Future Fundraising Now

What's not true about social media and fundraising

Here are some good warnings about social media from Frogloop: Five Social Media Myths You Need to Know. The myths:

1. A Facebook page can replace your website.
2. Social Media is a great fundraising tool.
3. Build an app.
4. Social Media is a free way to build your brand and list.
5. Social Media should be its own department.

I'd like to add one additional myth about Social Media: Social Media is the next big thing in fundraising.

Social Media is still a very small thing in fundraising. The jury is still out on whether it will ever be a big, or even medium-sized thing.

In the mean time, the best candidate for next big thing in fundraising is email. It's still a fairly small thing, but it's been growing steadily for a few years and shows no sign of losing ground.

Unlike with social media, you are not wasting your time if you're spending it learning and perfecting email fundraising.

Why donors go away

The new Passionate Giving blog has been running a series of posts called "10 reasons most major donor programs suck." You should check out all ten reasons, but especially #9: We Don't Tell Donors How They Made a Difference:

Most non-profits do a great job of identifying problems and ASKING. Some are even pretty good at THANKING, but most have a very hard time REPORTING BACK and specifically telling the donor how they made a difference.

Failing to report back is the fast track to irrelevance with your donors. Because it sends a very clear unintended message: Your gift didn't make a difference.

Someone who writes you a check with three or more zeroes in it (not counting the ones after the decimal) can reasonably expect to make a difference. If you don't tell them they made a difference, that communicates one of three things:

1. Their gift wasn't important.
2. Important or not, nobody at the organization took note of their gift.
3. The organization doesn't have its act together enough to know whether the gift was important.

Any of those would make future giving less likely.

By the way, failure to report back isn't only why so many major donor programs suck, it's why so many organizations struggle to hold on to donors at all levels.

This is one of the most important and under-appreciated jobs of fundraisers. Every donor should know that their giving makes a difference.

Don't misuse Giving USA figures

• Giving is up! The recession over! Party like it's 2006!
• Giving is still in the doldrums. There's no light at the end of tunnel.

That sums up the reactions to the new Giving USA 2011 report (download the executive summary or buy the full report).

You can take this data either way -- or better yet, you could have a more reasonable interpretation that's somewhere between those two.

What you can't do is use the data to chart your own course.

Total estimated giving in 2010 was up 3.8%, or 2.1% adjusted for inflation. Actually, that was partly driven by big jumps in charitable bequests (up 18.8%) and corporate giving (up 10.6%). So individual giving was only up 2.7% (1.1% adjusted for inflation).

But that doesn't mean your individual giving was up 1.1%.

Whatever happened to you in 2010 was influenced by the economic climate, but was a lot more the result of decisions you made.

If you slashed new donor acquisition during the recession and have not yet started it back up, you likely did worse than grow by one percent. And you have a few more tough years ahead of you.

If you kept the acquisition machine going, if you used smart, relevant fundraising offers -- you probably did meaningfully better than one percent.

The differences among the sectors, which ranged from small declines to a strong increase in international affairs, capture some of that variation.

One good use I can think of for these nationwide top line numbers: Talking to your board. You might say, Our fundraising revenue was up only 3% last year, but that's considerably better than the 1.1% nationwide average!

People appreciate context. Even when it's not terribly relevant.

Whatever you do, don't assume last year's 3.8% increase is something you can bank on for your organization.

Learn fundraising from your kids

Great post from Direct Creative Blog: 3 tricks kids can teach you about getting people to say "yes" to almost anything.

Yep, kids have it figured out:

1. If you want something from someone, ask for it.
2. If you want someone to do something, give a reason why they should act.
3. If you want something now, create a real and unavoidable time limit.

Podcast: Fundraisers beware of survey research

For the fifth installment of our State of Fundraising series, we take a look at survey research and how fundraisers can get value from it -- without being led dangerously astray. Surveys seem (and often claim) to report the truth. In reality, they reveal something else that's often far from truth.

To listen, click here to download the audio file or visit the Fundraising Is Beautiful page here, where you'll find several listening and subscription options.

Or subscribe with iTunes:

Why fundraising shouldn't be edgy

I hope Otis Maxwell is right as he proclaims The end of "edgy":

One of the side benefits of tough economic times is that fewer clients are asking for "edgy" work. Edgy we'll define as "different for the sake of different".... It's a special request of marketing managers who want to be able to show around their work and get the compliment, "ooh, that's edgy!"

So what's the problem with edgy? Good creative grows from a solid understanding of product and audience and a calculated plan to put the two together, which may or may not produce something never seen before....

Let me second that.

Edgy almost never works in fundraising, because it's about itself, not donors. You don't want people saying, Look at that -- it's edgy! You want them to say, There's something I need to do something about!

Edgy is also clearly a form of communication between young people. The older audiences that make up almost all donor groups don't appreciate edgy.

Finally, edgy design is typically not very readable.

If you're asking for "edgy" because you're tired of the same-old stuff, you're making a mistake.

Good fundraising is often pretty bland. It doesn't call attention to itself, because it's too busy call attention to the cause and the donor's opportunity to make a difference.

What kinds of photos of hunger work in fundraising?

Yesterday we looked at the use of images in fundraising. Today I'd like to zero in on one area where the use of images causes a lot of controversy and gnashing of teeth: International relief and development organizations.

The right image can unlock the compassion of donors in amazing ways. But it's so tough to get images right for this cause.

The photos of happy, well-fed 3rd World children that the organizations love to show can undermine the message that there's hunger or need and crush fundraising results. But I've seen exceptions, where happy photos were part of very strong fundraising campaigns.

The tough, painful images of suffering people with stick limbs, swollen bellies, and flies in their eyes seldom work in fundraising. But there have been record-breaking exceptions to this, where truly terrible images help unleash incredible compassion.

The safe path seems to be people who look poor, but not like they're dying, and have worried, sad, or other serious expressions. But even that doesn't always do it.

(I have a theory for those correct but non-working images: Very often, photos of children in famine situations have what looks like an angry scowl. A viewer can hardly help but react defensively to what looks like someone who's pissed off. I'm told that a reason these kids have that expression is because they're often suffering from dehydration headaches, which makes them furrow their brows and frown. It's not an angry expression at all. But the visceral reaction is the same.)

Conclusion: There's no clear rule about what works. Too happy and too harsh are risky. Even the right kind can have response-killing flaws.

The frustratingly inexact principle I use: Look for images that touch the heart. Happy, serious, or disturbing. It's that heart connection that does the job.

Images that work in fundraising

Do negative images work in fundraising?

There really isn't a meaningful answer to that question, because it's not a meaningful question by itself. It's a lot like asking "Do colors work in fundraising?"

The Cause Marketing blog raised the issue at Don't Use Exploitive Images in Charitable Appeals, Real World Results Suggest.

The post is about the Austin Humane Society, which used the image of a happy dog in fundraising, different from the typical sad animal imagery, and saw a significant increase in fundraising results.

Does this prove that positive images are better for fundraising than negative?

Not even close.

It shows that one positive image in one particular situation (and time and place) did well. That's all we know from this information.

It would be nuts for anyone to respond by making a wholesale switch to happy images. On the other hand, it would be a mistake to ignore the information and not look into using positive images if you believe they never work.

The truth is, some positive images work. Some don't. Same with negative images. In fact, positive and negative aren't really meaningful categories when it comes to fundraising.

The only categories that matter are "compelling" and "not compelling."

Here's how to pick winning fundraising images, positive or negative:

• Remove I like and I dislike from your criteria. Those are not relevant considerations, and they're very likely to lead you astray.
• Ask yourself if the image tells the same story as the words. So often, there's a vast disconnect between the words and the images in fundraising.
• Ask yourself, What will a non-expert see? This is very hard to do. It can help to ask an actual non-expert to tell you what they see in the photo. Don't ask for a critique of its quality or correctness; just have them tell you what they see.
• Is it real? This is a subjective question, but it's important. Does the photo seem to be of a real situation, or does it look staged or fake?

I've found the following usually (but not always) to be true of the most compelling fundraising images:

• Color is better than black and white. (There's also a meaningful budget consideration to this one.)
• Eye contact with the subject is good.
• One person is better than lots of people.
• People work better than things.
• Stock photography seldom works well.

Be the donor

We'd probably be a lot smarter at fundraising if we knew what it felt like to be our donors.

The Influential Marketing Blog looks at this issue for marketers at How To Stand In Your Customer’s Shoes (Without A Focus Group):

• Find your products or services online.
• Read and respond to reviews.
• Read your marketing materials out loud.
• Follow your call to action.
• Ask your average customers.

These are good ways to encounter your presence in context. You might be surprised how difficult or confusing or strange you're making it for donors.

While you're at it, give a gift. At least try to give. You may gain a new level of respect and awe for the donors who stick with you and keep giving, despite the barriers you're putting up.

Don't commit these fundraising sins

Here's a helpful post from the Beautiful World blog: The seven deadly sins of fundraising appeals -- and how to avoid them. Here are the seven sins:

1. Beating around the bush (Make sure you clearly ask!)
2. Confusing the issue (Only try to accomplish one thing at a time.)
3. Asking for the wrong amount (Know specifically who you're asking and ask them amounts they're likely to give.)
4. Style over substance (Being plain, clear, and literal always out-fundraises being clever, fancy, and conceptual.)
5. Making false economies (Cheap is good; too cheap can hurt.)
6. Poor attention to detail (Especially anything related to postal regulations.)
7. Failing to test and learn (Testing is the only way to really know what works.)

Check it out.