Future Fundraising Now

How skimping on your donors can make you lose your shirt

Great thought at Damn, I Wish I'd Thought of That: How long are your shirt tails?

Good shirts have nice long tails. They stay tucked in that way. But a shirt company could save a lot of money by shortening the tails on its shirts by a few inches. After all, just a tiny bit off the bottom doesn't make that much different, does it?

But the most important data never shows up on a spreadsheet: Customers who bought the shirt, thought it seemed short/cheap, and never came back. Your "fabric cost" spreadsheet doesn't have a column for "customer retention costs." Which means you may be saving money on a cheap product, but losing more money in lost repeat sales.

A good company has better math: What is the most economical way to keep our customers happy?

When it comes to donor experience, are you like the good shirt company, or the bad one? Do you trim just a bit off the bottom in a way you're sure nobody notices -- but maybe makes their experience just a bit worse than it should be?

• Do you send your donors receipts promptly, or do you save a few bucks with some lousy process that makes it take weeks to thank your donors for their gifts?
• Do you go to the trouble to find and tell inspiring stories about what donors are accomplishing with their giving, or is your fundraising vague and statistical?
• Do you have a newsletter that's designed to make donors feel good about the great things they've made possible, or is your newsletter all about how great you are? (Or worse yet, do you fail to report back at all what's happening?)
• Are you figuring out really cool specific actions you can invite your donors to take, or are you only raising undesignated funds and saving all the good stuff for foundations and mega-donors?

Donors aren't likely to complain about these things. But like a slightly-too-short shirt-tail, they can just leave people feeling a bit under-served. Their connection to you and your cause is a little less delightful and rewarding. The chance that they'll lose interest or get lured away by something else just that much higher.

Don't be stupidly cheap. Your donors deserve better. And they'll reward you if you treat them right.

Best-brand nonprofits act like real people

From trendwatching.com, an interesting prediction for 2012: Consumers will gravitate to brand that "behave more humanly, including showing their flaws." In other words, brand that are Flawsome:

... in 2012 consumers won't expect brands to be flawless; they will even embrace brands that are FLAWSOME, and at large (or at least somewhat) human. Brands that are honest about their flaws, that show some empathy, generosity, humility, flexibility, maturity, humor and dare we say it, some character and humanity.

That sounds like the way a great nonprofit brand should be.

How many nonprofits allow that in their brand guidelines? How many are so busy extolling their wonderfulness they can't act human?

And how "flawsome" they are may determine how well Susan G. Komen for the Cure comes through its current troubles.

How your donors are talking about you

There's an interesting infographic at The WOMMA Word and how word-of-mouth information about commercial brands spreads and is used: The Word and the World of Customers.

• 9 out of 10 conversations about brands happen offline
• 66% of these conversations are mostly positive
• 8% are mostly negative
• Average online review is 4.3 (out of 5)
• 55% of consumers recommend a company because of its customer service

What I find worth noting about these findings are these points:

1. How offline word-of-mouth is. Despite what they say, people talking about brands isn't something that was invented with Twitter. It's been going on as long as anybody has been selling anything. And it's still overwhelmingly happening offline. Don't over-focus on the social media part of it; you'll miss where the real action is.
2. How positive word-of-mouth is. Seriously, I thought it was mainly complaints. This is great news for nonprofits. We thrive in positive environments. You shouldn't be afraid of what people might say in public about you. They're pre-disposed to be positive.
3. How much service matters. Fundraisers who focus on service are going to benefit from great word-of-mouth buzz. Great service for us is: Flawless data, quick receipting, excellent and constant reporting back to donors, and giving donors control over the relationship. Among other things.

Are you interested in your donors?

Have you noticed how some of the companies you do business seem interested in you, and others don't?

The difference is quite simple: Those companies that seem interested almost always are interested. Those that don't seem interested don't give a rip about you beyond the revenue you represent.

MarketingProfs Daily Fix Blog takes a look at those companies that are interested, at 4 Ways to Show Interest in Your Buyers: Lessons from Bono. (Bono, apparently, is truly interested in his fans.)

Here's what smart companies do:

1. They Engage With Their Buyers
2. They Know Who Their Buyer Is Before They Engage
3. They Don't Treat Everyone the Same
4. They Measure Their Engagement

Nonprofits can and should do all of those things.

When you're interested in your donors, two really cool things happen:

1. You learn extremely useful things about them that make you a much more effective fundraiser.
2. They can tell you're interested, and they reciprocate. That means more gifts, more involvement, and better retention.

Create good experiences for your donors

According to the Customer Experience Matters blog, customer experience matters.

Okay, that makes it sound about as un-newsworthy as possible. But really, this is interesting stuff at New Report: The Customer Experience-Loyalty Connection.

The report looked at a number of customer experience factors in 12 industries, from airlines to wireless carriers, and found that better customer experience correlated with increased revenue:

Customer experience leaders enjoy a double-digit advantage in customers willing to buy more from them, reluctant to switch business away from them, and likely to recommend them. A modest improvement in customer experience can drive between $179 million (for health plans) and $308 million (for hotel chains) of incremental revenue over three years for every $1 billion in annual sales.

It begs the question: Does donor experience matter in a similar way? After all, the difference between a good and bad charitable giving experience probably isn't as dramatic as the difference between a good and bad experience at a hotel. We fundraisers just don't have nearly the capacity for tormenting our donors that airlines do.

But I'm guessing experience matters, and that if they applied the same study to nonprofits we'd see similar results -- that treating people right means they give more and stay with you longer.

I think giving donors a good experience includes these things:

• Get the data right. Don't spell names wrong. Don't have duplicate records. Don't mess up giving records.
• Be thankful. Receipt promptly. Thank specifically for what they gave. Thank more than you have to.
• Report back. Let donors know about the difference they make. Send a newsletter that's about them, not you.
• Offer choices. Let them control how often and how you communicate. Let them direct their giving to the things that interest them. Find cool ways to put them in the driver's seat.

Give the money back to donors

Here's a cool idea from the NTEN Blog: Say "No" to Money (to Make Money). Goes like this:

Set an ambitious but not unachievable target, and vow to your donors that unless you hit that target in the allotted time, you will return all the money raised so far. Every single cent.... By opting into the 'conditional giving' or 'in it to win it' strategy, it has been proven that your donors are more likely to rally ... and come through for you. They know exactly what is at stake, and they won't let you down.

I think that's great. It does what fundraising so often fails to do: Make it clear how urgently and specifically each gift is needed.

But I'd change it in a small way: If we failed to raise the total needed, I'd go back to the donors and ask them if they want their money back. (Assuming the promise to give it back wasn't integral to the offer in the first place.)

Having made the decision to give, who wants the money back? From talking to a lot of donors, I get the sense that the key moment of most charitable gifts is the giving. Not the purchase of the equipment that results. Sending back the gift could be just being a pain. You mean I have to figure out what to do with that money again?

And then extend the idea: What if a certain project you've raised funds for gets over-funded? Go back to those donors (or maybe the ones who gave after the need was funded) and tell them they can have their money back. Of course, you can offer them the choice of re-allocating their gift to something similar (which you could make the case for) or even unrestrict it.

My guess: The vast majority don't want their money back, but really appreciate being asked. Some will be moved to give an additional gift. And most will become more connected, committed, and generous than they were before.

Donor-respecting actions that would clearly demonstrate that not only does their money matter, but their opinion too. That's when fundraising becomes a whole new thing.

The easy path to fundraising success that hardly anyone takes

Tom Ahern has an excellent client that wants to succeed. That's the best kind. As Tom says, I have this lovely client.

This client doesn't balk at letting Tom write to the donors about the donors:

... I've been exploring the limits of donor-centricity, writing full-body flattery baths. And the results are in.... a 75% improvement in response, by merely focusing on the supreme importance of donors.

I hate to say it, but: Duh!

Put a talented fundraising writer to work and let them focus on donors, rather than how cool, capable, and important the organization is -- it's just going to work.

It's too bad it takes an unusual organization like Tom's lovely client to allow fundraisers to focus in on donors.

This is a fundraising strategy that's open to any organization that's willing to do it. Is something stopping you?

Don't "target" donors -- be their target

Do you "target" your donors? The Make Marketing History blog proposes that's the wrong way to think, at: Why Targetting Is The Wrong Marketing Mindset.

Good point:

Targetting just oozes all the wrong connotations: the passive customer, the picking off of individuals as they stray into your corporate cross-hairs, not to mention the assumption that you know how all customers behave. Reverse the metaphor. Think of your product/service as the customer's target and your marketing as a way of perfecting their aim.

Make yourself the target. That would be a pretty smart way to raise funds.

Here are some ways to do that:

• Know who your donors are -- and embrace them. Too many fundraisers wish their donors were different: Smarter, cooler, younger. It's way more effective to study your real, non-fantasy donors, and be attractive to them.
• Be where your donors are. If they respond to direct mail, use direct mail. If they're all over Facebook, be there. If there's an event your donors love, try to be there.
• Offer things donors really want to do. Here's the hard part. Most nonprofits are fantastically faithful to describing what they do and how they think about it. The smart ones learn how to make their work fit in their donors' worlds.
• Be remarkable. Do something that your donors will want to talk about.

Donor service matters

Treating customers right can help create an army of free advertisers. Treating them wrong can create a mob of rabid detractors, doing your competition's work for them, for free.

That's what Customer Experience Report supports. Customers said these things about their experiences

• 55% of people say they recommend a company based their experience with its customer service.
• 40% say they began purchasing from a competitive brand simply because of their reputation for great customer service.
• 85% say they want to warn others about the pitfalls of doing business with a company that gave them poor service.
• 66% say they want to discourage others from buying from that company.

Okay, so this tells us that customer service is important. What does it mean for nonprofits? We don't have the power to torment our donors the way airlines, phone companies, and plumbers can. You might think customer service is not important for us.

But we sometimes do those small annoying things that put them in a negative frame of mind. Things like:

• Spelling their name wrong.
• Having multiple copies of their record.
• Getting their gift amounts or dates wrong.
• Taking forever to receipt their giving.
• Not meeting their requests -- or taking so long to do so, they think they're being ignored.
• Phone reps who are not helpful, and/or uninformed.

Getting these things wrong won't show up on campaign reports, but they will hurt. Over time, they can hurt a lot.

Make sure you've got your customer care nailed down!

Thanks to Conversation Agent for the tip.

Words that can help us think more clearly

From Roy Williams' excellent MondayMorningMemo, here's a piece about some new ways to think about how we motivate donors to act: What to Say.

Williams says, "New ideas are carried by new words." And he has a list of some of these new words and how they apply to marketing and advertising. They're all good, but I'd like to point out just a few that can especially apply to fundraising:

• Authenticity: Being what you say you are.
• Ad-speak: Clichés, empty phrases, unsubstantiated claims and hyperbole -- the language of yesterday's advertising.
• Brandable chunks: Vivid, recurring phrases used by an advertiser to help position and define the brand. Slogans and taglines are out. Brandable chunks are in.
• Black words: Empty words that fail to contribute to a colorful mental image. The objective of every good writer is to remove the black words so that the others shine more brightly.

Real is in. Fake is out. Even more so for fundraising than for advertising.