Future Fundraising Now

Don't hide your fundraising call to action

When you're raising funds, you always have a call to action. And that is always give.

That's where confusion often crops up. You see a lot of fundraising that have calls to action like these:

• Think well of us. It's good if they do think well of you, but that's not the point.
  
• Learn this important fact. Education seldom leads to a gift. It's more likely to be the other way around: People who give to a cause tend to become educated about it.
• Change the way you think about our issue. Changing your thinking is one of the most difficult things any of us ever faces. A letter in the mailbox or an email is not an effective way to get people to do that. As with education, taking action leads to changed thinking.
• Write a check (or go online). They need to do that, but it's only part of the call to action.

The call to action is give. Give now. Give to change the world in a very specific way.

Don't hide it, don't get replace it with other things, and don't downplay it.

You have two seconds

Here's something scary from the Litmus Blog, reporting on a large set of data looking at what happens to sent emails: New Email Metrics: Two seconds to make an impression:

On average, 51.1% of readers spend less than 2 seconds looking at your email.

That's 51.1% of those who opened your email. Inside of two seconds, they've given up on whatever you had for them.

Count to two slowly. That's all the time they had for you.

What does this tell us? Nothing new, really. Just make sure the content of your email is compelling, enticing, and obvious -- in a way that a viewer can take in within two seconds.

No sweat, huh?

Thanks to Be Relevant! for the tip.

The Lady Gaga lesson

Just off hand, I'd say there's nobody and nothing farther off my personal radar than Lady Gaga. But I'll take a fundraising lessen where I can get it, like this one from Oneicity: What Lady Gaga can teach you about fundraising.

How should direct mail fundraising be like Ms. Gaga?

Lady Gaga stands out in a crowd. You have to as well. If you are sending boring, look-like-everyone-else direct mail you are violating the Lady Gaga Rule and not raising the funds you could.

Sorry, but it's true. The one with the best taste never wins. It's the one who gets the most attention.

So swallow your pride and make over-the-top, loud, weird fundraising. You may not be proud of how it looks -- but I think you'll be proud of the good deeds you make possible.

Podcast: How to Tell If Your Fundraising Is Good (Part 3: Packaging)

Direct mail, the life-blood of most fundraising programs, has different design conventions from other types of design. It's less pretty, more old-fashioned, and almost messy. Here's a look at direct mail design and packaging: Everything you need to create successful fundraising appeals -- from fonts, to photos, to underlining.

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:

Photos that hurt your fundraising

Most fundraising experts doggedly point out that photos of people are absolutely critical for successful fundraising messages.

They're half right.

A great photo makes all the difference. It can crystallize a message and drive home its emotional core more powerfully memorably than words can.

But the wrong photo can shoot your message down, making the best copy in the world ineffective and irrelevant.

There are two things that most often make a photo hurt your fundraising message:

The photo contradicts the message

This happens all the time: The letter says "Children are going hungry ... won't you help them?" -- but there's a photo of happy, plump children. It's a contradiction. You might as well have a banner headline that says, "Don't Worry: It's Already Taken Care of."

Make sure every photo you use says the same thing that the words say.

The photo shows unsympathetic-looking people

Someone who appears to be scowling at the camera sends a hostile message to the donor. Unfortunately, this happens often, because some people, when they're in pain or afraid, furrow their brow -- which looks like a scowl. That's not what it is, but that's how it looks. And it's a real turn-off for donors. Who wants to reach out to someone who seems to be hostile toward you?

If you know the person in the photo, or you're familiar with the situation, you can easily miss problem. You'll correctly interpret the expression of pain for what it is, not what it looks like to others. Get outside opinions of what people's expressions appear to be.

A picture is worth a thousand words. So make sure you get the right thousand words when you use a picture.

One secret to writing like a normal person

Here's great advice from Damn, I Wish I'd Thought of That!: Everything you need to know about being an AMAZING writer:

Never write a word you wouldn't say out loud.

Say what you want to say out loud to a friend. Say it a few times until it's awesome. Then type it up.

That's it.

Really. Do it. We routinely write bizzaro, alienoid phrases that no human would say to another human. You don't notice how weird it is because you aren't listening to yourself.

The way it looks on paper or screen doesn't clue you in to the weirdness. But you'll hear it in second.

Natural, normal-sounding copy raises more funds.

What makes fundraising fail

Crappy, failing fundraising copy is often the way it is because somebody liked that way. Not that someone wanted it to be crappy, but they wanted certain characteristics -- usually things like a professional tone, a dignified, non-urgent approach, maybe a side goal of lecturing the reader into a better understanding of the cause.

Successful fundraising copy, on the other hand, is almost never the way it is because fundraising professionals like it that way. The good stuff is the result of experience, discipline, and head-to-head testing. All the testing and measurement leads to a factual understanding of what works and what doesn't.

Somebody's personal preference? That's not a fact. It has a snowball-in-hell chance of working. That's not a 0% chance, but darn close to it.

Want to have a fighting chance of doing well? Start with facts and knowledge. Then sprinkle on some instinct and hunches -- but test them.

Are all marketing people complete idiots?

The advertising world briefly united in howls of laughter a couple weeks ago when two marketing and sales VPs at General Motors came up with the brain-wave of forbidding the word "Chevy" when talking about Chevrolets. (Read about it here in the New York Times.)

First, as a 61% shareholder in GM, I want those two VPs fired in a special ceremony that includes driving them away from company property in a Honda. Second, I want to join everyone else in asking, WTF?

It doesn't answer the question, but here's part of the memo announcing the plan, which you can read in full in the New York Times Wheels automotive blog:

When you look at the most recognized brands throughout the world, such as Coke or Apple for instance, one of the things they all focus on is the consistency of their branding.... The more consistent a brand becomes, the more prominent and recognizable it is with the consumer. This is a big opportunity for us moving forward.... One way to achieve this is with the use of Chevrolet vs. Chevy. We'd ask that whether you're talking to a dealer, reviewing dealer advertising or speaking with friends and family, that you communicate our brand as Chevrolet moving forward.

We have a proud heritage behind us and a fantastic future ahead of us ... speaking to the success of this brand in one consistent manner will ensure Chevrolet becomes even more prominent and recognizable than it already is.

(Note that the memo contains the phrase moving forward, which is required by all VPs everywhere as a special code meaning "I'm a moron, and if you didn't already think so, this memo will confirm it for you.")

Within hours, the geniuses at GM started backpedalling. They claimed the memo was poorly worded, and it didn't at all mean what it seemed to say. So all those songs about Chevys won't have to be re-written.

How does all this matter to the nonprofit world? In just one way: We are suckers for branding and marketing gurus form the commercial world. I'll bet virtually any nonprofit who could afford them would hire either of the Chevy geniuses in a heartbeat ...

And then they would proceed to put their brains to work doing to their nonprofit employer what they tried to do to Chevy (I mean Chevrolet).

Because that's what they do.

They do it in their own world They'll do it even worse in ours, as they never quite seem to grasp that we aren't selling junk, but motivating people to give.

So if your organization hires a hot-shot commercial branding or marketing expert, drive your Chevy to the levee! Because you are in for a couple of very rough years while their errors and sloppy thinking slosh through your marketing and fundraising.

The Curse of Too Much Mail

Here's my column in this month's FundRaising Success magazine, The Curse of Too Much Mail.

Teaser: If you accept the premise that your fundraising is annoying, painful, stupid and unwelcome -- you will make it so. It's a classic self-fulfilling prophecy, the not-so-well-kept secret of creative work: Your attitude bleeds through onto the paper.

Repetition, repetition, repetition: it's how fundraising works

You don't have a captive audience. If you assume readers start at the beginning and read straight through to the end, picking up the thread of your argument as it builds, point by well-constructed point, you're going to write the copy all wrong. People just don't read your stuff that way.

Your readers skip around, skim, get distracted, lose their place, come back later at a different place. Which is why repeating yourself is necessary. Whatever it is you want people to do, tell them that thing again and again and again.

Repeat yourself because you don't know if they understood it the first and second times.

Repeat yourself, because you can't be sure they even read it the first and second times.

Repeat yourself because sometimes, even when they read it, it doesn't sink in until they've seen it a few times.

Repeat yourself because you aren't sure what way of saying it is the one that gets through to any given donor.

This repetitive quality can be pretty annoying. It will especially stand out when you're reading closely and carefully: I heard you the first, second, and third times! Enough already!

Don't worry. Be repetitive. It works. It really works.