Future Fundraising Now

The good-copy practice that makes your fundraising copy bad

How hard do you work to make your fundraising copy "flow"? In my experience, too hard. Flow is considered a hallmark of good writing in many quarters. It's that sense of smooth progression from one topic to the next, with easy, almost unnoticeable transitions.

As the Happy Donors blog notes, it's not really what you want in fundraising copy: The #1 Secret to Writing Fundraising Letters that Maximize Results. Flow is usually exactly what you don't want in fundraising. Here's why:

Readers will pick up the four page letter, look at their name in the salutation, flip over to the P.S., then shuffle the letter around in their hands, maybe start reading here, maybe start reading someplace else, jump around a bit, and then, after this ragged scanning, MAYBE start reading at the beginning.

If that's true (and it is), flowing copy is a pretty bad idea. It won't communicate as clearly as choppy, jumpy, repetitive copy.

Write your fundraising copy so readers can start anywhere and quickly get the point and an ask. Don't have paragraphs that make no sense without the paragraphs before them -- you can't be sure your reader will see them in the order you put them.

Don't waste your time on flow. It'll make your copy less effective.

Podcast: Why donors go away

Why do your donors leave? Here's the bad news: It's mostly your fault. The good news: There's lot you can do to keep them engaged and giving. We look at some of those smart fundraising moves in this podcast and the next one.

We are looking at donor retention research posted here: Why donors stop their support.

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.

Or subscribe with iTunes:

Boomer life transitions and fundraising

Boomers are quickly replacing their elders as the fundraising target audience. For every older donor who "permanently lapses" (if you catch my drift), more than one Boomer turns 50, 55, 60, 65 -- the ages where people ripen into true donors, the gold-standard supporters who make nonprofit work possible.

A recent post at Engage:Boomers points out an important fact about these Boomers: They are going through huge and significant life transitions. Read Understanding Life Cycles Will Increase Sales:

From ages 48 to 66, Baby Boomers will experience more life transitions than at any other time in their lives. This means opportunities for brands and marketers to engage Boomers and build their brand promise in Boomers’ hearts and minds.

Here are some of the important life transitions that are transforming the way Boomers think and behave:

• Empty Nest: Many are entering a very different phase of life as their kids grow up and move out. Money, time get freed up. The noise level of life decreases. Many can now give a few extra moments of thought to your message.
• Caregiving for elderly parents. This one pulls in the opposite direction. As their kids get more independent, Boomers' parents become more dependent. The time and money freed by children leaving as sometimes eaten up by the escalating needs of their parents. This can keep them on the same too-busy-to-think treadmill for a number of years.
• Transfer of Wealth. As Boomers parents die, the largest transfer of wealth in history is falling into their laps. Some Boomers find themselves with inheritances that they may want to use in a philanthropic way.
• Grandparenting. Boomers are becoming grandparents at an amazing rate. This is a life stage that often promotes re-examining or returning to values from their own childhoods. Charitable giving may be part of that.
• Retirement. Only the oldest Boomers are at retirement age, and there are some indicators that the average age for retirement is going to be creeping up. Retirement often includes a drop in income, but it also brings a bonus in time to get involved.

Most of these things are going to make Boomers better donors than they have been. All of them should cause us to think differently about this demographic 800-pound gorilla.

Fundraising Hell, Level 2: The Lustful

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 two of a nine-part tour of all the levels of Fundraising Hell.

We enter now Fundraising Hell for Real, where the ugly stuff starts happening. This second level is where Lustful fundraisers end up. They are the people who spent their careers lusting after shiny new things (usually technology) and neglected what really worked.

They were bored with "old" fundraising vehicles, like direct mail or email. They loved saying things like Direct mail is dead, when there was no evidence whatsoever that it was anywhere close to an end.

Every time a new social site was launched, they slobbered all over it, eager to believe that this was the Next Big Thing that was going to kill direct mail, email, Facebook, etc.

Their more technical, the more exciting, in their eyes. If it required donors to buy new hardware, download new software, or be tech-savvy and cutting-edge -- the Lustful couldn't keep their hands off it: QR codes!

Their punishment in Fundraising Hell: to be endlessly blown around by the wind. With no anchors, no mastery, no faith in what is already proven, they were in life -- and are in the afterlife -- helpless, without control, unconnected, lost.

Want to avoid the second circle of Fundraising Hell? Commit yourself to the fundraising channels and methods that have shown themselves to work. Become a master of those things. Don't ignore the new, but don't lose yourself to it.

Next Monday -- Level 3: The Gluttonous

Previous level: Level 1: Virtuous Unbelievers

Does your fundraising copy make you sound like an idiot?

The tone of your copy matters. Here's an email test, reported at MarketingExperiments, that looked at the power of tone: Email Copywriting: How a change in tone increased lead inquiry by 349%.

The test was in an email designed to generate leads for a software package -- a high-end purchase with a lot of moving parts and higher-than-normal resistance from customers. Think major donor capital campaign.

Here's the opening of the control email:

Dear [Name],

You're just one step away from getting FREE access to RegOnline, our award winning Event Registration and Management Software. Quickly man an event website, try our event marketing tools, build a registration form template or even generate custom name badges.

Pretty standard sales language. Nothing really wrong with it. It has that breezy, somewhat stilted approach that we're all so used to hearing when someone's trying to sell something.

Here's the opening of the test:

Hi [Firstname],

I noticed that you started the process of getting free access to RegOnline but weren't able to finish. Are you concerned about giving out your phone number? Are you worried about high pressure sales tactics or mandatory contracts?

Right from the top, it has a more colloquial, normal-human tone. It talks to the reader about things they care about and worry about. It doesn't pile on the sales points. In fact, the test had very few sales points. It sounds like a normal person talking to another person about their concerns.

Results: the test generated a 349% increase in lead inquiry rate. You don't see improvements that big every day.

Fundraisers are prone to slipping into sales jargon as much as sales people. And it costs us.

Here's how to write like a normal person: Read your stuff out loud. Imagine you're saying what you read to someone you know. If your copy is like that control copy above, the person you're imagining would be tempted to punch you and in the nose, or run away. Why are you talking like that? You sound like you're not a real person!

Keep revising until your copy sounds (and literal sound is important) like something you'd really say to a real person.

Why donors get jaded, and how you can stop it

by guest blogger George Crankovic

The president of Haiti shocked everyone recently when he was speaking about the devastating 2010 earthquake that garnered worldwide sympathy. He said, Stop sending money, according to a recent report from NPR.

Haiti received a flood of funding after the earthquake -- an eye-watering $9 billion.

But there are still some 350,000 people living in temporary camps three years later. What happened?

Well, some of the money got tied up in red tape, some got misallocated in uncoordinated projects, and, let's be honest, some probably got skimmed off. But a big problem is that the money that did make it to the people in need in Haiti went to short-term relief: tarps, bandages, emergency food, and the like.

In truth, that short-term relief was the immediate need at the time. But that brings us to where we are today. The money's been spent, and those temporary fixes like bandages and tarps have been used up or worn out.

And here's the worst of it: Despite billions of dollars thrown at the problem, there hasn't been enough real change visible to donors. We fundraisers routinely promise real change to our donors.

The Haiti situation highlights donors' (and non-donors') deepest suspicions about nonprofits -- that charities have an insatiable appetite for money and will do anything to keep raising more and more of it, regardless of whether it's doing any good.

Donors start feeling swindled, jaded, and finally, less generous.

We can't expect donors to give endless amounts of money with no apparent outcome. But that's often what happens. Lots of organizations are good at raising money by the bagful, but when it comes to relaying results -- not so much.

Of course, in Haiti many more people beyond the unbelievable death toll of 316,000 would have died without assistance. Donors did save lives. But donors need to know that.

And the most meaningful way for them to know that is for us to tell them. That's part of fundraising too. We have to report back diligently in newsletters, thank you letters, videos on charity websites, social media posts, PR efforts, and other means.

That way there's a counterbalance when somebody says the money's not doing any good. Because if donors aren't sure they make a difference -- even a tiny difference in a sea of trouble -- they may just stop giving.

Why you should keep your fundraising simple

Yes, I know you're educated and sophisticated. And so is your organization.

Just don't let all that coolness show up in your fundraising.

The Marketsmart blog looks at the need for simple messaging at Why you should simply make your planned giving messages simple:

Supporters of your mission can get sophistication from a bottle of wine or a good book. But when it comes to your letters, they just want to know what the problem is and how they can help. You won't impress anyone by complicating your appeal. And you won't insult them if you make it simple.

It's a lot harder to communicate simply. And a lot of fundraisers make it even harder for themselves because their pride in their own sophistication drives them to show off.

It's rude. It's boorish. And it's not an effective way to raise funds.

Keep it simple!

Don't argue your donors into giving

A wonderful quote by Madeleine L'Engle from Church Marketing Sucks, at Walking on Water by Madeleine L'Engle:

We draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.

You could replace We draw people to Christ with We motivate people to support our cause and have a great way to think about fundraising.

I know a lot of fundraisers who think their job is to "educate" donors, to bust commonly held myths, to "raise consciousness," and turn donors into people more like them. These fundraisers tend to be continually frustrated with their donors -- who, it turns out, aren't all that interested in having their world-views adjusted by their junk mail.

Successful fundraisers embrace their donors and meet them where they are. They raise a lot more funds, and along the way raise a lot more consciousness at the same time.

Fundraising Hell, Level 1: Virtuous Unbelievers

Dante's Inferno is a masterpiece of medieval religious thought, an unflinching look at the nature of evil and what it does to the human spirit. I urge you to read it (and also the other two parts of his Divine Comedy, Purgatorio and Paradiso).

If Dante had been a fundraiser, his Inferno might have been slightly different, featuring the evils specific to fundraisers. Alas, he wasn't. We've been waiting nearly 700 years to find out what's waiting in the afterlife for fundraisers.

I have corrected Dante's oversight.

For the next nine Mondays, we'll explore each of the levels of Fundraising Hell -- who's in them, why, and what they suffer for their sins. Dante's Hell consists of nine levels, each one lower and more terrible than the previous. Fundraising Hell is similar.

Level 1: Virtuous Unbelievers

This level is a peaceful, pleasant, but somewhat sad place, where you see fundraisers wandering aimlessly.

These are fundraisers who never quite learned how to do their work right, who never heard the good news about effective fundraising. They never learned what works. Never attended a conference. Read a book. Or a blog. They just did the best they could in their ignorance.

Sometimes they got it right, more often they didn't. But they didn't really know the difference.

Many worked at very small organizations that couldn't afford to send them to conferences, didn't have books, and lacked connection to the larger fundraising community.

This is not a terrible circle. Technically, it's part of Hell, but it's not hellish. These deceased fundraisers continue their wandering and their relatively blissful ignorance. Their tragedy is one of wasted potential: They did their best, but their best wasn't very good, because it lacked direction.

How can you avoid this level of Hell? Well, since you're reading this, I can almost guarantee you aren't headed there. You could be going someplace far worse, but we'll get to that in the coming weeks.

Next week: Level 2 -- The Lustful