Future Fundraising Now

The power of artificially ugly fundraising

There's nothing really noteworthy in this mailing from Uncle Maynard's local Red Cross chapter, except one thing...

See those little semi-circles marching down the right and left margins?

If you're above a certain age, you'll recognize them in an instant: They're pin-feed perforations. Or rather, they're printed facsimiles or pin-feed perfs.

Now why would anyone bother to add fake holes to their mailing?

I can only guess, but here's a plausible explanation: The mailing is a long-time control that originated back in those dim, prehistoric times when pin-fed forms were the cheap way to produce this type of mailing. When you could afford it, you trimmed off the margins and nobody saw your perfs. But if you were really going for cheap, you left them there. And hoped the cheapness of it did no harm.

Eventually (in my hypothetical scenario) the people who produced this package come out with some great news: We no longer produce these packages with a pin-fed process. You can get the nice, clean, hole-free paper without the added cost of trimming!

Then the weirdest thing happened: The no-holes version didn't work as well. And if that weren't bad enough, it would now cost more to have the holes. They had to be artificially added to the process.

If they were smart, some testing was done at this point, so they could measure the cost and efficacy of the holes. Someone came up with the entirely strange idea of printed fake holes.

And the fake holes did the trick.

Direct response is that way sometimes. Clunky and ugly so often works better than modern and nice. Even artificial clunky and ugly. No, it doesn't make sense. And that's why logic is a weak guide for fundraising.

(If anyone reading this has the inside scoop on this package, I'd love to hear from you!)

More from the Trove

Ways to keep online donors on task

The most painful number in online fundraising is the gap between the number of people who arrive on a giving page and the number who actually complete the process of giving. Those people presumably intended to give, but something went awry.

You should do everything possible to make sure that whatever went wrong wasn't your fault. Here are some ideas from npEngage on ways to keep donors on your donation page until they've donated (You have been abandoned):

1. Include as few fields as possible
2. Avoid a "review & confirm" step in the donation process
3. Include a prominent security badge
4. Remove captchas
5. Include a short but compelling message on the form
6. Use single-page forms
7. Make sure your forms display well on mobile devices

What's wrong with pro-bono work for nonprofits?

Here's a question more people should ask, from the Good Agency blog: Pro bono. Where's the bono?

... it's not pro bono if there is no bono -- no actual good. No new donors, campaigners or volunteers. No new services funded or vulnerable people reached. No research paid for or hungry mouths fed.

Ad agencies and marketing companies like to do pro-bono work for nonprofits. It's a chance to bulk up their portfolios. (And who knows, maybe some of them just want to do good deeds.)

It turns out free work is worth about what it costs you: nothing.

If someone does a really cool project that makes you say ooh but lays an egg in the donor marketplace, you've taken a bigger hit than you might think...

The most common and uncounted cost is opportunity cost -- hours spent managing a dealing with a pro bono project that could have been spent doing something productive.

Then there's damage that can be done to your brand by heedless work that's driven by creative whim.

Just take a run through this shop of horrors and you'll see how badly things can go awry. And that free doesn't necessarily mean good. Or even free.

Bring your donors to life with a great newsletter

If you produce a newsletter and it's not bringing in revenue, you need to see this video at Movie Mondays for Fundraising Professionals.

It features my podcast partner Steven Screen, recounting what he did to a nonprofit donor newsletter to increase its revenue from $500 to $35,000:

3 simple changes to a newsletter that caused donations to skyrocket

Here's how you do it:

• Write for one person -- don't address a large audience.
• Make it about the wonderful things that have happened because of the donor.
• Design for skimming.

Believe me, it works.

How to get donors to tell other donors about you

From the Duct Tape Marketing Blog, The 5 Fastest Ways to Get More Referrals for Your Small Business:

1. Just ask them to
2. Focus on the first-timers
3. Do something fantastic for the old-timers
4. Always, always ask for feedback
5. Learn to be great at saying "thank you"

These things can also work for fundraisers. Getting a donor to recruit another donor for you is the least-expensive, and highest quality way to grow your donor-file.

A lot of fundraisers are lousy at saying thank you. They take forever to do it. They do it with no passion or emotion. They don't do it at all. There can be a lot of payback to doing that one right.

A great way to get new ideas that work

In a recent MondayMorningMemo, Roy Williams one of the real secrets to success. Something Better Than Creativity:

The secret of guaranteed success is to import a tested and reliable methodology into a business category where it has never been used. Repurpose the proven. They'll call you a brilliant creative innovator. You might even be able to patent your breakthrough.

Watch what works outside of fundraising. Or even what's working in fundraising categories other than your own. There are golden ideas hiding there, ready for whoever finds them and puts them to use.

Your fundraising is not for everyone

If you've ever tried to come up with a fundraising idea that would motivate "everybody" to give, you know how it has gone. Reaching everybody is a silly goal. Like telling a joke that everybody will find funny.

Seth Godin's blog encourages us to focus, at For the one person who didn't get the joke:

... the ability to say, "It's not for you," is the foundation for creating something brave and important. You can't do your best work if you're always trying to touch the untouchable, or entertain those that refuse to be entertained.

Your fundraising messages -- especially your most effective ones -- clearly exclude most people. That's not a shortcoming or a mistake. It's smart fundraising.

If you're trying to reach "everyone," you're probably reaching no one.

How to write better subject lines for fundraising emails

From the ClickZ Advanced Email Marketing blog, here are some brain-science-based ways to create better subject lines: Email Subject Lines and the Brain. Try these:

1. Use Certain Emotional or Personal Words to Grab Attention: The recipient's name, or certain other "trigger words," like free, limited, urgent, need, etc.
2. Increase the "Standoutness": Make your subject line different from the others. Longer, shorter, stranger.
3. Don't Habituate Your Subscribers: If your subject line is always the same, you're training recipients not to pay attention. Vary it.

The inbox is a crowded place, and your subject line is a very tiny canvass for capturing interest. We need to put a lot of attention (and testing) on those subject lines.

Fundraising creates meaning in donors' lives

Here's a great reminder of what we're doing as fundraisers, from the FundraisingCoach: The Art of Fundraising:

... most people are stuck working ... [at jobs] they don’t love. Doing things totally unrelated to their values. As fundraisers, we get to re-introduce them to what makes them human. We are like archaeologists. We get to dig down and uncover a person’s core values. We help them brush off the dirt and sweep away the cobwebs.

It’s wonderful to see people reconnect with their core values! But we do even more. We get to connect them with something wired even deeper into us as human beings. We get to reconnect them with generosity. We show them areas where their core values line up with our nonprofit’s values. And we ask them to invest in them.

When donors realize they can invest in their core values through our nonprofit, their eyes light up! All of a sudden their ... hours of work take on a whole new meaning.

Here's the full presentation (it's very short):

Or see it here on YouTube

How conference bullies victimize fundraisers

I was at a conference recently, where a clever consultant showed off a massive integrated awareness/fundraising campaign they'd done for a client.

It was good-looking and comprehensive. In addition to direct mail and email, there was print, outdoor advertising, transit ads, and a Facebook strategy.

Slide after slide of the slick, attractive creative went by.

Someone behind me gasped. It was a sound of admiration and envy. No doubt they were feeling sadly inadequate at the dull one-dimensionality of their own fundraising.

Funny thing was, I happened to have some inside knowledge about the campaign. Guess what: It didn't work. The Facebook part of the campaign brought in five small donations. The print ads did a little better: A few dozen gifts, most of them from current donors. There was no measureable response from the billboards or transit advertising. The only part of the campaign that you could call successful, the direct mail, did worse than it does most years.

The campaign was a dismal, crushing failure.

It was killed by a combination of abstract messaging, an unclear call to action, and (most of all) high spending in unproven media.

But it sure looked good on Powerpoint. And it sure made some of the people in that semi-darkened hotel meeting room feel like sorry rubes -- which is exactly the purpose of presentations like that.

The intent is to make you feel stupid and overwhelmed. These consultants know if they show enough pretty pictures, some people will be too distracted to ask the obvious questions, such as Did it work?

They also know that if someone does ask that question, they can answer it with vague, qualitative answer like It generated more talk than anything we've ever done. Or half-answers like Average gift went way up (which generally means response was terrible). And they get away with it

We're all afraid of missing something big, something that matters. We're all prone to getting tired of the same old same-old.

But don't let that fear and restlessness make you a target for the conference bullies who depend on insecure fundraisers. Ask the hard, quantitative questions. And if you don't get answers, don't agree to anything!