Future Fundraising Now

How to help disaster responders become committed donors

by guest blogger Sean Triner, co-founder of Pareto Fundraising.

If your organization raises funds related to disasters such as the horrific Nepal earthquake, you may also find that it is a strong source of new donors. The media coverage drives people to respond charitably, and if you are there, you can harness the outpouring of compassion.

What do you do with these new donors? As Jeff noted, you can expect lower second-gift and retention rates from these donors.

But there are several things you can do to improve the retention of these donors -- and thus get better long-term value from this outpouring of support:

• Thank quickly. Send an email, explaining that their money is having an impact straight away.
• Debit fast. It doesn't make sense to have an emergency appeal then not debit as quick as possible.
• Follow up all donations (except maybe lo-dollar gifts) a second ask within hours -- whilst the media frenzy is still happening.
• Follow up AGAIN as media response dies down, or within ten days -- whichever is sooner, and ask for a regular (sustainer) gift.

If you follow this you will get more second gifts, more regular givers and have more funds and people to go to when disaster strikes again.

How to connect with the army of Boomers who want to change the world

Boomers now range in age from 51 to 69. They are pouring into the donor demographic, become more critical to fundraisers every day.

What does that mean for us?

The Engage:Boomers blog says it means we'd better start telling Boomers more stories if we want to motivate them to action: Do You Have A Story To Tell? Baby Boomers Want To Hear It.

Here's why:

As we age, we tend to experience an increase in right brain participation in our mental functions. The right brain is as different from the left brain in how it sees and makes sense of life ....

The emotional, intuitive right brain is less interested in details than in the total picture. The left brain sees things in terms of categories; the right brain in terms of relationships.

As you transition into old age, your right-brain becomes more and more powerful, more the real decision-maker.

This is new for Boomers, but it's not new for fundraising. We've been talking to older people before Boomers started trying to make Old cool.

So we don't need to wait for Boomers get older before we change. We need to do this stuff NOW:

• Use images, the right images, to tell the story about how they can change the world through your organization. If you want them to help you solve a problem, you need to show them a literal picture of the problem. Not a picture of the problem already solved.
• Appeal to their emotions. They aren't going to give because the stats and facts prove that your cause is a big deal. They'll give if their hearts break and they can see there's hope when they give.
• Tell stories. They get stories. Make sure it's the story abut them changing the world, not about how awesome your organization is.

How to make email fundraising work

Want to know how to improve your email fundraising? Here are ten suggestions from the Bloomerang blog, at 10 Steps To A Successful Fundraising Appeal Email:

1. Subject line. Remember what it's for: To get people to open the email.
2. Clean images with small file sizes.
3. Personalized greeting. Use the recipient's name. Unless you know things are likely to go awry.
4. Donor-centric tone. Make it about them, not you.
5. Specific appeal. As them to do one specific thing.
6. Suggest donation amounts.
7. Communicate impact. Show them they can make a difference.
8. Short -- get them to your website.
9. Personalized signature.
10. Style and grammar rules don't apply. Warmth, urgency, and connection do.

Fundraising for the Nepal quake and other disasters

Yesterday's deadly earthquake in Nepal is a fundraising event for some organizations. Following are some comments on this disaster and disasters in general from a fundraising point of view.

Let me warn you that there are capricious and unfair elements to disaster fundraising, just as with the disasters themselves. I don't like these things any more than you do, but I'll aim to share the real issues we face.

The main unfortunate thing about disaster fundraising is that the most important driver of donations is the media coverage of the disaster: How deep and prominent the coverage is and how long it stays at the top of the news.

That's unfortunate, because the things that drive that mainly these four elements:

1. Body count. A disaster that kills fewer than 2,000 people will likely drop out of the news after 48 hours or so. Larger death tolls, like those in the 2010 Haiti earthquake, which killed more than 100,000 people, really grab the news media's attention and keep the story alive for weeks. With a death-toll already at 3,700, and likely to rise, the Nepal quake is moving into a media-watched disaster that keeps fundraising viable for a while.
2. Accessibility. If that media can't get camera crews to the disaster site, there will be a lot less coverage. Nepal is a long way from us, and many parts are hard to get to. This may hamper media attention.
3. Drama. This is an important X-factor for media coverage. Dramatic video, like that we saw of a vast tsunami racing across the landscape after the 2011 Japan earthquake, really grab media attention. The death of Western climbers on Mt. Everest is likely to increase coverage of the Nepal quake.
4. Sympathy factor. This is the painfully unfair part. Disasters in "unsympathetic" regions get less media coverage, and stir fewer donors to action. The 2003 Iran quake killed more than 26,000, but stirred less giving than some smaller disasters -- Iran is in many ways an unsympathetic country, especially to people in the US. Man-made disasters have the same problem: It doesn't matter how many people are killed or endangered, or how completely innocent those people are -- human-caused disasters are tough to raise funds for. Remember Darfur? I think the sympathy factor for Nepal will be high.

Things you should know about disaster fundraising

• The speed and low cost of digital communication makes disasters we wouldn't have considered in the past potential strong candidates for fundraising. Email, search engine marketing, social media marketing (especially Facebook), and targeted banner advertising and all be strong sources of giving and new donors who are stirred to action.
• New donors you get through disaster fundraising will have terrible retention rates -- tens of percentage points less than you're used to. That's because you get a lot of younger and less-committed donors who have no intention of ever giving again. There's not much you can do about it other than avoid throwing good money after bad.
• How you spend disaster-motivated revenue is a problem waiting to get you. Be honest, open, and super-clear with donors about how their gifts will be spent.
• Never, ever use the word temblor, no matter how tempted you are.

Podcast: Fundraising techniques that everyone does: Are they bad?

How often we hear someone say: I will never use that fundraising technique because everyone does it!

We see something again and again and think it's hackneyed, out-of-style, and ineffective.

Actually, it's usually the other way: Those fundraising "techniques" you see again and again are the things that work.

This special podcast for fundraising nerds only includes the cheapest way to get a powerful fundraising education. 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:

Stupid abstraction, not smart action

Does a microscope look like a pistol when you turn it on its side?

Ehh ... slightly, maybe.

The more important question: Would this ad be any more effective if a microscope looked very much like a pistol when you turn it on its side.

No. It wouldn't. Either way, it's a stupid nonprofit ad.

It's for Sidaction, a French AIDS charity, but it looks like a portfolio-padder for the ad agency that created it: It's an oddly-dimensioned 4-color piece that has no evident intended placement, and the agency's logo is on the piece (very small, upper right corner). And there's an English-language version.

Like most nonprofit ads that fall into the "stupid" category, this one counts on abstraction and a visual pun. I could excuse the pun if it were in the service of actually connecting with donors. But it isn't.

"The only weapon that can defeat AIDS is research. To put an end to AIDS, we must continue" is not fundraising. It's the equivalent to a disturbed person running down the sidewalk shouting "I exist!" It's of great interest to the shouter; it means almost nothing to everyone else.

Fundraising is connecting donors and their values with your cause. Just saying you do something -- even making it clear that the thing you do is very important -- is not fundraising. It's noise.

Oddly, this ad has a call to donate. That's a step most ads in this genre omit. So a limited sort of kudos for that. But it gives no reason for any donor to take that step.

If you want people to join you and support your cause, you need to talk to them about their values and their importance and give them a specific action they can take to make the world better. That's the only way to raise funds.

Thanks to Osocio for the tip.

More Stupid Nonprofit Ads.

Experts reveal how they get people to click and share

Check out this slide show from Upworthy on how they get people to click on headlines and share the stories:

(Or see it here on SlideShare.)

You may not think your organization has much to do with the shamelessly sensationalistic Upworthy, but you're almost exactly in the same business as them: Getting people to care.

The main takeaways:

• When it comes to virality, nobody knows how it works. Even the experts don't know.
• Every time you write a headline (or link), write 25 of them. That increases your chances of finding a good one.

How poor font choice can torpedo your fundraising

How much does font-choice matter? Check out this study reported at Futurelab: The Wrong Font Can Kill You. Literally. Your Sales, Too.

In a study of patients, when patients were given medical instructions in harder-to-read fonts, they perceived the instructions as difficult. The difficulty of the font made the information more difficult. They were less able to follow the instructions.

Are you doing that in your fundraising?

If you're using hard-to-read fonts, or other stupid design tricks like reversed-out type, type over color, type over images -- you're making your material "more difficult." Even if the writing is perfectly clear and frictionless -- it seems to readers like legalese or IRS forms. They are less able to understand what you're asking.

Some designers and brand experts choose fonts for how they look and feel, with little regard for how readable they are. Getting that look just the way they want it is more important to them than readability. That's bad design, bad communication, and bad fundraising. Don't put up with it!

You can still raise money with hard-to-read copy. Some donors are determined to do the right thing, no matter how rude we are to them. But you'll get less.

Why just adding a story to a fundraising appeal isn't enough

by guest blogger George Crankovic, Senior Writer at TrueSense Marketing.

One surefire way to grab donors is to include a great story about an individual. Just drop that story into your appeal, and you're good to go, right?

Not exactly. Here's why.

In a well-known study, participants were asked to give based on:

• A story about one starving child.
• Statistics about starving children
• A story about a starving child with statistics about starving children.

The all-stats/no story version cratered. But so did the story plus the statistics.

Even with a story, the focus in an appeal has to remain on one victim, not many. You can't force donors to extend their compassion to a mass of people. They won't do it. Here's a better way to go:

• Keep the identifiable victim at the forefront. Once you've presented the identifiable victim, weave that thread throughout the appeal, and don't abandon the victim at the critical point of the call to action. A call to action like, "Save people starving in Africa" attempts to force donors to extend their compassion to a mass of people. Your call to action should be something like, "Save Abeeku from starvation." If that causes restricted-gift problems, then make the "Save Abeeku from starvation" part the most prominent while downplaying the "and others like him" part.
• Choose the right image. This is vital -- show the identifiable victim in distress. Feature this image in the appeal, in the response device or online donation page, even on the reply envelope. And include a caption or other wording that reinforces the victim's name and plight.
• Be careful how you tell the story. If the story is just a recitation of events -- this happened to Abeeku, that happened, then this happened -- it probably won't arouse much empathy. Instead, a compelling story would be not only what happened to Abeeku but also why those events matter. Convey the drama of searching for food and coming up short, the despair of growing weaker and weaker, the helplessness of having nowhere to turn for help, the feeling that this day might be his last before he succumbs to starvation. Get donors to feel what Abeeku feels. They'll see a fellow human who sparks their empathy, and they'll give.

5 things you might be doing to weaken your fundraising

Want to do better at your fundraising? Here are some hints from 101fundraising, at Five big reasons your fundraising results could be better:

1. You're not speaking to the right people (Your audience isn't "everyone," no matter who you are. Find the niche you're in.)
2. It's all about you (It's about donors. Bragging is not fundraising.)
3. You're not showing an interest in them (Talk to donors about their values, their dreams, their wishes. Not yours.)
4. You're assuming (They know less about your cause than you do.)
5. Dumbing things down (Simple is good. Dumb isn't.)

I have a "part b" to #1 that's a common source of weak fundraising: You're speaking to yourself and others within your organization -- not donors. You're making a slam-dunk airtight case for your work, in your own eyes instead of donors'.