Are you thanking the wrong half of your supporters?

First published on UK Fundraising on 10th January 2019. Updated 24th February 2026

How has your week been?

No, seriously. How would you answer that question?

And, more importantly, how quickly did it take you to come up with an answer?

30 minutes? An hour? I mean, going back over the last 7 days/168 hours/10,080 minutes of your life, analysing the good bits and bad bits and then weighing them up to come to a balanced conclusion must have taken you some time?

But, of course, you didn’t do that, did you? You came to an answer nearly immediately.

So, what has this unremarkable observation got to do with fundraising? And, in particular, how could it help us increase the impact of our Thank Yous?

When it comes to remembering and assessing our experiences it’s safe to say humans aren’t particularly rigorous in their evaluation methodology. Take this example, shared by Daniel Kahneman in “The Riddle of Experience versus Memory”:

In the podcast, Kahneman recalls a conversation with one of his students who had been listening to a recording of a piece of classical music. At the end of the recording there was “a dreadful screeching noise”. The student wasn’t happy, passionately telling Kahneman “it ruined the whole experience”.

Kahneman points out that this statement can’t be accurate. The screech wasn’t until the end of the recording. By the time the unpleasant noise occurred the student had already enjoyed an incredible performance. However, when it came to recalling his experience the quality of the performance counted for nothing. The student’s perception of the whole experience was solely defined by one negative moment.

While this might seem irrational, Kahneman attributes this to the fact that, when it comes to remembering and evaluating experiences, we have “Two Selves”.

The first is the Experiencing Self. This is the self that lives in the present. It perceives each of the detailed individual moments that make up the whole experience. The student’s Experiencing Self listened to every note of the recording and could, if encouraged, recall that detail.

The second is the Remembering Self. This is the self we use to summarise all of those individual moments, converting our detailed experience into a simple story. This enables us to make an immediate judgement when we are asked to reflect on past events (such as when someone pops up in our inbox asking how our week has been).

Entrusting this task to your Remembering Self is a lot quicker and easier for your brain than relying on your Experiencing Self to go back and assess every single moment before you can reach an answer. In Kahneman’s story it is the student’s Remembering Self that has created the damning review of the recording.

The Two Selves are not equal partners. As Kahneman says, when it comes to evaluating past experiences, the Remembering Self is the one that makes decisions.

And, thanks to a number of mental shortcuts, it does so at great speed.

One of the shortcuts our Remembering Self relies on is considering how we felt at two key points:

• The point in the experience when we had the strongest feeling (the peak). (This could be a positive, pleasurable feeling, or a negative, painful one.)
• The end of the experience

The Remembering Self considers the average of our feelings at these two moments. In the case of the student, the screech was both the end point and the peak – the student experienced a strong feeling of anger and disgust that outweighed any delight he had felt during the performance. This explains why this one negative moment was so instrumental in defining his memory of the experience.

I’m glad you asked. You see, I think this phenomenon helps to explain one of fundraising’s great mysteries – why so many donors complain about not being thanked when the vast majority of fundraisers say they religiously thank every donor for every gift.

When fundraisers create thanking processes and supporter/donor journeys they do so with the Experiencing Self in mind. So, they might come up with a process that includes:

• Sending an automated receipt following the donation
• Sending a follow-up letter, thanking the supporter for the donation
• Subscribing the supporter to a regular newsletter
• Segregating future mailings so they include a line acknowledging their previous support
• Sending a physical or digital copy of the annual report at the end of the year

There is nothing wrong with any of these approaches – they all have a role to play. However, this entire approach is based on the idea that each interaction has a cumulative effect and that the donor’s experience and satisfaction will increase with each new touchpoint. As we’ve seen, that would be true if the Experiencing Self was in charge.

But it’s not.

And, with no pleasure-boosting peak or end to engage the more influential Remembering Self, the experience becomes forgettable (or, worse, defined by some other pain point within the donation journey).

As we’ve seen above, if we want the Remembering Self to take note, we need to plan for the supporter’s experience to have a positive peak and an excellent end. The good news is that your Thank You has the potential to fulfil both of these roles.

As fundraisers, we don’t tend to think of donations as having endings. We talk about our relationships with supporters as being ongoing and long-term. However, the reality is that many supporters (especially first-time donors and impulse givers) will view the experience of making a donation as being a self-contained action. For your supporter’s Remembering Self at least, the Thank You marks the end point. So, if we can provide the supporter with a positive peak at this point it will have a disproportionate impact on how they remember their experience of making a gift.

So, what makes a positive peak?

When it comes to peaks we can think of the Remembering Self as being a bit like a car dashboard camera. When things are going normally, or as expected, the Remembering Self sits inactive in the background. It only starts to record when something significant or unexpected happens.

All of the touchpoints in the example above can be described as normal – they follow the script for what someone might expect when they make a donation. They probably expect to receive confirmation their donation has been completed. They probably expect to receive a basic thank you. They probably expect to receive further marketing from the charity. On the face of it there is nothing unexpected there for the supporter. So there is no need for the Remembering Self to get involved.

If we want our Thank Yous to be remembered we need to add something unexpected to the mix.

Something out of the ordinary.

Something worth remembering.

In their book The Power of Moments, Chip and Dan Heath give some great tips for creating memorable moments, including these suggestions for creating positive peaks:

• Boost sensory appeal – create an element of theatre that maximises the impact on the senses and emotions.
• Raise the stakes – “up the ante” for supporters. For example, create a sense of pressure through competitions, games or public commitment
• Break the script – “defy [your supporter’s] expectation of how an experience will unfold”

When it comes to fundraising, peaks that strengthen the connection between the supporter and the beneficiaries, charity and/or fundraiser can be particularly effective. For example, the actors in a theatre company I worked with years ago had a tradition of wearing stripy socks during performances. They realised that sending stripy socks to donors was a powerful way of signalling that those supporters were part of the family. This simple act of initiation breaks the script and boosts the sensory appeal in a way that is relevant for that organisation.

One particularly memorable Thank You email from MAG (Mines Advisory Group) included three recipes that had been shared from MAG team members working around the world. As well as breaking the script, this simple act helped to create a bond between the supporter, the MAG team and the beneficiaries. It humanised people on each side of the relationship and gave an insight to their life. It also tapped into that powerful ritual that occurs when we share a meal together.

​Importantly, creating a positive peak doesn’t have to mean spending a lot of money. The simplest of touches can elevate a moment to become a memorable peak. More important than having a huge budget is having a fundraiser with the imagination and the drive to break the mould. Someone prepared to look beyond the status quo, to take responsibility for creating peaks for their supporters and to fight internally for the importance of defying supporters’ expectations.

So, what unforgettable peaks will you conjure up to elevate your donors’ experiences?

Seen some great experiences of unforgettable peaks? I’d love to hear about them! Get in touch to share some of your most memorable examples.