Future Fundraising Now

What happens if you listen to your donors TOO MUCH

Maybe you're listening to your donors too much.

Surprised to hear me ask that?

After all, fundraisers are completely in the business of supplying donors with what they want and need. The problem is, what they tell you they want is so often not at all what really motivates them to respond.

Virtuous blog tells the sad tale of some customer-listening done by Walmart, at When Not Listening to Your Donors Is the Right Thing to Do.

Seems the retail giant did some research and found out that most customers wished the stores were "less cluttered." I get that. I would have said the same thing.

So Walmart got less cluttered. And sales dropped $1.9 billion. Why?

... they listened to the wrong data -- what customers said instead of what customers did. Not to pile on ... but they took this critical mistake and decided to make it exponentially worse. They decided to take the response as gospel and forget everything they previously knew about customer purchasing behavior.

(I think they've since gone back to clutter.)

Here's the thing. Those people who wanted less clutter were telling the truth -- as far as they know it. They only have access to their conscious opinions. Their real behavior is more deeply rooted in their brains, in those subconscious lizard-like places that drive most human behavior.

It's the same with donors. Ask them what they want, and they'll give you all kinds of terrible advice. They want to hear from you once a year. They don't need emotional stories or suggested ask amounts. They don't want long messages or emotional photos. They tell you they'll donate more if you don't do those things.

Except they won't.

Listening means paying attention to what donors do. And taking what they say with a grain of salt.

There's nothing wrong with donors. That's just the way everyone is. Including you and me.

Do your fundraising in the real world -- the world of behavior, not opinions.

What you should know about soggy french dip and arrogant fundraising

Here's part of the menu board on a food truck near my office. They sell french dip sandwiches...

(In case that's a bit hard to read, it says: Like the original french dip, all of our sandwiches come "pre dipped.")

I'm a sort of french dip devotee. A good french dip is a thing of culinary beauty. I frequently order french dip, and when they're truly good -- which is surprising rare -- I become a very loyal customer of that establishment.

So when I saw a french dip truck among the food trucks, I expected great things.

But here's the thing: I've already tried "authentic" pre-dipped french dip. It's nasty. Soggy, mushy, squishy. Like eating something out of the kitchen sink strainer. I don't want mine pre-dipped. I don't care if that's authentic -- pre-dipped isn't nice.

But tell that to the people in the truck and they sniff back at you, We only serve the authentic kind. They literally refuse to sell me a french dip the way I want it, undipped and with the liquid in a separate cup. So I walk over to the next truck for my lunch, hoping they aren't too arrogant to sell me some food.

I bring you this tale of lunchtime woe, because sometimes, fundraisers act a lot like those "authentic" french dip purveyors.

They use terms like at-risk youths, food insecurity, sustainable, and ecosystems -- because those are the "authentic" terms used by professionals, not what regular people understand.

They laboriously explain their processes and why those processes are so superior, rather than show donors the outcome of their giving. Because the processes are ours.

They focus on how wise, visionary, and just amazing their founders were instead of on what the donor can accomplish now.

They're just like the french dip truck: They tell everyone it's My way or the highway. Like it the way I like it, or get lost!

Maybe it makes them feel good.

But it's a terrible way to try to raise funds.

Like the authentic french dip truck, they're turning away perfectly good supporters and their perfectly good money every day.

Enjoy your superior insider knowledge. Use it to make your impact greater. But don't insist that everyone like exactly what you like.

The one thing that matters most to your success in fundraising

Ready for the secret to success in fundraising?

The Veritus blog reveals it at The Beauty of Discipline:

... no discipline, no growth. Major gifts work is all about staying focused on the plan and working it. This requires meeting consistently with a manager to discuss what has been done and what you will be doing to nurture relationships with your donors. Do this, and you will be successful.

This is true of all fundraising, not just major donor work. In fact, it's the key to success in all disciplines of every kind.

If you want to have amazing success:

• Focus on the basics.
  
• Have a plan.
  
• Stick to it.
  

That isn't easy. And sometimes you might get bored with it. But it works.

Herschell Gordon Lewis: Inspiration to fundraisers

by guest blogger George Crankovic, Senior Writer at TrueSense Marketing he blogs at The Clued-in Copywriter.

Herschell Gordon Lewis passed away recently.

Most people knew him as the "Godfather of Gore."

Lewis achieved cult status as the creator of such over-the-top horror films as "Blood Feast," "A Taste of Blood," "She Devils on Wheels," and "Two Thousand Maniacs." In fact, he pioneered the genre of horror known as the splatter film. His movies are unapologetic festivals of campy violence.

He gained the same cult status in another area as well. Lewis will be forever remembered as a master of direct-response copywriting. For those of us who happen to love the work and craft of copywriting, Lewis was an inspiring and entertaining teacher, as well as a consummate practitioner.

In his many seminars, webinars, articles, and books, Lewis unstintingly shared his lessons and insights about copywriting and marketing for business.

But Lewis was equally insightful when he turned his attention to copywriting for fundraising -- which, fortunately for us, he did often.

Out of the countless ideas he shared about writing good fundraising copy, these three stand out for me:

• It's about "you," the donor -- not about "us," the organization. Building the fundraising message around what the individual -- the donor -- needs and wants is stronger in every way than building it around what the organization needs or wants. This attitude is essential for effective communication in the 21st century. It's the essence of donor-focused fundraising.
  
• Use the motivators -- fear, exclusivity, greed, guilt, and need for approval -- but use them skillfully. Often, a mere suggestion is all that it takes. As Lewis explained and demonstrated, these motivators are powerful. To be effective, though, they have to be wielded like an orchestra conductor's baton not a baseball bat.
  
• The best fundraising is episodic -- it presents anecdotes, narratives, and events to donors. Instead of falling back on statistics to make the case, it's more powerful to describe the events that demonstrate the need and how the donor can make a difference. This makes both the problem and the solution real for donors, not theoretical.
  

There's much, much more.

Lewis thought deeply about the nature of communication and the art of persuasion, and even more important, he showed us how and why to be better at them.

If you're a student of copywriting, then you count Lewis, along with other copy legends like John Caples and David Ogilvy, as one of your teachers. Or at least you should.

4 things that are not fundraising

Excerpt from How to Turn Your Words into Money: The Master Fundraiser's Guide to Persuasive Writing

1. Educating Is Not Fundraising

When you try to educate people into giving, they don't give. And they don't become more educated.

There's a simple reason why: Most people, most of the time, have no interest in becoming more educated. You're wasting your time, and theirs, if you try to hammer into them something they don't care about.

Here's an example of fundraising that tries to educate donors into giving:

You might not know this, but the typical homeless person in our area is not the bearded elderly man who just needs a hot meal. Forget that stereotype! Less than 10 percent of our clients are over the age of sixty.

Far more typical is the young mother with a couple of children in tow. They don't just need meals. They need holistic services to help them overcome the root causes of the problems that landed them on the street.

Suppose your lecture gets through and succeeds in changing someone's view about who is homeless and what we need to do about it. Congratulations. But you still don't have a donation.

People give for emotional reasons, not because of facts they accumulate. That's why you raise a lot more money by writing like this:

Life has been hard on Karl. He served in the first Gulf War, and he's never quite come home from the front lines. He lives under one end of the 13th Street Bridge. He's been there a few years -- Karl doesn't know how long.

Karl's rugged face is covered with scars. He always has new injuries. It's not from the war. Karl gets mugged every few weeks. Not because anyone would think he has money, but because he looks like he won't fight back. Which he doesn't.

This passage isn't about homelessness. It's about Karl.

2. Bragging Is Not Fundraising

It's hard to build a relationship when you make the conversation all about yourself.

Everyone knows this. Yet many organizations approach fundraising just that way. It doesn't work in fundraising any better than in other aspects of life.

The temptation to brag is strong. After all, you need to show donors your organization is worth their consideration. That their gifts will have impact. But the trick is to show donors the information they need, without the chest-thumping.

You might feel tempted to say something like this:

We've been working on Skid Row since 1932, longer than any other social service provider. We've built state-of-the-art facilities, and our staff are the best-trained and most-advanced professionals in the community,
bar none!

Don't do that! It's bragging. Instead, turn those facts around so they're about the donor's impact:

People like you have been helping the lost and hurting of Skid Row through us since 1932. Thanks to generous friends like you, our new building is roomy and efficient -- specifically designed to help as many people as possible. We'll stretch every dollar you give so you help the greatest number of people in the most life-transforming way.

When you tell the story this way, you're in the donor's
context, not yours.

3. Journalism Is Not Fundraising

Journalism is a good thing. But journalism isn't good fundraising. If you focus on the the five Ws of journalism (Who, What, Where, Why, and When, plus How) you'll miss the most important element of the story: the donor.

Here's how you might tell the story of a local homeless man when you use the framework of journalism:

Frank Gorman [WHO] spent last Christmas [WHAT & WHEN] under the 15th Avenue Bridge [WHERE]. It was his only option. He'd spent his last dollars buying gifts for the two young daughters he hadn't seen in more than two years [WHY].

That might be the way the local paper would tell the story. But it's not about the reader. It's just one of many stories about other people she'll read or hear on any given day.

Here's the same story, told in a donor-focused way:

Frank is a lot like you. He loves his kids, and like you, he'd do almost anything to make them happy. But last Christmas, Frank had to make a bigger sacrifice than most parents....

But here's how the values of good journalism can really kill your fundraising: Journalism is objective. It avoids even the appearance of slanting the facts to support a particular point of view. That's the right way to report the news.

Objectivity isn't appropriate in our field. When you become a fundraiser, you take sides, you're wildly biased. Your cause is too important for you to keep the distance of journalistic objectivity.

4. Being Funny Isn't Fundraising

There's a cultural gap between you and your donors. Actually, there are several gaps:

• You're an insider at your organization. The donor isn't.
  
• No matter how well informed your donor may be, you know a lot more about your cause.
  
• You are younger. And humor-wise, that's about as uncrossable a chasm as there is. If you don't believe me, try telling your grandmother a joke.
  

There's a more fundamental problem with humor that makes it bad for fundraising -- even if your donors somehow get the joke. The psychological foundation of most humor is a sense of superiority. You're laughing at something or someone. This sense of superiority is about as far from the emotion that leads to charity as you can get.

When you use humor in your fundraising, you make empathy and kindness difficult. Being funny while fundraising is like belting out punk rock while soothing a baby to sleep. You could be good at both. But not at the same time.

How to Turn Your Words into Money is available at:

• Amazon
  
• Amazon UK
  
• The publisher (best bet if you're ordering in bulk)
  

Beware the 3-Verb Fumble in your writing

Committee writing is a terrible thing: Lifeless, drab, confusing, unmotivating.

One place most often afflicted by committee writing: Taglines. They're small and short -- and a lot of people in the organization care about them. Every cook crowds into the kitchen, and the result is predictable: Stew. And not the good kind.

And committee-style stew-writing is so common, some writers write that way even when they're working on their own.

Here's one way to tell if you're venturing into committee writing on a tagline: The Three-Verb Fumble.

This is using three nearly synonymous verbs when one would do. Committees do this so more people get their fingerprint on the tagline. Rather than figure out the right verb, they go with three. (Almost always three. Even committees seem to recognize that four or more verbs piled up like a stack of pancakes would just be silly.)

Here are some real-life examples of taglines with the Three-Verb Fumble:

• Ducks Unlimited conserves, restores, and manages wetlands and associated habitats for North America’s waterfowl. These habitats also benefit other wildlife and people.
  
• Creative Commons develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation.
  
• DC Central Kitchen: To use food as a tool to strengthen bodies, empower minds, and build communities." D.C. Central Kitchen
  

Three verbs isn't automatically bad: check out the Public Broadcasting System: "To create content that educates, informs and inspires." Those are three distinct verbs that describe different activities. But that's a rarity

But in general, if your tagline (or any other piece of writing) exhibits stacks of three verbs -- you are probably guilty of committee writing. (Even if there's no committee involved.)

Why feelings beat facts in fundraising

If your organization is any good at all, you know clearly how the funds you spend impact the world around you. You can track dollars to activities, and you know what those activities accomplish.

Organizations that don't know that should figure it out quickly. Because they don't really deserve the support of donors.

But being able to say what donor support means in terms of program activities is not fundraising.

In fact, it's anti-fundraising, as reported at the 101fundraising blog: Feeling Good about Feelings, Facts and Fundraising.

Why? Because psychology:

What science has shown is that we feel before we think, and that we often act on emotion before we know why. What that means for our fundraising communications, is that we have to tell a story not about what money is spent on, but what money achieves.

Donors don't give because you're on top of all the details. They give because you touch their heart and show them they can make the world better in a way they care about.

Your donors give to make things happen. Not to fund programs. That means all fundraising should focus on the problems your donors can solve. Not the process you go through to do your work.

Your processes, no matter how excellent they are, don't cause donors to care and to give.

It's the outcomes -- the delta between the world as it is and they world as it will be when they give. That's how you reach donors and raise funds.

How to avoid churning your online file into a big blob of apathy

Some digital fundraising programs are just big churn machines. Lots of people are getting onto the list, but lots are going away by unsubscribing or ignoring it.

You might not think that's a problem, since churn doesn't cost you anything they way it does in direct mail.

But there is a cost. And a non-churn program is far more effective at raising funds.

Here are 4 Ways to Reduce Churn With Email Campaigns from the Kissmetrics Blog:

1. Segment Your List. (Don't send everything to everybody. Be relevant!)
   
2. Offer Educational Content. (Be useful. Send them stuff they can use.)
   
3. Send a Feedback Email. (Give them the chance to tell you what they want, like, and expect.)
   
4. Show Appreciation. (Especially for donors!)
   

The penalty for getting wrong, for being irrelevant, for not meeting donors on their own ground is far less in email than it is in traditional media. That doesn't mean you shouldn't care about it!