Future Fundraising Now

Why making your fundraising easy to read matters

The cost of unclear writing or hard-to-read design may be higher than you think: When you make a message hard to understand, or even just hard to read, you encourage donors to distrust what you're saying.

That's the message in an excellent article that appeared recently in the Boston Globe, Easy = True.

The theory is called cognitive fluency, and it shows how people prefer things that are easy to think about over things that are hard. The article includes these insights:

• Shares in companies with easy-to-pronounce names ... outperform those with hard-to-pronounce names.
• When people read something in a difficult-to-read font, they unwittingly transfer that sense of difficulty onto the topic they're reading about.
• When a personal questionnaire is presented in a less legible font, people tend to answer it less honestly.

So by all means, make it easy. It's hard enough to get people motivated; that last thing you need to is accidentally push them toward thinking you're no good.

Thanks to Customer Experience Matters for the tip.

Why fundraising doesn't work when it should

Superb article in the Washington Post about the puzzling way the human mind approaches human need: Beyond Comprehension: We know that genocide and famine are greater tragedies than a lost dog. At least, we think we do.

Here's the key point for fundraisers:

The reason human beings seem to care so little about mass suffering and death is precisely because the suffering is happening on a mass scale. The brain is simply not very good at grasping the implications of mass suffering. Americans would be far more likely to step forward if only a few people were suffering or a single person were in pain.

Journalists sometimes talk about compassion fatigue, the inability of people to respond to suffering when the scale or length of the suffering exceeds some astronomical number. But [the research] suggests that compassion fatigue starts when the number of victims rises from one to two. [emphasis added]

You might well ask, Why did so many people respond to Haiti? Doesn't that contradict these findings? I don't think there's any contradiction at all. A large-scale disaster like Haiti prompts an outpouring of giving because two things happen:

1. The news media, attracted by the size and scope of the disaster, swarm all over it and blanket all media with stories about the human cost of the disaster.
2. Video, photos, and stories of suffering individuals become inescapable. This motivates high levels of giving, both from people who are already active donor and from others who seldom or never give.

The rest of the time, you can hardly raise money for disasters. Because without the media telling the stories, a disaster is just a big number. Which is precisely not what motivates giving.

Disaster-response experts say there are about 400 humanitarian disasters worldwide every year. But on average, we have less than one media-promoted disaster per year.

So if you're working outside those unusual events, it's up to you to put a human face on the problem. And not get suckered into the numbers game.

Science equipment with wires and stuff confirms what good copywriters already knew

So scientists did some cool science again, where they strap scary-looking machinery to people's heads, then say words to them see how their brains handle it.

Here's what happened, as reported on the Neuromarketing blog, at Food, Shelter, and Big Words:

... specific brain patterns emerged for nouns related to food, shelter, and "manipulation" (things that can be grasped or used).... Long words also caused different activation patterns than short ones. emphasis added

If you've been in fundraising for more than, say, 27 minutes, you're probably saying duh about this news. Short, concrete, survival-related words get people's attention! People process long words differently! Knock me down with a feather!

I'm being unfair. The way a lot of fundraising comes out, I'll guess a vast cohort of fundraising professionals don't have a clue about those things.

The (very sound) conclusion drawn at Neuromarketing is this:

Incorporating food/shelter words in one's copy (when relevant and appropriate) may end up having a greater impact. This research doesn't tell us that long words are less effective or harder for the brain to interpret, but I'd consider the fact that lengthy terms activate a different area of the brain to be at least a caution flag for their use in headlines or short copy.

Fundraising is good for them too

If you look at charitable giving as a mere transaction, it's pretty lop-sided: Whatever the donors gives, she longer has. She gets nothing in return, other than a fairly minor tax incentive (depending on the country she's in). The fundraiser walks away with all the money, all the advantage.

No wonder so many people in the nonprofit world feel vaguely guilty and a little bit cheesy.

They shouldn't. The donor gets quite a lot back. Nicholas Kristof's recent New York Times column points this out at Our Basic Human Pleasures: Food, Sex and Giving:

Brain scans by neuroscientists confirm that altruism carries its own rewards. [One project] found that when a research subject was encouraged to think of giving money to a charity, parts of the brain lit up that are normally associated with selfish pleasures like eating or sex.

So at a time of vast needs, from Haiti to our own cities, here's a nice opportunity for symbiosis: so many afflicted people, and so much benefit to us if we try to help them. Let's remember that while charity has a mixed record helping others, it has an almost perfect record of helping ourselves. Helping others may be as primal a human pleasure as food or sex.

Don't explain away the power of symbolism

Every day, members of Congress sell and give away flags that have flown over the US Capitol. You can even request a flag that flew on a specific day that's important to you.

Now every rational person will agree: There's no physical difference whatsoever between a flag that flew over the Capitol on a special day and a flag that didn't. No difference at all.

Does that make our congressmen con artists and the people who want the flags idiots?

Of course not. The Capitol-flown flags are more "flaggy" than regular flags, more imbued with the essence of America. That's why people want them.

It's similar with fundraising offers that tell donors 0% of their gift will go to overhead. Look at it scientifically, and there's no difference between a no-overhead gift and a regular gift. But there's a symbolic difference that matters to many donors.

I only bring it up because a recent post at The GiveWell Blog, Robin Hood, Smile Train and the "0% overhead" donor illusion, calls out Robin Hood and Smile Train for their uses of the no-overhead claim:

If identifying effectiveness with "low overhead" is silly, the idea of "0% overhead" simply seems absurd.... it doesn't (and can't) mean that there are no operating costs affecting the total costs of the program. Rather, it's another case of zooming in on "your" money, rather than discussing the true total costs of the program you're supporting the existence of. It makes no sense in an analytical framework; it's a feel-good gimmick.

There's no doubt that when you tell donors 0% of their giving does to overhead, there's a sort of shell-game going on. Whoever it is who's covering the overhead is not covering something else. But the claim is literally true: The particular money sent by the donor does not cover overhead at all.

Fundraisers: don't fall into the trap of thinking It's not logical, so there's something wrong with it. That puts you at odds with human psychology. And if you're out of touch with your donors' hearts and minds, you aren't going to be raising much money.

If you can find a way to truthfully tell donors their giving won't go to overhead, do it!

How to tell if you're mailing too much

In its periodic War on Fundraising, Charity Navigator Blog asks How Many Requests for Funding Did You Get This Past Year?

The post is about a project by an anonymous donor who built a list of name-brand nonprofits that had mailed him between 8 and 24 appeals over the course of a year. It asks the question: "How many times a year should a given charity contact you seeking support?"

Asking how many times a charity should contact people is like asking How many holes should I dig? It's a meaningless question until there's more information.

The question should be How can a charity be relevant in the life of a donor? Figure that one out, and the question about how many is virtually an afterthought.

Churches pass the plate 52 or more times a year. Do church-goers feel harassed and hounded by that?

And one ask for funds can be too many. If you're a Republican, one letter from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is a mailbox-stuffing annoyance.

When the relationship is right, 24 appeals can feel just fine. In fact, I'll bet the list-compiling donor above has a couple other charities that didn't make the list, even though they contact him all the time: His kids' school, his house of worship, a group doing something useful in his neighborhood. Maybe he volunteers somewhere, and not only gets mail and phone calls all the time, but gives up hours and hours of his time -- far, far more burdensome than picking some irrelevant pieces of mail out of the box.

Frequency just isn't an issue.

Or rather, it shouldn't be an issue.

Because I'll tell you this: If a donor keeps track of your mail in order to make the point that you send too much, you're in trouble -- with that donor, at least. Your mail is irrelevant to the point that just seeing your envelope reminds the donor how useless and irritating you are. The more you send, the worse it gets.

But the problem is relevance. Not frequency.

I wish Charity Navigator would stop cheerleading the pointless quantity-of-contact issue and instead give donors advice that would improve their relationships with their charities -- and maybe force more nonprofits to be more relevant.

If donors were reading my blog, here's what I'd advise them:

• Don't give to charities that ask you to support vague, nonspecific causes. Give to those that respect you enough to let you in on the action of what they're doing specifically.
• Always give gifts of $50 or more. That will keep your name off the rental and exchange markets, and really keep random, unwanted mail to a minimum.
• If you're getting more mail than you want from a charity, call them up and ask them to send less. Most will honor your request. (If they don't, drop them like a hot potato.)
• If a charity doesn't promptly and regularly thank you for your giving and report back to you what you've helped accomplished, stop supporting them.

Six reasons people don't give, and what you can do about them

You know all the reasons people should give to you. Do you know the reasons they don't?

A post at About Nonprofit Charitable Orgs, Why People Don't Give to Our Causes looks at some of those as put for by ethicist Peter Singer, author of The Life You Can Save. Here are things that block donors from giving, and what good fundraising can do about it:

No Identifiable Victim. Donors are much less likely to respond to a huge, abstract problem than to a specific person in need. Good fundraising shows how large-scale problems play out in the lives of individuals -- and how the donor can impact individuals.

Parochialism. People are much more inclined to help solve nearby than far-way problems. Good fundraising erases the distance by bringing those distant problems close to home.

Futility. Donors are less inclined to act when they sense they can't make a difference. Good fundraising makes it clear that every gift makes a meaningful difference.

The Diffusion of Responsibility. There's much less compulsion to act if you feel like one of a large number people standing by, waiting for someone who. Good fundraising zeroes in on each donor shows their responsibility and opportunity in the situation.

The Sense of Fairness. Many donors need proof that they aren't "unfairly" shouldering the burden. Good fundraising lets them know that there are other donors like them who are all doing their part.

Money. Research seems to show that thinking about money can depress altruism. Good fundraising is about the cause, not the money.

Who cares about large numbers?

Here's an error a lot of us make: Making large numbers the heart of a fundraising ask.

In this case the Who Cares Campaign (raising funds to increase the number of medical professionals in Tanzania) builds the entire case on the facts that Tanzania is badly undersupplied with medical professionals:

When you throw a bunch of numbers out, you require you audience to build the connection between the numbers and their human impact. That seldom works, because:

1. Most people don't have the personal experience to make the connection between the abstraction of large numbers and the human impact.
2. Even when they can make the connection, they don't go to the trouble.

But it's even worse than that. The larger the number, the less compassion it stirs. That's not logical. It's not even fair. It's just the way the human mind works. Ignoring that is like constructing a building while ignoring gravity. Doesn't work.

I'm no expert on the subject, but I'll make some guesses about the situation in Tanzania that the Who Cares Campaign aims to change:

• People are dying needlessly, pointlessly, of things like treatable infections.
• Mothers are dying in childbirth, and/or their babies are dying.
• Young children and the elderly are the ones who suffer most.
• Outbreaks of easily treatable diseases can spread uncontrollably in underserved areas, causing preventable suffering and death.

Those are the stories they need to tell if they want a lot of people to join the cause.

What giving means to donors

There's a nice post at the eJewish Philanthropy blog by author Ruth Andrew Ellenson titled The Sweetness of Giving. It's about her childhood memories of putting coins in the tzedakah box every Shabbat, and the lessons that taught her:

Our whole society is geared towards acquisition. The idea of owning that one thing that will bring us perfect happiness ... is something we are programmed for from birth. The idea that material things can bring satisfaction is a fantasy that's hard to let go.

And yet sooner or later (hopefully sooner) we learn the lesson that ... wealth really has no meaning unless you go out into the world and share it with others.

As fundraisers, it's easy for us to forget the sweetness of giving. We sometimes think what we're doing is a type of sales. And it is, yet it's completely different.

Giving expands and improves donors. It connects them to their faith. It deepens their ties with family and with others in general. Giving is deeply precious, far beyond the revenue it generates.

We'll be better fundraisers if we keep that in mind.

Fundraisers who don't give don't get it

Good point from Seth Godin at Watch the money.

... if you work for a non-profit and you don't give money to charity, what exactly are you doing in this job? I've met some incredibly generous people in the charitable world, but I can also report that a huge number of people -- even on the fundraising side -- would happily cross the street and risk a beating in order to avoid giving $100 to a cause that's not their own. And the shame of it is that this inaction on their part keeps them from experiencing the very emotion that they try so hard to sell.

A lot of fundraisers (the ineffective ones, anyway) don't realize what they're "selling." They think they're selling how great, effective, modern, cool, and admirable their organization is. That's not it at all. They're actually selling giving.

They might figure that out if they'd give regularly to all kinds of causes. Giving to your own organization feels smart. It's what's expected of you. It's not very much like giving to others.

So if you want to really get fundraising and have insight into donors, be a donor yourself.