Who's your competition for donor support?
Organizations with similar causes? Other fundraisers in general? Commercial offers gobbling up donors' disposable income?
Those are probably all factors. But the big one, according to MarketingProfs Daily Fix Blog: Your Biggest Competition Is Noise
Your donors have a lot going on. Financial worries. Health issues. Things going on with their kids or grandkids. You know how noisy life is. It's the same for your donors.
So what do we do?
The greatest need isn't to add to the noise. It's to distill to a simple, compelling, and memorable signal. By developing micro-statements and using analogies, you can gain memory space and beat your biggest competition: noise.
For fundraisers, the secret is to do two things:
- Keep your message simple.
- Make your message relevant to your audience.
Do those two things, and you'll be a welcome message, not just more noise.
That's how you break through.
Jeff Brooks has been serving the nonprofit community for more than 30 years and blogging about it since 2005. He considers fundraising the most noble of pursuits and hopes you'll join him in that opinion. You can reach him at jeff [at] jeff-brooks [dot] com. 
