Future Fundraising Now

The first (and second, and third) lesson in fundraising

At SOFII, a new fundraising writer describes a moment of discovery: The first big lesson in fundraising copy. It's kind of like watching one of those fast-motion films of a flower blossoming:

I had felt like I had to write something that had never been said before to bring a fresh new voice to the company. I was terrified of not being original. In fact, I had refused to even look at the material my co-workers had written because I was scared I’d inadvertently copy their style.

That's an important lesson. And it's part of a larger lesson that all fundraisers (not just writers) need to learn: It's not about you.

Just as a new writer can get all tangled up in attempts to write something totally amazing that really displays their unique voice, fundraisers make similar mistakes:

• They try to make their fundraising messaging all about how amazing their organization is. What they should be doing is make it all about how their organization is a perfect partner for the amazing donor.
• They try to use their fundraising as an educational medium to make their donors into better people who think more like they do.
• They try to make their fundraising esthetically pleasing (to themselves).
• They try to create fundraising that they believe they would respond to. This is the biggest and most common killer of all. If you aim your messaging at yourself, you will miss your donors.

Fundraising: It's not about you. This is a lesson that comes early in the career of successful fundraisers. Early and often.

Fundraising and real-world CRM magic

Here's an interesting view of the way someone in the commercial direct-marketing world views fundraising: CRM: Customer Relationship Marketing, We can learn from Non-Profits.

They think we're hot stuff! They say we're doing CRM! They recommend learning a thing or two from us by getting onto a few fundraising mailing lists:

It'll be a very inexpensive lesson in CRM, not to mention brilliant direct mail creative. It'll look weird at first what with fonts and layouts making everything easy to read and the copy in a perfect one-to-one personal mode.

You'll get special updates on all the good your money is doing. You'll see the kids you're helping. You'll be asked for more money but you will also feel like a valued and important member of a wonderful group. It will never occur to you that you're being CRMed.

It's easy to think CRM is some kind of quasi-magical mystery that takes a cube-farm of 200 or so statisticians to make happen. But really, it's just treating people according to what they've done. Thanking donors. Telling them what their giving did. Asking them in the context of their past giving. Asking amounts that are around the amounts they've given before.

That's what almost all smart nonprofits are doing.

And the rest of them? It's time to get on board. None of these things are difficult to do.

The magic, 200-statistician stuff? It can work. It might add a few percentage points to your results. Maybe enough to support the cost of doing it.

But the real money comes from doing real-world CRM -- treating donors like people and their giving like a relationship.

Holiday subject lines: good, bad, ugly, weird

Four subject lines from the end-of-year in-box:

Christmas Appeal - Consider a gift today!

There's a soft spot in my heart for literal and straightforward communication, unadorned by the cleverness that so often turns nonprofit messages into secret code.

But this one may go too far, leaving nothing to the imagination. If the organization were extremely well-branded and strongly associated with Christmas (The Salvation Army), it might work. That wasn't the case here.

And "consider a gift" is just weak in any case. They've given away the fact that there's an appeal for funds in the in-box. They've also let drop the fact that this may not be the coolest offer they're going to see today. Just another boring holiday-season appeal for funds.

Subject lines work best when they entice and promise. This one did neither.

[Organization] Responds to [obscure disaster]

This one makes one of the most common fundraising errors of all: Assuming that because we're doing it, everyone cares.

It's not a subject line at all, but the headline on a press release. (In fact, that's what the content of the email was: a press release.)

News flash: Nobody is interested in press releases. Not even the press. Just announcing that you're doing something is lazy and lame. If you want people to get involved, you have to involve them.

Bad Start to December Fundraiser

(I saw this one at Nolo's Fundraising Tips for Busy Nonprofits.)

Bad. Really bad. It is completely self-directed. The for people within the nonprofit, a bad start to a December fundraising is truly a problem. Not for donors. They don't support us for our fundraisers. They support us for our causes.

Every time you communicate with donors, you must spend some time and effort thinking about what concerns them. You'll find that what's bothering you is seldom of interest to them.

This is not tax deductible

(From the Obama campaign.)

This is an odd subject line. Why highlight one well-known, if slightly unattractive fact about their fundraising? There was nothing in the message about the lack of tax deductibility.

I wonder if I was in a test panel. One thing going for this one is its oddness. Odd subject lines often do well. Maybe this fits that category.

The power of YES in fundraising

It's easier to say yes if you've recently said yes.

It's harder to say yes if you've just said no.

Successful fundraising builds a momentum of yes. It starts with easy yeses and works its way toward, "Yes, I'll give!"

This is often what's behind survey fundraising. They tend to lob softball questions that are easy to answer with a yes. It's not useful research, but it can be good fundraising. Do you want good to prevail over evil? Yes!

It's also why so often the fundraising call to action starts with the phrase YES! I want to...

So construct your fundraising message so the donor has plenty of opportunities to say yes:

• If you ask rhetorical questions, make sure the answer is yes.
• Tell them things they know and can easily say yes to rather than surprise them with believe-it-or-not facts.
• Tell them things about themselves that they know (or hope) to be true.
• Paint an attractive picture of what will happen if they give. Only a psychopath can say no to that!

The more yes you get, the more responses.

Four ways you chase away donors with your writing

Here's some basic help from the Happy Donors blog: Why donors don't read your fundraising letters.

The sad reality is, most of our fundraising letters go unread. And most often, you lose the battle for readership before they even open the envelope.

But once a donor has opened your envelope and is holding the letter in her hand, she still might not read it. And here are some reasons why:

1. You open the letter talking about yourself.
2. Your letter doesn't look and "feel" personal.
3. The letter reads like it's written.
4. I can't easily scan your letter and/or when I scan, nothing grabs my attention and buys my readership.

Let me especially comment on #3, because it's an important point that a lot of fundraisers miss. Too many fundraisers use a writerly tone. It may be the way your writing teachers taught you to write, but it doesn't sound like a friend connecting with a friend -- and that's why it's not good fundraising.

It takes a true professional writer to not sound like a writer.

How nonprofit websites get messy

You've seen those nonprofit websites that don't know what they're for. They seem to be aimed at the news media, with lots of links to press releases. Or maybe it's researchers, because of all the links to detailed information about the cause. Possibly it's just a branding vehicle, because it's full of abstract phrases and images but no calls to action. Oh, is it supposed to raise funds? There's a DONATE button.

Websites turn out that way because the process used to create them never forces clarity. It encourages everyone to say everything -- and end up saying little at all.

The MarketingProfs Daily Fix Blog has some thoughts for avoiding this mess, at Six Steps to a Nonprofit Website That Works:

1. Include stakeholders at appropriate times and contexts, but focus them on what's actually important.
2. Clarify exactly how the website will become an expression of the organization's offerings, priorities, and target audiences.
3. Identify who the website is really for.
4. Take actual data into account.
5. Articulate how the organization is positioned within the "nonprofit marketplace."
6. Recognize that a website will need consistent care and feeding after its launch.

Like any "publication," websites need to start with a clear purpose. Don't let the fact that it costs nothing to add stuff confuse you into throwing everything out with equal weight.

Handwriting on paper is a key to creative success

I thought it was the case, and now there's a study -- reported in Fast Company at The Pen Is Mightier Than The Phone: A Case For Writing Things Out -- that bears me out.

Writing, on paper, using a your own hand, is often better for creativity and for thinking than typing! It's also better for remembering:

By committing your thought to paper, you're also doing more to lock it into place. ... as your hand executes each stroke of each letter, it activates a much larger portion of the brain's thinking, language, and "working memory" regions than typing, which whisks your attention along at a more letters-and-words pace.

For me, every important project I work on has a significant part of its life as ink scrawled onto paper.

Don't let those handwriting muscles atrophy!

Detailed reporting respects donors of all sizes

I wish all nonprofits would do this, but almost nobody does: actually tell donors where their money goes. Not in the form of a pie-chart of the entire budget, but what one donor's giving specifically made possible.

Hip online fundraiser charity:water is doing it. They have a program called Dollars to Projects that actually tells donors, Here's the specific project you helped make possible.

Donors of even modest gifts can track their gift to a specific single project. They get its name, the type of project, how many people it reaches, some background context and photos, and who else donated to it (most of them seem to be anonymous). Donors can even find their project on Google Maps.

Here's an example report.

I wish this wasn't noteworthy. I wish most nonprofits were doing this for their donors. That would help overcome one of the most common reasons people don't give: My gift won't make a difference. How many donors would say that if they knew they could expect reports like this?

Everyone who's not doing this (i.e., virtually everyone): Take charity:water's example. Treat all your donors with the respect that's due them. Figure out how to report what their gifts make possible!

Why fundraising doesn't work

Great reminder from Katya's Nonprofit Marketing Blog: 3 very simple things that are easy to forget:

1. We're not our audience
2. Our audience doesn't think like us
3. Our audience doesn't take action without guidance

Failing to remember numbers one and two are the most common cause of failed fundraising. If you can remember that you are not the audience and the audience doesn't think like you -- and if you can act on that knowledge -- you will do well in your fundraising.

How to become a spammer without even trying

One of the cool things about email fundraising is how cheap it is. You can just keep emailing someone without postage and printing costs telling you maybe this particular name isn't such a good bet.

Not so fast. There's an insidious hidden cost to thinking that way, according to The Big Fat Marketing Blog, at Unscrubbed E-mail Files Pose Risks To Marketers: Study.

Just as with direct mail, the longer an emailer goes without responding, the less likely they are to respond. And then the trouble starts:

Internet service providers are increasingly giving weight to engagement metrics when determining deliverability. They know -- and care -- which messages are and aren't being opened, even if marketers don't. And messages that go unopened will increase the likelihood a marketer will be labeled a spammer.

In other words, if you're sending a lot of email to non-responders, you could be quietly building a reputation as a spammer. And that could cause your emails even to your best names not to reach their destination.

The good news is, getting gifts isn't the only way to create engagement. If you get someone to do something, anything, that's engagement. So even if you've got a lot of nondonors on your email list, if you get them to sign petitions, take quizzes, watch videos -- anything at all -- you've got engagement.

That not only keeps you out of the spammer category. It also helps move nondonors toward giving.