Future Fundraising Now

You too can be a lot like charity:water

Do you have what it takes to be a game-changer like charity:water?

Yes, you absolutely do.

The real question is are you willing to do what charity:water does?

Most organization are not.

Here's what charity:water does that's different, according to npENGAGE, at So, You Want to Be like charity:water? They don't spend all their time and energy describing and explaining themselves. They focus on telling stories about their donors:

Most of us in America don't know what it's like to not have access to clean water, but by telling meaningful stories -- stories of those in need and stories of the supporters giving up their birthdays to help -- they help us relate to a community in Africa.

Please let that sink in a bit.

They aren't trying to raise funds by "educating" people about the problem of water in poverty areas. They aren't spamming people with their elevator speech. They aren't sticking to some brand guidelines version of bragging about their effectiveness.

They're telling stories about donors who experienced the joy of doing something positive about a big problem.

That may not go a long way to deepen people's knowledge about the issue, and it may not add a lot of points to the public's regard of the brand.

But it does show potential donors that giving to charity:water is fulfilling, life-affirming, and fun. And I'll bet that not only raises more money -- but also educates and informs more than all the well-intentioned lecturing, bragging and brand-guided chest-thumping in the world.

Is your organization willing to stop trying to make the case that you are cool, exciting, unique, effective, etc. and instead start bragging about how cool, exciting, unique, effective, etc. your donors are?

That's one of two things that charity:water does to change the fundraising game. (The other is a powerful, specific, understandable call to action.)

Any organization that wants to do this can do it. That includes yours.

Ways to make your landing pages to their job

Here's help for the most important pages on your website: The landing pages: from Unbounce, Brutally Honest Advice for Better Landing Page Design:

• Illustrations should be illustrative. Every image tells a story. Make sure you uses images that tell the right story.
• Want to use video? Either commit or quit. Videos have even more power than images. Don't just use any old video on your landing page. Make sure it specifically supports the action you want people to take on that page.
• Copy is your first wireframe. Write copy first! That way you know what belongs where.
• Design for clarity. Not cleverness. Make everything obvious and easy.

Less-effective landing pages can cost you a lot in lost interactions. Don't let that happen on your website.

How to produce more effective email newsletters

Email newsletters can be a powerful tool for engaging with your donors and others. Rich and inexpensive, they can really tighten your relationships.

Here are some useful tips from Social Media Marketing Hacks For Nonprofits: Top 5 Nonprofit Email Newsletter Mistakes:

1. Adding total strangers to your list without their permission. (This is spamming. Anyone who does it deserves the bad results that will follow.)
2. Giving Subscribers Content That Isn't That Interesting.
3. Sending Your Newsletter to Everyone. (You have different audiences with different needs. Segment them and create separate, relevant newsletters.)
4. Not Asking People to Take Action. (They can't read your mind!)
5. Not using a mobile email template. (Around half, maybe even more, of your newsletters will be read on a phone. Make sure it's readable.)

Don't do these things!

Frustrated fundraisers sometimes blame donors for their pain

There's a sloppy set of assumptions floating around the fundraising community that I believe does deep harm to our work and ourselves.

It's the trope that fundraising is basically dishonest, but it has to be that way because donors force it on us.

If fundraising were really like that, I'd go find something honest to do, like sell used cars.

You can see the "donors make us dishonest" attitude in this recent post at the Guardians' Voluntary Sector Network blog: We must hook donors in but I feel downright sick at the picture charities paint.

In charity marketing we know that we manipulate the truth -- any story told in full detail will lose 99% of readers. So we pick the bits that will have most impact. We miss out the red tape of the process, our frustrations at the charity's inefficiencies and the confusing extra detail -- they are too much to explain in a direct mail letter or hard-hitting advert.

Holding off from publically whining about your organization's problems while fundraising is not "manipulating the truth." It's being mature and aware of your audience.

Telling your most dramatic (true) story rather than an uninteresting story is not dishonest. It's how you connect with people.

On the other hand, trying to challenge, educate, or "improve" donors via direct mail or email is not only arrogant, it's doomed to fail.

If you're a fundraiser, your job is to raise funds. It's not to express your frustrations to the world; you can do that on your own time. And it's not to mold your benighted donors into "better" people (i.e. more like you); they're in charge of their own self-improvement.

Our job is to tell the truth, and tell it in ways that will connect donors to our causes. If that doesn't seem satisfying, I'd say it's time to move on. You aren't doing anyone any favor by hanging around and complaining -- least of all yourself.

We must adjust to enter the world of our donors. We have no business trying to bend them into our world. When they don't give, we should look first at our own work -- not blame them.

We're darned lucky to be involved in fundraising. But it's not for everyone.

The number that can make fundraisers seem like seers and mind-readers

By now just about everyone in fundraising is awake to the importance of donor retention (thanks, in part, to Roger Craver's excellent book, Retention Fundraising).

Here's a great post at The Agitator about how to measure retention before it happens: LTV ... The GPS For Fundraisers.

You see, retention -- the percentage of donors who give again -- alone only tells you part of what you need to know. The higher the percentage, the better, of course. But what should you do about that?

Lifetime Value (LTV; some call it "Long-term Value," meaning the same thing) tells you what donor retention is worth

Once you know a donor's lifetime value, you'll better understand how to allocate your resources, both in terms of donor acquisition (what lists and packages and techniques to use) and donor retention (how much to spend on important efforts like 'thank yous,' second gift strategies, monthly giving efforts, and improving donor service).

You see, a donor whose first-ever gift to you is $5 will most likely continue to give you $5. And his total giving over the entire relationship -- his lifetime value -- will come to somewhere between $50 and $75. If you aren't paying attention, you could easily be spending quite a lot more than that to get that value. I don't think anyone would feel good about that -- least of all the donor.

If you are paying attention to LTV, you'll skimp a bit on those $5 donors. You'll communicate with them less, you'll use your least expensive channels to do so, and you'll thank them less elaborately. You shouldn't just drop those low-end donors, even though that might seem smart: A small group of them -- statistically insignificant, but financially meaningful -- will upgrade to higher value.

If you spend less on a group of donors, generally their retention will get worse. But in this case, the money you save on low-dollar donors can be spent instead on high-end donors -- and when you improve retention among them, your long-term financial picture can get a lot better. The impact is so powerful, you'll look like you can read minds and see into the future.

That's how you build a powerhouse fundraising program: Spending your dollars where they make a difference. Not throwing good money at low-return investments.

Know your donors' LTVs -- not just one big pot, but by giving levels. It works like a really powerful GPS!

Save your fundraising call to action from these errors

The most important thing you do in, any fundraising situation is the call to action. If the call to action is weak (or non-existent), you're wasting everyone's time -- your own, your donors', and the poor trees who gave their lives for the paper you're misusing.

Here's some help on your call to action, from Kivi's Nonprofit Communications Blog: Five Ways to Sabotage Your Call to Action.

1. Assuming One Size Fits All. Don't send the same message to everyone. Prospects are different from donors. Long-time donors who've supported you for years are different from brand-new donors. Know what kind of people you're communicating with and aim and them.
2. Being Too Vague. Fundraising is about action. Make it clear what the action is and what you want the donor to do.
3. Failing to Make It Relevant. It's not about you. It's about the donor. Bragging is irrelevant.
4. Not Making It Super Easy to Do It. This is especially important online. Is your form easy, or full of conundrums?
5. Asking Sheepishly. Ask clearly, boldly and repeatedly. If your ask is vague, many won't notice that it's there.

Most ineffective fundraising could easily do better than it does by avoiding these common errors.

How to make your home page a donor-friendly place

When people google your organization, there's a good chance they'll end up on your home page. What they do next depends on what they find there.

Here are some ideas from the Classy blog: 4 Ways to Engage Donors from Your Nonprofit Home Page. Consider having these things on your homepage:

1. Present a Clear Donate Button. (And if you're serious about getting it clicked, you'll make sure it strongly contrasts with the rest of the page. Don't let the brand police tell you otherwise!)
2. Tell Donors Exactly How to Get Involved. Specific, non-symbolic, non-ambiguous calls to action that they can take immediately. Don't waste time on your philosophy, thinking if they get that they'll be able to give. Make it about action.
3. Collect Supporters' Emails to Keep Them In the Loop. Give them a good reason to share their email with you.
4. Spotlight Your Current Campaign.

Many organizations fall to the temptation to make their homepage an exercise in vanity. That gets you nowhere with donors. Think of it as a welcoming foyer for people who are interested in getting involved.

Podcast: Are you Yoda or Batman to your donors?

There are two fundamentally different approaches fundraisers can take to their donors: One stays in the background and empowers the donor to be the hero. The other stands in front and tells the donor to be a good side-kick -- keeping the hero label for himself.

One of these raises a lot more money than the other. Do you know which? And do you know which of them you are?

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:

The secrets to writing colloquial copy

Colloquial, conversational writing is one of the most important tools for fundraising.

If you're an experienced writer, you know how difficult it is to make your writing seem easy, more like casual speech than like professional writing.

Here's a great post from Write to Done: Conversational Writing: 10 Tips by Leo Babauta:

1. Listen to yourself talk.
2. Listen to others talk.
3. Read good conversational writing.
4. Write as if you're talking to a close friend.
5. Address the reader directly.
6. Talk in your head as you write.
7. Eliminate formalities.
8. But don't be too informal.
9. Read it out loud when you're done.
10. If it sounds stilted, change it.

Real writers know the strange truth. The less you work on your writing, the more complex and formal it will be.

6 characteristics of a well-run nonprofit

I spoke recently with Steven Shattuck at Bloomerang TV about well-run nonprofit organzations:

(Or watch it here on YouTube.)

The conversation is based on material in my book, The Money-Raising Nonprofit Brand.