Your gift planners can personally connect with more donors and prospects than they could have in an entire month in the 1990’s. Personally connect with record number of donors and prospects this month!

When I was a kid, friends were the other kids you hung out with, playing homerun derby in the street, building forts in the woods, facing off on Nintendo and just chilling during recess. I knew my friends’ faces, physical attributes, and mannerisms because I spent hours with them every week, if not every day.

When I was a kid, I watched some of my classmates who had many followers, those other classmates (and me) who literally followed others around, walking down the hall after them, sitting near them for lunch, playing with them during recess, hanging on their every word as the spouted their knowledge to anyone who would listen.

When I was a kid, having friends and followers (or being a friend and a follower) took time, and presence. Today it is oh so different.

Today, when you say the word “friend,” I would venture that a majority of the under-50 crowd would immediately first think of Facebook where you and I can be linked with hundreds (up to 5,000) “friends” who can follow each other through the computer. For many of these “friends,” the only picture they have of you is not the one they see in your presence, but the photo you’ve displayed on your Facebook page.

And the word, “follower” immediately conjures up Twitter where you must sign up to be a Twitterer’s follower in order to read the daily or hourly machinations of the Twitterer which is many cases is nothing more than the what you would have casually said to each other while playing on the playground or passing each other in the grocery store. Ashton Kutcher is on a race to beat CNN to be the first on Twitter to have one million “followers.”

Why is this good news for you as a nonprofit major gifts officer? Because you no longer have to be physically present with all of your donors and prospects. Certainly, being literally in front of your donors and prospects is likely going to have better returns and should still be your goal as much as is possible. But we no longer define “personal” contact as that contact which happens in person or over the phone. Today, “personal” is as much defined as being a “friend” on Facebook or a “follower” on Twitter. The advantage there is that whatever you do on your own Facebook site or Twitter account, you do for all your connected donors and prospects simultaneously.

Many have bemoaned the new definition of “personal,” but regardless of our concern for such a definition in the course of how we experience and relate to each other from an anthropomorphic or psychological sense, the new definitions could help you in your personal connection to donors and prospects. Imagine the look on your boss’s face when your monthly statistics for “Personal Contacts” with donors go from 66 one month to 512 the next…and it’s only a matter of time when nonprofits will begin tracking friend and follower statistics for their major gifts officers, AND income that comes from those two channels.

While no one can guarantee that using Facebook and Twitter will work for major gift officers, one thing is certain, your donors are alive and well on both platforms. Big business and small business alike are spending a lot of time and energy in doing the Facebook and Twitter thing right. And nonprofits are doing the same. Is yours?