It is hard to get a donor’s attention.
So when you are sending a donor something with an explicit purpose – for instance you’re Asking for a gift or Reporting back on what their previous gifts made possible – don’t include anything that can cause your donor’s attention to “leak” away from your main message.
Here are three examples of accidental attention leaks:
- Your social media handles on the envelope for your appeal. At the moment a donor picks up your envelope, would you like them to open the envelope and have a 4% chance of them sending you a gift… or go to your Instagram page and have a .25% chance of giving you a gift?
- Promoting your upcoming event right before the ask to give a gift. It’s well known that the more options you give a donor, the smaller the overall response. I’ve seen many a great fundraising email or letter torpedoed by someone who says, “Hey, please add a paragraph about our event” or “Be sure to also mention that we need volunteers and include the link.”
- A list of your Board members down the left side of your appeal letter. I ran a test once where we sent a letter to half a nonprofit’s donors on letterhead that had the list of Board members down the left, and the same exact letter to the other half of the organization’s donor except the list of Board members had been removed. The letter without the list of Board members raised more money.
In my opinion, here’s what happens when you list the Board members down the side. Some donors are reading the letter, picking up what you are laying down, starting to think about giving a gift… and they see a name on the left that takes their attention away from the carefully crafted letter. Maybe the name reminds them of a friend from college. They wonder what that person is up to. And pretty soon your donor is on Facebook instead of reading and responding to your letter.
Your organization spends so much time, money and effort to get a donor to read your fundraising. Don’t allow anything in your fundraising other than content and design that will drive them towards taking the action you want them to take.
There is one place this advice doesn’t apply – your e-newsletter. You can stick everything in there because you don’t expect anyone to respond.
But if you want people to respond, here’s what I’ve learned over years and years of looking at fundraising results: pieces of fundraising that “keep the main thing the main thing” will cause the most action and help your organization the most.
Steven Screen is Co-Founder of The Better Fundraising Company and lead author of its blog. With over 30 years' fundraising experience, he gets energized by helping organizations understand how they can raise more money. He’s a second-generation fundraiser, a past winner of the Direct Mail Package of the Year, and data-driven.
- Steven Screenhttps://betterfundraising.com/author/steven/
- Steven Screenhttps://betterfundraising.com/author/steven/
- Steven Screenhttps://betterfundraising.com/author/steven/
- Steven Screenhttps://betterfundraising.com/author/steven/
