Future Fundraising Now

Stupid metaphor equates education with being thrown from an airplane

If a friendly and engaging stranger offered you a gift that you knew to be very expensive, but had absolutely no value or utility for you, would you accept the gift?

Would your attitude change if you learned that the stranger had a lot more to gain from giving you the useless gift than you ever could from receiving it?

That's not as weirdly hypothetical as it sounds. It seemingly happened to Plan UK, saddling them with this silly yet disturbing TV spot:

Or watch it here on YouTube.

The creator of this mess is my favorite serial creator of stupid nonprofit ads, Leo Burnett. We're fortunate to have a press release that gives us some insight into what everyone thought they were doing: New Plan TV ad highlights the power of girls education. The ad, it seems is supposed to "highlight the difference education can make -- and draw attention and support to our campaign."

Um, yeah. It looks to me not so much like an ad that encourages education, but one that encourages flinging girls out of airplanes.

Yes, once again, stupidity is achieved through abstraction, that favorite tools of ad agencies and those who would imitate them. Here's more insight into the craziness, from the Executive Creative Director at Leo Burnett: "Poverty often feels like an insurmountable problem and because we don't know where to start, we simply don't. The fact that Plan know that girls are the best place to start is so simple and arresting that it demanded a narrative to make people really stop and think about the possibility."

So the "narrative" they come up with: Girls falling helplessly through the sky. Somehow, by the time the reach the ground, they seem to regain consciousness and land on their feet. That causes buildings to magically appear. Suddenly, the whole issue is so clear!

The work of educating girls in the developing world is wonderful, transformative, and exciting. There's no reason to hide it behind a bizarre and violent metaphor. The work of motivating donors is also wonderful. No reason to hide it, when a clear, specific, and emotional call to action is what motivates people to action.

Plan takes pains to make it clear that this spot was done pro bono. That's nice. But the reason the agency did it was to pad their portfolio, and possibly win some kind of bogus award, which is currency in the agency world. They used the work of Plan for their own advantage -- offering nothing in return but a weird piece of eye-candy.

No harm done? Maybe. But ineffective marketing is like a tax on effective marketing. It's like pointlessly calling for help, crying wolf. There is a cost to stupidity.

Thanks to Creative Advertisements for NGO for the tip.

More Stupid Nonprofit Ads.

Why your fundraising didn't work

Doing a post-mortem on a failed direct-response fundraising campaign? Check this post at Karen Zapp's Nonprofit Blog: Top 10 Reasons Why a Fundraising Campaign Flops.

1. Copy isn't reader-centric
2. Poor list (you aren't being smart about whom you're asking)
3. Too many editors change the copy until it becomes a weak mush.
4. Single channel effort – didn't integrate across multiple channels (online and offline)
5. Appeal is filled with business-like jargon; it's cold and impersonal
6. No story
7. No clear call-to-action stated multiple times that obviously shows how the donor makes a difference
8. No single person, family or critter that the reader can connect with through their own experiences; text dominated by sweeping generalities and nebulous facts
9. No package gestalt
10. No reminder sent to boost response

Any one of these things can kill your campaign. The most deadly one is #2, which can demolish an effort that's otherwise flawless.

What the FOAC is wrong with my response rates?

by guest blogger Lisa Sargent, fundraising copywriter, donor communications specialist, and rabid defender of direct mail.

Before you shoot your copywriter because he or she hasn't been the creative cash cow you hoped, I strongly suggest you consider this acronym for direct mail success -- in order of priority, according to website SOFII ...

FOAC:

1. Format.
2. Offer.
3. Audience.
4. Creative.

Put another way (hat tip to the late Bob Stone, direct marketing legend), 60% of the success hinges on the List, 30% on the Offer, and 10% on Creative.

You may have heard 40/30/30, or 40/40/20. Or some other variation.

The point is this: List (aka Audience) always has more impact on success in fundraising than Creative.

So, for example, if your house list contains a bunch of names of people who haven't given to you for 4, or 5, or more, years ... if you lump your one-time event participants in with your loyal donors ... and you spend good money mailing these people, over and over, in the exact same way that you communicate with your repeat givers ...

Your direct mail will never perform the way you expect, no matter what kind of creative geniuses you hire. List matters more than creative, every time.

What's in new book on fundraising

Here's what's in my new book, The Fundraiser's Guide to Irresistible Communications: Real-World, Field-Tested Strategies for Raising More Money:

• The Importance of Being Urgent The secret ingredient that so many fundraisers omit.
• Make It Easy to Read Have your readers breezing happily through your copy.
• Long Messages Work Better It's true. And your boss is wrong.
• Grammar for Fundraisers The rules you should and shouldn't follow.
• Persuade with Story, Not Statistics One way motivates donors, the other demotivates them.
• Keep It Simple Complexity kills fundraising.
• Make It All About the Donor It's not about you!
• I Have Bad News and Good News Balanced fundraising that works and keeps working.
• Have a Clear Call to Action No matter how well you write and design, if you omit this, you're sunk.
• P.S. I Love You Guess what part of your letter people are most likely to read.
• Design for Older Eyes You're a tree falling in the forest with nobody to hear it if you don't design for bifocals-wearing readers.
• Don't Skimp on Emphasis It makes a difference.
• Make Images Work for You The right picture can boost results, but the wrong one can turn them away.
• Plain, Corny, and Obvious Three characteristics of successful fundraising design.
• Self-Centric Fundraising The deadliest mistake in fundraising.
• Three Things You Should Know About Donors Embrace these truths, and you'll always do better.
• Three Deadly Fundraising Myths Everyone else is getting it wrong because they believe these things.
• Proud to Be a Fundraiser What's really going on with donors is better news than you might have thought.

Buy it on Amazon (Don't worry about the "Temporarily out of stock" message. It'll be back in action soon!)

Or at Amazon.co.uk

Or from the publisher (best bet if you need multiple copies, or if you don't want to wait for Amazon to stock it again.)

What Clinton's on-the-fly speech revisions teach us

If you saw President Bill Clinton's rousing speech during the Democratic National Convention last week, you know you were witnessing a skilled communicator at work.

What was less obvious is how much the speech he delivered was different from the prepared text that was presumably being displayed on his teleprompter -- and how much stronger his impromptu version was than the prepared text.

You can see both displayed together at the Atlantic Wire: What Bill Clinton Wrote vs. What Bill Clinton Said.

Clinton made his speech clearer, more colloquial, and more forceful with many small (and a few large) changes.

Look at the last sentence of the speech to get an idea of how he made it better:

What his teleprompter said:

If that's what you believe, if that's what you want, we have to re-elect President Barack Obama.

What he said:

My fellow Americans, if that is what you want, if that is what you believe, you must vote and you must re-elect President Barack Obama.

The printed version is okay, but a bit flat. Lacking force, not a real thundering end. He transformed it into a powerful new thing, while not really changing the meaning at all:

• He changed if that's to if that is. Most of the time it's better to go with the contraction if you want to sound colloquial. Clinton saw something better: By taking out the contraction and saying is, he got greater emphasis and stronger rhythm.
• He reversed want and believe, putting believe in the second spot, which gives it more emphasis.
• He changed we to you.

Fundraising writers: Study these changes. That's professional work.

Beware of graffiti fundraising

Why are most graffiti illegible?

Actually, they aren't -- to their primary audience. That audience is not you. You have nothing to do with the message.

Graffiti are about the people who write them. It's a proclamation: I was here. You and I don't care that this particular young vandal was there. And Young Vandal doesn't care that we don't care. It's just for him, his buddies, and their rivals.

Sadly, a lot of fundraising is like that. It's all about the people who created it. It makes no attempt to connect with or communicate with others. It's a product of self-expression, not an attempt to connect.

It's the kind of fundraising that's chained to super-prescriptive brand guidelines that are focused on the greatness of the organization. Or that tries to "educate" donors into a proper understanding of the cause before they give. It's just an elaborate form of I am here.

Problem is, fundraising is supposed to motivate responses. When it's self-focused Graffiti Fundraising, it's just a waste of money. And time. And your donors' good will.

Don't do Graffiti Fundraising that merely proclaims your existence and awesomeness. Talk to your donors about their opportunity to change the world.

How not to waste money on event donors

If you do fundraising events, such as walks or runs -- where you have participants who get their own sponsors -- there are two common mistakes to avoid once the event is over:

1. Ignoring those event donors. As if none of them have any interest in your cause, and none will ever give to you again.
2. Dumping those event donors in with your "normal" donors. As if supporting an event participant is exactly the same as giving directly.

Either mistake is going to cost you. Lost revenue if #1. Wasted fundraising efforts if #2.

There's help handling these unusual donors in a white paper from Event 360: 4 steps to Converting Event Donors to Organizational Donors (PDF; registration required).

Here's how to think about it:

Treat event donors the same say you would treat a friend of a friend. The burden is on you to pursue a deeper relationship and engage them outside of their relationship with the event participant. If you do not take the first step, chances are the relationship will never move beyond their support of the event participant.

If you do events, check it out.

How to stop killing your fundraising

The Agitator suggests Nonsense Audits to help nonprofits get rid of pointless and harmful activities, at Down With Fundraising Nonsense. One of the things they take aim at:

... the number of folks who must see, sign-off or otherwise be involved in the creation and approval process of appeals and other donor communications. Add in the amount of time and personnel involved in shepherding this mostly moronic process of democracy-based, 'everyone's-entitled-to-an-opinion' copy review fest into your audit also.

If it's more than one or two folks in addition to the agency rep and one nonprofit staffer, then the yellow or red flags should go up. I've never seen a situation where a committee's opinion did anything but harm.

That's so true. I hope the Nonsense Audit catches on, and that every nonprofit on the planet starts doing them.

In the mean time, here are three truths about fundraising approval processes that you can count on being true:

1. Committee involvement in your fundraising communication will automatically decrease its effectiveness. This is a law of physics, like gravity. There are no exceptions.
2. The fewer cooks you have in that kitchen, the better you'll do. Also, things will be meaningfully faster, less expensive, and more fun.
3. The IQ of a group is not the sum of the IQs of all the participants, nor is it the average of all of them. It is the average IQ of all the participants divided by the number of participants. Each member you add to the committee lowers its effectiveness. Even if that person is really smart and wonderful.

An oddball way to turn your web names into web donors

You've probably heard of the old salesman's tactic of asking you to do him a small favor. That predisposes you to like him, trust him, and do more for him. It's a proven quirk of human psychology that once we help someone, we're more likely to want to help them again.

Some new research, reported at the Neuromarketing blog (Make a Crazy Request, Close the Deal) says the tactic works even better if the initial small favor is weird:

... the experimenter asked the unwitting subjects to perform a task that was simple but unusual: to tie his shoe (offering the explanation of an injured back). The unusual tasks, even though simple and quick, had the same lift on subsequent requests as more complex ones.

Find the research here.

Many fundraisers use the small-favor principle by making sending easy, low-bar, non-donation emails. Sign a petition. Click to release funds. Share a video. These can help people become more likely to make donations later on.

What if we made those easy offers strange and memorable? Here are some ideas:

• Send us a photo of something (make it easy like a photo of your hand).
• Send us a certain phrase in your own handwriting.
• Send us a sound file of you saying or singing something.

(My guess is you want these requests to be plausibly meaningful, though I don't really know if that's important.)

If it works the way it did in the research, it could turn nondonors into donors.

Let us know if you try it!

New book will help you be a better fundraiser

From time to time, someone asks me, What do I need to know to effectively raise funds?

I generally stammer out something that I hope will be helpful -- something like Make it all about your donors or Don't forget to ask.

Of course, one-sentence advice won't take you very far.

But being asked the question is what got me started writing The Fundraiser's Guide to Irresistible Communications.

This book is exactly for you. If you read this blog, if you read any fundraising blogs at all, you are clearly someone who wants to do fundraising right. You want to work with knowledge, not hunch and superstition.

Based on decades of hand-on fundraising with dozens of great nonprofits, this book zeroes in on the hard stuff, the surprising, counterintuitive things that most often trip up fundraisers.

You won't find wild-eyed, speculative theories in this book. Just the solid, experiential practices. Nothing controversial -- unless you're in one of those marketing departments that makes it a practice of ignoring what works.

This is the book you can show that meddling, know-it-all executive director or board member who insists on taking all the life and effectiveness out of our fundraising. See? An actual printed book says it should be like this!

Here's what some excellent people who've read the book are saying:

Tom Ahern, author of How to Write Fundraising Materials That Raise More Money and Seeing Through a Donor's Eyes:

"An instant classic that will be read and reread obsessively by the fundraisers of this world."

Roger M. Craver, Editor of The Agitator and Founder, DonorTrends:

"This simple, smart, and fun-to-read book is for those aspiring to a black belt in fundraising. If you're in fundraising and this book isn't on your bookshelf, dog-eared, underlined, and well-worn, you've been shortchanging yourself and the organization you serve."

Katya Andresen, Network for Good and author of Robin Hood Marketing:

"A fundraiser's breakfast of champions -- bread-and-butter fundraising wisdom based on years of experience."

Stephen Hitchcock, Bread for the World and author of Open Immediately: Straight Talk on Direct Mail Fundraising:

"This brief book is packed with practical advice and research to back it up. It's a delight to read as well. Give this book to everyone in your organization -- and to your best board members."

Buy it on Amazon

Or at Amazon.co.uk

Or from the publisher (best bet if you're ordering lots of copies -- which, of course, you need to do!)