Future Fundraising Now

The hidden fundraising laws about donor fatigue

You've heard about "donor fatigue." It's a theoretical state where donors tire of hearing about some specific topic -- sometimes philanthropy in general -- and they become unresponsive.

There's a pair of Brooks' Laws that help clarify the realities of "donor fatigue":

Donor Fatigue Law #1: A Priori

Anyone who cites "donor fatigue" as a reason not to try to raise funds really means "I'm fatigued."

We get tired of deploying similar messages repeatedly. It really is fatiguing, and many of us seek ways to relieve the strain.

Cancelling fundraising because of donor fatigue has the obvious advantage of being a self-fulfilling prophecy. The lack of funds raised because you didn't try to raise funds "proves" the assertion that donors are unresponsive.

Donor responsiveness to anything can rise or fall. Repeating a relevant message is not one of the factors that causes that. Even though it gets really boring.

The other time "donor fatigue" is often cited is after a project has done poorly, which leads us to ...

Donor Fatigue Law #2: Ex Post Facto Law

Anyone who cites "donor fatigue" as a reason a fundraising project failed really means "I'm incompetent."

This is another way for fundraisers to save face and turn lemons into lemonade.

"The campaign failed not because we did a poor job, but because of donor fatigue." Unprovable, but believable. A brilliant career booster for the ineffective fundraiser.

More Laws of Fundraising

Stupid ads tell donors not to give

I have arthritis. It sucks. But it could be a lot worse.

Not too long ago, someone who had my type of arthritis for as long as I've had it would not be able to type, walk, play a musical instrument, or many other activities. Thanks to treatment, I can do those things.

I'm deeply grateful to the researchers and medical professionals who make a reasonable life possible for me and many others -- and to the nonprofits that have been supporting that work for so many years. Organizations like Arthritis Society of Canada.

So it pains me (in a distinctly non-arthritic way) to see Stupid visited on a good organization like this. It seems to be an outdoor display ad campaign -- Warning, Will Robinson! Danger! Outdoor display ads have not been effective at fundraising for a long time -- and here's one of them:

There are several other similar ads, urging us not to donate to arthritis, but to "give Cristy a pain-free future" or "Brian the ability to play with his son."

It's a strikingly common go-to approach for Brand Experts working on nonprofits to make the message what we don't do or, in this case, what you shouldn't do.

Why do they go there so often? Have they seen it work? Ever? Anywhere in advertising, marketing, or anywhere else?

What's interesting about this is that it's actually good advice -- for arthritis fundraisers. We should always remember that people donate to help people. But it's a silly thing to say to people you're hoping will make donations.

If you want to read the oddball, bloviating reasoning behind the campaign, you can find it here: Arthritis Society 'turns away' would-be donors in new campaign. Their main point is this:

This campaign shifts people's focus from an abstract idea like 'arthritis' to the tangible impact they can have on the lives of real Canadians ... who face this relentless, devastating disease every day.

Except that it doesn't do that. It stays resolutely abstract. The nearest thing they have to a concrete idea in the ad is the word arthritis. Showing photos of people that don't tell a story about arthritis makes an interesting point. But it's not a call to action.

Here's the takeaway: You motivate people to donate by showing them how their values align with your cause and giving them action to take that makes the world better in a way they care about. If you're giving people a mind puzzle that they have to figure out, you are not raising funds

That's navel-gazing. And stupid nonprofit advertising.

More Stupid Nonprofit Ads.

Tricks and treats for online fundraisers

Online fundraising is a lot like Halloween: Part fun, part scary. It has plenty of tricks and plenty of treats to keep you on your toes.

Online fundraising "tricks"

• It's a "cold" medium. The way people read email is different from traditional media. It's fast, action-oriented, impatient. Not good for emotion and compassion -- the basic ingredients of charitable giving. That explains the response/conversion rates -- numbers that would sink the entire endeavor if it weren't for the low cost.
• The donors who really want you can (maybe) find you. The fanatics who really should be on your list can now Google you. They still might not find you, but you can improve your chances with good SEO.
• The donors are younger. (This is also treat; see below.) Younger donors have low retention rates. That shows up in the comparatively poor retention of online donors.
• It's crowded. If you thought the mailbox was bad, with its dozens of competitors every day -- think about the inbox: Someone who's a habitual online donor probably gets a hundred or more emails per day from nonprofits that have something to say.
• It's cheap -- so cheap, you can afford to be stupid. And being stupid is expensive, no matter how little it costs in the first place.

Online fundraising "treats"

• The donors are younger. Younger donors give higher average gifts, and if you can keep them, they'll stay around longer. The trick: define your target younger audience as those between 45 and 65.
  
• Average gifts are high.
• It's two-way. Donors can actually interact with you. That's a foundation for a meaningful relationship.
• It's multimedia. Do you have a cause that's hard to capture with words? Online, you can show pictures, videos, live cams -- whatever it is that makes the case.
• It's cheap. No spiraling postage, paper, printing costs. That makes a lot of things possible. It also lowers the risk of innovation.

(This post first appeared on October 31, 2013.)

Fundraising Laws concerning co-workers

Maybe you remember the Boss Corollary to Brooks' First Law of Fundraising Effectiveness:

The more your boss hates the fundraising, the better it will do.

That inverse relationship between fundraising effectiveness and boss-love also applies to colleagues are not the boss. Which leads to these corollaries to the First Law:

Corollary #1

There is no fundraising project so brilliant that it can't be completely destroyed by an accountant.

Corollary #2

Or by a lawyer.

Predator Awareness Side Note to Corollaries #1 and #2

While you sleep or eat, the accountants and/or lawyers are actively hunting for successful fundraising projects to destroy.

Corollary #3

If your program people like your fundraising, it will fail.

Corollary #4

The most fundraising campaign you create will cause an emergency meeting of the board about what they should do to keep it from ever happening again.

The truth is, successful fundraising is so squarely aimed at donors that it is virtually guaranteed to miss people who are not donors, especially insiders. But also non-insiders who are not donors. Which brings up Corollary #5 (which is also a corollary to the Fifth Law of Fundraising:

The most devastating and articulate complaints from the public about your fundraising will come from people who have never donated, and never would donate no matter what you do.

Fundraising that works is for and about donors.

More Laws of Fundraising

This poster will guide you to successful fundraising

If you are of a certain age and took piano lessons as a kid, you might remember a book called Music Play for Every Day. It was first published in 1928, but was still in use in my childhood, some decades (ahem) later. (And you can still buy it used on Amazon!)

And if you ever saw this book, the most memorable part was an illustration titled THE ROAD TO THE CLASSICS. You can see it here.

I don't know if it helped many young piano students to reach the Temple of the Classics, but it sure was memorable. Especially the must-avoid "Swamp of Jazz" that was one of the obstacles to avoid.

I think we can use something like this, our own ROAD TO SUCCESSFUL FUNDRAISING.

Download. Print. Learn.

And find your way to the Temple of Successful Fundraising.

Laws of Fundraising regarding donor complaints

Donor complaints rule the lives of many fundraisers, a fact that is captured by the 5th Law of Fundraising:

Donor complaints are a stronger force than anything described in physics or quantum mechanics.

But that's not all. Here's the 1st Addendum to the 5th Law:

Imagined donor complaints are an even stronger force than that.

You have probably seen this force at work: Three donors calling to complain about something in your fundraising will outweigh the hundreds or thousands of donors who responded to that same thing. Angry comments about a particular photo, or a shade of red, or the decorations on a sheet of mailing labels can send some fundraisers into a tizzy of self-recrimination and a lifetime ban against those things, even if they were proven to be effective.

But even more powerful: When someone says, We can't do that; donors will complain! It doesn't matter if anyone might complain or not. The possibility can cause sweeping and often destructive decisions about fundraising.

This is captured by the Einsteinian Quantification of the 5th Law:

D > LTVc²

That is, the Damage caused by a donor's complaint is greater than that donor's projected lifetime value, times the speed of light, squared. (Many fundraising scientists think the Einsteinian Quantification is too optimistic.)

One of the notable feature of the 5th Law is which donors complain. They are frequently not your best donors. As described by the 1st Corollary to the 5th Law:

The likelihood that a donor will complain is inversely proportional to the donor's monetary value.

In other words, complaints most often come from low-dollar donors, deeply lapsed donors, and even non-donors.

Likewise, what donors complain about is not random. The 2nd Corollary to the 5th Law states:

The number and intensity of donor complaints is directly proportional to the effectiveness of the fundraising campaign they are about.

That is, donors rarely complain about minor and unimportant fundraising initiative. They go after the large and important ones.

Here are two additional useful corollaries to the 5th Law about the complaining donors themselves:

If there's a donor who hates everything about your fundraising and constantly complains about it ... that person is your board president's best friend.

If you make a really terrible errors in fundraising -- especially in direct mail -- it will most likely affect cranky donors who are already annoyed with you.

More Laws of Fundraising here.

Stupid claim that a color can do your job for you

Colors can pack in quite a lot of emotional information. But if there were a color that somehow compelled viewers to pay attention, I figure we'd know about it because:

1. It would have been discovered by advertisers or propagandists many years ago.
2. It would be licensed for use selling soft drinks and athletic shoes, thus not available for fundraising.

Apparently not.

According to Pantone and United Way Centraide of Canada, a new color has been developed (wait, do you develop a color, or discover it?) that will make "local issues" "#unignorable." That's also the name of the color.

Here's the amazing new color:

It's ... red! Well, not quite. In fact, it's suspiciously close to Pantone's color of the year for 2019, living coral. (Do I detect a fad?)

To understand the claims for this color, you have to read the inevitable press release on this amazing new color: United Way and Pantone Color Institute™ Join Forces to Make Local Issues Unignorable. It quotes a Pantone executive with this little explosion of hyperbole:

To highlight these issues, we wanted to create a distinctive color that was virtually unignorable.... Displaying a radiant glow that instantly mesmerizes, this irresistibly captivating coral shade we call "unignorable" stands out from its surroundings, draws immediate attention and with its high physicality, induces us to act.

Making local issues "unignorable"?

That's a heavy lift for a color.

Maybe the video will help clarify, since it's not at all about those "local issues," but about the campaign and the color itself, with what you might call "color porn":

(Or view it here on YouTube.)

How does this color make "local issues" unignorable? And what exactly are "local issues"?

You can find out at this website. But the short answer is this: They use the color in abstract art depictions of abstract issues like this one:

The local issue you can no longer ignore now that you've seen this is homelessness. That's the theory. Because of the color, this completely abstract image has grabbed your consciousness. Presumably, you are now looking for a way to donate.

Yes, that's utterly ridiculous.

There are a lot more like that. Puzzling, abstract images that feature this coral-red color.

My question is this: Since when is a color more "unignorable" than a human face or a true story?

Answer: Never.

It's another case of high-end branding "experts" bamboozling nonprofit executives who are bored with the job of actually communicating with people.

Our job is not to make issue unignorable. It's to stir people to action.

That means connecting with the right people -- meaning the ones most likely to care and take action.

That means giving them a reason to express their values through your organization. Which they'll do when you get specific and make it about concrete action they can take.

Using the right color can be part of doing that effectively. But it's a relatively small part.

Fundraising is hard. There are no shortcuts, no magic color that will force people to pay attention, care, and donate.

So if someone tries to sell you a shortcut, ignore them.

They're completely #ignorable.

More Stupid Nonprofit Ads.

INFOGRAPHIC: The way fundraising generally turns out

This matrix illustrates an odd tendency I've seen in fundraising projects.

The vertical scale is about the potential impact of the project: High or low.

The horizontal scale is about the quality of execution of the project: Rushed, sloppy, and slapdash or Careful, well-built, and excellent.

X identifies the two quadrants where most fundraising is.

Maybe you've noticed this too.

Any idea why?

Stupid guy burns guitar, fails to help the poor, confuses everyone else

I've been fortunate to have worked with quite a few Salvation Army units in my career.

The Salvation Army is one of the most real organizations you'll ever encounter.

So why someone thought they had to create a symbolic representation of what the Army does is a mystery to me. The literal truth is more than thrilling enough to inspire normal people who live in the real world.

The victim of this stupid ad scam is The Salvation Army of Switzerland:

(Or see it here on YouTube.

I'm assuming the Army is the victim of an ad agency stupid ad scam here, even though I can't find a self-congratulating agency taking credit. My only evidence it's a scam is the weird explanation (suspiciously in English) on the YouTube page:

Every year in Advent, the Salvationists take out their guitars and play heartwarming Christmas songs. Will that always stay that way? Or is this tradition ending soon, because the Salvation Army is running out of guitars? Watch this perhaps the last music video and share it.

The implication is that the Salvationists have been foolishly singing to people who needed more tangible help, in direct disobedience to the biblical call to help those in need: If one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? (James 2:16)

I don't think so. In fact, the gritty, open-eyed realism of the Army is what sets them apart from a lot of would-be do-gooders who'd rather strum a guitar than actually work to help someone. And that's not something they're just now figuring out.

I'm also pretty confident that even if a Salvationist out with his guitar on a frigid December night would burn his guitar -- or even a nice log of firewood -- to give a homeless person on a few minutes of slight warmth.

I think he'd invite the homeless guy to come inside, to get a warm meal and a comfortable bed. And maybe start work on the issues that made him homeless in the first place. I mean, they'd do all that before they thought about tossing a guitar into a burn barrel.

I realize I'm taking this all very literally, and that the video's intent is probably more symbolic. But that's just the problem.

For a feet-on-the-ground organization like The Salvation Army, reality is far more interesting (and far less silly) than goofball symbolism that doesn't even capture the situation.

If you actually want to help people understand the Army, to think well of them, or -- who knows? -- maybe even donate ... show them the reality. And give them a chance to be part of it.

It's not rocket science.

Though it's unlikely to win an ad industry award or bulk out an agency demo reel.

If my guess is wrong, and this video is self-inflicted by the organization ... then I have no explanation. Either way, it's a towering example of a Stupid Nonprofit Ad. A waste of money, time, and opportunity.

More Stupid Nonprofit Ads.

Brooks' Laws of Fundraising: Time vs. Fundraising

Brooks' 4th Law of Fundraising is about the odd relationship between your time and the importance of the projects you work on:

The less important a fundraising initiative is, the more time you'll be forced to spend on it.

There are several important corollaries to the fourth law, including some important ones about meetings:

Every planning meeting on a given project cuts in half the likelihood of the success of that project.

The IQ of a meeting can be calculated by taking the IQ of the dumbest person in the room and dividing by the number of people in the room.

And finally:

That meeting you're about to go to? For the love of all that's holy -- don't go!

There are also a couple corollaries about the sources of time-wasting:

Donations of free media will waste more of your time than almost anything else, other than pro bono work donated by advertising agencies.

Board members have most of their craziest, time-wasting ideas in December.

More Laws of Fundraising here.