Future Fundraising Now

Podcast: Why donors go away, Part 2

Why do your donors leave? For the most part, it's your fault -- the things you do (and don't do) drive away donors. But there's a lot you can do to keep donors happy, engaged, and giving. We look at some of those smart fundraising moves in this podcast and the previous one.

To listen, click here to download the audio file or visit the Fundraising Is Beautiful page here, where you'll find several listening and subscription options.

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Fundraising mistakes: where monsters be

If you watch the same scary movie more than once, you may find yourself yelling at the screen, Don't go in that dark room! The monster is in there! He's going to eat you!

To no avail. He goes into the room and things don't go well. Every time you watch it.

Working with a lot of nonprofit organizations can be like that. You see them walk into dark, monster-filled rooms over and over. The difference from the movies is, they can hear you when you warn them. That doesn't mean they listen, though.

Tom Harrison knows about this, and writes about it in FundRaising Success magazine: 15 Mistakes That Have Already Been Made for You.

Here are some of them, the ones I find most vexing and common:

• Cutting acquisition quantity to improve fundraising ratios but destroying your future revenue stream in the process.
• Lazy cultivation. (Failing to thank donors, stay relevant to them, and use your resources wisely on them.)
• Letting brand dictate fundraising messages instead of mandating that brand reinforce fundraising messages.
• Being seduced by a consultant who claims to be able to acquire "higher value donors" and ending up getting too few donors to sustain your organization.
• Chasing blindly after the next big thing.
• Forgetting to test.
• Believing that you are the target audience.
• Being afraid to fire someone.

These things happen with shocking regularity. Again and again and again. But, as Tom says, you don't have to make the mistake. The outcomes are predictable: The monster has very sharp claws and very big teeth!

Remind your donors of their freedom not to donate

Some interesting research at the Unbounce blog: 5 Research Studies that Will Drastically Affect How You Write Copy.

All five studies are interesting, but one stands out: the "But You Are Free" technique.

It works like this: When you remind donors that They don't have to give, or they have choices about the amount, timing, or other factors about the gift, they are more likely to respond:

By reaffirming the subject's freedom, researchers found that the subjects felt less threatened about making a choice.

It's a simple statement you can add to your message any time. Phrases like:

Please don't feel obligated...
• Whether you give is entirely your choice...
• Any amount you want to give will help...
• You are free to say no -- I will understand...

These things could improve response. Give it a shot!

Fundraising Hell, Level 4: The Greedy and Wasteful

If Dante had been a fundraiser, his Inferno might have been slightly different, featuring the evils specific to fundraisers. I have corrected Dante's oversight. This is part four of a nine-part tour of the levels of Fundraising Hell.

After we leave the sadly passive sufferings of the Guttonous Fundraisers, we make our way down to the next level, where we find the Greedy and Wasteful Fundraisers.

These were the fundraisers who valued self expression over other connecting with donors. To them, the purpose of fundraising was to display the awesomeness of their organization -- its methods, its history, its staff, whatever they deemed worth bragging about.

This type of fundraising evil takes two different forms:

1. Greed, where the fundraisers didn't see fit to be open or informative about what they do with their donors. They don't think donors can handle the details; they're not real partners, just passive funders.
2. Wastefulness, where the fundraisers can't shut up about their greatness. Donors don't matter to them, either -- except as passive audiences to be enlightened.

Opposite sins, but remarkably similar. Either way, it's because they're horrifically self-centered.

For punishment, they endlessly push gigantic weights along until they crash into others and their weights. They yell and curse at each other (these types really hate each other), then start pushing their weights somewhere else.

The entire level is watched over by a slavering wolflike giant, the Demon of Branding. It's really his domain.

To stay out of this level of Fundraising Hell, fix your mind on one thing: Fundraising is about donors. It's not a vehicle for your pride and self-expression. Your excellence is a vehicle for their greatness, not vice-versa.

Next Monday -- Level 5: The Wrathful

Previous levels:

• Level 1: Virtuous Unbelievers
• Level 2: The Lustful
• Level 3: The Gluttonous

When you try to persuade yourself, you fail to persuade donors

From Katya's Nonprofit Marketing Blog, Message isn't working? Here's a three-point diagnosis. Some typical ways fundraising goes wrong:

1. Falsely assuming that information results in action.
2. Forgetting that we're not the audience.
3. Treating marketing as an afterthought.

In my experience, #2 is the most common and most destructive of the three. People at nonprofit organizations become obsessed with creating messages they think would motivate them -- and thus radically mis-communicate with their donors.

It's difficult to get outside of your own head. It's even harder when there's a group-think in the organization that's seeking self-pleasing messages.

Effective fundraisers are the ones who talk to donors, not themselves.

Pixar's 22 rules of fundraising

by guest blogger Andrew Rogers

Emma Coates, a story artist at Pixar, has listed 22 Rules of Storytelling that help explain why the studio tells great stories so successfully. There's a lot here for writers in any medium, but some of the rules are particularly adaptable for fundraisers:

Rule 2: You gotta keep in mind what's interesting to you as an audience, not what's fun to do as a writer. They can be very different.

Rule for fundraisers: Put on your donor's glasses. Does she want to read about the program specifics that obsess insiders? Or would she rather read about how she's helping transform lives?

Rule 5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You'll feel like you're losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.

Rule for fundraisers: Don't ladle everything your organization does into every appeal. Clearly define a problem your donor can solve, and focus on that.

Rule 7: Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.

Rule for fundraisers: Have an offer. On a very practical level, many experts recommend writing your reply-device copy first, to make sure you've distilled your offer into a simple, clear statement. Then expand that one sentence into a full appeal.

Rule 16: What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don't succeed? Stack the odds against.

Rule for fundraisers: What happens if the need isn't addressed? How are real people being affected? In our case, we should never "stack the odds" by exaggerating or otherwise being less than perfectly truthful. On the other hand, don't tell less than the full truth either, and remember that the full truth often isn't very pretty.

Give all 22 of these rules some thought. How would you put them to work?

The worst nonprofit newsletter headline ever written

I just saw the worst nonprofit newsletter headline ever written:

Partnering with the Southern Philippines

Unfortunately, this headline isn't the lone occupant of the "worst ever written" slot. It's tied for worst with about a zillion other nonprofit newsletter headlines.

Here's what's wrong with the headline -- and with the many others just like it:

• No news. It's not about something specific happening. The action here is a vague, ongoing process. Headlines that draw readers into their stories are packed with action -- news.
• No people. Millions of interesting human beings live in the Southern Philippines. The action people want to read about is done by and with them -- the children, mothers, priests, lumberjacks, or whoever -- not with the region.
  
• Weak, jargony verb. It's pretty cool that we can easily turn nouns into verbs in English. But not this one. "To partner" is one of those verbs that conceals and blandifies action. Headlines live on powerful, specific verbs.
• -ing verb. Even a strong verb loses a lot of its force when you put -ing on it. It turns it from an action into a process. Not interesting.

The purpose of nonprofit newsletters is to be read. If it isn't read, it's a waste of money. The purpose of headlines is to get people to read the material under them. Boring, no-news, abstract, unintelligible headlines don't do that.

Secrets from the Obama email fundraising machine

Some interesting and useful observations on the Obama '12 email fundraising machine, from M+R Research Labs: Surprises from Obama’s New Media Staff.

• Segmentation based on donor behavior is the only segmentation worth doing.
• Novelty worked ... until it didn’t!
• Shorter vs. longer? It mostly didn’t matter.
• Micro-goals worked for advocacy but not for fundraising.
• Facebook app made a huge difference for their mobilization efforts.
• Best performing appeals often had the highest unsubscribe rates.
• They hardly integrated with snail mail. The online program was mostly a separate entity from the direct mail stream.
• Clickers and visitors to donation pages were strong prospects for resends.

Not all these apply completely to fundraising email, but some do, and they're all good hypotheses we can learn from.

Fundraising Hell, Level 3: The Gluttonous

If Dante had been a fundraiser, his Inferno might have been slightly different, featuring the evils specific to fundraisers. I have corrected Dante's oversight. This is part three of a nine-part tour of the levels of Fundraising Hell.

We continue our trip downward, leaving the terrible winds of the Lustful Fundraisers and enter the level inhabited by Gluttonous Fundraisers.

These are the fundraisers who only took, never gave. They gobbled up donors, tossing out one campaign after another to rake in the gifts -- but they never thanked donors, never reported back, never gave any thought to building relationships.

As new digital capabilities become available that allowed richer and deeper communication, they covered their eyes and ran away. They didn't want two-way communication with donors! Too difficult!

They saw donors as resources to consume. Not as fellow human beings and partners in a shared cause. They became great experts in the art of response rates, but knew and cared little about donor retention or upgrading. Low average gifts or abysmal costs-per-donor didn't bother them -- just as long as they got those responses, the gross revenue in the door. They didn't even care that their approach was profoundly unhealthy and unsustainable.

Their punishment: they lie like beached whales in smelly, slushy pools of semi-frozen sewage. As they were in life, they are blind and unaware of those around them.

If you want to avoid this afterlife, make sure you think about more than response rates and gross revenue. Watch retention like a hawk. Ask yourself what donors want out of giving to you. Think about donors as a precious resource you steward, not something to extract all the value out of and move on.

Next Monday -- Level 4: The Greedy and Wasteful

Previous levels:

• Level 1: Virtuous Unbelievers
• Level 2: The Lustful

How brochures kill direct mail fundraising

Hey -- how'd you like to know an easy way to increase the cost of your direct mail fundraising -- decreasing response at the same time?

Here's how: Add a brochure to the package. It works like magic to make things worse!

Brochures almost always depress response in direct mail. (There are, no doubt, exceptions to this. But they are rare. I've never seen a brochure improve results. Or even stay even with a non-brochure mailing.)

Here's a fairly typical brochure. It was in a mailing from The International Rescue Committee. It's a good example of why brochures do exactly opposite of what we intend for them.

• Brochures aren't personal. Direct mail fundraising is all about make a person-to-person connection. Think about it: Would you consider a stranger who hands you a brochure someone likely to become a friend?
• Brochures may be distracting. Brochures have color and photos. That can draw donors away from the active ingredients you'd rather they pay attention to, such as the reply device.
• Brochures aren't about donors. Theoretically, they could be, but they never are. Brochures are created out of the need to puff up and explain organizations. This brochure is a prime example. It's all about the achievements of the organization -- we vaccinated, we trained, we gave, we created, we assisted, we counseled. The only you statement sneaks in on the back panel: Donations from humanitarians like you allow us to... That's bad fundraising.

If you want to improve your results, test your package with no brochure. Most likely, your numbers will improve. (And you'll lower the cost too!) I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but I've never seen a brochure that improved direct mail response.

Here's the rest of that brochure, in case you'd like to see an organizational brag-fest (click to enlarge):

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