Future Fundraising Now

Four things that will make your fundraising stand out

From the Direct Creative Group Blog, here are some things that will make your fundraising stronger, no matter what channel you're in: "Channel-Agnostic Messaging" in Fundraising. Every channel has its own rules and conventions, but at the high level, all fundraising is pretty much the same, and it should do these things:

1. Cast the donor as a hero.
2. Articulate the need, relevant to the donor's heroic role.
3. ASK for support.
4. Prove that the donor's support will make a difference.

It's not the complicated, is it? If you do these things, you'll stand out gloriously. And raise more money.

What happens when you send a check to your donors?

The Trove has seen a minor surge lately in mailings that include checks. Real, cashable checks you can take to the bank. They're for small amounts -- usually around $2.

When you see a tactic show up repeatedly, that's a sign it's working.

Why would a charity send out checks? To get attention. Attention is one of the most important -- and probably most difficult -- elements of successful fundraising. The quest for attention drives some fundraisers to send cash. The advantage of checks is you only have to pay for those that are cashed. And I'll guess that's a small percentage.

Here are a few recent fundraising checks, along with how they explain themselves:

Coalition to Salute America's Heroes. Check amount: $2.25. Explanation:

"I hadn't heard from you in awhile so I sent you this check to grab your attention -- and ask for your help!"

As you'll see, most of these check mailings come right out and explain themselves this way. I'm sending this check to get your attention.

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Christian Appalachian Project. Check amount: $2. Explanation:

You can cash it if you'd like. But, I really hope you won't. Quite honestly, I sent the check to get your attention. I needed this letter to stand out among the many others your receive.

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Help Hospitalized Vets. Check amount: $2.50. Explanation:

I sent you this special check to make a point on behalf of the American heroes who fought on the front lines....

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This one gives a different reason:

Help Our Wounded. Check amount: $2. Explanation:

I've sent you a $2 check with this letter. That's what a soldier in Afghanistan pays for just 46 seconds of phone time!

This one claims a logical reason for sending the $2 check. To me, the logic feels better -- but I'd bet an espresso or two that it works because it gets attention, not because of some tenuous connection with the offer.

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There's another type of check that's also effective, but a lot easier to do. Like this one:

Coalition to Salute America's Heroes

This is not a real check. If you took it to the bank, they'd laugh at you. It's merely a facsimile of a check that "dramatizes the impact of matching funds on the donor's gift: She sends her check, along with this one, to double the amount that goes to the cause.

You might think this a confusing substitute for a more standard reply device. It's not, apparently. I've seen it work wonders, time and again. Donors love to give in ways that increases their giving, and this is a great way to get them in on the action.

More from the Trove

Sell your fundraising offer like it's a product

The way you "sell" a fundraising offer is a lot like the way you sell a product. (It's not identical, but close.)

Here's a post at the KISSmetrics blog about selling products that can clarify your fundraising: 7 Simple Steps to Writing Product Descriptions that Sell. Try these steps on your fundraising:

1. Define Your [Donor] Persona
2. Create a Comprehensive List of Features and Benefits
3. Define Your Tone of Voice
4. Create a Scannable Format
5. Write a First Draft
6. Edit Your Text to Boost Your Persuasiveness
7. Optimize Your Copy for Search Engines

Anyone who thinks this way while creating fundraising offers is several steps ahead and far more likely to drive response. Give it a try.

The real secret to great fundraising writing

Great post at Otis Regrets: Is this the John Caples of 2014?. It's about an editor at Gawker named Neetzan Zimmerman, who was profiled in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required).

Zimmerman writes headlines. His job is to collected eyeballs, clicks, and links. He does that with headlines like: Mom Fined $140 Every Day Until She Circumcises Her Child.

His job is a lot like yours and mine. And he's good at it. Here's the observation that stand out:

It's not enough to write well, to know your subject and audience, to deliver up benefit statements that get readers reaching for their wallets. To be a truly great and consistently control-busting copywriter you need to be able to connect with people on a visceral level, where they trust you and want nothing more than to hang on your every word.

That's the magic part of fundraising writing. Where you go beyond all the knowledge and science and connect with people. Of course, it isn't really magic -- it just seems like it, because it's deeper knowledge that most people don't know how to use.

How do you get to be like Neetzan Zimmerman (or John Caples?

It's part talent, part paying attention and studying, part long experience. All built on a willingness to get outside of your own beliefs and preferences.

Your donor relationships are not your brand

by guest blogger Andrew Rogers

One-to-one marketing exponent and DMA Hall of Famer Don Peppers of the Peppers & Rogers Group (no relation) has a post on LinkedIn (Brands Aren't the Same as Customer Relationships) stressing the crucial difference between a corporate brand and the company's actual relationship with its customers.

I'd recommend reading the whole thing, substituting organization for company and donor for customer. But here's the key point:

If you want your [charity] to be [donor]-centric, you need to know how profound the difference is between how your brand works, and how a [donor] relationship works."

A "brand" is about how an organization sees itself and its place in the market. A relationship is about how the donor sees herself, what motivates her, what she responds to, and how supporting the organization helps her fulfill her goals.

Both have their place. But a successful, sustainable, and responsible fundraising program has to be based on relationships, not just branding.

Don't tell donors what they are not doing

I visit a lot of nonprofit websites, so I see a lot of banner ads for nonprofits. They follow me around like hopeful little stalkers.

I'm not complaining. And I happen to know that this type of targeted online advertising can be quite effective -- when it supports other direct-response fundraising efforts like direct mail.

But I want to complain a little about this one for The International Rescue Committee. I saw a number of versions of it at the end of the year. Here's one:

I also heard public radio underwriter breaks that put it even more baldly: It's not charity. It's humanity.

Why would any fundraiser ever want to say that?

They replace "charity" -- something donors believe in, understand, and loving doing -- with "humanity" -- an abstraction without no clear action connected to it. Is that supposed to persuade someone to act? What would the action be? It's like going to music lovers and saying It's not music. It's organized air vibrations.

Oh, the humanity!

Is "charity" something shameful? Anyone who thinks so is so far from the emotional heart of charitable giving, they really need to find some other form of employment.

I don't know anything about the background of this campaign, but it smacks of the work of clueless Brand Experts: They're the professional locusts that goad nonprofits into abstract and ineffective messaging. They're the ones most often responsible for Stupid Nonprofit Ad.

You might be wondering why I'm not labeling this a Stupid Nonprofit Ad. Three reasons:

1. It's not really stupid. Wrong-headed, but not stupid.
2. The image looks like it's from Typhoon Haiyan, which hit the Philippines shortly before I started encountering this campaign. Points for relevance.
3. The words "Your gift matched now." That's a big step into relevance for donors. That's smart fundraising, even if they rest of the campaign isn't.

But really -- don't tell donors what they're not doing. Give them a real reason to give. Let them change the world. Don't make them part of someone's weird philosophical quest.

Do you have the most depressing job in the world?

The people in our industry I feel the most sorry for are the fundraisers who think donors hate fundraising.

They have a working assumption that fundraising is annoying, and that giving is painful. Fundraisers who make that assumption make a lot of errors:

• They fail to ask clearly. Because they think they're bugging people, their asks are vague. Needless to say, unclear asking nets fewer responses than clear and straightforward asking. And really, wouldn't you think it's even more annoying to have to decode unclear communications?
• They don't ask often enough. Ask too often, and donors will turn on you, they think. As if donors are some kind of semi-wild dogs who can only tolerate so much contact before they revert to the dangerous creatures that lurk below the surface. When you ask seldom, you not only make a lot less revenue, but you end up with less-engaged donors and much worse retention.
• They give donors a "rest" after they give. Giving was so painful and awful, the donors need time to recuperate. In doing so, you miss the time when donors are most likely to give: soon after they've given!

All this means less revenue. And less connection with donors, who want to give, who want to be involved and change the world!

Worse yet, it's a self-fulfilling prediction. If you think fundraising is annoying, you will create annoying fundraising!

But the real reason I feel sorry for these people is they're voluntarily forgoing joy! If they realized what a blessing their fundraising brought into their donors' lives, they'd be thrilled to come to work every day. As it is, they feel pretty crappy about what they do most of the time.

Who tolerates living like that? I'd change careers. They should too.

Things that improve your fundraising

What did you learn about fundraising last year? Here's what Front Range Source learned: 5 Things that Moved the Needle in 2013...

1. Integrate your email and direct mail activities.
2. Extricate your corporate relationships from your events. (You may find you can get corporate support without that difficult and expensive event.)
3. Invite your board step up to the plate in new and meaningful ways.
4. Break down silos and buy into a shared vision.
5. Forget perfection. Just ASK!

I'll add one more:

• Come up with a better fundraising offer. You can dramatically improve results by giving donors something more exciting to give for.

How your fundraising can cut through the noise

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:

1. Keep your message simple.
2. 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.

How to find and destroy jargon and other donor-unfriendly copy in your fundraising

One of the things that kills fundraising copy is stilted, odd, jargon-filled, legalistic language that's hard to read or understand.

It happens because everyone inside the organization completely understands that copy. It's in insider language, and you can't detect how weird it really is.

Here's a solution, from Damn, I Wish I'd Thought of That! -- Talk like a human:

Hire someone (permanent or freelance) to review everything you write. De-lawyer it, de-engineer it, de-jargon it. A few days of rewrites will completely change how your customers perceive you and relate to you.