Future Fundraising Now

How create your own ice bucket success

Remember the Ice Bucket Challenge? It happened in the Summer of 2015 when the ALS Association in the US (and a number of related organizations around the world) became the beneficiaries of a gargantuan fad. They raised more than $220 million worldwide.

It sparked a groundswell of demand: We need our own Ice Bucket!

By now, nearly two years later, it's clear to almost everyone that trying to launch your own Ice Bucket Challenge is like trying to fund your organization by buying a winning lottery ticket. You could win -- somebody has to! -- but realistically ... it's not going to happen.

But here's the good news: You can have Ice Bucket-like financial success. Yes, you. It doesn't take lightning-strike luck. Just smart and well-targeted work. Quite a lot of work, actually. Which is why it's rarely done. The field is wide open for you to be a hero at your organization!

You only need to do three things. Any one of the three will make a huge difference for you, but the more you do, the more astounding the amount of revenue you'll see pouring in!

Here are the things to do:

Focus on planned (legacy) giving

There are a lot of checks with amounts that include a lot of zeroes waiting to be written to your organization. Some of them will just sort of drop out of the sky when donors decide on their own to leave you in their will.

But you'll get a lot more of that if you actively cultivate it.

A lot more. Really: A lot more.

How to cultivate planned giving is a bigger topic than fits in a blog post. But let's just note that there are good and not-good ways to do it.

In fact, I've seen evidence that doing it, but doing it wrong, can actually drive away legacy givers!

So make sure you do it right.

The payoff for focusing on planned giving won't be this summer. It'll be five, ten, and more years from now. That's why so many organizations don't do this in any meaningful way. Why spend your time on something that's going to pay off when you don't work there anymore? (How about professional pride.)

Spend more time and money on your mid-value and major donors

Imagine a salesperson working at a Ferrari dealership who spent the same amount of time and effort on a customer wanting to buy a Ferrari key fob as he did on someone looking to buy an actual Ferrari. What would you think of that salesperson?

Does blooming idiot sound about right?

That's exactly what a lot of fundraisers do. They treat all donors -- whether they give $5 or $5,000 -- exactly the same.

You could be just breaking even -- or even losing money -- on your low-end donors. The loss might be invisible, because the upper donors are more than picking up the slack, which makes the overall program look like it's just fine.

You could make a lot more revenue if you spent (wasted) less on your low-end donors and more on your middle and major donors.

How should you be spending on them? Communicating with them more. More personal contact, like phone calls. Higher-end direct mail. More elaborate acknowledgments, thank-yous, and reporting back.

The result: More revenue, at a higher return on investment.

Also: better retention of your best donors. And more upgrading.

Find more monthly donors

This may be the biggest opportunity of all. Monthly givers have an annual value that's triple (or more) what typical donors give. And more important, monthly donor retention is usually above 90% -- compared to around 50% for most donors.

Between the high annual values and the superb retention rate, monthly donors are more than a nice-to-have. They're an Ice Bucket.

How and where to get monthly donors is a big topic we'll talk about another time. But you should be working on moving your donors into a monthly giving program. Just a few points that might help you do that:

• The main reason donors become monthly donors is their ease and convenience. (Not yours.)
• Push for EFT (direct debit) or credit card giving. (Note: EFT is a hard sell in the US. It's much more common in the rest of the world.)
• Give the program a name that makes the donors feel like super-important insiders, heroes in the cause.
• Push monthly giving everywhere and all the time.

Pursue these three goals -- planned giving, middle and major donor giving, and monthly giving -- with your donors, and you will have your own Ice Bucket-like astounding success. Think of it as a "get rich slow" scheme.

Not everyone is willing to work for powerful results. That's the main difference between you and the people who just keep whining that they can't seem to get their own Ice Bucket Challenge!

This post first appeared on the Moceanic Blog.

Effective Altruism -- what does it mean for fundraising?

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

Peter Singer wants donors to give based not just on emotion but also on cold, hard facts and clear-sighted reason. He says donors should calculate where their dollars will have the greatest impact, and give only to those charities that demonstrate the best outcomes. It's like a cost-benefit analysis applied to philanthropy.

He calls this effective altruism. You can read about it here. It's an idea that some donors find appealing.

The way Singer looks at it, giving involves the larger issue of living an ethical life, and effective altruism says that we should do the most good that we can.

From the donor's perspective, effective altruism means that giving shouldn't be simply an emotional response to, say, a photo of a sad child or the story about a homeless person. Instead, donors should weigh the cost versus benefit of their gift to ensure maximum impact.

While all this may seem somewhat unrealistic, it's actually good for us as fundraisers to recognize what donors who lean toward effective altruism want from their giving. Because, when you think about it, effective-altruism donors aren't really all that different from donors in general.

Most donors want know that the money they give is being put to good use and that it's having the intended impact.

So if we want to keep all donors engaged and giving -- including the effective-altruism people -- it means that we have to respond in our fundraising with:

• More emphasis on the offer to donors. Giving has to be a good deal.
• More emphasis on the impact the donor will have.
• More emphasis on the outcome the donor can expect.
• More emphasis on reporting back to donors.

In short, everything we try to do to create good fundraising, except a lot more of it.

Does your job title make donors want to avoid you?

It's possible that your job title is so terrible, it's chasing donors away.

That's what a new study by researcher Russell James finds, as reported on the MarketSmart blog, at Why fundraiser job titles suck and cost you a lot of money!

The study asked people, "Who at the charity are you more likely to contact?" It gave them an array of typical nonprofit job titles.

The title that fewest people wanted to contact: Director of Advancement.

Others people didn't want to get in touch with:

• Chief Advancement Officer
• Director of Institutional Advancement
• Chief Institutional Advancement Officer

Think you can fix the problem by being called Director of Development?

Sorry.

Titles with the words advancement or development all did poorly.

May I say one gigantic and cumulative ouch for all those hardworking advancement and development professionals out there?

Titles that worked better sounded more gift/advisor-oriented. Like:

• Chief Individual Giving Officer
• Chief Special Gifts Officer
• Director of Major Gifts

Take a look at your title. It may be one of those invisible (to you) barriers that keeps donors at a distance!

(Abstract of the study available here.)

How to recruit an army of monthly donors

If you want to raise a lot more money for your organizations, there are three things you should focus on:

1. Major donors
2. Planned giving
3. Monthly giving

Let's look at #3. It's probably the biggest deal, and here's a great post from A Direct Solution with hints from a nonprofit that has converted about 30% of its donors to monthly giving: When Is the Best Time to Ask for a Monthly Gift?. Here's what they do:

• Every September, they take over the homepage with a direct link to their monthly donation page.
• They send a special appeal, with a match offer, followed by a series of emails.
• Every online donation form has the monthly option included,.
• They incorporate a monthly ask in their welcome email series.
• They send a special welcome package within a month after their first gift.
• Every direct mail appeal donation form has the monthly option front and center, equal proportion.

Nothing earth-shattering. Just doing a lot of little things right and consistently. That's how you get monthly donors. And really change your revenue picture for the better.

Forget the doubters; raise funds from your own tribe

Why is it hard to raise funds?

One reason is that large numbers of people don't believe what you're saying. No matter how obvious and self-evident you thing it is.

That's what Seth Godin reminds us at Facts are not the antidote for doubt:

... facts won't change a mind that doesn't want to be changed. More facts don't counter more doubt. Someone who is shaking his head, arms folded, eyes squinted and ears closed isn't going to be swayed by more facts.

This tells us a lot about the weird state of US politics these days.

But more to our point, it reminds us of one of the important truths about fundraising:

You are never fundraising from "everybody."

The only people who have any chance of responding to your asks are those who already know, understand, and believe. Everyone else doesn't know about your cause, or doesn't care about it, or won't believe you in any case.

Don't waste your time and money on those people. You aren't going to get them.. (The best you can hope for is they may eventually experience some kind of personal transformation. Your part in that may simply be to faithfully do your job.)

Instead, tell the story of the problem members of your "tribe" want to solve. (And don't try it with facts; they have almost no impact on the hearts even of believers!)

How to conduct a tour that will win over your donors

I've been in the fundraising business for a long time, so I've been on a lot of tours of nonprofit facilities. Mainly hospitals and performing arts venues.

Some of those tours have knocked my socks off, making me thrilled to be connected to the organization I was seeing.

Others ... not so much. I've come away tired, confused, irritable -- and not very enlightened about the organization.

I'm not the real target for a tour. That would be donors. And they need to have a great experience, not the tiring and annoying one.

Here are some qualities that make the stand-out tours stand out:

• Inspiring. This is probably the most important quality of a great tour. It's easy to get caught up with what you're showing -- the name of this building, when it was built, what's happening in it. What barely matters to donors. You need to show them why. That's what makes the difference between a tour that gives them a lot of forgettable facts and one that brings your cause into the donor's heart. Go easy on the facts. Be sure each donor knows why it matters, and why she should care.
• Amazing. One of the best outcomes of a tour is that you give the donor a story she'll want to tell. Give her surprising, jaw-dropping, unusual things and anecdotes.
• Real. Don't avoid the messy, crowded, in-need-of-repair parts of your facility. That's part of the reality of any facility. Perfect is boring.
• Quirky. Most facilities have quirky features, places where something odd has happened, odd spaces that once made sense but are now just odd. Funny stories. Ghosts. Those are the things that bring a tour to life.
• Comfortable. Be mindful of your tourists. Limit the number of stairs they'll have to climb or time they'll spend outside in hot, cold, or wet weather. A difficult tour can sometimes be the story a donor comes away with!

A great tour is a lot like great fundraising. You don't win people's hearts by bragging about yourself and explaining processes. You reach them by being human and showing how their values and resources can make the world a better place.

How to stay in touch with donors in the hard months

We're in the part of the year when it gets a little harder to raise money for most nonprofits. Does that mean just go on hiatus and stop connecting with donors?

Not according to Ann Green's Nonprofit Blog, at Don't Be a Stranger. Keep in touch with your donors:

• Share an update
• Say thank you
• Create a better newsletter
• Tie in current events
• Focus on relationship building in your appeal

Best of all, just ask for a gift.

I've never seen evidence that asking a donor for a gift hurts the relationship.

But I've seen ample and repeated evidence that if you don't stay in touch and don't ask ... you lose a lot more donors.

Donors may or may not respond to an extra appeal or two, but they aren't going to stomp away in a fit of pique because you asked.

Should you get rid of your nonprofit newsletter? NO!

Is it time to give up on your newsletter? The Big Duck suggests so at It might be time to kill your newsletter:

It's time to say goodbye to the newsletter as we know it. Chances are your investment in it is simply just not worth the time and energy as it used to be.

If by "newsletter" you mean email newsletter, I might agree. I've not yet seen an email newsletter I'd call a success. They rarely get decent engagement of any kind -- open rates, click-throughs, or response. There are many other things you can do in email that work better in those ways.

But if "newsletter" means print newsletter, don't stop producing it.

Don't.

Really, don't do that!

If your print newsletter seems to be failing, fix it, don't kill it.

Make sure it's a donor-focused newsletter, and make sure you're doing it right. But don't cancel it. It's far too important.

Read Tom Ahern's book, Making Money with Donor Newsletters and get to work making your newsletter do its job, which is showing donors that their giving isn't a waste of money, but accomplishes exactly what they hoped it would.

(And really, I wouldn't give up on an e-newsletter just yet. I think someone is going to figure it out if we keep trying!)

A good newsletter that's about the donor (and not a brag-sheet) can raise money. But more important, it can lift donor retention by showing them that their giving matters!

A slogan is not a fundraising campaign

I got this the other day in the mail from a local organization that I'm not a donor to. (I've hidden the identity, because it's a local hard-working organization that really doesn't deserve public ridicule.)

"Cancer is a word, not a sentence." Pretty clever. It might be a comfort to someone facing cancer, though I can't help but think if I had cancer, I'd be saying I really don't care about cancer in general; tell me about my cancer.

This is a case of sloganeering in lieu of fundraising. It's a common error, caused by fundraisers mistakenly taking their cue from commercial brand advertising.

No matter how clever the slogan, it's unlikely to work in fundraising. That's because a slogan doesn't involve donors in any way. It isn't a call to action. (Theoretically, it could be, but it never is.)

A really good slogan might be resonant or memorable. It might make donors nod knowingly, or chuckle, or think I'll have to show that to Phyllis. But it's not a call to action, and that means not many people will take action. The best you can hope for is you have such a strong brand that people already have in mind to donate to you -- so the fact that you fail to actually ask doesn't matter; you'll get responses nonetheless. Of course, a blank piece of paper would do just as well.

But a real fundraising piece that includes a call to action will do a lot better.

Next time someone shows you a clever slogan in lieu of a call to action, send 'em back to the drawing board. Fundraising is about action, not slogans.

(This post first appeared on May 30, 2012.)

When you love the fundraising .. your donors won't respond

How many times has this happened to you: While working on a fundraising appeal, you are filled with an unusual energy. You end up creating a real masterpiece, something you're proud of.

And then it bombs. Doesn't work at all.

It's happened to me many times. The appeal you love is the appeal that doesn't work.

Pamela Barden has seen it too, and written about this frustrating phenomenon at A Tale of Two Appeals: The One You Want to Write Vs. the One Donors, Prospects Want to Read:

... there is one important thing everyone involved in the process of creating a fundraising appeal has to remember: You are not the target audience. What you think or feel doesn’t matter. What matters is what the person being asked to make a donation thinks and feels. Will he or she respond because of that appeal, or will the carefully written words and cutting-edge design go straight into the recycling bin?

The more you like it, the less effective its likely to be.

Get used to it, because that's the way fundraising is.

The best thing you can do is train yourself to "like" qualities you know to correlate with response. You might say, "This is really corny and old-fashioned. Love it!" That would be a step toward fundraising wisdom.

The next best thing is to treat your own sense of like as a counter-indicator of success: "I love it. I've done something terribly wrong!"

This is another reason fundraising is hard. You have to turn off that inner voice. Because it's telling you nothing of value.