Future Fundraising Now

Almost everything you need to know about fundraising

After a long series on the science of giving, Katya's Nonprofit Marketing Blog sums it all up with 6 Truths Behind Why People Give.

Here are those useful truths (along with my comments):

1. Giving is mostly emotional and irrational. This is probably the most important truth you can know about fundraising. The minute you embrace it, you will start getting better results.
2. Giving is personal. They give because of themselves, not because of you.
3. It's really hard to change #1 or #2. I've worked with dozens of nonprofits that were putting enormous effort into changing one or both of these facts. Results were consistent: It costs a lot of revenue to ignore the real landscape you live in.
4. Giving makes people happy. Fundraisers who don't believe this are very unhappy (and unsuccessful).
5. Giving is a social act. This is one area where online giving has a big advantage over traditional channels: You can make the act of giving visibly and instantly social.
6. These are sweeping generalizations. Test for yourself! There are exceptions to every rule!

The most popular kid isn't always the winner

Some folks will tell you that a presence on the Internet is all about getting everyone to click your stuff -- to be amazingly popular. Seth Godin begs to differ, at The thing that makes it popular...

There are a hundred ways you and your organization can become more popular, earn more clicks, generate more comments... but is popular what you're after?

It shouldn't be.

If you're a serious nonprofit engaged in actually changing the world, popular is beside the point. You don't need four billion people to think you're cool. You need just a million people to walk with you and provide financial support. (In most cases, far fewer than a million will get the job done.)

Here's an attempt by a nonprofit to be popular at the expense of actually making connections: Amnesty International Hungary has a series of videos like this one, with titles like Secret scenes of the E.T. who was found in Budapest. But check out the video:

(Or see it here on YouTube.)

This is one of a large series of videos with names like Amazing! Dog speaks to his owner, Magician makes a trick and takes off cute girl's clothes, and Unbelievable goalkeeper mistake! The kind of stuff that gets forwards galore.

In case you don't have the time to figure out the joke, the entire video just looks like a YouTube video trying to load. A little way in, there's a message comparing your short wait for a video to load with the much longer wait for justice and other things that many around the world face.

Using a tactic common among producers of Stupid Nonprofit Ads: Don't say what you want to say, symbolize it.

So here's what presumably happens: Someone sees the title, thinks, Cool! and clicks. But within seconds, they see they've been tricked. The story probably ends right there for most. A few viewers make stick around long enough to see the message; how many bother to puzzle out the lesson? How many more are just annoyed at having been tricked?

There's no point in getting "everyone" to click something you created. Especially if you use trickery to get them to do it. You're better off being real and straightforward and deep and compelling with the smaller group of people who are going to care about your cause enough to actually take action.

Don't seek indiscriminate popularity. That gets you nowhere. Find your real audience, then seek depth and passion with them.

Stupid ad trivializes tragedy

If you've ever walked with someone as they descended into dementia, you know it is one of the most wrenching, anguishing things that can happen.

We should all fervently hope and pray for treatments and a cure for Alzheimer's disease.

And that's clearly what the Alzheimer Society of Montréal wants too. But you can't really tell from this stupid ad:

Here's a detail, so you can see the "punch line."

Alzheimer's almost hits the category of "too scary to talk about." And that might lead people to reach for metaphors and analogies to talk about the disease and what it does.

But this computer hard drive analogy is inept. Not only that, it's glib and dehumanizing. Roger, even if he's in the late stages of Alzheimer's, is not a blank hard drive. He's still human.

Worse yet, comparing the deep human tragedy of Alzheimer's with the minor problem of a broken hard drive just pushes everyone further from understanding and caring about this disease. Losing a hard drive is a pain -- possibly a huge pain. But it can't even come close to comparing to the heartbreak, fear, and pain of Alzheimer's.

What someone should have asked is this: What are we trying to accomplish? What action or attitude do we hope to engender with this message? It appears nobody asked that, so they ended up with a pointless and misleading analogy that trivializes the very thing the organization is dedicated to fighting.

As you might expect, this is the work of an ad agency.

Thanks to Osocio for the tip.

More Stupid Nonprofit Ads.

Podcast: Fundraising in the rest of the world

For the fourth installment of our State of Fundraising series, we interview Sean Triner, founder of Pareto Fundraising, who blogs at Sean Triner's Blog. Sean shares some of what's happening in fundraising outside the US, based on his experience in Australia, Asia, Europe, and Canada. Fundraisers both in and outside the US will find this useful and fascinating.

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:

What to do about the Japan quake and tsunami

An 8.9 quake is big. Off-the-charts big. And the resulting tsunami that swept parts of coastal Japan yielded shocking, heart-wrenching video.

Everybody is focused on Japan today. All kinds of nonprofits are wondering what they should do.

My opinion: The Japan quake is not a major fundraising event.

Please note that I'm not minimizing the magnitude of the destruction or the suffering and loss of those in the midst of the destruction. They should be in our thoughts and prayers.

But from a fundraising point of view, this is not a Big One.

That's because it lacks the massive death toll that drives the media coverage that drives an outpouring of giving, like we saw with last year's Haiti quake. It's more like last month's quake in New Zealand, or the huge quake that hit Chile a month after the Haiti quake.

The steepest death estimate I've seen for the Japan quake and tsunami about 1,000 dead. That's a shockingly huge number of lives snuffed out. But it's not enough to keep the media's interest. This story is going to fade quickly from the news.

In fact, as I write this mid-afternoon Friday, Pacific Time, part of the coverage is already moving to the unremarkable arrival of the tsunami on the US West Coast. The local angle, while clearly not really tragic or important, is grabbing some of the limelight.

These are the earmarks of an event that's not going to raise a lot of funds.

That's not to say you shouldn't do anything at all.

The rise of digital media makes it possible to respond quickly and give people the chance to give in the first hours, when the story is still dominant.

Assuming your organization has the expertise and connections to be part of the relief effort in Japan, You can quickly mobilize donors and raise funds. Here's what I'd recommend:

• Direct mail. Don't. By the time you get it produced into mailboxes, this story will be long gone from the news. You will not do well.
• Email. Yes, if you can send it in the next few hours.
• Search engine marketing. Yes, if you're set up and can move fast enough.
• Mobile giving. Yes. (But take heed of this warning: Text Giving: A Tool, Not a Miracle.)
• Social media. Yes. Push your message out through Facebook, Twitter, and other places, if you already have a presence there.
• Telemarketing. Maybe, if you can get it going immediately, and you have an appropriate list for making such calls.
• Print. Probably not. Too slow in most cases.
• Broadcast media. Maybe, but I doubt it. It's possible to be on the radio on super-short notice. Anything that requires any production time is not a good bet.
• Public relations. Yes. Make sure your name is among those mentioned as responders in news stories about the quake.

See also In fundraising, not all disasters are equal.

I'll check in with updates to this post through the weekend.

Update Saturday, 3/12, 4:30 p.m. Pacific Time: Estimated death toll for the quake now between 1,300 and 1,700, according to the New York Times. Continued disturbing news about the damaged nuclear power plant (story). Quake story still dominates most online news sites. My opinion about the fundraising impact of the event are not changed, though there's the possibility of a much higher death toll as yet-unreached areas open up, and the nuclear plant could become an even bigger story in the coming days.

Update Sunday, 3/13, 3:30 p.m. Pacific Time: Death estimates from several sources climbing to above 10,000 (BBC story). If correct, this is climbing into the area that could make this an important fundraising event. Story still dominates most news sites. I think we're seeing the impact of a disaster in a friendly, respected, and very accessible country: More news coverage than in more remote, less friendly places.

Update Tuesday, 3/15, 4:30 a.m. Pacific Time: The story continues to dominate most news outlets, though it has focusssed more on the developing nuclear disaster. I would continue pushing online fundraising efforts.

20 Ways to Be Donor-Centric

Here's my column in this month's FundRaising Success magazine, 20 Ways to Be Donor-Centric.

Teaser: "How many times have you said, "I wouldn't respond to that"? That's only relevant if you're fundraising from yourself. Pay attention to what your donors do and don't respond to. Using yourself as the standard is egocentric. And it always fails."

December online fundraising starts now

As we discovered in the recent Online Giving Study, December is when the online gifts really happen big time.

BeaconfireWire makes the good point that a lot of the success you have in December starts a long time before that: Six Ways to Start Your Year-End Fundraising Now.

Here are things you can do now for a better December:

1. Analyze Last Year's Results
2. Grow Your List
3. Collect Information
4. Do Major Testing
5. Complete Any Landing Page Changes
6. Say Thank You

How a brand change will impact revenue: Real-life figures

Seems every time you turn around you see a nonprofit organization that's "changing the brand." I've been a close observer of the process a lot of times. Too many times.

I say too many times because rebranding almost always has a negative impact on revenue. Response rates to fundraising campaigns drop. Acquisition suffers. Donor retention falls.

I can't claim to know why it goes this way, but I have a theory. I think the problem is two-fold:

1. There are basic flaws in the very structure of branding that hurt fundraising. It's a misapplied discipline from the commercial marketing world that simply doesn't work in our context.
2. Most of the time, the changes brought about by branding are bad changes that impede readability, emotional connection with donors, and clarity of offer. This is not intrinsic to branding. It just does most of the time.

So here, in my experience with re-branding, are revenue impacts you can likely expect if you rebrand. These are based on my first-hand observations, which have been frighteningly consistent over the years. Obviously any of these things could go very differently; your mileage may vary.

Change the logo

No impact. Each time I've seen a logo change, as long is it wasn't also a name and/or identification change, there was no change to revenue afterward. I think this is because very few nonprofit logos are that well-known or established in people's minds to begin with. I imagine if The Salvation Army changed its venerable logo, things might not go so well.

Change graphic standards

Small negative impact. I think the reason the impact is small is because graphic standards aren't that big a deal in the scheme of things. And the reason they're usually negative is because usually the changes are for the worse, I'm sorry to say. They tend to bring in hard-to-read fonts, chilly colors, and other weird things that just degrade the communication abilities of the organization. I think if there was a change in graphic standards toward readability, clarity, and emotion, you'd see a small positive impact.

Change organization's name

25% to 50% loss of revenue. Yes, you read that right. Changing your name can really wallop your fundraising. I've seen it happen every single time. Even when the old name was weird and the new name made sense. A workaround that may save your bacon: Use both names together for period.

Change cause identification

20% to 30% loss of revenue. Rebranding very often consists of making what the organization does less focussed. An organization that used to proclaim it fed the hungry now provides "hope." (Hope is a very popular concept among branding people.) An organization that used to focus on a single disease or problem now peddles "health." This change will hurt nearly as much as a name change.

Now you may have noticed that the best outcome here is revenue-neutral, and it goes downhill from there. Given that the whole point of rebranding is to improve revenue (at least it should be), I have to conclude one thing: The branding discipline doesn't work for nonprofits. At least the way it is commonly practiced.

Do you have experience that contradicts mine? I'd love to hear about it!

How to get the right photo for fundraising

Photos can make all the difference in fundraising. They can capture the essence of your cause with a depth and immediacy you just can't match with words.

Unfortunately, a photo can also torpedo your intended message when it's wrong. How often have you seen a message about hunger accompanied by a photo of plump, smiling children? The photo speaks louder than the words: Everyone is well-fed and happy.

Another popular but destructive photo is the Giant Check Handoff: A well-heeled donor hands a six-foot long check for a huge amount to a grinning executive director. The message is two-fold and clear: Your tiny check hardly matters compared to the Big Boys. plus We don't do anything interesting.

The Butterfly Effect blog has some good advice for nonprofit photography at No giant checks, please:

If you can't hire a pro, your best alternative is brute force: take a lot of photos all the time. Enlist your staff, your volunteers, even your program participants as photographers.

Even total amateurs will get a great shot now and then, but you can get luckier by copying the professionals: get up close, shoot from a variety of angles, and avoid harsh flash lighting.

We all love the crisp, well-composed work of professional photographers, but some of the most effective photos I've ever worked with were taken by amateurs. Because they were in the right place at the right time and didn't muck it up.

Brute force. Go for it.

How not to send junk mail

A columnist at Philly.com has done a couple of pieces on the huge piles of direct mail fundraising local people have been getting: Experts on nonprofits explain mailings game. The core point is this: Some people get a lot of mail from nonprofit organizations. Which leads to:

It made me want to know more about why bad things are happening to nice people.

Excuse me, but getting unwanted mail is a "bad thing"? Really now. Losing your job is a bad thing. Having your house foreclosed is a bad thing. Getting a serious disease or losing a loved one are bad things.

Junk mail? I think most people can overcome the trauma. Some sense of proportion would be nice.

Nevertheless, it is something people complain about, so those of us who create these mailings need to pay attention.

And I have a feeling that the real problem isn't so much the quantity of mail people get. It's the lack of relevance that's pouring into their mailbox.

Think about it. Donors just want to help sick people, or hungry children, or animals, or veterans. And suddenly their mailboxes fill up with mail from other organizations. They didn't sign up to be bought and sold on the list rental market.

The other thing that seems to get their goat -- they start getting premiums galore. They can't see the connection between the cause and the trinket -- because for the most part there isn't any.

Either way, it's a dose of irrelevancy that raises the complaint. One irrelevant piece of mail is too much mail. A bushel of interesting, useful, relevant mail? That would be a bonanza.

It's not easy to be relevant all the time to all the donors. It may even be impossible. But if you make sure everything you send has great offers that give donors exciting ways to change the world, interesting stories that touch their hearts, and a look and feel that's aimed at them (not yourself), you'll be in better shape.

Then tread lightly (if at all) in the list rental market, and really try to make any premiums or freemiums you're using are evidently relevant.

Pull all that off, and I bet even the most annoyed, over-mailed donor won't throw your stuff in the junk mail pile. And when that reporter comes around looking for a salty quote about the deluge of mail -- it won't be about your mail.

Thanks to AFP Blog: Recent News of Note for the tip.