Everyone likes spontaneous surprises. Like when the new friend you just met in line at Starbucks offers to buy your coffee or you pull up to the drive-through window during a hectic lunch break only to find that your bill has already been covered. They’re small gestures, but they can make the world of difference in your day.

You can do the same for your donors.

Showing love to the people who keep the lights on is a valuable investment worth making year after year. At the end of the day, without your donors, your mission and work would not get carried out.

But before you go crazy with the gift giving, here’s one thing we want you to keep in mind: When you are trying to show your donors some love, make sure that you do just that—show them the love. Don’t pair a gift or a freebie or a giveaway with an ask for donations. That’s just tacky. Keep these types of interactions thankful and all about the donor, not your needs.

Here are just a few of the ways you can thank and appreciate your donors.

Letters from someone they impacted. One of the reasons why child sponsorship is so popular and so powerful is that it gives donors the chance to connect directly with the impact that they’re creating. Why not mimic that in your own work?

Whatever you do, wherever you work, find someone who has been impacted by your organization’s work. Explain to them the significance of the people who partner with your organization to make it possible for you to provide water, education, aid, rescue, etc. to him/her. Ask if they would be willing to write a thank you letter directly to the people who helped. You can then send out that letter in physical and digital versions as a simple way of saying thank you to the people who partnered with you. It’ll both surprise them and delight them. 

Evidence of impact. Your donors might see photos of your impact through emails that you send or stories that you post on your website, but how many of them have gotten the chance to actually hold a photo in their hand, pin it up in their office or share it with their friends? These people support you because they believe in the impact you are creating so give them the chance to share that with others.

You can even go a step further and print your images on magnets so they can slap it on their refrigerators for everyone to see. Personalize these gifts by printing a short little saying like “I helped feed this family” somewhere over the photo or magnet to add an extra touch to the gift!

Special gifts. Special gifts say that you’re going the extra mile and showing even more appreciation for your donor. When taking this avenue of expressing gratefulness to your donors, make sure that the gift you send has some connection or tie to the work that you do. For instance, if your nonprofit’s mission is to provide clean water to needy communities around the world, send your supporters branded plastic water cups along with a postcard sharing how many clean cups of water they helped provide around the world in the past month, year, etc. 

Whatever you do, do it with gratefulness and treat your donors like family. It’ll go a long way.

You can even take gratefulness a step further if your donor management system allows for powerful segmentation within your donor base. In doing this, you can separate your donors out by giving level or last date of gift or length of relationship to send gifts appropriate for each donor. For instance, your lower-level donors might get the plastic water cup whereas your major donors get a glass water decanter. Give gifts appropriate to people’s continued investment levels in your nonprofit.