Steven Screen, Author at The Better Fundraising Company

The Path is not Hard to Find – But it is Hard to Start Walking It

Steven Screen | November 13, 2025November 7, 2025Repeat

If your nonprofit wants to raise $1 million three years from now, ask nonprofits who are currently raising $1 million what they did three years ago.

Here’s what you’ll find: the path to where you want to go is knowable and has been travelled before.

There are outliers of course, but for instance…

There’s a stage where an organization that wants to keep growing will install a major donor management system
There’s a stage where an organization that wants to keep growing will say, “Our email and direct mail fundraising could use some help, we’re going to bring in an expert” (this is what we primarily do here at Better Fundraising)
There’s a stage where an organization that wants to keep growing will add a line in their budget for “Donor Acquisition”

There are a small handful of strategies that we’ve seen work again and again. They can often feel awkward for smaller organizations because they don’t have personal experience with the systems or approaches.

But again, the path is knowable and has been traveled before.

Don’t look at the Big Organizations and say, “Oh, they can only do those things because they are big.” Those Big Organizations used those strategies to become big.

So the first question a nonprofit needs to ask is, “What does the path look like?” The second (and often harder) question is, “What changes and sacrifices do we need to make to get on the path?”

Word Pictures

Steven Screen | November 11, 2025November 6, 2025Ask

It happens all the time at nonprofits – you want to include a story in your next appeal or e-appeal to help donors understand the situation better… but you don’t have a story.

In case that ever happens to you, here’s a technique we use all the time. I call it “telling a true story about a person you know exists but you have not met.”

Here’s an example for an organization that sends missionaries and is raising money to provide training for the missionaries.

As I write you today, there’s a missionary who could use a little help. Their faith is strong, their marriage is strong, but they could use a little break and a little encouragement. That’s why I’m excited to tell you that your gift of $XX will provide a day of respite and training.

Because in the life of a missionary, there should be times of rest. These are people who think about their calling 24/7! And with as rapidly as today’s world is moving, it’s hard to build deep cross-cultural relationships and stay on top of the latest missionary knowledge.

Your gift will allow one person to do just that.

Imagine the relief when a missionary hears, “A generous donor has sent in a gift to help pay for your training. And the cost for this break and trip will be paid for – it doesn’t come out of your personal budget!”

If you put yourself in a tired missionary’s shoes for a moment, I’m sure you can image tears, and relief, and joy, and wonderment.

See how there’s no traditional “story”? But can you also see how we’ve painted a true word picture that helps the donor see the situation and what their gift will do?

Here’s the thing: you are an expert in the people or cause you’re working on. You know the details, the circumstances, and the emotions.

So you can share details that you know are true, even though you don’t know the people themselves.

This technique is not a replacement for “a great story from the field.” (There are details and emotions in real stories that even the best writers can’t create.)

But sometimes you don’t have a story. And when you know your work, and you know your fundraising would be more powerful with true details, this technique is helpful.

Fundraising in Two Steps

Steven Screen | November 6, 2025November 10, 2025Ask

At its simplest, I think you can boil “raising money from individual donors through the mail and email” down to two steps:

Making an emotional connection with the humans reading your fundraising (which I wrote about on Tuesday), and
Then giving people an easy, low-cost step they can take to make a meaningful difference.

This approach is easy to understand but hard to do. And it goes against the standard orthodoxy of “make a case and describe our work in an inspirational way.”

But in my now 30+ years of looking at fundraising results, this “two step” approach is at the heart of the fundraising that works the best. (And if you want evidence, just call me. Better Fundraising’s clients routinely see huge jumps in revenue as soon as we help them switch them from the standard approach to this approach.)

And it makes sense, right?!? If you “make a case and try to inspire people with your work” you have to teach them about your work and tell them why it’s inspiring. This means your reader has to learn something before your request for support makes sense. This is homework, not fundraising!

Or you could tell your reader an interesting story about something they care about. (And you know they care about your cause or your beneficiaries – if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be on your list.)

Once your donor is emotionally engaged, you give them a low-cost way to make a meaningful difference. You lower the barrier to giving a gift. You describe something great that they can do or be a part of. You describe the meaningful difference it will make.

Get people emotionally engaged, then tell them how their small gift today will make a difference. I share how to do this in this post, this free eBook, and it’s what McKenzie is describing in this post.

Really, that’s it: get people emotionally engaged, then tell them how their small gift today will make a meaningful difference.

Emotional Connection > Organizational Connection

Steven Screen | November 4, 2025November 4, 2025Repeat

Your donors don’t experience your fundraising as “donors.”

They experience your fundraising as humans.

So if you want to expand the number of people who will pay attention to your fundraising, make your fundraising more interesting to humans.

Humans who like stories with villains and triumphs and tragedies and emotions.

Because there’s a very small group of people who resonate with your organization… but there’s a very large group of people who would resonate with the stories you can tell, with stakes that matter, and the emotions woven through all of it.

Today, what cuts through the clutter is emotion-filled content that sounds like real humans talking about what they care about. Not “approved content” that’s passed through the pastel-colored nonprofit hope machine.

Get real. Get emotional. Don’t make a case, make a moment.

Scary Data Frankensteins

Steven Screen | October 30, 2025October 24, 2025Ask

When you are reviewing fundraising data, beware any time the data contains information from two different media channels or two different audiences.

Here’s a simple example…

Say we recently completed a campaign that included one appeal letter to current donors and two e-appeals. Here are the results:

11,000 sent
124 gifts
1.4% response rate.

With those numbers, we can get a vague sense of whether the campaign was successful. But I would say that the data above hides more than it illuminates because when we go to run the campaign next year we don’t know how to improve the campaign because we don’t know which parts of the campaign worked, and which parts didn’t.

But look at what happens when we can see the results for each piece of the campaign…

Direct mail appeal letter to current donors

1,000 sent
83 gifts
8.3% response

E-appeal #1

5,000 sent
31 gifts
.62% response

E-Appeal #2

5,000 sent
10 gifts
.20% response

OK, now we’re talking. Look at what we know now:

The appeal letter is a tremendous success. An 8.3% response in direct mail is fantastic.
E-appeal #1 is also a success – a .62% response in email is also a success.
E-appeal #2 is not a success – a .2% response is too low.

Compare that to the combined data, which gave us an average response rate of 1.4%. That number didn’t tell us anything.

But looking at the performance data for each piece enables us to do something powerful: learn that the messaging used in the appeal letter and e-appeal #1 worked great, and then apply those the next time we do this campaign and to all our future fundraising.

Additionally, by breaking out the results for each piece, over time you’ll learn your benchmarks for each audience and each channel. This is very powerful because it helps you identify the pieces of fundraising that are effective, and those that aren’t.

But if you keep everything together, you just get a Frankenstein.

People are More Important than Platforms

Steven Screen | October 28, 2025October 21, 2025Repeat

The online fundraising platforms we’re currently using are going to change.

Think about it. For any Fundraiser who has been fundraising online for a decade, they’ve had two dominant platforms: Facebook and Instagram.

Now podcasts, texts and TikTok are coming.

If you work in Fundraising for the next 20 years, I bet there will be three or four more platforms.

The technology changes every couple of years. Human psychology barely changes at all.

It’s good to know the ins and outs of whatever platform you’re using now. But what will make you an exceptional Fundraiser is knowing the ins and outs of what makes people give and then give again.

Then you’ll succeed on any platform.

***

PS — writing this post made me realize that the two channels that have the most staying power are probably the mail and email. I suggest that’s true because mail and email are experienced by the recipient as a direct message to them.

Texts have the same feature.

If those are the three “platforms” that are going to stick around, I would prioritize getting good at them. Plus, they have a feature that is always a benefit: they allow you to “own your list” instead of being at the mercy of the algorithm.

Whose Story Is It?

Steven Screen | October 23, 2025October 21, 2025Ask

There’s a blogger I like named “Gabe The Bass Player” who writes primarily for musicians. I find him thought provoking.

Talking mostly to musicians, he recently said, “You keep getting to do this because enough people continually add you as part of their story.”

I think the same thing is true about nonprofits and fundraising – your organization keeps getting to do its thing because enough people add you as part of their story.

Keep thinking about that last part: “…people add you as part of their story.”

There are a million different ways to think about fundraising. But any way that ignores the fact that an individual donor is primarily adding you to her story is not going to work very well.

Is it true that she’s also part of your story? Of course.

Is it true that she’s also part of the story of your cause or community? Of course.

But at that mostly sub-conscious “give or don’t give” moment, her story is the most important story to her.

So for your mail and email fundraising to really succeed, it must be created in such a way that the donor sees herself and wants to add your organization to her story.

Your Email List is a Cross Country Team

Steven Screen | October 21, 2025October 16, 2025Ask

If you’re a small nonprofit and you don’t raise much money from your email list, keep reading.

Here’s an analogy that has proven helpful for many of the organizations we serve: think of your email list as a high school cross country team whose season has not yet started.

People have signed up for your team. Some people have been signed up for the team for 6 months. But the team hasn’t gone on any runs yet – they haven’t had to do anything yet.

In this analogy, when the season starts and the cross country team begins going on long runs, what’s going to happen?

Three things, almost immediately:

People are going to drop off the team. They are going to say, “Oh, I didn’t know we’d have to do that, turns out this isn’t for me, I’m going to drop off the team.”
A few people are going to complain. “I don’t like this. I liked it more when we talked about running.”
A few people are going to say, “Yes, this is what I’m here for, this is hard but good.”

The same three things are going to happen when you start to regularly ask your email list to make gifts: people are going to drop off your team (unsubscribe), people are going to complain (reply to your emails with whatever is bothering them), and people are going to know they are in the right place (donate).

But most nonprofit email lists are like cross country teams that go on one or two runs a year. That kind of “training” doesn’t make for a very effective team.

Here’s the thing: on your cross country team, you want people who understand that they will need to go on long runs. You want people who will go on long runs even when it’s cold and rainy. You want people who are on the team despite the difficulty, who love the community and the joy of getting better.

And on your email list, you want people who understand that they will be asked to give gifts. You want people who are on your list despite the difficulty, who love the community and the joy of making the world a little bit better.

Your cross country team will be stronger when it is a little smaller, and made up of people who know what it takes.

Your email list will be stronger when it is a little smaller and made up of people who know what it takes.

So if your email list hasn’t been asked very often, be prepared for a few unsubscribes and complaints when you start. But also be prepared for more donations than you’ve received before, more first-time donors, and an email list you can count on when the going gets tough.

How I Learned to Give Directions

Steven Screen | October 16, 2025October 10, 2025Ask

Back in the 90’s I received a lesson in giving directions, and I use that lesson in fundraising every day…

I was writing and producing radio commercials for a national chain of bookstores. At the end of each ad, there were 8 seconds to describe the location of one of their stores. And I was responsible for writing the description of each store’s location.

When I started writing these, my instinct was to start the description in the context of the store. This resulted in descriptions like, “you’ll find us at the NW corner of Harlow and Prescott, across from the museum, in Byron Center.”

This approach puts significant cognitive load on the listener because they must remember a lot of details (which corner? what streets? across from which landmark?) before they even know what town the store is in. And if the town turns out to be close by, the listener then has to “go backwards” and remember the details from before.

Thankfully my boss corrected me and said something like, “don’t start the description from the store, start the description from a place the listener knows. Always write from the known to the unknown.”

This advice changed how I give directions, and how I write.

My revised store directions were much more helpful to people: “You’ll find us South of Grand Rapids, in Byron Center, across from the museum, on the corner of Harlow and Prescott.”

My fundraising writing was better. Before, I tended to write from the context of the nonprofit: “We have 4 programs to help people in our community. And all our programs take a holistic approach to addressing the needs of junior high students who are behind in math.” Today, I start with something the listener knows or understands; “There are local junior high students who are behind in math. Our approach is holistic, and we serve them with 4 different programs.”

Going “from the known to the unknown” makes your fundraising easier to understand quickly because it reduces the cognitive load on your readers.

This ability to meet donors on common ground – to write fundraising that they understand that then helps them see what their gift will make possible through you, is gold.

If you do this, more people will read your fundraising. And when more people read your fundraising, more people tend to give to your nonprofit.