Future Fundraising Now

Manifesto can help you raise more money

If you think your fundraising is annoying, it probably is.

If you understand that by presenting donors with the opportunity to give, you're helping transform their lives, your fundraising is probably excellent.

That's why I like this post at UK Fundraising: Are you really proud to be a fundraiser? A new manifesto for fundraising.

Consider posting this manifesto where everyone in your organization will see it:

This is a fundraising office

Treasury of the voluntary sector

Engine room of the change charities bring to the world

Through this office we connect the people who want to change the world with the people who can change it

We convert their ideals into the funding that allows charities to achieve their missions and visions

We underwrite charities' successes and insure against their failures

Friend you are about to enter sacred ground

This is a fundraising office.

What "donor centric" really means in fundraising

"Donor centric" might be the most misused concepts in our industry. It sometimes means "I use my own tastes and preferences to decide how we should treat donors."

Big mistake. Big, expensive mistake.

The decisions go like this:

• Address labels? I have no use for them. Hate 'em. Not donor centric.
• Emotional stories? I see right through them. Manipulative. Not donor centric.
• Long messages? Ain't nobody got time for that. Not donor centric.
• Frequent contact? It annoys me. Not donor centric.
• Short sentences, short paragraphs, colloquial language? I'm too sophisticated. Not donor centric.
• Direct mail? I've never responded to it in my life. Not donor centric.

This version of "donor centric" is not donor centric at all. It's egocentric. And it's not only disrespectful of donors ... it's an ineffective way to raise funds.

A post at 101fundraising, Not relationships VS results -- relationships FOR results, looks at this issue:

Your donors want to give. They enjoy it. You have no right to cancel money-making programs like premium mailings because you don't like the idea of it. Being donor centric means paying attention to how your donors behave and making smart decisions based on those observations.

One of the hard things about fundraising is that what you think you'd respond to almost never works in real life. There are two reasons for this:

1. Your donors are not you. They are different in many significant ways.
2. Even if you were exactly like your donors, you don't really know what you'd respond to. Your conscious opinions on the matter are at best wild guesses. More likely, your conscious opinions are exactly wrong.

Don't let egocentric fundraising posing as donor-centric fundraising alienate you from your donors and crush your fundraising revenue.

What you must do to connect with Boomer donors

Every day more Baby Boomers flood into the pool of your potential donors. You cannot afford to ignore them -- to communicate with them the way you have been with the older generation.

Here are some guidelines on connecting with Boomers from the Engage:Boomers blog: The Do's And Don'ts Of Connecting. They're intended for commercial marketers, but you can see how they translate to fundraising:

• Learn as much as you can about physical and behavioral changes caused by the aging process.
• Promote and advertise your [fundraising offer] as a gateway to meaningful experiences....
• Be authentic and give them the facts (reduce hyperbole).
• Portray [your donors] as doing for others, as individuals, as smart, as active, as wise.
• Use Baby Boomers to assist in product, service and communications development.
• Touch their hearts and they will allow you to enter their minds.

How the less-skilled fundraisers do it

From the Fundraising Trend Spotter blog, How to raise less money through your fundraising appeals:

• Don't ask.
• Talk a lot about your charity's needs.
• Don't convey a sense of urgency.
• Don't get donor's attention.
• Try to convince the head, not move the heart.
• Sound too clever.
• Send fewer appeals.

If you read a lot of fundraising messages, you'll see a lot of these things happening. All the time. The good-news side of this is that it means less competition for fundraisers who don't make these mistakes.

5 things fundraisers need to know about Boomers

As Boomers increasingly replace their elders in our donor lists, it pays to know how they are different from the previous generation -- and how Boomers themselves are changing as they age.

Good insights from Engage:Boomers at 10 Insights for Connecting With This Generation.

Here are five of them that especially apply to fundraising:

• Increased individualism. (Fads are for younger people.)
• Increased demand for facts. (Not impressed by hyperbole and high-flying claims of awesomeness.)
• Increased response to emotional stimuli.
• Less self-oriented, more altruistic. (This is why charitable giving ramps up so dramatically as we age.)
• Increased time spent in making purchase decisions. (This is likely why longer messages tend to do better than short ones in fundraising.)

Improve your nonprofit brand without getting more stuff on your shelves

The Money-Raising Nonprofit Brand: Motivating Donors to Give, Give Happily, and Keep on Giving

This book can do you and your nonprofit organization a lot of good -- save you a world of hurt and raise you a lot more money.

But 256 pages? 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches? A full pound in weight? Who has room another book?

Get an ebook! It costs less than the hardback edition. Takes no space on your shelf. Your reader will not be noticeably heavier. Plus you get search capability, dictionary look-up (for all those hard words), and all kinds of ways to communicate about the book without even putting it down.

E-book editions available all over the place in all kinds of formats:

• Barnes and Noble NOOK
• Apple iBook
• Amazon Kindle
• Foyles
• Google Play
• Kobo

And here's something cool you can do with an ebook: Get an autograph. Just go to Authorgraph and request one. I'll be compelled to obey.

What fundraising is really about (it's not money)

You've probably heard (or said) something like this: My work in nonprofit would be so great if I didn't have to do fundraising!

I can understand thinking this way. After all, you're in it because of the cause. Fundraising is just something you need to do to make the real work possible.

But there's another way to think that might not only make fundraising bearable -- but even make you love fundraising as much as you love the cause.

Because fundraising changes the world!

Some of the ways it does that are described in a recent New York Times column by Arthur C. Brooks: Why Fund-Raising Is Fun.

When you look at the positive impact giving has on givers, fundraising can quickly feel less like a pain and more like an activity worth pursuing. Here's just one thing we bring about as fundraisers:

... the real magic of fund-raising [is that it] creates meaning. Donors possess two disconnected commodities: material wealth and sincere convictions. Alone, these commodities are difficult to combine. But fund-raisers facilitate an alchemy of virtue: They empower those with financial resources to convert the dross of their money into the gold of a better society.

Fun? Why not?

You'll have a lot more fun when you see fundraising for what it really is:

1. Fundraising is not an act of taking something away from donors, leaving them just a little poorer. It's an act of adding to them -- they end up far richer, despite the decrease in their bank balance.
2. When you realize fundraising is about donors, you suddenly get a lot more effective at it. And everything is more fun when you're succeeding at it.

Fundcrushing on Twitter: it's still fundcrushing

Fundcrushing: a form of fundraising that assumes donors will be moved to give if you throw enough large numbers at them.

It doesn't work very well.

Here's an example of fundrcrushing from Twitter:

The fact that 780 million have no access to clean water is not a reason to get involved. It is a reason not to get involved. Your tiny contribution seems to mean almost nothing in the face of that staggering number.

That's what makes it fundcrushing.

Fundraising would show a problem the donor can solve.

Try a Google-simple nonprofit homepage

Here's a good laugh at npENGAGE: If Google were a nonprofit, what would its website look like?

Actually, I don't think this is accurate. On the real nonprofit Google, the "Search" button would be much harder to find, and getting to the actual search page would require users to navigate through several pages with titles like Learn about our algorithm!

Simplify!

The most meaningful information you have to share should be at the forefront with options for next steps. Giving your visitor too many links, too many choices, or too much information divides their attention and detracts from the bare essence of what you are trying to achieve.

As a counter-example, check out the homepage of Ocean Conservancy:

That's a beautiful page. No mistaking what the donor can do there. (Actually, there's quite a lot of content on the page, but almost all of it is below the fold: You have to scroll down to see it.

How to escape the obnoxious fundraising trap

You're walking along a city sidewalk. Suddenly a panhandler is walking next to you, cajoling you for a handout. C'mon! Just a dollar! Just fifty cents! I need some food!

You quickly conclude that the easiest way to get rid of him is not to confront him and send him away, but to dig some coins out of your pocket and give him a few.

His tactic works, but it doesn't feel good. It's an unpleasant donor experience that retention.

Are you afraid your fundraising is like that?

Look out. The Agitator calls that Nonprofit Narcissism:

Fundraisers who see themselves as burdening their donors have a totally dysfunctional mindset, and they probably have poorly performing fundraising programs as a result.

They are probably thinking and talking about their needs -- i.e. the needs of their organizations -- instead of the needs (and aspirations) of their donors.

"Our fundraising is obnoxious" is typically a self-fulfilling prophecy. It comes from fundraisers who don't understand what fundraising is really about: fulfilling the aspirations of donors. They think instead it's about wheedling a few more bucks from donors.

So they fundraising like that -- like the aggressive panhandler. Which is indeed obnoxious. It sometimes "works," but not for the long-term. Gift frequency and average gift tend to be low. Retention is poor.

To make matters worse, fundraisers in this situation often ramp up the obnoxiousness of their fundraising, desperately trying to squeeze a few more dollars out of their beleaguered donors.

It's a long, slow death-spiral.

The way out is to change your thinking about fundraising: Make it about the donors. Give them specific calls to action that allow them to see the ways they can change the world. Thank them and report back on how they make a difference. Stop bragging about your awesome programs. Stop focusing on your shiny new brand.

That's how you escape the death spiral.

Fundraising about donors will bring in more revenue. It also feel much, much better.