Future Fundraising Now

What to do about your "weakest" fundraising appeal

It was a pretty good idea.

A foundation that wanted to help strengthen local nonprofits was offering large grants of unrestricted funds, requiring only that the grantees use the money is "matching funds" in fundraising campaigns.

They knew that matching funds offers improve fundraising, so they realized helping local nonprofits improve their fundraising had short-term and long-term impact.

But the foundation stipulated that the matching funds should be applied to the grantee's "weakest" appeal of the year. It seems they thought the best way to use their grant was to bolster an appeal that hadn't done well.

That last stipulation is what ruined a cool idea.

Because, given a choice, it's better to improve your best successes than to improve your relative failures.

Here's why:

Let's say adding matching funds to an appeal can be counted on to improve it by 10%. (It usually does considerably better than that; I just want to keep the math easy.)

Now let's say your weakest appeal gets a 2% response and nets $10,000. Your strongest gets 10% response for a net of $50,000.

If you apply matching funds to the weakest appeal, it nets $11,000. Hooray!

If you apply matching funds to your strongest appeal, it will net $55,000.

What do you prefer: An increase of $1,000, or an increase of $5,000?

But that's not all. Your strongest appeal gets more revenue because it gets more people to donate. Every time a donor gives, she grows more likely to give again, give more, put you in her will, tell others about you ... Giving leads to more giving.

So your improved weak appeal does less of everything you want.

We all have a "weakest appeal." We should do our best to improve it.

But if you really want to make a big and lasting difference, put more thought and energy into improving your strongest appeals.

2 things donors NEVER complain about

Donors can complain about quite a few things you might do, from spelling their name wrong to sending them mail while they were on vacation.

But there are a few things donors never complain about, including: “It’s Too Easy to Read!” The One Complaint I’ve Never Heard from a Donor (on The Better Fundraising Blog).

Some fundraisers "bulk up" the readability of the communications because they believe their donors are "more educated" and/or will bristle if "talked down" to. So they use long, complex sentences and technical terminology.

Which is a big mistake, no matter how highly educated and intelligent the donors are.

Because even the most towering intellectuals among donors don't notice that you're aiming up at them to recognize their achievements.

They just become less likely to respond when your message is harder to read.

Thing is, you'll also never hear a donor complain that your fundraising message is too difficult to read.

They don't notice that either.

Paying attention to readability is a responsibility of writers. Readers don't note the ease or difficulty of any text.

But if it's easy, they are more likely to read. If they read, they are more likely to respond.

And if it's difficult, they are less likely to read. Thus less likely to respond.

The correlation is clear.

But no complaints come in, either way.

If you want maximum response, make your message easy to read. That means two things:

1. Keep reading ease good, typically a Flesch–Kincaid grade level of 6 or lower or a score of 80 or higher.

(Yes, it's a bit confusing. There are two Flesch–Kincaid ways of measuring readability. Grade level, where lower numbers mean easier, and score, where higher numbers mean easier.)

2. Design for readability. That means large fonts (12 point should be the minimum), readable fonts (usually serif fonts in print), plenty of white space, short paragraphs, and no design tricks like reverse type or colored type.

Either way, complaints aren't going to clue you in that you've made an error of readability.

Response will show you. Hard to read = less response.

When the fundraising is not good

Here's a super-short blog post from Seth Godin that every nonprofit leader should read: “It’s just not that good.”

He makes a distinction that everyone who has the job of evaluating fundraising should make if they're thinking “It’s just not that good.”

1. You might mean, “I don’t like it, it doesn’t appeal to me.”
   
2. Or you might mean “I understand what has appealed to the audience you’re trying to serve, and this isn’t going to work.”
   

Seth's takeaway that nonprofit leaders should take note of is this:

If you mean #1, what you have to say is not helpful or valuable. You might want to keep it to yourself, because you're just as likely to harm the project as help it. (Actually, you're far more likely to cause harm.)

But if you mean #2 -- and you have expertise and experience backing you up, that's valuable.

So when you see fundraising that gives you a negative reaction of some kind, before you share your thought with anyone else, do this:

• Take a deep breath and count to 5.
  
• Ask yourself if you mean "it doesn't appeal to me"
  
• Then ask if you mean, "I have specific knowledge that tells me this is unlikely to work."
  

If you realize you meant "it doesn't appeal to me," bite your tongue, clam up, put away your red pen.

But if you meant "I have knowledge that says it might not work," say so. It's important!

This little bit of self-knowledge is not easy. But it's one of the main things that separate leaders from micro-managers. And struggling nonprofits from successful ones.

5 things plain-text email does a better job of raising funds

The first few times I saw this, it shocked me: Extra-plain, low-design emails seem to do better than others. The plainer, the better.

It seems wrong that in a medium that easily and routinely includes visuals, sound, video, and all kinds of interactivity ... a message that basically looks like a piece of paper pulled out of a typewriter is an effective way to move people to action.

But it's reliably true. Plain text emails are often the best way to raise money.

Nonprofit Fundraising shows why at 5 Reasons to Send a Plain Text Email:

1. They’re More Personal. The emails you get from real people that you know are like that. When you take advantage of all the cool things that are possible in email, it looks increasingly like it's not from a human. That, okay to ignore!
   
2. They’re Less Likely to Be Marked as Spam. Some spam filters flag HTML-rich emails as spam. When that happens, your message doesn't get through, no matter how wonderful it might be. And being flagged as spam increases the likelihood that future emails will also be flagged as spam.
   
3. They Take Less Time to Load. Your donors might not have the fast and reliable connection that you have. When people have to wait for something to download, they become more likely by the microsecond to give up and move on.
   
4. They are Easier to Forward. Complex formatting can turn into alphabet soup if someone tries to forward it. Say good-bye to the possibility of peer-to-peer fundraising!
   
5. They’re More Likely to Be Read. The richness of our digital world makes less-rich things stand out.
   

Plain text isn't the only way to do fundraising emails. But it's possibly the best bet in a lot of situations.

There's no such thing as a magic bullet in fundraising

Someone on the board has heard that a super-rich family is giving out money by the bucketful. They could fund us for years to come!

Or someone went to a really classy fundraising event that no doubt raised an impressive amount -- why don't we do that too?

Or someone read an article about donors switching over to bitcoin giving, and they're giving a lot of money ... if you set up a system for them.

Those are all dead ends. Because there are no magic bullets in fundraising. It's wishful thinking. That's why all fundraisers should Stop Looking for a Fundraising Magic Bullet, according to The Fundraising Authority.

Success in fundraising comes about a different way:

When you see a non-profit that is really thriving ... I can guarantee you that it got there the hard way.... They stewarded their donors and encouraged them to upgrade. They asked for referrals to new donors. They built annual giving programs, held in-person meetings, made personal fundraising calls. They did the work. They are still doing the work.

Like most things in life, success in fundraising comes from showing up every day, doing the hard and mostly unexciting work, and sticking to it for a long time.

It sure would be nice if there were one big, new, exciting thing that would do an end run around all that work. But there isn't.

Top 5 blog posts of the month

Here are the 5 most-read Future Fundraising Now blog posts in the month of September:

1. Newspaper ink rub-off and blameless fundraisers -- what you can do
   
2. 11 non-writing ways to write better
   
3. Why fundraising is all about the heart
   
4. 6 common errors that kill your fundraising story
   
5. Your fundraising story arc is too small