanity International provides guidance and resources, but the day-to-day operations of our work is led by local staff, community partners, donors and volunteers.

Shared Campaigns

Sometimes, Habitat for Humanity International runs national fundraising campaigns, which can help raise funds and awareness for our affiliate. If you donate through one of these campaigns, a portion of your donation may go to support a larger global efforts, but if you designate your gift locally it will support our local work in [insert service area].

How Can We Create a Winning Stewardship Plan That Educates?

Step 1: Set Clear Goals

Before diving in, ask yourself:

What do we want to achieve with our stewardship efforts?

Maybe you want to:

• Boost donor retention by 15% this year.
• Increase volunteer participation.
• Convert 20% of one-time donors to monthly givers.

Whatever your goals, it’s important to write them down. This helps you focus your energy and get the whole team on the same page. 

It can be scary to write down your goals because it can mean looking at failure further down the road. But, that’s not what this is.  Writing it down keeps us all clear on what we’re trying to achieve.  

As always, we recommend you write down your goals using the S.M.A.R.T. goals framework – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (S.M.A.R.T.).

Step 2: Get the Right Team Together

Who should be involved in your stewardship efforts?

Don’t go it alone! Bring together folks from different departments:

• Development team
• Communications staff
• Program managers
• Board members
• Volunteers

Each brings a unique perspective and unique relationships that can enrich your stewardship strategy.

Step 3: Create the Right Message & Get Everyone on the Same Page

It’s critical to get everyone in your organization on the same page. Describing the relationship between HFHI and your affiliate can be complex, so it’s really important that everyone is telling the same story.

Start by developing some simple Q&A worksheets. Get your team together and walk them through the talking points.

It may seem silly, but it is also worth doing some practice work as a group to help deliver the information naturally.

Step 4: Develop a Tactical Communications Plan

With Habitat 2.0 already in full swing, the next 12 months is a critical time to start connecting with your closest supporters and partners to give them a better sense of any changes they may experience with local fundraising activities.

Group your community supporters into clear segments (ex. major donors, corporate partners, monthly donors, volunteers, etc.), assign those segments to a person on your team, or to a specific communications tactic.

Your best supporters and partners should be communicated with through more personal ways – phone calls, in-person meetings, exclusive events, etc.

For other segments, we recommend considering a multi-channel approach – social media, email newsletters and mail.

As you continue to engage your community in 2025, it’s important to stay on message and continue to reiterate how the relationship between HFHI and your affiliate works.

Remember, most people won’t remember anything until they hear it 7 times!

Communicate Local Impact and Gratitude

Every time a donor gives, it’s because they felt they could make a difference. It’s important that we consistently communicate the impact that their support is having locally and reiterate how they can continue to support your local work.

Try to communicate impact to your community at least quarterly if not more frequently.

Use Storytelling to Bring Your Mission to Life

As humans, we’re hardwired to understand the world and remember things through stories. As communicators, it’s our job to leverage this. 

Stories stick with community members. When telling your stories be sure to utilize stories that have a narrative arc – context, challenge, overcome, call to action.

With digital marketing, especially social media video storytelling, creates so many great opportunities to tell engaging stories. Format your stories so they can be used across different channels – website, email, social media, in-person events and personal outreach.

Use Infographics to Deliver Concrete Data and Metrics

Some community members will be moved by emotions, others are interested to see the scale of their impact. Numbers can help support stories for these community members.

Connect support to specific outcomes and impact:

• “Your $200 donation helped us build an accessible ramp through our critical home repair program on Main Street recently.”
• “Thanks to your 300 volunteer hours last year, we were able to serve more than 20 families this year.”

Use infographics or simple charts to make the data easy to digest.

Personalize Your Communication

Create communications based on a supporter’s experience. Personalization makes supporters feel important and it dramatically increases the likelihood that they stick around.

Here are some ideas for personalization:

• Recognize volunteer time – “You spent 30 hours working at our latest development on Main Street. Your experience probably showed you how important tools are to do the job right. Will you help fund a new set of power tools to finish the job?”
• Recognize location – “The Johnson family has been your neighbor for the last 20 years, but with the rising cost of rent and homeownership, they haven’t been able to achieve the dream of owning a home in our community. Your donation will help us complete the construction of their new home on Main Street.”
• Recognize long-time support – “Thank you for being a loyal supporter of our work for the last 10 years. During that time, we’ve served over 200 families in our community.”

There are many other ways to personalize your communications. Try to be creative!

Bringing HFHI Donors into Your Local Work

As part of Habitat 2.0, some affiliates have received a list of HFHI donors in their service area that have donated to HFHI, but not the affiliate.

This is a huge opportunity to steward a new set of donors and bring them into your local work.

Here are a few things to do this most effectively:

• Don’t treat them like all your other donors: avoid the temptation to just add these donors into your CRM and treat them like all of your other donors. You need to have a an onboarding process to educate them on who you, what your relationship to HFHI is and your local impact. A custom donor onboarding series can be a helpful tool for this.
• Don’t just ask them for money immediately: just like any other new donor that comes into your organization, you need to pay special attention to these donors. Create a series of communications and engagement opportunities to build a relationship with them. Remember, these donors have never received any communications from you. Build a relationship first before asking them for money.
• Build an in-person relationship with them: many affiliates hold regular monthly, quarterly or semi-annual simple events for the purpose of engaging new donors. This can be a construction site tour, home tour, cocktail hours or orientations. These events are great opportunities to invite new donors and build a one-on-one relationship with them.
• Use automated onboarding if possible: many affiliates are using email automation for this process. Most email newsletter platforms like MailChimp or Constant Contact will allow you to add contacts into a series of emails that can be sent at regular intervals. We recommend building an onboarding series to tell your local story to engage this new group of donors.

Go Beyond Email Communications: How Can We Create Engaging Experiences for New Donors?

It’s great to communicate with supporters through social media, mail, phone, web and email.  However, at the end of the day, there’s no beating an experience in real life. Especially post-pandemic, personal interactions feel more valuable than ever.  

Here are a few ways to engage your supporters.

Host Exclusive Events

An exclusive event or one-on-one meeting can help make your supporters feel appreciated and special. Consider regular low-stress events that you can put together that won’t drain your team.

• Donor appreciation cocktail hours – have a relaxed event at a local bar, brewery or venue that allows supporters to come together and build a community. Try to get one of your partner families or local service recipients to tell their story.
• Behind-the-scenes tours – before you dedicate a home, give your supporters a quick tour of new home. Bring the partner family in to show your supporters around and tell their story.
• Access to thought leaders – invite a local official or thought leader to hold a small group presentation about a topic that interests your supporters.

Offer Volunteer Opportunities

Especially in the Habitat world, many donors want to do more than just write a check. Provide ways for them to get hands-on with your mission:

• Construction volunteering
• Skills-based opportunities (like pro bono consulting)
• Board or committee positions

How Can We Measure the Success of Our Stewardship Efforts?

It’s always great to know if what we’re doing is actually working, right? That’s why it’s so important to have a clear way to measure our progress. But measuring success isn’t just about winning or losing—it’s about learning.

Most of the time, results aren’t black and white. They fall somewhere in between. So, figuring out what worked and what didn’t is the key to getting better.

It’s not always easy, but creating a culture of learning within your organization is critical for continuous improvement. When we focus on learning, measuring becomes a helpful tool for growth, not just a way to hand out grades.

Some simple metrics that we used when I was in fundraising are:

• Donor retention rate
• Upgrade rate (donors increasing their giving)
• Lifetime value of donors
• Engagement rates (email opens, event attendance, etc.)

Most fundraising CRM’s should have these reports baked into them. If we use these reports on a regular basis, we can start to track, learn and adjust your strategies over time.