Future Fundraising Now

Protect your fundraising from those "harmless" last-minute additions

Fundraising projects can go wrong in so many ways. One of the most sneaky and insidious is pointed out at this post from The Far Edge of Promise: It Wouldn't Hurt To...

You know when you're doing a fundraising project says it wouldn't hurt to add this to the job? And you say, "No, I can't see that it would hurt." That's where the problem starts ...

... the real concern with this seemingly innocuous statement is that you run a far greater risk of clouding an exceptionally good and helpful message or focus by adding something that confuses.

"It wouldn't hurt" often comes late in the project. When you're getting weary of it and wanting to move on. Your defenses are low. You have the energy to say yes, but not the energy to dispute the change. And the suggestions isn't wacky or super-destructive -- why not?

But that little add-on is more often than not a mistake.

Fundraising depends on simplicity and single-mindedness. Those little additions that shouldn't hurt usually do hurt.

The right way to do a fundraising project (almost any project, really) is this: Before you start work, put in writing exactly what you're going to create. Circulate that among everyone who has a stake in the work. Make sure they know this is the blueprint, and once everyone agrees, there will be no "one more things" added to it. Then stick to the plan.

Because those last-minute additions could hurt a lot.

Why do we write letters to donors?

If you're over a certain age, you may remember when everyone wrote letters all the time. Every day, the mailbox contained a handful of letters from friends and family.

Times have changed. You probably haven't received a personal letter from a real person in a while. You're a lot more likely to get a letter from a lawyer or someone else you'd rather not hear from.

The personal letter has all but died out -- killed by email and other quicker, more convenient communication channels.

But the letter is still the powerhouse of fundraising. It lives on like a prehistoric throwback, because it still works.

It's strange, but a letter that is:

• On letterhead
• Starts with a salutation
• Has a signature
• Has a P.S.

Try and replace the letter with some cool designed piece that's easier to read, rich with photography, branded to the hilt -- it's unlikely to work.

That's because most donors grew up on letters. Unlike you or me, a letter in the mailbox for them is still a sign of personal contact. Something joyful.

Depart from the conventions of the letter at your own peril!

It's possible that when you and I are elderly and people our age are the majority of donors the letter won't have the power it has now.

But until that day, stick with a letter.

Three ways to make your fundraising stories stronger

Here's more about telling stories so they support your fundraising, from Katya's Nonprofit Marketing blog: 3 ways to make the story of your cause impossible to ignore.

1. If we're not feeling, we're not conscious. (Emotion is the normal state for all people, all the time.)
2. The story is in the specifics. (Details, details, details.)
3. Zero in on your point. (Don't let your wonderful story get in the way of your call to action.)

How not to waste your time in fundraising

What do you do to improve donor retention? The Agitator can tell you a few things that won't do that trick, at Looking For Retention In All The Wrong Places:

The sad fact is that far too many fundraisers ... overly exalt 'strategy,' 'brand,' 'creative' and 'program' while assigning mundane importance (and investment) in 'service level' actions and donor experiences that occur in call centers, around events, with the fulfillment of premiums and in proper acknowledgements.

Here's The Agitator's list of things you should invest in to improve retention"

• Donor Service centers (inbound calls and email response).
• Events.
• Premiums.
• In-person fundraising.

I'd add these boring things to that list:

• Frequent-enough communication (one of the main causes of lost donors is failing to connect with them often enough).
• Clean data.
• Specific, compelling fundraising offers.
• Prompt and relevant receipting.

So many fundraisers are chasing the "glamor" things like branding. That's not where you'll find success. Most of success in fundraising comes from excelling at the "boring" stuff. That's where you should be putting your energy.

Your instinct is wrong

Think you're smart? Good for you. Just be aware that smarts alone may not get you where you want to go in fundraising. You also need knowledge.

Kivi's Nonprofit Communications Blog tackles One Big Myth about Direct Mail Appeal Letters:

We all like to think our instincts can guide us through our fundraising. But sometimes your gut instinct is just wrong and that's when you need to turn to the experts ... who have proven their methods work over and over again.

The big myth they're talking about here is that one-page fundraising messages are somehow better than longer ones. This is totally wrong; experience tells us that longer letters are better than short ones.

That's one big myth, where almost everyone's instinct or common sense will lead them astray. There are others:

• Common sense says that a short message will work better because nobody has time to read a long message. Common sense is wrong.
• Common sense says it's a mistake to ask someone for a gift soon after they've given. Common sense is wrong.
• Common sense says being funny, intellectual, modern, etc. is a great way to connect with donors. Common sense is wrong.

There are more. A lot more.

This is why you can't count on what "seems right" to guide your fundraising. Get professional help. And if you are the professional doing it, make sure you're getting educated about what really works.

How personal opinions destroy fundraising effectiveness

Seth Godin asked a question I wish would be widely asked within nonprofit organizations: Is everyone entitled to their opinion?

In the consensus-heavy world of nonprofits, a lot of people's opinions are sought and valued. This is probably one of the most destructive forces in our industry.

As Seth notes, not everyone's opinion is valuable:

If you're working in Accounts Payable and you hate the company's new logo, the people who created it should and must ignore your opinion. It just doesn't matter to anyone but you.

I know you don't like cilantro, but whether or not you like it is not extensible to the population at large.

Some people's opinions are positively deadly.

I once worked with an organization that asked everyone to weigh in on their fundraising. One of the most vocal and opinionated people was the receptionist. She had no particular insight or knowledge about fundraising or their donors. In fact, she was profoundly ignorant and consistently wrong in her strongly held opinions. But she kept getting asked, and she always had something to say.

Through the changes she forced on their fundraising, this receptionist probably cost her employer several thousands dollars a week in lost revenue. In fact, if you added the lost revenue to her salary, she was probably pulling down a good seven figures annually. That's an expensive receptionist.

Just because someone works in your organization and is dedicated, valuable, admirable, or nice doesn't meant they have one useful or helpful thing to say about fundraising. Just because someone holds strong opinions about fundraising doesn't mean they know what they're talking about. And hardly anyone's personal likes and dislikes should translate into guidance for what's the right way to do anything.

Listen to those who can back their opinions with knowledge and experience. Find a different way to value and respect everyone else. The purpose of fundraising is to raise funds, not to be a creative outlet for your staff.

Why emailing too deep can hurt your online fundraising

One of the cool things about email fundraising is you can send as many as you want, no additional cost, right?

Wrong. There can be a steep cost to sending too many emails, as reported in The Chronicle of Philanthropy's Social Philanthropy blog: The Dangers of an Inactive E-Mail List.

If you're getting low open rates, email providers know that, and can consider you a spammer...

... if not enough supporters open the messages, the providers will stop delivering the messages to subscribers' inboxes.

It seems grotesquely unfair, but your emails can get crushed by the actions of email providers. The best campaign ever conceived can fail because your previous campaigns didn't get opened enough.

This means don't mail your inactive email names too often. They're the ones least likely to open your messages and get you labeled as a spammer.

Turns out good list hygiene and prudent contact schedules are just as important in email as direct mail. Who knew?

The one thing you need to know in fundraising -- and how to get it right

The Good Steward blog says there's One Trick to Fundraising:

Know your donors.

And that's true. When you know your donors, you can be relevant to them. You can aim your messaging at them, not yourself. You can spend less cultivating donors not likely to respond, and more on those who can make it worth it.

Knowing what your donors say is good.

But it's much, much better to know what they do.

In fact, compared to what you learn from observing their behavior -- when and how they respond to your fundraising and other messages -- what they say about those things can lead you badly astray. What they say is very often totally unlike what they do. Because they don't know their own minds on the subject of charitable giving.

(There's nothing wrong with them; nobody knows their own mind very well on almost any subject. That includes you and me.)

So go ahead and use surveys, focus groups, and other ways of hearing donors talk. But much more important -- be a fanatical sifter of fundraising campaign response data. That's how you really know your donors.

Why typical advertising has no impact on nonprofit marketing

At Non-Profit Humour, a strangely familiar tale of a nonprofit organization that was lulled into a state of stupidity by an ad agency: Advertising campaign reaches Mrs. Betty Turner, 93, and 17,678 people who don't care.

In this satire -- and despite the realism, it is satire -- an organization runs a meaningless awareness campaign that costs a lot and has absolutely no impact:

The campaign, which lasted an entire week, was seen by an estimated 17,679 people and many hundreds of cats and dogs. Since the Foundation's website doesn't have web metrics Snidely says they couldn't actually tell whether the ad campaign had any impact, but she's optimistic that the ads made a big impression on the public.

It's all too common. A nonprofit is persuaded that "awareness" is a powerful thing. So they develop a multimedia campaign built on abstract concepts (sometimes including opaque wordplay and/or weirdly photoshopped images). After paying the agency for developing the ads, there's little budget left, so the impacts are spread thin.

The agency then counts "impacts" -- which means how many people might have seen or heard the campaign: If the publication running an ad has a circulation of 15,000, that's 15,000 impacts. Never mind that the huge majority didn't see the ad at all, they merely had access to it. And if that ad is abstract and lacks a clear challenge or call to action, even most who see it will be unaffected by it; it's just more noise in their noisy days.

Counting impacts yields pretty big numbers, so they report the large number as if it has any kind of meaning, creating visions of 15,000 people who are now fanatical supporters, when in reality, there are zero new supporters, and awareness was raised in about three people -- like the woman in the story who was hit by a falling billboard.

If you're serious about recruiting people to join you in your cause, you will not waste time or money on vague awareness campaigns. You'll do measurable, donor-oriented marketing that actually brings supporters in the door.

What's wrong with social media fundraising?

If you have a thick skin, do what The Agitator did recently and say something critical about the use of social media for fundraising: In Defense Of Serious Fundraising Dialogue.

What happens is this: A lot of 140-character shouting. You are an ignorant dinosaur.

Which is too bad, because, as the Agitator notes:

The solid, professional, serious advancement of our trade ... is seriously diminished by those who flit about on the channels, all thumbs, no thought. Those who have little idea what fundraising is all about, often because they have minimal experiential grounding in what's important and why.

Not long ago, I was held captive on a phone conference where a new media expert revealed his grand plan for a nonprofit organization's bold new future in social media.

Beside the fact that the expert's entire case for his grand plan was based on anecdotes about dissimilar situations, it also had several fatal flaws that anyone with even minimal fundraising experience would not have made:

• The entire campaign was hidden under a puzzling new sub-brand.
• There were no benefits -- just features.
• There was no specific call to action. If the first two problems don't kill the campaign, this one will finish it off.

The campaign is probably going to fail.

And it's going to fail because when social media and other new channels became the topic of conversation, everyone's brain turned off. They willingly chose to be hypnotized by a Dangerously Ignorant Guru who doesn't actually understand the basics of human motivation.

The end result: After the failure, this organization will likely decide social media "doesn't work." Which will only be half-right at best. A better conclusion: When you do it wrong, it doesn't work. Who knows what might happen when you do it right?

Social media of some kind will probably eventually become important in fundraising. But that's not going to happen until discussions and plans become based on facts, not noise, anecdotes, or ideology.