Future Fundraising Now

Who's wrecking your fundraising?

I've noticed that on nearly every fundraising direct mail copy-approval committee there's at least one person who thinks direct mail is stupid, lame, annoying.

That person makes it his mission to single-handedly reform the conventions of direct mail. That is to say, to completely ruin the direct mail at hand.

Why do we listen to people who aren't on board with the work we're doing?

Seth Godin weighs in on this question at Unanimous is not an option:

Trying to please everyone will water down your efforts, frustrate your forward motion and ultimately fail.

Shun the non-believers.

The non-believers are everywhere. Maybe more so in fundraising than other places. They are a sort of anti-Midas, turning everything they touch into something decidedly unlike gold.

I'm with Seth: Shun! If you can.

More on destructive approval processes.

Thank you letters that make donors happy they gave

Too often, the thank-you messages we send to donors are just bad. Talisman Thinking Out Loud captures some of that badness and how it might feel for the donor at From a Donor Regarding Your Thank You Letters:

Every letter I receive is the same -- same letter, same content, same typos, same electronic signature. It would be nice if you could vary the information or update me on something you have done with my contribution.

This is dismayingly common: Thank-you letters that haven't been given much thought. Donors keep getting the same message over and over again. They're not relevant. There are errors.

This is a terrible way to treat your donors.

Their gift is an act of trust, connection, and compassion -- and you respond with a half-hearted gesture that transparently shows how little you value the gift.

You put a lot of thought in effort into asking for the gift. You should put at least some into thanking for the gift. At minimum, that means your message of thanks is:

• Well written, engaging, and emotional.
• On the same topic as what they gave to.
• Correct -- the amount is correct and their name and
• address are error-free. Prompt.

Good thanking is part of a good relationship. Your donors are worth it.

Stupid nonprofit ads deserve to die

Some causes are harder to raise funds for than others. One of the toughest assignments is raising funds to help people who are perceived to have got themselves into their problem in the first place.

Lung cancer is in that category. Because of decades of successful anti-smoking marketing, everyone knows about the correlation between smoking and lung cancer. Some people have the attitude that those who have lung cancer "brought it on themselves" by smoking. Which is ridiculous.

I'm giving you what I assume was the brief for a campaign by the Lung Cancer Alliance and noonedeservestodie.org. The goal, I guess, was to encourage a more compassionate and sensible response toward lung cancer, which should lead to more financial support.

Let's see how well it succeeds:

Or see it here on YouTube.

There's a print/outdoor version too:

This campaign was reported recently in the New York Times, at Cancer Campaign Tries Using Shock to Change Attitudes, as an example of "shockvertising" -- the theory that you can get a lot more attention by being shocking.

It's true that being shocking will probably get you more attention, and has got this campaign attention. Problem is, just getting attention doesn't accomplish anything. You have to get the right kind of attention. Just making people angry about something you said but didn't really mean is of no value.

This campaign is in trouble because it invites misunderstanding. It's based on misdirection -- not just once, but in two layers:

Cat lovers deserve to die

Oh -- ha, ha. That was a misdirection. What we really meant to say was:

Cat lovers deserve to die ... If they have lung cancer

Gotcha! That was a misdirection too! I bet you're so confused you're more open to considering what we really want to say:

Many people believe that if you have lung cancer you did something to deserve it. It sounds absurd, but it's true. Lung cancer doesn't discriminate and neither should you.

If you've spent any time in the trying-to-make-people-understand-you field, you may have noticed that any time you say something contrary to what you want people to get, they don't get it. They think you mean what you say. When you say "cat lovers deserve to die," they think you're a creep. When you amend that with "If they have lung cancer," they think you're some kind of monster.

And they stop paying attention.

And they don't change their attitude.

And they don't give any money to a worthy cause they'd no doubt have been open to supporting -- if they'd been competently approached.

Once again, an ad agency has applied flawed advertising logic to nonprofit marketing. Just say no!

More Stupid Nonprofit Ads.

How to stop the an out-of-control fundraising approval process

Here's a tale of horror from the BlueFrog Creative blog: Is your approvals process killing your appeals?

Seems they have a client that gets the opinions of 35 reviewers on copy for fundraising messages. Yes, 35!

That's guaranteed mediocrity for the organization. (Actually, it's more like guaranteed insanity.) As BlueFrog noted:

The fundraising department's prime function was no longer to produce appeals that would engage and inspire supporters -- the sum total of their ambition had been reduced to producing appeals that would get signed off.

After three or so, each additional reviewer can only make your work worse. The ignorance, stupidity, and personal need for significance compounds with each reviewer. By the time you're at 10 reviewers, all the life is gone from your message. At 20, coherence has been removed. By the time 30 reviewers have weighed in, you'd have been better off sending a page of solid black ink. I don't know from experience, but I have a feeling that reviewer #35's comments turn the fundraising message into a soul-eating neuro-virus that automatically consigns anyone who accidentally tries to read it to the Fires of Hell. (Fortunately, hardly anyone will try to read it.)

If you actually want your fundraising to do well, each of the three, possibly four, people with reviewing responsibility should work with these qualifications:

1. Specific and identified expertise, and they should limit their comments to that area. So if the guy who knows everything about the micro-enterprise program in Sumatra the message is about wants to "improve" the sentence structure, don't listen to him! He's wrong, and will make it worse.
2. Accountable for results. If you make a change that makes the message raise less money, you should feel that pain of the damage you've inflicted. That'll get people thinking responsibly about their comments in a hurry.
3. A general attitude that they never request a change unless they absolutely must. Their own preference isn't a good enough reason to change anything.

This would go a long to toward stopping the insanity and improving the financial health of nonprofits.

Bragging is not fundraising

Here's the back of a 6" x 9" envelope from Uncle Maynard's Treasure Trove of Direct Mail Knowledge:

I've no reason to doubt that this is a good expression of what this Christian teaching ministry does. But as far as fundraising goes, it misses the point entirely.

It's a common fundraising mistake. The strategy seems to be something like this:

If we can make people see how excellent we are, they'll give.

That's not fundraising. It's just bragging.

The correct strategy for successful fundraising is this:

If we can show people how our mission is a part of their mission, they'll give.

Your excellence is not the reason donors give. They give because they have a mission in life (probably more than one mission), and they come to believe that you can help them accomplish it.

Of course, they have to believe in your excellence in order to let you onto their personal bandwagon. But that's not the main point.

Instead of bragging, you should have a clear call to action for the donor: Here's what you can do!

The first step for effective fundraising is to understand what they call to action is for your donors. Then you make the call and make the case.

You don't need to brag.

How to brand a nonprofit

Good post by Geoff Livingston on Only One Kind of Branding Matters:

Only one kind of branding matters, and that's the customer experience.... You can manufacture as much messaging as you want, but if your brand promise doesn't meet the customer experience then your efforts will fail. Fast.

That's why so much nonprofit branding is such a dismal failure. It doesn't (or can't) do the real job of being the donor's experience. It's just a bunch of wishful thinking in the from of design and copy guidelines.

If the donor's experience with the organization isn't what it should be, the outward appearance doesn't make any difference. In fact, advertising wisdom is that excellent advertising only accelerates the demise of a bad product.

If you not an organization whose beneficiaries and donors are the same people (such as an arts organization, a hospital, house of worship, etc.) the best and almost only thing you can do to make donor experience great is have a thrilling call-to-action and amazing reporting back that keeps proving to donors that their giving does what you say it does. That and flawless service.

That's the branding that makes a difference.

When fundraising writing is too good

Occasionally you'll see fundraising copy that reads something like this:

The rain slashed down like needles as the evening darkness spread, bring the fear of night to the huddled inhabitants of the homeless camp under the roaring traffic of the freeway.

That's (arguably) strong writing; at any rate, it's detailed and sensory. But would you write like that in a letter to your mother?

Or would you say it more like this:

The homeless people out there under the freeway are so hungry and cold. Won't you please help them?

The first example is "workshop" writing -- because creative writing workshops are where you learn to do it. It's a form of art, not a form of person-to-person communication.

It's stylized, specialized discourse. It doesn't come across as authentic communication.

Good fundraising is an authentic, human connection, not high-end art. If you want to genuinely reach people, tell stories the way people tell them verbally, not the way novelists write them.

Colloquial writing can be just as dramatic and powerful as workshop writing. But it sounds like a normal person is talking, not like a writer plying his craft.

And colloquial writing takes just as much skill -- more, actually.

Save your workshop writing for the workshop. If you're fundraising, concentrate on connecting with people on a personal, heartfelt level.

When less is more and more is less in email fundraising

Here's an interesting test from the Which Test Won blog.

For a travel industry e-newsletter, the test compared sending shorter, more frequent newsletters to longer less frequent ones. The total amount of content was roughly the same either way.

The less-content, more-frequency version got lower open and click rates, but much higher multiple opens and multiple clicks. More important, it got more purchases, revenue per contact, and less churn.

That's a pretty sweet deal. Look into the less-content, more-frequent approach to cultivating your email names. It just might make a difference for you.

The envelope makes no sense -- but it doesn't have to

From Uncle Maynard's Treasure Trove of Direct Mail Knowledge:

This is the only image on the front of an envelope (shown about twice actual size). It partly overlaps the window. The organization's name and address are on the flap.

A lot of people looking at this will say it's the most stupid thing they've ever seen. Why bother labeling something that's not a government document a NON-GOVERNMENT DOCUMENT? Isn't that sort of like calling your cat a NON-CANINE PET?

The illogic of it is why most organizations would never put this mark or anything like it in the mail. Someone on the committee would very articulately expound on the pointlessness of it.

But let me tell you: It is utterly brilliant.

Not only is it 100% true, it's designed to incite curiosity, which increases the chances it'll be opened. That is exactly what direct mail envelopes are supposed to do. It's their entire job. Not to be beautiful, clever, brand-compliant, cutting-edge, wise, funny, or anything else -- unless one of those qualities causes the recipient to open it. And those qualities seldom accomplish that.

Some of the best-performing direct mail I've done has had teasers like this. Things that no doubt made people say "What the heck?" Things like:

• DO NOT BEND
• MESSAGE ENCLOSED
• TUESDAY
• DEADLINE

I know what the committee thinks of those. They don't make sense!

Making sense isn't their purpose. Getting opened is.

Give it a try. You'll be happy with the results.

Fundraising from donors who just aren't that much into you

Some of the coolest donor-cultivation ideas I've seen have gone nowhere, and I think I know why: They were built on the assumption that donors were as into us as we are into ourselves.

Inspiring Generosity blog looks at that issue at When Building Donor Relationships, Talk is Cheap, with one of the big myths of fundraising: Everyone Loves You:

Despite what we desperately want to believe, most donors don't want a relationship with your nonprofit. The gift comes in the mail because the donor is honoring the request of a friend or colleague, or maybe they want the deduction for their taxes. These donors don't really care about your organization. They just gave you some money.

Yeah, some donors really do want a relationship with you. You know most of them already, because they are major donors, volunteers, or otherwise heavily involved.

Other donors are fanatically connected with your cause, but less so with your organization.

But more, probably most, of your donors -- they just give. It doesn't mean a whole lot to them. You are one of many organizations they give to. They give because something in your fundraising connected.

And that's good enough. Remember, most people don't give at all.

That's why simple, clear, straightforward fundraising that donors can grasp without spending a lot of time and energy always works best.

Aim your fundraising at people who spend less than one minute a month thinking about you. They are where the bulk of the revenue comes from .

Keep the doors open to your fanatics; they are wonderful people, and they'll give more than their share. But there aren't that many of them.