Future Fundraising Now

13 super-common comments that will crush your fundraising -- and how to answer them

There are often a lot of cooks in the fundraising kitchen. Many of them know nothing about cooking.

But that doesn’t keep them from having strong opinions about what does and doesn’t work in fundraising.

Here’s a very helpful post from Hands-On Fundraising that give some of the most common uneducated ideas about fundraising messages: They challenge your fundraising appeal. How should you respond?

I can vouch that these are super-common ideas. And that they are very bad ideas!

1. Does the letter really have to be two (or four, or more) pages? With very rare exceptions, longer letters work better. This is one of the most dependable truths in direct marketing. The other problem with many short letters: Too get everything in on one page means you must use tiny fonts, long paragraphs, and narrow margins. Almost unreadable.
   
2. Why that serif font? It looks so old-fashioned! And why is it so big? In print, serif fonts are much easier to read. As for font size, 12 point is really the smallest size you should use. 13 or bigger is better yet. Ease of reading is one of the most important goals you should have.
   
3. I was taught either indents or a space between paragraphs. Why are you using both? Indents and lines between paragraphs both make reading easier. That’s why we use them. Whoever taught you that rule was not as obsessed with readability as they should have been.
   
4. That’s a sentence fragment. It’s not grammatically correct. Grammar, schrammar! The goal of fundraising is to be colloquial, easy to read, human, and persuasive. Not follow your elementary teacher’s arbitrary rules.
   
5. We don’t begin a sentence with “And” or “But.” That’s another arbitrary rule, not based on anything but a theory of what a sentence is. Sentences start with conjunctions are still sentences. And they can help propel readers forward.
   
6. We have all these great statistics about why our work is so important. Why aren’t you using them? Numbers numb. They actively dissuade people from paying attention or taking action. Persuade with stories. That’s how you connect with people.
   
7. We have several co-chairs and we want them all to sign. The minute you add more than one signer to a letter, you automatically degrade the writing. Because you are forced to use an excluding “we” instead of a personal “I.” (Multiple signers are sometimes used because it’s believed each of them brings some kind of “star power” to the message. Probably not. But if you really think so, have the second (or more) signer sign a lift note.
   
8. Couldn’t we save room if you combined those first two lines? The goal is not to crowd as many words as possible onto the page. It’s to be readable. Short paragraphs are best!
   
9. We have a gala coming up. Can’t we throw a mention of it into the P.S.? Many readers read the P.S. first or even only. Whatever it is you most want people to do is what should be in the P.S.
   

I couldn’t help but add four more common objections we get to professional fundraising:

1. I don’t use contractions. A letter signer literally wrote this to me one time. The lesson: You do use contractions. Everyone does. When we take them out, we sound like robots!
   
2. Our donors are highly educated. We should be writing to them at a post-graduate reading level. Reading ease has nothing to do with education. When writing is easier to read, everyone benefits, no matter how educated they are.
   
3. We need to fully explain all our programs so donors will understand us. Donors don’t give to fund your organization. They give to make something happen. When you educate them about your organization, you’re just being irrelevant to them. You raise less money.
   
4. I wouldn’t respond to this! Possibly not. But this message is not aimed at you. And your conscious opinion that you wouldn’t respond has no connection at all with whether you’d actually respond.
   

7 things you can do to get the most from DAF donors

As donor-advised funds explode in popularity, you increasingly have donors with DAFs. And those donors have the potential to be midvalue or major donors and to leave bequests.

Here’s some help for maximizing your DAF donors, from the Masterworks Blog, at 7 Ways to Inspire Donors to Give With a Donor-Advised Fund:

1. Identify donors who have given DAFs and cultivate them. Track their DAF donations as “soft credits.”
   
2. Quickly and appropriately acknowledge the donor who recommended the DAF gift.
   
3. Use donor engagement or preference surveys to see if you can get DAF donors to identify themselves.
   
4. Treat DAF supporters as mid-level or even major donors.
   
5. Add a DAF widget or giving opportunity on your website. This can make it easier for them to give.
   
6. Use direct mail appeals, receipt inserts, newsletters, and other communication to: Invite donors to name your organization as a DAF beneficiary, remind donors they can use their DAF to make recurring gifts, provide helpful content about setting up you up as a recipient of the DAF.
   
7. Use your next major donor mailing to ask for a “leadership gift” and suggest that a DAF might be an excellent way to accomplish that.
   

20 ways to improve your emails

Here’s a useful checklist for email fundraisers, from the Hubspot Marketing Blog: 20 Email Best Practices That Actually Drive Results. It’s aimed at commercial emailers, but most of the hints work for fundraising too.

1. Don't purchase contact lists. It’s basically paying to be labeled a spammer.
   
2. Avoid using 'No-Reply' in the sender's email address. Let your recipients talk back to you in the way they prefer!
   
3. Stick to fewer than three typefaces.
   
4. Optimize the email's preview text. It can work with your subject line to improve open rates.
   
5. Include an email signature.
   
6. Clean your mailing list regularly.
   
7. Keep the main message and call-to-action above the fold. Don’t hide them under a giant logo or photo.
   
8. Personalize the email greeting. Writing writing to people. Say hello to them.
   
9. Keep your email between 500 and 650 pixels wide.
   
10. A/B test your subject lines and calls to action. It’s not what you assume it will be surprisingly often.
    
11. Include your logo.
    
12. Name the offer in your subject line.
    
13. Allow recipients to subscribe to your newsletter. Your best emails may be forwarded to new recipients who aren’t subscribers yet.
    
14. Write compelling (but concise) subject lines. 30 and 50 characters is best.
    
15. Create automated emails for opt-ins.
    
16. Closely tie emails to landing pages. Sending those who click to generic landing pages costs lowers overall response.
    
17. Conduct a five-second test. Can someone (other than you) tell within 5 seconds what your call to action is?
    
18. Make it personal. Make it about your reader. Not about yourself.
    
19. Include a clear CTA.
    
20. Follow up. Sending just one email asking people to do something is almost not worth doing.
    

Worried about Giving Tuesday? Maybe you shouldn’t

Giving Tuesday is on a Sunday this year.

Not that Giving Tuesday ... the real one. December 31.

Giving Tuesday (the “official” one) is a big day for some organizations.

But not for everyone.

December 31 is a much bigger day. For nearly all organizations, it is by far the biggest online giving day of the year.

If there’s a day you should be worried about being prepared for, it’s December 31.

If you’ve raised a lot on past Giving Tuesdays, keep at it. Think about adding more messaging.

If Giving Tuesday is weak for you, consider giving it a miss. Put whatever time and budget you’ll save into your end-of-year campaign.

If you’re not sure about Giving Tuesday, dip your toe in. Give it a try. It might be worthwhile. If it goes well, do it again next year, maybe even more so. If it doesn’t go well, you are free to away and never think about it again!

But be sure to keep your eyes on the real prize: December 31.

3 ways we know direct mail is alive and kicking

Has someone told you lately that direct mail fundraising no longer works?

Maybe you’ve also seen direct mail response rates go down. While costs go up.

But before you pull the plug on your direct mail program, consider this post from the BDI Blog: Direct Mail: It’s Alive! 3 Reasons Why It Still Works in Fundraising. It might change your mind:

1. Mail is still preferred by most of your donors. I know it may be hard to get your head around this, when you personally don’t interact with direct mail. But the numbers confirm it. Mail still works. It may eventually stop working as new generations age into the donor stage of life. But it is not this day!

2. Direct attribution is over, but it doesn’t mean your mail is not driving gifts. Like it or not (and you should like it more than not), donors freely cross channels. And the most common crossing is those who respond to direct mail online. In some cases, a majority of direct mail responses happen online. This can give the impression that the mail “doesn’t work,” when it works very well.

3. Direct mail is adjusting, adapting and getting smarter. Technology is improving at printers. We can do things to personalize the mail and make more targeted and relevant than ever. Keep your eyes open to new opportunities in the mail.
   

Direct mail is still the best-performing part of a healthy fundraising program for most of us.

10 reasons donors say NO, and what they mean

“No” means “no.” Right?

In fundraising: kinda, sorta.

The very helpful book, The Influential Fundraiser: Using the Psychology of Persuasion to Achieve Outstanding Results by Bernard Ross and Clare Segal, takes a close look at what NO might mean in a face-to-face conversation with a donor where you specifically ask for a donation. There are at least nine specific colors of a donor’s “no”:

1. No, not for this
   
2. No, not you
   
3. No, not me
   
4. No, not unless
   
5. No, not in this way
   
6. No, not now
   
7. No, too much
   
8. No, too little
   
9. No, go away
   

In direct mail, there’s a 10th type of no, and it’s probably the most common of all of them:

I’m not paying enough attention to say yes or no!

It’s neither a no nor a yes. But since there’s no donation, it seems like a no.

But among all those potential negative answers, only one is a complete and final NO -- the kind of NO that means there’s no further point in asking.

All the others are something different.

Major donor fundraisers have a huge advantage over the rest of us: When they’re told “no,” they can ask questions or read nonverbal clues to discern which kind of no it is.

All we get is a lack of response. Which we tend to take as a “no.”

Even though it’s not really a true “no, go away, don’t ask” at all.

So don’t think of non-response to a direct mail or email appeal as as a final and total no -- as your failure to make the case. In most cases, that’s not what it is.

“Negative” fundraising works, but do your donors ever get good news?

It is widely believed in fundraising circles that donors respond to our stories of success, that they want to join success. And that stories of need, of problems, are repellent to most donors.

I don’t know where that belief comes from.

Not from reality, I’m sorry to say.

Check out this post on the Bloomerang Blog, which asks (and then answers) the question, Do Negativity And Alarm Really Raise More Funds?

Negative events impact our brains more than positive events. Psychologists refer to this as negative bias, and it can have a powerful effect on your behavior, your decisions—even your giving.

Worse, studies show that we’re more likely to perceive negative news as truthful. Since negative information draws greater attention, many may believe it has greater validity. This might be why bad news seems to garner more attention.

This is confirmed by many years of testing and experience.

But there is a critical need for positivity and celebration in fundraising. Donors need to know that their donations are put to good use and result and great things happening.

That’s what thank-you messages, newsletters, and all kinds of donor stewardship are for. In fact, donors should be encountering more happy-ending success stories in their relationship with you than the “negative” stories that activate their giving.

One of the top causes of our overall poor donor retention rate is this: Too many donors don’t get the news that they’re giving matters.

And too much fundraising is ineffective in the first place, because it doesn’t place action before the donor in the first place: It just tells them, We are doing great work! So donate now!

10 ways to give your fundraising appeal superpowers

Here are some great tips for improving fundraising messages, from Clairification, at Top 10 Fundraising Appeal Writing Tips:

1. Begin with drama and get right to the point. Don’t spend a paragraph or three introducing yourself and thanking the donor for the past giving. (Save that for the end of the letter.) PRO TIP: Your first few paragraphs of your first draft are probably garbage that you need to cut. Not just you: Everybody.

2. Lead with easy to read, understandable copy and design. Good reading ease score, large serif font, black type against white background.

3. Use a conversational tone; understand donors are asking questions right off the bat. This is conversation, not a presentation.

4. Ask directly two to three times. At least! Donors skim, so the more times you ask, the better likelihood they’ll notice an ask.

5. Avoid jargon like the plague. Jargon is a way for professionals to talk to each other. It excludes everyone else. Don’t exclude your donors from the conversation that’s specifically with them.

6. Talk about outcomes, not processes. Your processes are vitally important. But that’s not what donors care about. They want to make something happen. Focus on that!

7. Give a compelling reason to give today. If they don’t give right away, they probably won’t give at all. Make it urgent. (And don’t talk about your past successes. That’s anti-urgent!)

8. Flatter the donor; assume the best. Talk to donors like they are dedicated supporters who love your cause and want to make a difference. Sure, some people aren’t that at all. But you aren’t talking to them. (And they aren’t listening anyway.)

9. Make the donor feel the appeal is about them. This is the hard part. People give for reasons of their own. Those reasons may not be the same as yours. And they’ll certainly be less detailed and educated than your reasons.

10. Tell the donor specifically what it costs to accomplish what needs to be accomplished. Ask for specific amounts, and and be clear what those amounts do.
    

Ultimate Fundraising Lesson [PODCAST]

The most important thing you can learn about fundraising — the one thing that can make the difference between mediocrity and big-time success — it’s this: It’s not about you. It’s about your donor! It’s so easy to talk about how great our organization is … and to forget that donors don’t give because you’re awesome. They give because they are awesome. That’s why successful fundraising is about donors, not about us.

From the archives of the now-defunct podcast Fundraising Is Beautiful. This episode first aired on January 18, 2018. Listen here:

(If you don't see the audio player below, click here to listen.)

Tired of the same old, same old fundraising?

A lot of fundraisers look at the messages they and others are sending out, and they just feel tired.

“Why is our fundraising like that?” they ask. “Why so old-fashioned? Why so much like last year and every year?”

I understand. Doing the same old thing year after year really does get old.

You know what I’m going to say next: We do the same old same old because it works.

But there’s more to it than that.

Look at this Christmas appeal from The Salvation Army.

You can hardly imagine a more same-old same-old piece of direct mail. Yawn.

But I can guarantee you this boring piece of mail is tested every year. They’ll keep mailing it until something different does better.

Which will happen eventually.

But there’s something else going on that’s less visible. You can see it on the return envelope:

What are those random little rectangles with colorful designs? They haven’t been there forever.

They are an innovation. They are there because they improved the package.

I don’t have specific knowledge about it, but I can guess the thought process. They knew the common truth that if you put live stamps on a return envelope, you boost response. But the cost of those stamps make the tactic profitable only for upper-end donors. Certainly not for acquisition mailings, which this piece is.

But some smart person asked a strange but smart question. “Would something that vaguely looks like stamps on the return envelope improve response?” I’ll bet someone else in the meeting said that was a silly question.

But they tested it.

And clearly, those little rectangles improved response!

That’s an innovation.

Not world-changing one. It probably makes a pretty small difference. But a measurable and statistically significant one.

So it’s a little thing. But they’ll keep testing little things. And big things, and the same-old will change.

Effective fundraising is always testing.

And we don’t change things just because we’re tired of them. We find out what works.