Future Fundraising Now

In our future: Focus on donors?

Maybe you've seen the discussion that's making the rounds about how fundraising might change in the next ten years. The central question many are tackling is How will donors be different in 2020 and how will they be the same?

Ken Burnett takes a swing at the question at 2020 vision: What might be the future for fundraising? Interestingly, he looks more at fundraisers than at donors, and makes this prediction:

Fundraisers will wake up to the fact that they are selling neither their organizations nor their causes, nor their missions and certainly not all the nuts and bolts and insignificant minutiae of what they do. Rather they are promoting joy, the warm glow, the exhilaration, the sense of achievement and fulfillment, even the meaning of life. As business life and political life are so discredited now, the timing for all this could not be better now.

Hey, if even a few more fundraisers figure that out, we'll raise a lot more money, enrich a lot more donors' lives, and fund a lot more good deeds.

So I hope Ken is right.

I personally know quite a few organizations that are already thinking this way, and many more that are heading in this direction. But far too many fundraisers are trapped in a fundraising model that's all about them, and not about their donors.

My little 2020 prediction: Some of the world's best-known and largest nonprofit organizations will disappear by the year 2020 because they couldn't master the art of actually speaking to donors.

Thanks to The Agitator for the tip, along with some cogent thoughts on these things.

Strike back with a t-shirt

You might want to get this t-shirt.

If the fundraising-is-ugly disease afflicts your organization, this could help start the conversation that turns that terrible attitude around.

It's created by Fundraising Coach Marc Pitman, and you can order it, along with an amazing array of imprinted tchotchkes from here at Café Press.

Oh No! Charity Navigator just trashed my nonprofit!

by guest blogger George Crankovic

Charity Navigator, the charity watchdog, has lots of power, which it can unleash at will with ratings that can influence how much donors give. Research proves it.

A study by Daniel Neely, Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, found a strong correlation between the rating and donor behavior. A drop of just one star in an organization's Charity Navigator rating corresponds with a decrease in donations of 39% on average. Adding a star correlates to a 39% increase.

That's power.

But Charity Navigator is not without its problems. Two prominent ratings are simple ratios -- program expenses divided by total functional expenses and administrative expenses divided by total functional expenses. These are supposed to tell you how low a given charity keeps costs. But they don't tell you how effective charities are at helping. The fact is, really effective nonprofits need super-talented people (including some who can command higher salaries), investments in technology and infrastructure, and continual self-evaluation. These take money.

But whether the ratings are right or wrong, there they are. What's a charity to do when the stars are too few? One option is to show -- in annual reports and newsletters, for example -- how the money they spend generates a greater impact.

Another is to reframe, and create your own metrics — goals for number of people helped, pounds of food delivered, number of dogs rescued, etc. -- based on realistic and defensible appraisals of the need you are responding to. Then you must do your best to meet or exceed these metrics, and of course make sure every one of your donors knows about it when you do.

All said and done, it's better to hold our own feet to the fire.

Study shows why donors aren't exactly flocking online

If you spend a lot of your time trying to make online fundraising take off, here's some info that will probably annoy you: the 2009 Consumer New Media Study from Cone. Some of the findings:

• 60% of those surveyed have used some form of online or new media to support a cause, through email (33%), Web sites (29%) social networks (27%).
• 85% of respondents say new media provides them with an opportunity to learn about new issues.
• 80% believe it provides another way to support their favorite causes.
• But only 18% have made a donation through new media.

(That 18% strikes me as unrealistically high. Likely the product of self-reporting -- some who think they should or would give online say that they have given online.)

The self-reported barriers to online involvement in the survey:

• 39% said they didn't trust their effort would actually help the cause.
• 31% said they'd rather spend time and/or money supporting causes offline.
• 27% said they didn't see any existing results or impacts.
• 22% said they felt overwhelmed by the number of causes on new media.
• 19% said their favorite issue, cause or organization doesn't use new media.
• 17% said they didn't understand the tool or application.

Other than the second one, which is a media-use preference, we can help overcome all these barriers by doing stuff right online.

Download the study here (PDF; registration required).

Social media can't do it all

The way some folks are talking, you'd think Twitter can leap tall buildings in a single bound; Facebook can stop a speeding locomotive. And both are soon to bury direct mail and even email as viable means of communication. Right.

We can all use a reality check about this shiny new thing, like you'll find at 10 Things Social Media Can't Do at BL Ochman's blog.

Here's some of what social media can't do:

1. Substitute for marketing strategy
2. Succeed without top management buy-in
3. Be viewed as a short-term project
4. Produce meaningful, measurable results quickly
5. Be done in-house by the vast majority of companies
6. Provide a quick fix to the bottom line or a tarnished reputation
7. Be done without a realistic budget
8. Guarantee sales or influence
9. Be done by "kids" who "understand social innately"
10. Replace PR

And while we're on the subject of social media, here's a not-quite-safe-for-work video (the audio; the picture's no problem) called The Social Media Guru.

How nonprofits can get Twitter right

I'll just say it: Most nonprofit Twitter accounts are really awful. Boring. Self-referential. Unimportant. Are these organizations that are changing the world? You wouldn't know from what they're tweeting.

Here's some help: Twitter Best Practices for Nonprofit Organizations at DIOSA Communications. Here are most of them (each one has more detail at the original post):

• Authenticity before marketing. Have personality. Build community.
• Be nice. Be thankful. Reply and Retweet!
• Follow everyone who follows you if your goal is to have lots of followers.
• Don't tweet about your coffee (unless it is fair trade), the weather, or how tired you are.
• Don't only Tweet your own content.
• Send messages, but not via auto-responders.
• Limit your Tweets to 5 per day, and no more than 6!
• Poll your followers to increase participation.
• Tweet powerful stats related to your organization's mission.
• Register your organization's Twitter account with TweetMeme.
• Favorite Tweets to build partnerships and organize Twitter profiles.
• Tweet inspirational quotes.
• Repeat your most popular Tweets.

Thanks to @joannefritz for the tip.

Good fundraising is a lot like creating fan clubs

Here's a useful distinction from the Make Marketing History blog: Fan Clubs Not Fanfares. Here are the differences:

Fanfares feed the egos of creators and advertisers. Fan Clubs feed the needs of prospective and existing customers. Fanfares aim to create water cooler moments. Fan Clubs are the water cooler.

Ask most marketers or ad people to motivate folks to give to your organization, and they'll start dreaming up fanfares. Noisy, big, expensive fanfares -- that they hope will win them some awards. And 99 times out of a hundred, they will fail to stir up meaningful support.

Fan clubs -- that's a different kind of challenge. Tougher, more subtle; you can't get there by throwing money around. To create fan clubs, you must:

• Do something people are excited about doing.
• Find a special group of people who are passionately into it -- and like talking about it.
• Give them stuff to talk about, and maybe give them ways to connect.

Then the fan clubs do your marketing for you.

There are two rules to remember about this:

1. If you are a nonprofit, you can not afford a fanfare that's loud enough to make a difference.
2. Even if you could, it most often doesn't make a difference, so don't try to get one made for you pro-bono.

Just do cool stuff and find people who want to do cool stuff along with you.

Cause marketing -- is it just cynical fundraising?

by guest blogger George Crankovic

By now you've probably seen the commercials on TV for the Tide Loads of Hope campaign. Proctor & Gamble is bringing mobile washing machines and dryers to locations in the Gulf Coast affected by Hurricane Katrina, and the company is donating 10¢ of every purchase of Tide to disaster relief efforts.

According to Brandweek.com, "P&G's reasoning is that charitable giving is much easier when it's built into a common or everyday purchase, such as detergent."

This is of course just one of a gazillion examples of cause marketing. According to estimates, companies have spent almost $1.5 billion on cause marketing in 2009. In the words of marketing guru Bruce Burtch, who is credited by some as first conceiving of cause marketing, these companies are attempting to "do well by doing good."

If companies are giving in order to get -- if they're wrapping themselves in philanthropy just to boost profits -- and if people need a purchase to prompt them to give, then where does that leave traditional fundraising? In a very good position, actually.

Although cause marketing has its proponents, it misses the fundamental core of giving.

The truth is that people give because it feels good. And they give to do good, without any ulterior motive. The altruistic impulse is wired into our circuitry. It is not tied to purchases or dependent upon them. Giving is outside of commerce. Like volunteering, giving is the area of people's lives that is happily unrelated to the "getting and spending" of the everyday grind. Giving doesn't have a profit motive. Giving is its own reward.

Although mega-corporations will no doubt continue to bask in the reflected glow of their (self-remunerating) largess, we should never forget that we as fundraisers have the moral high ground. We occupy a unique place in the landscape of American life where there's passion, energy, and drive for their own sake -- not for profit -- simply to make the world a better place. And the view from here is pretty good.

How not to write lame headlines

The most important bit of copy in an ad: the headline.

The hardest-to-write bit of copy in an ad: the headline.

That's why this article, Top ten secrets of headlines that pull, at SOFII (the Showcase of Fundraising Innovation and Inspiration) is worth reading right now. Here they are (but go read the whole thing):

1. It has to have impact.
2. Keep it short. (I don't agree with this one; there's no special power in a short headline, and long ones can be extremely powerful.)
3. Tell a story.
4. Make an offer in the headline.
5. Include a price. (Maybe.)
6. Your headline has to resonate. (As in, it's gotta sound good. Read it out loud. If it's clunky and awkward sounding, it's a bad headline.)
7. Don’t punctuate. (Mainly don't put a period at the end.)
8. Observe reading gravity. (The eye moves left to right and top to bottom. Don't create visual barriers to that movement.)
9. Allow your headline enough space.
10. Copy what others do. (There's no shame in this, and it can really work for you.)

Online fundraising the creative way

This will be a big hit with word people. And it's flat-out cool.

I CAN, a UK charity that helps children with language and speech problems, has a fundraising program called Adopt a Word.

Here's how it works: You look up a word on the site, and if it isn't already taken, you can adopt it for £20 (for a year). The money goes to help children.

If you're in the UK, you'll get an adoption certificate mailed to you. If you're a poor schmoe who doesn't live in the UK, you have to make do with a PDF of the certificate. (By the way, "schmoe" would be a great word to adopt.) Here's mine:

You can also buy various swag with "your" word on it.

The whole thing is a great way to put flesh on what otherwise might be a pretty vague offer: It would be tough to quantify and price what it takes to help a kid who has communication issues. But £20 to adopt a word (that's about $33 US) is something you can connect with. And it's not just a random thing: It's words. Something connected with the offer.

Very admiring thumbs up.

Read more about the campaign at SOFII.

Thanks to Conor's Fundraising Blog for the tip.