Author: Steven

Steven Screen is Co-Founder of The Better Fundraising Company and lead author of its blog. With over 25 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.

Weird but True (and Important)

Steven  |  Ask
Strange but true.

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.

***

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

***

Hey, I’m giving a free webinar next Wednesday on how to make your most effective annual plan ever.

There are two main things I’m going to teach:

  1. How to know the times when your donors are most likely to give you a gift, so that you can plan your asks during those times
  2. How to tweak your “communication mix” so that you get more response from the same number of letters and emails

The free webinar is next Wednesday, January 29, at 2pm Eastern/11am Pacific.

There’s limited availability so that we can have a conversation.  This is NOT me talking for 55 minutes.  There will be lots of time for questions.

For more info, here’s the link:

https://betterfundraising.com/annual-planning-webinar/

I hope to see you next Wednesday!

“Did my gift make a difference?”

Steven  |  Report
Make a difference.

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.

***

Hey, I’m giving a free webinar next Wednesday on how to make your most effective annual plan ever.

There are two main things I’m going to teach:

  1. How to know the times when your donors are most likely to give you a gift, so that you can plan your asks during those times
  2. How to tweak your “communication mix” so that you get more responses from the same number of letters and emails

The free webinar is next Wednesday, January 29, at 2pm Eastern/11am Pacific.

There’s limited availability so that we can have a conversation.  This is NOT me talking for 55 minutes.  There will be lots of time for questions.

For more info, here’s the link:

https://betterfundraising.com/annual-planning-webinar/

I hope to see you next Wednesday!

Need an emergency fundraising email because of the LA fires?

Steven  |  Ask
Fires.

We’re replacing today’s blog post with a special announcement:

If you’re at a small nonprofit, and the fires in LA have caused you to need extra/emergency funds, we’d like to help: we will write an emergency fundraising email for you.

<< If you don’t work in/around LA, but know someone who does, please feel free to forward this post to them. >>

Watching the fires unfold this week has been heartbreaking.  We work with people who have lost their homes. 

Knowing how the nonprofit community jumps into action at times like this, there are hundreds (thousands?) of smaller nonprofits in LA who could use some emergency cash.  And they don’t have the time or expertise or budget to get out an emergency email. 

So we’d like to help.

If you’re at a small nonprofit and would like us to write a free emergency fundraising email for you, here’s what to do:

  1. Send an email to info@betterfundraising.com
  2. Give us a brief snapshot of what’s happening for your beneficiaries or organization
  3. Tell us if your organization is too small to afford to do this on your own, or if you’ve just never really known how

We’ll reply with a few detail questions about your exact situation so we know what to say in the email.  Once you send us the answers, we’ll write an emergency email for you within a day or two.  We’ll also send a handful of tips that will help you with emergency fundraising in general.

We made this offer after hurricanes Helene and Milton last fall, and it was a joy to meaningfully help the organizations who took us up on our offer. 

We are inspired by all that nonprofits in the LA area are doing right now.  This is the way we can help, and just like you, we’ll help as much as we can.

If you or your organization need an email, please get in touch!

Approach to Appeals

Steven  |  Ask
Appeal.

This month we’re sharing the ideas and strategies that had an outsized positive impact on the nonprofits we serve. 

Today’s idea is that there’s an approach to appeals (appeal letters and e-appeals) that, in our experience, tend to work the best.

Here’s the simplest summary of what the performance data leads us to believe:

  • The most successful appeals tend to be about the help that your beneficiaries or cause needs now, and how the donor’s gift will provide that help.
  • The less successful appeals tend to be about help that the organization has already provided, and request support for the organization.

When organizations change their appeals to be about the help that’s needed, and how the donor’s gift will help provide it, two things happen.  First, each appeal raises more money.  Second, the organization retains more donors year-over year.

Put another way, they start raising more money in the short term and in the long term.

Of course, appeals like this are only one element in an effective donor communications plan.  And they take a lot of thought to create.  For instance, appeals like this only describe part of an organization’s work.  You have to choose which part of your work to talk about, and you have to talk about it in an accessible way.

But if you create appeals that follow this approach, you’ll start raising more money immediately.

***

If you’re interested in what it would look like to have Better Fundraising write and design your fundraising, fill out the “get in touch” form on this page.  We’ll reach out to schedule a chat. 

And if you fill out the form before the end of the month, we’ll give you our 2024 pricing for all of 2025, a savings of $3,500.

Foundations

Steven  |  Repeat
Back to basics.

There are some core, basic principles in fundraising.  (As an industry, we tend to not talk about them enough because we silly humans like shiny things.)

But these core principles are part of every successful, national organization I know of.  They should be the roadmap for the fundraising programs that small and medium-sized nonprofits are building.

Principles like:

  • Communicate with your donors regularly.
  • Focus more on improving the metrics that matter most, like “net revenue” and “retention rate,” and focus less on metrics like “likes” and “awareness.”
  • Infuse your individual donor communications with emotion.
  • You have to Ask, you have to Thank, and you have to Report.
  • Create as many fundraising assets as you can, and fewer fundraising art projects.
  • Use language your donors understand immediately. 
  • Major Donor Management systems work better than ad-hoc approaches.
  • Build a donor pipeline.  Have steps and benchmarks for everyone from “email list subscribers” to legacy givers.

The surest path to success is to build your fundraising program on and toward these principles.

Then, defend them and enshrine them. Make sure they don’t leave when your current staff do. 

You could say these principles are boring, in the same way you could say that a foundation for a building is boring.  But you cannot build a reliable, ever-expanding organization without a good foundation.

Take More Steps

Steven  |  Repeat
Steps progress.

This post is the first in a series of special posts for January.  Last year we kept track of the ideas that had outsized impact on the small and medium-sized nonprofits we serve.  Each of the posts this month is about one of those big ideas.

I hope they are helpful as you think about your fundraising this year.

***

Every piece of fundraising you make & send is a step on your journey to raising more money.

Here’s the simple truth: the more steps you take each year, the closer you are to raising more money, because you get better when you practice.

You know those organizations that send out 10 appeal letters, 6 printed newsletters, and 50 fundraising emails?  They can do that because they’ve practiced so much that their fundraising works great.

They don’t have different donors than you.  They don’t have a better cause than you.  They’ve just practiced more.

At some point in the past, someone at those organizations said, “Let’s figure out a way to make and send more fundraising.”

If your organization needs someone to say that, you can be that someone.

Don’t be afraid of making & sending more fundraising.  The more steps you take, the better you get at taking steps.

For Overcoming the Resistance, We Thank You

Steven  |  Ask
Overcome.

There are a LOT of reasons not to ask for money.

At a conference earlier this year, we asked people to share what their biggest challenge in fundraising was.  The following list is just a small sample of the resistance that many fundraisers must overcome in order to ask for support…

  • “I’ve worked from age 10 to pay my way in life so it’s hard to ask for money”
  • “Being very new and not knowing where to start and expecting people to say no”
  • “My boss and his ideas”
  • “Fear about making a direct ask”
  • “Knowing how much to share due to the traumatic nature of our work”
  • “We have a private community that doesn’t want their photos taken or their story touted due to cultural tradition”
  • “Being too timid or just being intimidated by asking”
  • “Being new and don’t want to do something wrong”
  • “Managing all the tasks grants, major gifts, events etc. all by myself”
  • “Amount of permission / reviewers of fundraising pieces”
  • “I am a quiet person”
  • “Having the courage to talk about emotional stakes of children dying”
  • “Lack of any personal connection with our audience”
  • “My organization has a general unspoken theory of don’t ask”

There’s a lot that holds people and organizations back from asking for support.

So if you and your organization sent out fundraising this year-end, you overcame the resistance.  You overcame the fears, the bosses, and the hurdles.

You showed vulnerability and courage.

You served your beneficiaries or cause, and you served your donors.

Thank you.

Matte, Not Glossy

Steven  |  Ask
Paper choices.

In the midst of the holiday hubbub, here’s a tactical tip for you…

I was once part of a test to see if using matte paper, as opposed to glossy paper, would change fundraising results.

Here’s how the test worked:

  • We took the organization’s active donors (about 80,000) and randomly split them into two equal groups.
  • After writing and designing their newsletter, we printed half of the newsletters on matte paper and half of the newsletters on glossy paper.
    • Just to be super clear, the design and content of the newsletter was exactly the same.  The only difference was the finish of paper.
  • One of the groups of donors received the matte version, and the other group received the glossy version. 

The matte version of the newsletter raised more money.  Both the Average Gift and the Response Rate were slightly higher.

I’ve replicated these results in other tests, and so have lots of other Fundraisers.

The general understanding for why this happens is that glossy paper reflects more light than matte paper, and the reflections make anything printed on glossy paper a little harder to read.  This is especially true for older donors whose eyes don’t adjust between bright and dark as well as they used to.

And as you already know, when your fundraising is harder to read, fewer people read your fundraising.  And when fewer people read your fundraising, fewer people give.

The difference in money raised was not astronomical, but it was significant enough that the organization started using matte paper for almost everything (even over the objections of somebody in leadership who thought glossy paper was “more professional.”)

Using matte instead of glossy doesn’t apply to everything.  Does the outside of your holiday card to donors need to be matte?  No.  Can your annual report be on glossy stock?  Sure.

But when you desire a response from the piece, and therefore readability matters more, go matte.

Call a Major Who Hasn’t Given Yet (and here’s what to say)

Steven  |  Year-End
Call a major.

Here’s another quick tip for you as the year-end approaches…

Call a major donor who hasn’t given a gift yet.

Here’s what to do (this will be easy for some nonprofits, hard for others):

  1. Make sure you know exactly who your major donors are.
  2. Run a report to see which of them haven’t given in the second half of this year.
  3. Call each Major who hasn’t given recently, or who you think could give another gift
    this year.

Here’s What to Say

Our approach is that this call is a reminder – a service to the donor – not a direct Ask.

Take as much of the following script as is helpful to you and the context of each donor.

“I’m calling because I know how much you love helping [beneficiaries/cause], and I noticed that we hadn’t received a gift from you yet, here at the end of the year. You and your generosity have been extraordinary. So I wanted to call to see if there’s anything you need from me, or [your organization name], to help you make a gift or decide to make one.”

Then stop talking. Be comfortable with tension (if there is any). Let the donor speak next and take the conversation from there.

Pro major gift fundraisers will also be prepared with three things:

  1. How much you’d like the donor to give
  2. What her gift will do / the outcomes her gift will create
  3. Reasons her gift is needed before the end of the year

But even if you don’t have those things, make the call. Making the call is the most important element.

If your call goes to voicemail, leave the message on voicemail.

And if you can’t make the call, send an email. But only if you can’t call.

It Won’t Work for Every Major Donor –

Because nothing works for everyone.

But for some majors who have been busy, or traveling, or were on the way to sending you a gift but put down your letter and forgot – you’ll be providing them a great service. You’ll be helping them give a gift that they would love to make!

And you’ll be raising more money!

This post was originally published on December 12, 2019.