Future Fundraising Now

Spam: Not dead yet, but still crowding the good stuff

Here's some good news that's not so great: Spam now makes up les than half of all the email sent!

That's as reported in Quartz at Spam has fallen to a 10-year low and is unlikely to make a comeback.

The not-so-good part about this is how barely under half it is: 49.7% in June, according to security company Symantec. But it's good compared to how it was from 2008 to 2010, when around 90% of all email was spam.

This is good for anyone who isn't sending spam, and/or would rather not be thought of as a spammer.

Because the painful truth is, the line between spam and not-spam is drawn not by experts, but by the person who owns the in-box. Your brilliant e-newsletter is most likely raw, nasty, jelly-coated spam -- as far as some of the people who get it are concerned. And it's not spam at all to others.

But the higher proportion of good stuff to spam in the in-box, the less likely your piece will be swept up in the general sea of spaminess.

So let's celebrate crossing the half-way mark. Maybe the in-box will be become a place of relevance once again!

The good news about donor fatigue

If you're afraid of "donor fatigue," I have some good news for you: There's no such thing.

What we sometimes identify as "donor fatigue" is really fundraiser fatigue.

It happens when fundraisers get tired of their own messaging. Unwilling to enter our donors' worlds, we stay in our own heads. And make mistakes like these:

• We create messages that are catered more to our needs than to donors'.
• We vary our messaging so donors can't figure out what they can do through us.
• We get "clever" and turn our messages into mind puzzles.
• We try to bowl them over with facts about our cause (this is also called fundcrushing.

When we do those things, response falls off the table.

Funny how we ascribe the drop to a condition within donors. It's our fault!

Serious fundraisers have powerful, consistent messages that reach donors where they are. They never experience "donor fatigue."

New invention could save your fundraising from your boss

I'm working on an invention that will dramatically improve fundraising. It's called the Better Feedback Translator.

Here's what it does: When your boss or a board member makes certain comments about your fundraising, the Better Feedback Translator changes what you hear into what they would have said if they understood fundraising.

That way, you don't end up making costly and damaging changes to your fundraising messages. Think of the increased revenue!

Here are some of the phrases the Better Feedback Translator will change for you:

WHEN THEY SAY	YOU'LL HEAR
That's incredibly corny.	That's great! It's going to work like crazy!
Not sophisticated enough.	You nailed the tone.
This doesn't sound like me.	This sounds so human. Nice job!
We said the same thing in the last three messages. Boring!	Good job not confusing our donors!
Repetitive!	Good clarity!
This letter is too long. Nobody will read it!	Thanks for paying attention to what really works, even though it seems counterintuitive.
I'd never respond to this.	Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Violates our brand guidelines.	Relevant to donors!
I hate it!	We have a winner on our hands.
I love it!	Uh-oh. Back to the drawing board.

This project is under development. If you'd like to back it, please send me money.

How to attract more readers to your message

Headlines are the thing. Write great headlines and everything else you write will get a lot more action. Here are 5 Ways to Become a Better Headline Writer from Kissmetrics:

1. Know Your Audience
2. Practice
3. Follow Patterns (Headlines that start "How to" work for a reason. Look for common types and imitate those patterns.)
4. Split Test
5. Study Human Psychology

These things will also help you with the cousins of headlines, subject lines and envelope teasers.

Getting great at writing headlines is one of the best investment you can make in your fundraising.

Are you ready to show your donors just how badass they are?

Book review: Badass: Making Users Awesome by Kathy Sierra

Your donors are awesome. They are badass world-changers.

Does donating to your organization feel badass?

It should!

This book can help you change the way donors feel about donating. Giving to your organization could be exciting, life-affirming, beyond-the-normal, something donors are tempted to brag about. Badass.

As this excellent book maintains, it involves a change in the way we talk about what we offer donors:

It's not about our organization, our cause.

It's not about how the donor feels about us.

It's about how the donors feels about herself, in he context of what our cause and our work helps her to do and be.

(I edited this to make it about nonprofits and donors.)

It's become fairly commonplace to say Fundraising is about donors, not about us. Badass challenges us to take it a step further: How do we make our donors feel what a big deal they are? How do we position giving to our organizations deeply and viscerally internal to each donor -- so we aren't just telling them they're heroes, but they know it?

This book starts your thinking. And it may take you to very new places.

Badass is not aimed at fundraisers. If you're looking for a bunch of easy how-to-raise-more-money tips, you'll be disappointed. It's aimed at people selling products that requires some level of mastery to use (the examples are things like high-end cameras and snowboards). But if you put your imagination to work, you may be able to leap across the gap and apply badass thinking to fundraising.

This is a quick, easy read. The only thing that will slow you down is how often you have to step and just think about what you've read. Highly recommended for smart fundraisers who are ready to take the next step.

Available here at Amazon.

Your brain prefers paper over digital

Everyone is doing everything online. Forget print. Forget direct mail.

Not so fast. Paper-based fundraising is going strong, and there's some new research that might help us understand why, reported at the Neuromarketing Blog: Print vs. Digital: Another Emotional Win for Paper.

Here's the finding:

... the latest set of experiments showed that physical media caused greater activation of the ventral striatum [part of the reward system of the brain] than digital media. While this doesn't conclusively show that paper is more powerful than digital for stimulating intent to purchase, it is a finding worth exploring in more detail.

Paper is better at communicating emotion and connectedness. Two of the key ingredients of philanthropy.

So don't walk away from direct mail and other paper fundraising. It's not going away. It may never go away.

Your donors don't trust you

Almost everyone thinks your organization is a fraud.

At least, that should be your working assumption. Years of stupid charity scandals (plus media-hyped non-scandals about charity salaries and other bogus topics) have caused a lot of people to distrust the nonprofit sector in general.

That includes you.

It's one of the main reasons people don't donate: They think you'll either rip them off or incompetently fritter away their generosity.

Earning the trust of your donors should be one of your top priorities.

Here are some things not to do, from the Bloomerang blog, at 10 Ways to Damage Donor Trust:

1. A slow gift acknowledgement
2. A lack of personalized communications
3. Ignoring communication preferences
4. Surveying, and ignoring the response
5. Not offering opportunities to support specific projects of funds
6. Not reporting on campaign, project or fund results
7. Not recording meeting details (after meetings with donors)
8. Recognizing donations, but not volunteerism
9. Treating referrals poorly
10. Not associating a gift from my business, family foundation or charitable giving fund to me

And this: Don't have a scandal! Don't hire someone who will. Don't work with partners who will lead you astray!

Painful truths about fundraising they didn't tell you about in school

Here's a revealing post at Medium about the beliefs many people carry into the fundraising profession: Five Things They Didn't Tell You When You Signed Up to Fundraise. Have you ever confronted any of these?

1. No one has to give you money.
2. It's none of your business what other people do with their money.
3. What's important to you might not be to others.
4. People are not heartless or ignorant or selfish if they don't give.
5. Never assume the value is obvious.

A lot of bad fundraising comes from fundraisers who have not learned these truths:

• They think they are entitled to people's donations because their cause is so important. The truth: There are a lot of important and deserving causes. Not everyone knows or cares about yours.
• They think people spend too much money frivolously and/or donate to undeserving cause -- so people are obligated to give to their organization. The truth: That's not our call.
• They think their cause is self-evidently and obviously the best possible cause. The truth: You have to win people over. On their terms. Even then, some people won't value what you do.
• They think everyone who doesn't give (or who doesn't give enough is morally flawed. The truth: Really not our call.
• They think you have to be evil to say no to them. The truth: It's reasonable to say "no" to your fundraising for many valid reasons.

A realistic view of donors and how they connect with your organization and your cause will make you a very much better fundraiser.

Thanks to Marc Pitman for the tip.