Future Fundraising Now

Why the rich give proportionally less and what to do about it

by guest blogger George Crankovic

When the likes of Warren Buffet or Bill Gates cuts a check to charity in the hundreds of millions of dollars, it attracts media attention and admiration all around.

High rollers like these can do lots of good in one stroke of the pen. Maybe that's why many people assume charitable giving is largely a story of those who have done very well doing good.

But according to a new book on charities and giving by Ken Stern, With Charity for All: Why Charities Are Failing and a Better Way to Give, the people who can least afford it are the ones who give.

The top 20% of earners give about 1.3% of their income to charity. But the lowest 20% of earners give almost three times more -- 3.2% of their income. That's a huge gulf.

Working stiffs are giving till it hurts. And they're giving even without the benefit of tax deductions because most can't itemize.

What's more, the rich tend to give to colleges and universities, the arts, and museums. In 2012, not one of the top 50 gifts went to social services. Ordinary folks, on the other hand, give to social service charities and churches.

But here's the really interesting part. One study showed differences in giving even among the wealthy. Rich people living in more homogenous neighborhoods gave less than rich people living in somewhat more racially and economically diverse areas.

So what conclusions are drawn from all this -- and how can we apply it to fundraising?

First, the wealthy tend to put their own interests above those of others. That's just the way it is. So if you're approaching a person of means in a face-to-face major gifts setting or through a communications channel, you must demonstrate what's in it for them. Think donor benefits. That's what you should always do in fundraising, but in the case of wealthy donors, it's even more so.

Second, the wealthy are less exposed to poverty, economic injustices, social barriers, and other challenges, so they may be less able to empathize with these problems. That's why, instead of dialing back the need in an appeal in the belief that it will be more palatable to wealthy donors, you should show the raw reality and do it boldly. Especially for big donors, it's sympathy, empathy, generosity, in that order.

Books that can make 2013 your best fundraising year ever

They asked buyers of nonprofit-topic books what were the must-have titles. What did smart book-buyers say?

Their top five fundraising books included The Fundraiser's Guide to Irresistible Communications.

Make 2013 your best fundraising year yet by reading the book that was written precisely for you: The fundraising professional who wants to do fundraising right, who pays attention to the facts, who's ready to meet donors where they are.

The other four books of these top-five are superb. In fact, it's a little intimidated being included among these folks. Here they are:

Seeing Through a Donor's Eyes, by Tom Ahern

The 11 Questions Every Donor Asks, by Harvey McKinnon

Asking, by Jerold Panas

The Ultimate Insider's Guide to Winning Foundation Grants, by Martin Teitel

These five books are available from the publisher with free shipping through January 11. There are also bulk discounts. Or check them out at Amazon, where the discount is steep.

Book review: Story Wars

Winning the Story Wars: Why Those Who Tell (and Live) the Best Stories Will Rule the Future by Jonah Sachs

You can't read more than a few paragraphs about fundraising practice without being told that telling stories is the key to success. (my book, for example, has a chapter about this.)

Yes, you're going to do a lot better if you show donors through stories why they're needed and what their gifts will do than you will with iron-clad facts and statistics.

But there's more to it than that. Not every story is equally powerful. That's what Story Wars is about. And that's why you should read this book.

It's a hands-on look at the type of stories that touch people and affect their behavior. Drawing heavily from real life, it both dissects the elements of successful stories and leads you through the process of building your own.

There's a lot there, but the insight that I think fundraisers need to pay the most attention to is this:

If you are the hero of your own story ... you wind up with only a single compelling character -- yourself.

We can create far more compelling stories by realizing that our brand is not the hero, our audience members are.

That is a Big Deal. It separates the stories that make a difference from the stories that don't. And it got me thinking about the three most common story types we use in fundraising:

1. Almost never works: The nonprofit as hero. Our dynamic, cutting-edge methodologies and excellent staff are the best! It's mainly empty bragging, and thus not interesting.
2. Sometimes works: The story of a beneficiary in need. Here's dramatic proof that our work is needed. When it's a great story, it moves donors to care and to give. The story isn't always great, though.
3. Usually works: The donor as hero. Here's your chance to make a difference! This is the real story you should always tell. In fact, the two other types of stories only work at all because the donor makes it part of her story for you.

Fundraising really is all about telling stories. But it's about telling the right story in the right way.

I urge you to read Story Wars to deepen you understanding the power and use of stories.

Available at Amazon.

The critics are raving about new fundraising book

Here's what some of the reviews are saying about The Fundraiser's Guide to Irresistible Communications:

The Agitator:

... order several copies -- especially extras for your CEO, program folks and key board members. I guarantee it'll soon have a dog-eared, underlined and well-worn place on your bookshelf, providing tested ammunition to counter all the copy-related nonsense you encounter.

The Fundraising Detective:

... a quick, two-hour read and is packed full of useful tips and reminders of how to do direct mail fundraising.

Fundraising Coach:

This book is packed with real, tested tips, not ephemeral theories. Ignore them at your peril.

BlueFrog Creative:

Admirably clear and easy to read. Jeff practices what he preaches.... the book will take you to a pretty great place, where hopefully you feel proud to be a fundraiser. And lucky. And equipped to fundraise well.

Get Fully Funded:

... a must-read for everyone who is serious about raising money. It contains dozens of simple, practical ideas that you can easily implement for big results.

Neuromarketing:

... chock-full of down to earth advice for boosting the effectiveness of fundraising appeals. There's little or no theory, no research citations, just practical techniques Brooks has learned from 20 years in the fundraising trenches. This book is a must-read for anyone raising money for nonprofit causes.

Andrew S. Rogers, a Top 1,000 reviewer on Amazon:

So much of what makes good fundraising effective is counterintuitive. The good fundraiser has to set aside her preferences about what looks best, or sounds best, or is the "right" way to describe a problem or a program or a solution. Instead, she must be willing to inhabit the mind of the donor, and be able speak to that donor in a special, even unique, way. Many of those other authors resent that fact. Jeff celebrates it.

Tom Ahern on Amazon:

... fascinating and unpredictable. There is nothing else like it in the how-to book market (and I buy them all, out of desperation). Jeff's new book is a gift to the nonprofit world. Buy it. Learn from the very best.

What's the chance that all these smart people are wrong? Get your copy today!

The Fundraiser's Guide to Irresistible Communications is available at Amazon, Amazon.co.uk, or from the publisher (best bet if you're ordering in bulk -- which, of course, is a very wise thing to do!)

Help me sell new book on fundraising

I could use your help marketing my new book, The Fundraiser's Guide to Irresistible Communications: Real-World, Field-Tested Strategies for Raising More Money.

I'm looking for a marketing tagline: A succinct, powerful, persuasive sentence that will help people decide this book is something they need -- that this book will help them meaningfully and immediately improve their fundraising, and that it's easy to read, practical, and based on experience. (In fact, it is all those things. Not everyone knows that yet.)

Here are some tagline choices. Please vote for your favorite. If you have a different suggestion, leave it as a comment.

Which tagline do you think works best?
	Fundraising that works.
	Catnip for donors.
	Fundraising as if donors mattered.
	True-to-life experience from a grizzled fundraising veteran.
	Fundraising for the real world.
	Just like my blog, but with fewer typos.
	You may be shocked, but you'll raise more money.
	Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres.
	The Weak-Fundraising Terminator.
pollcode.com free polls

Thanks for your help!

The Fundraiser's Guide to Irresistible Communications is available at Amazon, Amazon.co.uk, or from the publisher (best bet if you need multiple copies)

What's in new book on fundraising

Here's what's in my new book, The Fundraiser's Guide to Irresistible Communications: Real-World, Field-Tested Strategies for Raising More Money:

• The Importance of Being Urgent The secret ingredient that so many fundraisers omit.
• Make It Easy to Read Have your readers breezing happily through your copy.
• Long Messages Work Better It's true. And your boss is wrong.
• Grammar for Fundraisers The rules you should and shouldn't follow.
• Persuade with Story, Not Statistics One way motivates donors, the other demotivates them.
• Keep It Simple Complexity kills fundraising.
• Make It All About the Donor It's not about you!
• I Have Bad News and Good News Balanced fundraising that works and keeps working.
• Have a Clear Call to Action No matter how well you write and design, if you omit this, you're sunk.
• P.S. I Love You Guess what part of your letter people are most likely to read.
• Design for Older Eyes You're a tree falling in the forest with nobody to hear it if you don't design for bifocals-wearing readers.
• Don't Skimp on Emphasis It makes a difference.
• Make Images Work for You The right picture can boost results, but the wrong one can turn them away.
• Plain, Corny, and Obvious Three characteristics of successful fundraising design.
• Self-Centric Fundraising The deadliest mistake in fundraising.
• Three Things You Should Know About Donors Embrace these truths, and you'll always do better.
• Three Deadly Fundraising Myths Everyone else is getting it wrong because they believe these things.
• Proud to Be a Fundraiser What's really going on with donors is better news than you might have thought.

Buy it on Amazon (Don't worry about the "Temporarily out of stock" message. It'll be back in action soon!)

Or at Amazon.co.uk

Or from the publisher (best bet if you need multiple copies, or if you don't want to wait for Amazon to stock it again.)

New book will help you be a better fundraiser

From time to time, someone asks me, What do I need to know to effectively raise funds?

I generally stammer out something that I hope will be helpful -- something like Make it all about your donors or Don't forget to ask.

Of course, one-sentence advice won't take you very far.

But being asked the question is what got me started writing The Fundraiser's Guide to Irresistible Communications.

This book is exactly for you. If you read this blog, if you read any fundraising blogs at all, you are clearly someone who wants to do fundraising right. You want to work with knowledge, not hunch and superstition.

Based on decades of hand-on fundraising with dozens of great nonprofits, this book zeroes in on the hard stuff, the surprising, counterintuitive things that most often trip up fundraisers.

You won't find wild-eyed, speculative theories in this book. Just the solid, experiential practices. Nothing controversial -- unless you're in one of those marketing departments that makes it a practice of ignoring what works.

This is the book you can show that meddling, know-it-all executive director or board member who insists on taking all the life and effectiveness out of our fundraising. See? An actual printed book says it should be like this!

Here's what some excellent people who've read the book are saying:

Tom Ahern, author of How to Write Fundraising Materials That Raise More Money and Seeing Through a Donor's Eyes:

"An instant classic that will be read and reread obsessively by the fundraisers of this world."

Roger M. Craver, Editor of The Agitator and Founder, DonorTrends:

"This simple, smart, and fun-to-read book is for those aspiring to a black belt in fundraising. If you're in fundraising and this book isn't on your bookshelf, dog-eared, underlined, and well-worn, you've been shortchanging yourself and the organization you serve."

Katya Andresen, Network for Good and author of Robin Hood Marketing:

"A fundraiser's breakfast of champions -- bread-and-butter fundraising wisdom based on years of experience."

Stephen Hitchcock, Bread for the World and author of Open Immediately: Straight Talk on Direct Mail Fundraising:

"This brief book is packed with practical advice and research to back it up. It's a delight to read as well. Give this book to everyone in your organization -- and to your best board members."

Buy it on Amazon

Or at Amazon.co.uk

Or from the publisher (best bet if you're ordering lots of copies -- which, of course, you need to do!)

Book review: at least 100 great fundraising ideas

Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing by Roger Dooley

One-sentence review: You need to read this book.

If you prefer to base your fundraising on facts and science (as opposed to your own hunches and superstition), this is precisely the book for you. It focuses on practical marketing takeaways from neurological research. There are 100 short chapters, each with a neuroscience finding and how it might be used in marketing.

It's not specifically a fundraising book -- though there are some chapters about raising funds -- but almost all the marketing ideas can easily translate to fundraising ideas.

Like this one:

...physical material (like paper) is more "real" to the brain. Since it has a physical place, it engages with the brain's spatial memory networks.

This probably helps explain the power of direct mail -- it hooks more deeply into the brain than non-paper media!

I came away from this book with more than a hundred ideas I can test or just put to work in fundraising. If even a small percentage of these ideas improve results, my clients stand to make the price of the book hundreds of times over in the coming months.

Like any science, neuroscience research is extremely technical; the findings are hard for us non-scientists to understand, much less put to work. Brainfluence bridges the chasm between the research and the marketplace. It's an easy, quick, enjoyable read, and you'll get ideas you can use.

Dooley also writes the wonderful Neuromarketing blog, which you should also be reading.

Brainfluence is available at Amazon and Powell's.

The book that sent me into orbit

There's a great question for this month's Nonprofit Blog Carnival: What Book Has Changed Your (Professional) Life?

Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace by Gordon MacKenzie

This book changed my professional life. It's the only "business" book I ever recommend to people.

Don't get me wrong -- there are some truly excellent books about fundraising that have helped me in a big way, and you should read them. Anything by Tom Ahern or Mal Warwick is well worth your time, and will make you a better fundraiser. There are others too.

But Orbiting the Giant Hairball transformed the way I approach life as creative professional who wants to make a difference.

Here are the main points:

• For most of us, we're going to make a lot more positive impact as part of a community than alone. That means working within an organization.
• The problem is, every organization has a "hairball" -- a mass of policies, procedures, rules, and bureaucracy. These things can strangle your ability to do great things.
• All organizations have hairballs. Some are worse than others, but a hairball-free organization does not exist. Trying to conquer the hairball is pointless.
• But if you let yourself be trapped in the hairball, you will while away all your time on triviality. You'll accomplish little that matters. On the other hand, if you completely escape the hairball, you are no longer part of a community.
• The solution is to "orbit" the hairball. Stay just within its gravitational force, but never tangled up in it.

The book is full of inspiring examples of orbiters and hints for how to orbit. It has probably helped me solve more conundrums and deal with frustrations than anything else I've read.

It's not a "normal" book. It's filled with sketchy drawings and weird design. But it makes its point well.

Maybe it can change your professional life too. I highly recommend it.

You can get a copy of Orbiting the Giant Hairball at Amazon or at Powell's.

Book review: checklists keep us on track

by guest blogger George Crankovic

Like most of us, I think of myself as a capable professional. And that, I discovered, is exactly the problem.

I discovered it in a remarkable book called The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande, a doctor and surgeon. (Available at Amazon and Powell's.)

Gawande explains that most surgeons bristle at the idea of using a checklist. It's because they see themselves as skilled professionals and people of learning and science. They fail to see how anything as mundane as a checklist could be of any use.

But Gawande gives indisputable proof that checklists work.

Far from being an annoyance, the checklists that Gawande used in his research did three essential things. They helped surgeons deal with the complexity they face in their professions, promoted teamwork with the nurses and anesthetists, and ultimately got the details under control so the doctors could focus on the big picture -- helping the patient.

Complexity? Teamwork? Details? Aren't those exactly the things that we as fundraisers have to deal with? And -- be honest -- aren't we bedeviled by them again and again? The humble checklist is the answer.

But, as Gawande cautions, it has to be simple, or it won't get used. And it has to be specific. One master checklist intended to cover everything won't be of much help. So, with that in mind, let's take a look at a possible checklist for a typical direct mail appeal. It might go something like this ...

Carrier envelope

• Is the postage correct?
• Is the corner card address correct?
• Will it mail?
• Does it motivate (including the teaser, if there is one)?

Letter

• Is there an offer and is it clear?
• Is there a P.S.?
• Is the recipient clearly told to donate?
• Is the signer's name and title correct?
• Is the letter compelling — would YOU give if it were sent to you?

Response device

• Is there a clear call-to-action related to the letter content?
• Is the gift string correct?
• Is the sending address correct?
• Are the address, website, phone number, and disclaimers present and correct?

This is just an example of course, and these points may seem simple -- but that is the point. One checklist isn't intended to cover everything. It's supposed to catch those simple things that trip us up again and again. If you've ever sent a mailing with the wrong postage, or if you've ever sent a message that was muddled by an unclear strategy, then you know how much havoc so-called simple things can cause.

It's just hard to believe that something so basic, so obvious, so schoolmarmish can do so much. But it can. The unassuming, unsung checklist. Try it and see.