Future Fundraising Now

Why it's hard to raise funds online

Here's one of those depressing reminders of what we're up against in email fundraising, from the Smart Insights Digital Marketing blog: The 3-5-7 rule for Email marketing. The rule goes like this:

• 3 seconds to get their attention with your subject line and the from line
• 5 seconds, once they've opened your message, to draw them in.
• 7 seconds to get them involved, on the way to taking action

I don't know how scientific these numbers are, but I'll bet they're at least in the ballpark of reality.

Your emails have to make it through a deadly gauntlet before they even have a chance of generating response. If you thought the mailbox was a cutthroat place, it's nothing like the inbox. This is why response rates online are so low compared to direct mail.

Craft every part of your emails with this in mind.

Thanks to Be Relevant! Email Marketing Blog for the tip.

Stupid ads succeed in stroking egos while avoiding response

If you create a stupid nonprofit ad and The New York Times runs an article about it before it ever appears in real life, you can probably declare victory, and get off scot-free despite the lack of fundraising that's going to happen.

But that doesn't mean it isn't a shockingly stupid waste of time, money, and opportunity.

Like this howler of a campaign for Action Against Hunger. The Times article is here: Antihunger Campaign Forgoes Images of Starving Children. An article in the Times is a lot of publicity.

Here's one of the two ads that make up the campaign:

The second ad shows an open pizza box with an Oreo-sized pizza in it. The copy: "Hungry? Imagine living on only a tiny fraction of what you eat each day. Every year, 3.5 million children try -- and don't survive. You can help prevent this."

Both ads include the logo of Ultimat Vodka, which is donating around $400,000 worth space for the ads in Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, Saveur, Wine Enthusiast, and The New York Times Magazine.

I'm not troubled by the presence of a Vodka company in a hunger ad, and I doubt it would trouble very many donors, either.

Anyway, there aren't going to be many donors to worry about. Because the ads make several serious rookie mistakes:

• Big numbers. The fact that 3.5 million children die each year is not going to motivate giving. It's going to turn away giving. People give to help solve human-sized, solvable problems.
  
• Jargon. Guess what? Most people don't know what "acute malnutrition" is. It's a medical term with little emotional punch or life connection.
• Abstract imagery. If you want people to donate to help people, you're going to have to show images of people. Not paper dolls; not miniature pizzas. Donors don't have time to play your mind games. Just show them what needs to be done. (The creative director at the clueless agency that created the ads explained it with the creative directors' Trump Card: "cognitive dissonance." Sorry, cognitive dissonance is a code phrase for "no response.")
• No coupon. Even a first-year junior copywriter in fundraising who's barely sober most of the time knows that if you want response, you've got to include a coupon. Even though most responses now come via the web or the phone. (Oops! They forgot to include a phone number!)

Beyond all that, here's more news for you: Print advertising is not a very good way to reach donors. Even without all those rookie mistakes, it's unlikely to work. Print is still viable in very special circumstances, such as during disasters. Also, it can work in very low-cost publications, such as small-town newspapers. Certainly not the high-end publications they're going to be in.

Of course, the ad placements are covered by the vodka company, and they probably wouldn't be interested in the paying for a standard old ugly direct-response ad.

This whole project appears to be a big circle of ego-stroking on the part of the charity, the ad agency, and the vodka company. And for that purpose, it's very successful. It became so the moment a New York Times reporter picked up the scent.

But it's still an incredibly stupid nonprofit ad.

(Nancy Schwartz has a detailed and excellent critique of the ads here.)

More Stupid Nonprofit Ads.

Some magic words for fundraising

From Otis Regrets, Using "magnet words" to make your copy work harder:

• You. (Or, better yet, the reader's name used sparingly)
• New
• Free
• Save
• Guarantee/guaranteed
• Easy/simple/foolproof
• Proven
• Safe
• Best/better

These are words with special power to get readers' attention and encourage them to respond. Not all are well-suited for fundraising, but it's worth your trouble to figure out ways to use these words.

How fear of failure strangles your fundraising

Please read this post at TomorrowToday: Innovation: Failing into the Future. The main message: failure is not an option; it's essential if you want to succeed.

You see, almost all new ideas are bad. And not all bad ideas are obviously bad -- you simply have to try them out to see if they're bad or good. If you don't try out a lot of ideas, you won't find the good ones.

The problem is that most of our organizations have been built to ward off failure at all costs, built around the recognition and rewarding of success. This mindset and practice permeates both the formal and informal structures and it is both tacit and implied.

Are you dedicated to avoiding failure? If you are, please note this: You are also dedicated to avoiding real success. As long as failure avoidance is your motive, your success is going to be limited to things someone else discovered in the past -- in some other time when failure was tolerated.

And most things that work in fundraising slowly lose effectiveness over time. So until you develop a taste for failure, you are on a downward glide-path.

Every success comes after a string of failures. In general, the bigger successes follow more failure.

So embrace failure. It's how you succeed.

Why testing matters in online fundraising

Which Test Won is a great blog to read, if for no other reason than this: It keeps you humble.

Like this post: Amsterdam Printing -- Button Test

The difference between the two was subtle. Different words, slightly different size. Same color, same placement.

But one drew 45% more revenue per visitor. That's a smack-down!

I studied both. Both seemed strong in ever-so-slightly different ways. I finally chose one, based on some similar testing I've done.

I got it wrong.

That's the way it goes when you visit that site. You get it wrong sometimes, and right sometimes. Part of the sport is reading the comments. People there give their reasons for their choices. Most of the people who were wrong seem to have just as good reasoning as those who choose right. But they're still wrong.

We couldn't have predicted the winner of this test. We know we're preaching to the choir, but when you're not sure what copy to use, optimization testing can help you find your answer!

Nobody knows it all. Only your donors can tell you the truth about what works best. Actually, they can't tell you -- they can only show you.

Meaning this: Test as often as you can. Especially online, where our general body of knowledge is still thin, new, and changing fast. No matter how smart you are, you don't know it all.

Sexy fundraising

Unless you're raising funds for babies or puppies, you're sunk. Right?

I have weird news for you: For every organization wishing it could talk about hungry babies, there's another one that's grown so sick of talking about hungry babies that they're searching high and low for some other way to raise funds. They're tired of it. They think it's cheap, old-school, and not a full picture of their work.

If you're fortunate enough to be able to talk about emotionally powerful topics like babies or puppies, count your blessings.

If you're not, it's up to you to make your cause sexy. The offer you don't have is the one you desire.

Fundraising lessons from Andy Rooney

by guest blogger Jennifer Miller

You ever wonder what fundraisers can learn from the late Andy Rooney?

His signature commentaries at the end of "60 Minutes" might give us a clue. His musings spanned topics from pies to politics. But the topics weren't as important as his delivery: Clear. Concise. The kind of simply constructed truths that made you smack your forehead and question everything you thought you knew about the fabled Mrs. Smith and her supposed baking. You always knew where Andy stood on a topic.

You also ever wonder what made Andy Rooney so popular with older viewers? You know, the crowd that generally gives to our fundraising efforts?

My theory is that the gentle pock marks of time makes older viewers -- and donors -- a lot more savvy than younger people give them credit for. They want the low-down, and not on the down-low. Say what it is that you mean, and mean what you say. And that's what Andy delivered.

Andy publicly fancied himself a writer more than a broadcaster. So I started to wonder ... what if Andy Rooney wrote fundraising appeals?

For starters, you'd never get a letter that buried the ask in the tenth paragraph. You'd know why he was writing and what he was asking for. No extra fluff or nonsense to clutter the offer. Just enough emotion and deftly worded touches to leave you inspired -- and motivated to give. If he wrote this blog post, for example, it would be half as long and twice as powerful.

Andy's observations, and the way he worded them, left little room for argument. And that's exactly what good direct-response fundraising should do, too: Identify the need. Make the donor the problem-solver. Give the offer. Ask for the gift.

That's the way Andy might have done it, anyway.

The effective fundraising PS

It's strange how fundraising appeals always seem to have a PS, isn't it? The amateurs want to omit it, because it "doesn't make sense."

The professionals know that if you leave off the PS, you're in trouble.

The professionals also know how to do it right. Like here, at Dear Joan: 10 pointers to the perfect PS for your next fundraising letter:

1. Say exactly how much money you would like your donor to give.
2. Say why you're asking.
3. Say what it will do for your beneficiaries.
4. Say it in a way that’s different [from] elsewhere in your mailing.
5. Say thank you!
6. Provide an extra reason to give.
7. Provide a deadline for donations.
8. Provide a contact point for donors.
9. Never treat your PS as though it’s an actual Post Script.
10. Never mention [things that] are not relevant to your core proposition, your ask and your donor.

That's how the PS should be. But most of all, it needs to be there.

Stupid ad displays stillborn creative concept

It's shocking, a crime against all morality, that preteen kids are forced to fight as soldiers in some parts of the world. I doubt it's difficult to persuade others of that. The hard part, I think, would be getting Westerners to believe it's really happening.

So if you're working for Amnesty International or any of the other organizations working to address the child-soldier issue, you probably put a lot of thought into making this unbelievable outrage believable.

This stupid nonprofit ad, on the other hand, took the exact opposite approach. Make the issue seem less real! What if infants in the womb were already child soldiers?

Here's what you get:

As usual with stupid nonprofit ads, the copy is microscopic. Here's what it says:

Thousands of unborn children in South America are predestined to become child soldiers. Contribute to make a difference at www.amnesty.org

Following the common MO of stupid advertisers, this one attempts to create a symbolic representation of a real thing. Real photos of real child soldiers are shocking.

But apparently, someone thought obvious fake mock-ups of ultrasound captures would be more persuasive. I'm guessing "shock value" is what it goes for. Thing is, it's not shocking. It's just strange.

Then there's the utter falsity of the ad's claim: The fact is, no child is "predestined" to become a child soldier. If they were, there'd hardly be any point trying to fight it. But children become child soldiers because of poverty, injustice, the actions of evil men, and the inaction of others.

They aren't born that way. Each one could be prevented, and every one can be rescued. If we take sufficient action.

Why would anyone create a message that undermines that truth?

As near as I can tell, no part of Amnesty International has any official connection with this campaign -- to their credit. It's apparently freelance, portfolio-padding, navel-gazing, award-trolling stupidity. No real harm done.

Except this: The creator of this stupid nonprofit ad may someday get real work from a real nonprofit. And, following the abstraction-at-all-costs formula, put another stupid nonprofit ad out there, this time at cost to an organization that needs and deserves smart work.

Just make sure it doesn't happen to you!

Thanks to Creative Advertisements for NGO for the tip.

More Stupid Nonprofit Ads.

How your board destroys your fundraising

In the most recent edition of Contributions Magazine, here's a great article by Tom Ahern: On the Delicate Subject of Committee and Board Approvals.

Why do people who know nothing about fundraising have approval authority over fundraising messages?

... we often cede the weighty responsibility of "blessing" fundraising communications to higher authorities: boards, committees, the executive director. That's irresponsible. Uninformed opinions and second-guessing can, without malice or intent, easily ruin competent work and undermine your ability to raise money. When untrained people have the final say on what goes out the door, you run a serious risk.

I'd say "risk" is an under-statement. When you put non-experts in charge, you have near-certainty of bad results.

This may be the top cause of ineffective fundraising.

There are right and wrong ways to do fundraising, and a surprising number of the right ways are counterintuitive. When you ask your board or director to comment, all they have to offer is their intuition. And their intuition is wrong.