Nonprofit fundraisers are magical creatures. Through a mixture of science and art, they conjure connections between individuals’ better desires and nonprofit missions to spark change in the world. Magical, I tell ya.

Fundraisers are also a passionate, determined breed. Studies show that fundraisers work an average of five to twelve hours of overtime each week. Again. And again. And again. Those hours get longer as the days get shorter when the holidays approach. And, year after year, the job gets yet more challenging as program beneficiaries’ needs grow and nonprofit budgets increase.

Magical, passionate and determined, though they may be, nonprofit fundraisers are often bright stars that burnout fast. The average tenure for a fundraiser is just 16 months. This fact is not only deeply felt by the individual fundraisers but by the nonprofit sector as a whole. High turnover rates combine with struggles in finding qualified candidates to result in long-term vacancies in development positions. Those empty development desks present serious challenges to nonprofits and their missions.

Any fundraising professional is familiar with the dramatic scale of #GivingTuesday. $177,000,000 raised online from 1,640,000 individual gifts in 2016 alone. All on one day. 24 mere hours. And that one day, branded just five short years ago, is now the de facto start of the end-of-year giving season.

Nothing can cause more confusion between your finance and fundraising departments than the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) requirements for donation acknowledgements. Never fear! We're here to shed a light on what often feels like a murky area.

The right thank you is essential to a nonprofit expressing exceptional gratitude and developing long-term relationships with donors. Below is a little inspiration from two organizations that get it right to help your creative juices flow for your next thank you letter or email.

Repeat donors are essential to successful fundraising efforts. They can also be notoriously difficult to come by, and are becoming more so. Between 2008 and 2015, donor retention across the nonprofit sector declined 8%. Overall, just 45% of donors come back and give again to an organization in the year after a gift. That number becomes even starker when looking at just first time donors who give again only 23% of the time.

What’s more, post-election realities have affected giving in ways that require nonprofits to innovate in their fundraising efforts. Lynne Wester, famed donor relations expert noted in her blog recently:

“With a finite amount of charitable giving and an ever increasing number of nonprofits, the dollars simply cannot stretch equitably to everyone. Meaning that if one nonprofit experiences a windfall, like the ACLU raising $24 million dollars in one weekend, six times its yearly totals, that this money comes from another nonprofit's bottom line.”

To compete, you must set yourself apart in a sea of nonprofits. One powerful way of doing so is by expressing exceptional gratitude.