Jeff Brooks

Blogger, author, and fundraising copywriter Jeff Brooks has been serving the nonprofit community for more than 35 years. He believes that success in fundraising comes from sharing our hearts and our stories with donors, and from keeping our eyes on the facts and the data that are in front of us.

The power of ignorance in fundraising

Jeff Brooks  |  Repeat
Ignorance.

The following is a hand-picked guest post from Jeff Brooks. Enjoy, and you can read more about Jeff below.

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Scene: Board meeting for the very small organization where I’m a board member.

The all-volunteer fundraising committee is presenting a plan to launch a monthly giving campaign. After years of struggling to do this, we finally had an online giving platform that made it easy.

People are nodding. It looks good. After the presentation, it’s time for Board comments.

One board member speaks up: “I really hate the subscription model. I just tune it out whenever I see it. We should not do this.”

Another board members chimes in: “I know what you mean!”

The group teeters for a moment on deciding against monthly giving. Because one member thinks they don’t like the subscription model.

A significant opportunity could have been gone. At least until enough board turnover will allow a reconsideration.

It happens all the time: Board members or other nonprofit leaders make ignorant, harmful decisions based on gut feelings or “intuition.” Often, there’s nobody at the table with knowledge to warn them away. Or worse, leaders are not interested in knowledge and unwilling to listen to it.

As long as leaders choose to remain ignorant, fundraising will suffer.

Part of your job as an awake, aware fundraiser is to fight the good fight for knowledge over ignorance. I’ve seen it work many times – leaders’ eyes opening. Fundraising programs blossoming as a result. It happens. And if you can make it happen, it will be a source of joy and pride you’ll treasure.

In those cases where it cannot happen – where leaders simply won’t listen and actively choose ignorance… you have a choice: Keeping fighting, or go someplace with proper leadership.

I don’t advise that lightly. Creating change is better. If it’s possible. You are gifted with time, talent, and knowledge. Don’t let someone waste it because they can’t listen.

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Steven says, “Jeff Brooks is the brilliant author of Future Fundraising Now (which you should subscribe to).  I’ve been lucky enough to know Jeff since we both had hair that was longer and browner.  He’s the best, clearest voice on direct response fundraising that I know of.”

Two Questions Never to Ask About Fundraising

Jeff Brooks  |  Repeat

The following is a hand-picked guest post from Jeff Brooks. Enjoy, and you can read more about Jeff below.

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In fundraising, it’s smart to get more than one pair of eyes on anything you plan to send out.

But not everything you ask people will give you useful or accurate information.

Here are two questions fundraisers often ask others that often lead to fundraising failure:

  1. Do you like this? Fundraising isn’t meant to be liked. It’s meant to connect and persuade. Those are not at all the same thing. In fact, it’s common for the most effective fundraising to be disliked. And when nonprofit staff “like” the message, it is very likely to do poorly with donors. They are the wrong audience entirely. Good fundraising will often rub them the wrong way.

  2. Would you give to this? This might seem a more on-target question. But it’s not. Because rationally thinking through whether or not you’d respond is radically unlike encountering a message, paying attention to it, and following through with a donation. Those two situations are so different, there’s no correlation between the two. If there’s a correlation, it’s the strong negative correlation between insiders saying they’d give and donors actually giving.

If you’re hoping to improve your fundraising, don’t ask anyone either of these questions.

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Steven says, “Jeff Brooks is the brilliant author of Future Fundraising Now (which you should subscribe to).  I’ve been lucky enough to know Jeff since we both had hair that was longer and browner.  He’s the best, clearest voice on direct response fundraising that I know of.”

The Most Dangerous Syndrome for Fundraisers

Jeff Brooks  |  Report
Syndrome.

Here’s a great guest post from Jeff Brooks of Future Fundraising Now. And watch out for NPNGS in your fundraising!

Does your newsletter and/or website contain any of the following?

  • News about the accomplishments of your staff
  • Photos of well-heeled donors presenting giant checks to your organization.
  • Detailed history of your organization
  • Photos of people standing around (possibly holding wine glasses) at your fundraising event
  • Articles explaining how your programs and processes work
  • Manifestos about how your approach is superior to others’

If you answered yes to any of these, your organization might suffer from Nonprofit Navel-Gazing Syndrome, or NPNGS (pronounced “nippings”).

This condition can cause nonprofits to believe that if donors just understood them and grasped how awesome they really are – they’d give.

Unfortunately, that’s not how charitable giving works. Donors don’t give to keep you in operation. They give to make things happen. Fundraising that’s all about you is always less effective.

Donors don’t think like you. They’re less schooled in the fine points of what it takes to accomplish your mission. Their view of what you do is less nuanced than your view. They’re drawn to simplistic, even incomplete descriptions of your work – and the strongest philosophical argument can leave them cold.

Organizations with advanced NPNGS sometimes blame the fact that their self-focused fundraising doesn’t work on their donors. They see them as “deficient,” and sometimes go as far as trying to somehow find “better” donors who will appreciate them.

The sad truth is, they inevitably learn that few donors are willing to spend the time getting up to speed on them.

The cure for NPNGS is easy. It’s to embrace this truth: Donors are interested in you because of what you help them do. You are their agent in their mission to make the world better. That should be the topic of all your fundraising. Not the inner workings of your organization. Not the accomplishments of notable others. Not the need for raised consciousness or philosophical buy-in.

Your top-notch staff, your wonderful events, your well-honed methodology, your superior mindset – all these things are part of your uniqueness and your ability to accomplish your mission. But donors aren’t much interested in that. They just want to give to achieve clear results they can understand. Swallow your pride and meet donors where they are.

The Big Thank-You Mistake That Chases Away Donors

Jeff Brooks  |  Thank
Thank

When I was a Cub Scout, proudly dressed in the blue uniform with the yellow scarf, I once helped an old lady cross the street.

It went like this: I sidled up to an elderly woman who was standing on a corner, waiting for the light to change.

“Can I help you across, ma’am?” I asked.

She looked me up and down. Suspiciously. “Yes you can, I’m sure,” she said. “And you may.”

Her jab at my word choice went over my head.

The light changed, and I hooked my arm around hers and started across. I concentrated on matching her speed, as I’d heard about another Scout who had moved too quickly and pulled his old lady off her feet; he ran off in a panic, leaving her on her hands and knees in the middle of the street.

We made it across fine. Both of us upright. We got to the other side, and I unhooked by arm from hers.

I waited for my much-deserved praise.

She said: “Thank you for your commitment to traffic safety.”

And walked away. Leaving me gaping and confused, silently vowing never to help weird old ladies across the street again.

Okay, I made up that last part about her strange form of thanking me. No human being would do that.

But nonprofit organizations do exactly that all the time!

It’s probably happened to you as a donor:

  • You donate to help hungry children in Haiti, and they thank you for doing your part to fight world poverty.
  • You donate to fight a terrible government policy you hate, and they thank you for protecting civil liberties.
  • You donate to save some beautiful animal from extinction, and they thank you for your commitment to habitat preservation.

I know why it happens. The organization thinks of its mission as fighting world poverty. But if they sent out fundraising with that as the offer, they’d have shut their doors years ago. So they raise funds with specific offers, like feeding hungry children in Haiti …

But when it comes time to thank donors, they forget — or more likely, they don’t really care. So they thank the donor for helping them accomplish their mission in the broad sense.

Which is basically rude. And not human.

Don’t be that organization. Thank your donors for doing the thing you asked them to do.

It would be perfectly fine if — once you’ve really piled on the gratitude for the thing their gift accomplished — to tell them their gift also helped do that bigger thing.

But don’t act like you live on a different planet by thanking them for something they likely have no sense that they did at all.

Thank your donors for doing the thing you asked them to do.

Then they’ll happily keep coming back to help you across the street, again and again!