Future Fundraising Now

You and your donors: Who's the sidekick?

Do you think of your donors as heroes? How about as superheroes? The 101fundraising blog has some suggestions at Treat donors like the superheroes they are:

• You write stories about them
• You ask for their help when in need
• You smooth the communication with them
• You keep them in the loop with all developments
• You prove them you are the right ally to win the battle
• You should never forget them

Here's another way to treat donors as superheroes: Think of your organization has their sidekick. You're not quite as awesome as they are, but you are very helpful, and you complete them. A lot of fundraising gets it backwards, basically saying, "I'm incredibly awesome. How'd you like to be my sidekick?"

If your mental picture of the relationship has you in the sidekick role, your fundraising will be much more relevant and persuasive.

5 improvements to your website that will make a difference

User research by the Nielsen Norman Group shows us 5 Tips to Get Donations on Nonprofit and Charity Websites:

1. Clearly Explain What the Organization Does. ("On average, it took users about 6 minutes to locate information about the organization’s purpose, which was far too long. A task time of 1 minute for this crucial task would be a more reasonable goal....")
2. Disclose How Donations are Used. ("Those who couldn’t find the information were aggravated and thought the organization was inefficient or trying to bury those details.")
3. Display Third Party Endorsements.
4. Provide a Noticeable and Clear Link to Donate. ("...25% of the homepages included in our study failed to provide a Donate call to action.")
5. Streamline the Donation Process. ("Although the donation process requires less information than a typical e-commerce checkout process, it took longer for users to complete, on average.")

I don't think too many nonprofits would be surprised by these tips. But the number who don't achieve these best practices is discouraging.

Number five, especially. Over-complicated donation forms are the graveyard of online fundraising.

The power of repetition in fundraising

It's the one of the easiest and most effective ways to improve your fundraising bottom line: repetition. Or, as Willis Turner in FundRaising Success magazine says, If It's Worth Saying, It's Worth Saying Again.

Repetition -- mailing or emailing the same message again -- works:

Despite what many people think, simple repetition is one of the most powerful tools in your creative arsenal. The savviest fundraisers use it all the time to ratchet up emotion -- and results -- from their donors.

I saw a study once of new direct-mail donors. On average, these donors had received the direct-mail acquisition piece six times before they responded to it.

Direct mail is a low-attention environment. Email is even lower. Most of our recipients do not read most of what we send them. But attention is sometimes cumulative. Recipients may progress from barely noticing what we send, through being slightly aware of it, on up to full attention. If you send something only once, the message can never move up that ladder.

Repetition also works within a message: Your call to action should be repeated five, ten, or more times. If you just ask once, you'll hardly be heard.

Word Crimes: don't be that person

You've probably seen this, as it roars through social media, getting a lot of enthusiasm from word people:

Or watch it here.

Okay, it's a fun song; it made me laugh.

But it's a little bit evil.

Because it preys on a weakness we word people have: We think we're superior to other people. The fact that we pay more attention to language gives us no right to label people who don't as "dumb mouth breathers." That's just churlish. It shrivels your soul and probably makes you a weaker writer.

Grammar Girl says it best at Weird Al's "Word Crimes" Video:

...appealing to the base instincts that I'm tired to the bone of seeing: The call to feel superior and to put other people down for writing errors. Prescriptivism sells. Encouraging people to rant against the "morons who can't spell" sells.

"Word Crimes," like most rants of its kind, makes no distinction between spelling, grammar, or usage errors and pet peeves, like "could care less" (which is not "wrong," no matter how much it annoys you).

When you label people who don't use English the way you do as dumb, you isolate yourself into a dreary and lonely fake-ivory tower. Your superiority will make it hard for you to love and respect your donors -- most of whom are "morons" by the standards of "Word Crimes." When you think that way, you have a hard time connecting with donors at a heart level. Demonstrating your superiority (and/or their inferiority) will limit the depth of connection you can make with them.

Beyond that, your peeve-driven beliefs will wall you off from some rich ways of communicating. You don't want to have emojis or numbers used as words in your resume or grant application -- but you might make powerful use of them in an email to your supporters.

So enjoy "Word Crimes." But don't be that person who believes it. It's not good for you, your fundraising, or the health of a free society.

The real word crimes are things like lying, inciting people to hatred, or encouraging ignorance. In fundraising, word crimes are being abstract, sloppy, or self-centered. And the punishment is poor response.

Ask donors to give their time and they'll probably give more money

by guest blogger George Crankovic

In fundraising appeals, we have a one-track mind. We ask for money, but rarely if ever for donors' time as volunteers.

Asking donors to give their time may increase their giving, research shows.

In one study, The Happiness of Giving: The Time-Ask Effect, people were split into two groups. One group was asked how many hours they'd be willing to give as volunteers to a certain charity, while the other group wasn't asked about volunteering at all. Then both groups were asked how much money they'd give.

The people who weren't asked about volunteering gave an average of $24. But the group that was asked first about volunteering gave an average of $36.

You might think that guilt motivated people to give money in place of time spent volunteering. But researchers concluded it's more complicated than that.

People generally have positive feelings when they consider spending their time. They think about social events or other activities that represent emotional meaning and well being for them. So when they think about spending time volunteering, it has positive emotional connotations. But when asked to spend money, people go into a more analytical mode. They evaluate the dollars spent and what they get in return.

Two different mindsets. Emotional for giving time; analytical for giving money. We know that donors give for emotional reasons, and based on this research, asking donors to volunteer their time is another way to tap into emotional motivations for giving a gift.

Will it hold true for your donors? Here are some ways to find out:

• Add a checkbox for donors to get more information about volunteering on the response device of your direct mail appeals and on the donation page for your e-appeals.
• Consider adding a story about a volunteer in your appeal. The story should fit in with the offer, of course, but showing donors how their gifts empower volunteers could emphasize the time aspect of giving.
• Include a prominent call to volunteer in your newsletter that plays up the benefits of giving one's time.
• Have a story about a volunteer in your newsletter and emphasize how much this person enjoys it and draws satisfaction from it.

Certainly worth testing. Asking for donors' time could boost income, and at the very least, you'll gain volunteers.

Bragging is not fundraising

If your message to donors is all about how great your organization is, how deserving you are of support, you aren't really giving people a reason to give.

Real fundraising is showing donors how your organization connects with the donor's personal mission and values. You recognize how great they are, how important their mission -- and you seek to work with them.

Why your donors need to give to you

A lot of people in nonprofit organizations struggle with fundraising, because it feels to them like begging: socially questionable, awkward, ethically gray.

They shouldn't. Motivating people to give is itself one of the most important things you do. In fact, it may be the most important thing you do, given the positive impact you have on your donors.

The Veritus Group blog says Donors Need to Give, More than You Need the Money, and they're right. Here's why:

1. Giving Subdues the Power of Money. (Money can wreck your life. Really. But giving it away can short-circuit its power.)
2. Giving Blesses the Giver. (The research is clear: charitable giving improves the giver's life in many, many ways.)
3. Giving Transforms Lives. (Of donors.)

No fundraiser should ever feel sheepish or awkward about asking for money. It the work of heroes.

The quickest way to increase online donations

A well-made giving page is probably the more important element of successful online fundraising. Here are 5 Proven Ways to Increase Online Donations from the Constant Contact blog:

1. Make it ridiculously easy (as few steps as possible, no fields that aren't completely necessary, no requiring them to log in)
2. Make it mobile
3. Make it match the rest of your website (in fact, make it match what you're doing in direct mail too -- there's a good chance that's what sent them there!)
4. Make it urgent
5. Make it recurring

Take a close and critical look at your giving pages. Do They live up to these ideals? If they don't, you are losing donations that you should be getting.

How to write simple copy and raise more money

Simplicity is one of the greatest virtues of fundraising copy. Master simplicity, and you're well on your way to real mastery.

Copyblogger has some hints for simplicity aimed at commercial writing, but they work well for fundraising. Read 6 Steps for Writing Simple Copy That Sells:

1. Have only one goal (seriously: just one)
2. Only have one audience
3. Make it conversational … by actually conversing
4. Avoid jargon and "insider" language
5. Cut your adjectives in half and your adverbs altogether (almost)
6. Cut 'til it hurts

The little book that can kill your writing style

You probably had an English teacher at some point who sang the praises of a little white book titled The Elements of Style, often referred to by its authors, Strunk and White.

If you were forced to buy this book, I urge you to free yourself from its clutches. If someone recommends it, telling you it's a type of holy book for writers, politely say no thanks.

Strunk and White has more bad writing advice per page than almost any other book published. Follow it, and you'll hamper your style and become a weaker fundraising writer.

Not all of its advice is bad. "Write with nouns and verbs" is good.

But far too much of it is pointlessly bossy or just wrong: Like "Do not inject opinion." Really? What genre would that be?

Strunk and White's most damaging advice is "Use the active voice." Passive voice is the right voice in many situations. Especially in colloquial writing such as fundraising.

Then there's the fact that the book so often fails to follow its own advice. In the section urging writers to "Put statements in positive form," you read this sentence: "The adjective hasn't been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place." There you have it: A sentence in negative form, passive voice, and using three adjectives. It's not a bad sentence. But it's one you'd never write if you follow Strunk and White.

Whole generations of would-be writers have spent their careers wearing the Strunk and White straitjacket. Don't let that happen to you.

There are plenty of good sources of writing help. A standard stylebook, such as The Chicago Manual of Style gives solid advice and doesn't stray into bossiness. Or the excellent On Writing Well by William Zinsser, which is packed with real advice that can help strengthen your writing.

(For more on the problems with The Elements of Style, check out 50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice.)