Cha Hernaez, Author at The Better Fundraising Company

From Higher Ground to Common Ground

Cha Hernaez | April 3, 2025March 27, 2025Ask

Most nonprofits have a “higher ground” understanding of their work and their cause.

And they should! They are experts. They understand the cause they are working on, and they understand the complexities of what needs to be done. They’ve built programs that are effective. Their expertise makes them good at what they do.

But when organizations create fundraising that invites individual donors to join the organization on its higher ground – instead of creating fundraising that meets donors on shared common ground – they put barriers between their donors and giving.

They make their fundraising exclusive.

The hallmarks of higher ground fundraising are things like:

Spending more time explaining the process the organization uses (your programs, or a particular approach) instead of the change in the world that the process makes possible…
Focusing more on the organization itself, and less on the cause or beneficiaries…
Sharing statistics to illustrate the size of the need or the scope of the organization’s work…
Educating the donor about everything that the organization does, rather than focusing on what donors tend to be most interested in…
All while using the organization or sector’s jargon to sound professional.

It’s like higher ground fundraising requires the donor to know about the organization in order for them to help the beneficiaries.

Two Problems

Higher Ground fundraising causes two problems.

First, it raises less money. Every one of the bullets above, in our experience, causes individual donors to give less. Individual donors tend to be more interested in what’s happening with the cause or beneficiaries today, and the change that the donor’s gift will make (or has made). Individual donors tend to be less interested in the organization itself.

The bulleted points above are highly relevant to staff, organizational partners, grant-funding organizations, etc. But they aren’t as relevant to individual donors. Hence the old phrase, “Individual donors give through organizations, not to organizations.”

Second, the “higher ground” approach results in exclusive fundraising. It creates a filter where the people likely to donate are the people who are willing to put in the time, the people who are willing to learn about the organization’s approach, and the people who are willing to speak the way the organization speaks.

Each of these is a barrier that some people will not cross.

From Higher Ground to Common Ground

Do the hard work to make your fundraising simple and inclusive. Have a good offer. Create fundraising for individual donors that any person who cares about your beneficiaries, at any level of understanding, at any reading level, will find relevant.

This means consciously deciding to leave the high ground. It means you’ll have to defend your fundraising from internal audiences who love the high ground and want everyone to join them there.

Here’s why: there are a LOT of people out there who care about your beneficiaries and would like to give a gift to help. There are far fewer people out there who are willing to wade through an education in your work before they can give a gift.

So if your communication and fundraising are always on the higher ground – and inviting donors to join you there – you will remain smaller than you could be. You will remain doing less than you could be.

If your communication and fundraising are aimed at the common ground you share with donors, you will raise more money and have a larger impact.

In fundraising, the high ground is lonely.

This post was originally published on March 2, 2023.

Start on Common Ground

Cha Hernaez | April 1, 2025March 27, 2025Ask

If you would like your letters and emails to raise more money, they should begin by talking about something the donor already understands, as opposed to asking the donor to learn something new.

Here’s a made-up example of an appeal that starts by asking the donor to learn new things.

Did you know that 19% of the families in our community have no exposure to the Arts? We call them L.E.A.H.s (Lacking Arts Exposure Households) and a LEAH might be arts-curious, but never had an enjoyable introduction to the Arts that was relevant to their life.

Look at all the work the reader has to do:

Understand a statistic
Learn a new acronym
Learn a new phrase (“arts-curious”)

All that and they haven’t reached the second paragraph!

A Neuroscientist would say, “That paragraph puts a large cognitive load on the reader.” So do you think the reader is more likely to keep reading, or less likely to keep reading, after a paragraph like that?

Now, here’s an alternative approach to the first paragraph, one that begins with what the donor already knows…

A lot of families in our community don’t have the same relationship with the Arts that you and I do. And I know you’d love for everyone to experience the same fulfillment and joy that you feel. But too many people were never introduced to the Arts in a way that was relevant to their life.

In addition to sounding more personal and less like a teacher, that paragraph opens by talking about things the donor already understands and cares about.

A paragraph that speaks to the common ground the organization shares with the donor will create connection with the donor.

The donor is now more likely to keep reading. Which means the donor is now more likely to donate.

Is there ever time for a statistic or bit of education? Sure. But most likely at an event or in some other context (lunch with a major donor, blog post) where both you and the donor have more time.

In a context like the mail or email where donors are moving fast (when was the last time you read a fundraising email top to bottom on your phone?) start with something the donor already knows. Not an education barrier.

This post was originally published on August 8, 2023.

Your Brand

Cha Hernaez | March 27, 2025March 27, 2025Repeat

For your individual donors, your nonprofit’s brand is far more than your visual identity and voice.

Your brand is also:

Whether your fundraising is accessible, or takes thought and education to understand
Whether it’s easy to give you a gift online, or not
Whether you “report back” to donors that their gift made a difference, or you brag about how big a difference your organization makes (“We helped 4,317 people last year!”)
Whether you thank donors promptly, or not

For individual donors, your brand is the total experience a donor has while donating to your nonprofit.

For most small nonprofits, the “next step” to strengthening your brand with individual donors has nothing to do with your visual identity, and everything to do with your donors’ experience.

News Speed vs Nonprofit Speed

Cha Hernaez | March 25, 2025March 24, 2025Ask

There’s a lot of unease in fundraising right now. It kind of feels like anything could happen this year.

So yesterday, while helping an organization review their plan for the rest of the year, I reminded them of the following principle:

If something happens in the world that causes your organization or beneficiaries to be in the news, create and send fundraising fast.

You want to have the first e-appeal in your donors’ inboxes, not the seventh.

This is when it’s good to remember that your individual donors operate at the “speed of news,” while most organizations operate at the “speed of nonprofit.”

“News speed” is fast. Things change every 24 hours. The news points your donors’ attention in different directions almost every day.

“Nonprofit speed” can often be sloooow. Need to get an appeal out? It could take 4 weeks…

The reason it’s important to move fast when your nonprofit or beneficiaries are in the news is that the news provides awareness for your situation, and your fundraising will always raise more money when there is more awareness.

So when something happens in the world that you should be fundraising about, move fast. Stop, “do not pass go,” write & send that email today.

And if my Monopoly reference hasn’t done it already, let me further date myself: back in the ‘90’s and early 2000’s I served multiple national organizations that had “emergency appeals” pre-printed and sitting in storage. When an emergency happened, all we had to do was quickly write a few lines of copy about the disaster. The copy was lasered on the front page of the letter. The letters would be in the mail 24 hours later.

The nonprofits went to the expense of pre-printing letters because we knew that losing even a day would mean raising less and helping less. This is hard for smaller organizations with less time and money to spend on fundraising.

But everyone can write and send an e-appeal.

The news moves fast. If the news focuses attention on your organization or beneficiaries, you should move fast, too.

Top Heavy

Cha Hernaez | February 13, 2025March 13, 2025Major Donor Fundraising

The following graphic is from a fundraising analysis on a nonprofit we serve. Look at how much of their revenue from individual donors comes from their major donors:

This kind of revenue distribution is normal; a large percentage of a nonprofit’s revenue from individual donors comes from a small group.

In fact, the revenue distribution for this organization is not particularly top heavy. About 65% of their revenue is coming from their $5,000+ donors. We regularly see organizations where 80% or 90% of revenue is coming in from $5,000+ donors.

This is why – even for small organizations – we put such emphasis on managing your major donors well.

It’s why “having a proven major donor management system” is one of the “core four” strategies we teach in this free eBook. It’s the reason Major Gifts Engine exists (and is on sale right now, btw). We can wish the funding were more equitably distributed.

We can even work to make it so. But right now, intentionally managing today’s major donors is the best way to meet tomorrow’s revenue needs.

Weird but True (and Important)

Cha Hernaez | January 23, 2025March 31, 2025Ask

Here’s something weird but true:

Your Staff and Board receive more of your fundraising communications than your donors do.

That might not seem possible, but here’s how it works:

The Staff and Board of a nonprofit tend to open and read everything the organization sends out… but donors don’t.

Let me give you an example, and then I’ll share why this is so important.

For example, if you send out a fundraising email, almost everyone on your Staff and Board notice and look at it. But if your email open rate is 30%, then 70% of the people on your email list did not see the email.

So your Staff and Board received an email, but effectively 70% of your donors did not.

And if you send out an appeal letter, everyone on your staff and Board will notice and take look at it. But maybe 50%* of donors opened the letter.

So your Staff and Board received an appeal letter, but about half of your donors didn’t.

Play this out over the course of a year and your Staff and Board have received a lot more of your fundraising than your donors have. Put another way, the Staff and Board understand how many pieces the organization is sending to donors, but they don’t understand how few pieces the donors are receiving.

Consequently, most nonprofits have an over-inflated sense of how much they are communicating with their donors.

The Consequence

When Staff and Board don’t know this truth, they often inadvertently keep an organization smaller than it could be.

The Staff and Board base their advice on “how much communication is enough” on their own inflated perception, NOT on their donors’ lived experience.

Consequently, nonprofit Staff and Boards consistantly advocate for less communication than the organization could be sending out, which results in less money raised from individual donors.

At Better Fundraising, our general rule of thumb is that most individual donors see a little less than half of the fundraising an organization sends out. Keep that in mind as you build annual plans and campaigns, and you’ll communicate more effectively and raise more money.

And if you’re at a smaller nonprofit where your Staff or Board are handicapping your fundraising because of a mistaken understanding of “how much we’re communicating with our donors,” please share this post with them.

Getting Staff and Board to recognize the situation, and then moving past the stage where “my Board/boss won’t let us send out any more fundraising because s/he thinks we send too much,” is a step made by every organization with a thriving individual donor fundraising program.

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* This is an educated guess. The published data on direct mail open rates is self-reported data, which is notoriously inaccurate.

“Did my gift make a difference?”

Cha Hernaez | January 21, 2025March 31, 2025Report

At Better Fundraising we have come to believe that a large number of your individual donors are wondering something:

Did their gift to your organization make a meaningful difference in the life of one of your beneficiaries?

We think donors are wondering that because when an organization shows & tells donors the specific differences their gift made possible, and uses stories about the individual lives of beneficiaries to illustrate the difference, the organization retains more donors and raises more money.

So as you look at your communications plan for your individual donors, do you show and tell them that their gift made a difference?

If you’re not already doing this, you’ll be surprised at how powerful it is for donors to read the phrase, “Your gift made a meaningful difference” and be told a story about one person that illustrates the difference.