Steven Screen, Author at The Better Fundraising Company

Three Core Functions

Steven Screen | September 4, 2025September 1, 2025Repeat

The following is from my friend Richard Perry, and it’s too good not to share:

There are three core functions of a nonprofit:

Deliver programs to solve a societal problem.
Inspire and retain supporters to fund it.
Build internal systems that support both.

That is so clear, and so true.

What I like about what Richard says, and why I want to see it spread, is that this thinking convincingly makes the case that Fundraising (“inspiring and retaining supporters”) is equally important to Program. And it specifically calls nonprofits to “build internal systems that support both.”

But if your experience is anything like mine, you feel that most nonprofits do not treat Fundraising equally to Program.

That happens for lots of legitimate reasons: most Founders are program-oriented and naturally focus their time & effort in that area, plus fundraising is by nature uncomfortable to most people. Additionally, fundraising education has not kept up with the explosion of nonprofits in the U.S.

Fine.

But the shift to “treating Fundraising equally to Program” is one that immediately helps the organization. The “flywheel effect” is obvious: the fundraising becomes more effective, the organization is better at retaining fundraising talent, the organization retains more donors each year, and the organization raises more money.

The mature, national organizations I served at the beginning of my career had all made this shift. I think that tells you something.

If you’re a leader of an organization that hasn’t made this shift, it’s worth exploring what’s stopping you.

If you’re working at an organization that hasn’t made this shift, it’s worth sharing this thinking and having a conversation.

The Amount of the Match

Steven Screen | September 2, 2025August 27, 2025Ask

Here’s a super tactical, deep-cut of a post for you. Save or bookmark this for the next time you have a matching grant to use in email or the mail.

Specifically, this post is about how to communicate the amount of matching funds you have.

Most pieces of fundraising always mention “there is a match” and the “amount of the match” in the same breath throughout the letter. You don’t want to do that.

The fact that you have a match, and the amount of the match, are two distinct pieces of information. And one of them is far more important than the other.

Here are the rules of thumb that we try to live by…

Guiding Principles

It’s the match itself that makes people respond, not the amount of the match. Therefore, the amount of the match is not a piece of information we want to over-communicate or over-emphasize.
The amount of the matching funds only needs to be mentioned once in the email or letter. Sharing the amount honors the provider of the match, and lets donors know that the funds are limited.
Include the amount of the match on the landing page and/or the reply card. Do this so that donors who don’t have the letter or email will still see that the funds are limited. But remember that other copy points like “the donor’s gift doubles” and “what the gift will do/fund” and “the deadline” are more important for creating a response than the amount itself.

Specific Guidelines

Even though you should mention the match itself early and often, mention the amount of the match just once in the email or letter.
Specifically, mention the amount of the match the second time the match is mentioned in the body of the email or letter.
- For example, in the context of a letter I will highlight that there is a match on the outer envelope, in the upper right corner/johnson box, and in the first three or four paragraphs of the letter. Then, the second time the match is mentioned in the letter, I include the amount of the match. (This usually happens 1/2 or 3/4 the way down the first page of the letter.)
If you want to mention the amount again on the second page, fine. But do it at least three paragraphs before the end of the letter. Don’t mention the amount in the PS.

Edge Cases

If the amount of the match is so large that it’s almost a news item of its own, mention the amount of the match more often. For instance, say you’re a small organization and you’re given $500,000 in matching funds. By all means, mention it more than once.
- But remember – for the donors reading your letter or email, it’s still usually more important that “their gift will be doubled” than “how big your match is.”
When using email or social to promote a match, mention the amount more often when the matching funds are almost gone. As in, “There are only $570 in matching funds left, give now to have your gift doubled!”
Sometimes the amount of the match is very important to the person / Foundation / Organization that has given it. If you need to mention that amount more often for them, no problem.

I hope these rules of thumb help you raise even more money the next time you have a matching grant!

Who Is Shining?

Steven Screen | August 28, 2025August 27, 2025Ask

You know games like Monopoly or Uno or Exploding Kittens? Well, of the Top 5 best-selling games in the world right now, three of them were created by one guy.

His name is Elan Lee. He is one of the top “game designers” of our generation.

And here’s what Elan said recently when talking about creating games:

“We do not make games that are entertaining. We make games that make the players entertaining.”

Read that quote again. Seriously. I had to read it three times before I really understood that second sentence.

He wants players to have the feeling of, “I was fun to be with, and the people I played with were fun” – not “that game is so fun.” He knows that if the players feel great about themselves when playing the game, they will want to play again.

Put another way, he wants the people playing the game to shine, not the game itself.

This idea perfectly maps over to fundraising.

Think about your organization’s fundraising to individual donors for a second. And think about your donors as “the people playing your game.” Does your fundraising make the people playing your game shine, or does your fundraising make your organization shine?

For instance, is your fundraising to individual donors mostly about your organization, mostly about the great things you’ve already done, and then asks your donors to support your work? If so, you’re making your organization shine.

But fundraising to individual donors is a lot like human relationships: if you can make someone feel good about themselves, they are likely to feel good about you.

Helping a person feel and be great is a surer path to relationship than telling them that you are great.

There are millions of people playing Elan Lee’s games because he designed the games to make the players shine. If you’d like to have more people donating to your organization, design your fundraising to help your donors shine.

10 Years of Above Average Growth

Steven Screen | August 26, 2025August 20, 2025Repeat

There’s a nonprofit that Better Fundraising has been serving for about 10 years. And during those years, the nonprofit has experienced above-average growth.

I was asked to summarize why this organization’s fundraising to individual donors has experienced this uninterrupted run of success. And I’d like to share that summary with you in case it helps you raise more money.

We have the following beliefs about the world and about individual donors:

We’re in a world where there are almost twice as many nonprofits the U.S. than there were 25 years ago.
We live in a world where people receive, on average, between 6,000 and 10,000 marketing messages per day
We believe that individual donors are materially different than staff, board members, or volunteers. We believe that individual donors are not subject matter experts like we are, and they care about and value different things than staff do.
We know that the average donor in the United States is 68 years old.
In the context of direct response fundraising (direct mail, email, phone, radio), we know that Individual donors tend to make the “give-or-not-give” decisions in mere seconds.
We believe that many donors would love to give more than once per year, but that’s only likely to happen if we ask them to.
We believe that donors appreciate knowing reasons and stories that show the organization’s work (and the donors’ support) is needed today.
We believe that communicating often enough to donors so that the organization is a regular, relevant presence in their lives will lead to more donations than occasional or sporadic communications.

These beliefs lead us to create direct response fundraising and major donor programs with the following goals:

Communicate with donors more often than internal audiences might think is necessary.
Create communications that are dramatic and urgent, in order to break through the noise and earn donors’ attention.
Write and design our communications to touch donors’ values and emotions more than trying to appeal to what the organization values.

These beliefs and goals have led to 10 years of above-average growth.

There’s more than just beliefs and goals, of course. You have to maintain your database. You have to learn what does (and what doesn’t) go on an effective landing page. You have to learn how to structure a major donor development system.

But all of those are tactics that can be learned by anyone.

If your fundraising isn’t regularly and consistently growing, look at the beliefs and goals that drive your fundraising program. And if you need a new belief or goal, the ones above are a great place to start because they are proven to guide you to make tactical choices that will help you build deeper relationships with your donors and raise more money.

Embrace the ‘In Between’

Steven Screen | August 21, 2025August 18, 2025Ask

The time in between when you make a fundraising ask, and when you start to receive gifts, is tough.

You’ve completed your work. You’ve thought it through. There’s nothing you can do to make it better and then of course you start to worry. What if there’s a typo? What if the link goes to the wrong page? What if, as the people at your event pick up their giving forms, they aren’t inspired?

But also, it’s a time of excitement and expectation. You can’t wait to have people react to it, to hear what questions they have, to see the money start to come in.

And you never know whether it’s going to work. (Well, when it’s the 15^th time you’ve done a Back To School campaign and they all work great, you are pretty sure. But you still don’t know.)

And after the “in between” tension of waiting, there’s the first gift that comes in 3 minutes after you send the e-appeal. There’s the long-lapsed major donor who calls after receiving your letter. And sometimes it’s middling results and a realization of what you could have done better. Every once in a great while it’s just mostly silence.

Always exciting. Sometimes a little stressful.

This tension and expectation “in between” will always be a part of trying to grow your impact. Because if you want to grow, you need to talk to more people than you can talk to one-to-one. Which means that for the life of your organization you’re always going to be making asks of groups, and sending out letters & emails, and then experiencing the “in between.”

Embrace it.

How to Make Sure a Low-Priced Offer Does NOT Produce Small Gifts

Steven Screen | August 19, 2025July 17, 2025Ask

Here’s a question I get every time an organization is thinking about using a good fundraising offer with a low price point:

“OK, so our offer is $7. Are we going to get a ton of $7 gifts? Aren’t we going to raise less money this way because our donors are going to give less?”

The short answer is:

Not if your Ask Amounts for each donor are at or above what that donor gave last time.

Let me explain…

Offer Amount vs. Ask Amount

There’s a difference between your Offer Amount and your Ask Amounts.

Your Offer Amount is the cost of your offer – the cost to do the thing you promise will happen if a donor gives a gift. (We’ve talked about how those amounts should usually be less than $50.)

Your Ask Amounts are the amounts you list for your donor to give on your reply card. They often look something like this:

[ ] $50
[ ] $100
[ ] $150
[ ] $_______

Those are your Ask Amounts. (This is also often called “gift ask string” or “gift ask array” but we’re going to refer to them as Ask Amounts for clarity’s sake.)

Think of it this way:

Your Offer Amount is how much it costs for the donor to do one meaningful thing.
Your Ask Amounts are how much you’d like the donor to give today.

Make sense? Still with me?

How Smart Organizations Raise More Money

This is simple to explain, but it takes a bit of work to do. But here’s what the smart organizations do:

They customize the Ask Amounts for each and every donor.
The customized Ask Amounts for each donor are in increments of the Offer Amount.

Here’s what that looks like. Say I had recently given a donation of $100 to an organization. And they were writing me with an offer of “$35 will train one volunteer to advocate for our cause.” My Ask Amounts would look something like:

[ ] $105 to train 3 advocates
[ ] $140 to train 4 advocates
[ ] $210 to train 6 advocates
[ ] $______ to train as many advocates as possible

There’s a lot going on in that example that’s helpful.

First, the Ask Amounts are all in $35 increments – increments of the Offer Amount. Because remember, your whole letter (or email, or newsletter, or event) should be about the Offer. So it will make more sense to your donor if your reply card has amounts that are based on the offer you are writing them about.

Second, the beginning Ask Amount is at or above how much I gave last time. This is key to helping donors give how much they gave last time… or more!

Third, the description text (“…to train 3 advocates”) describes how many of the outcomes my gift will fund. This helps donors know exactly how much good their gift will do. It’s a proven tactic.

To do this, most smaller organizations use Excel to calculate the Ask Amounts and Outcome Amounts (“3 advocates”) for each donor. Then they merge in those amounts onto the reply card.

This takes real work. It’s worth it.

The Benefits to You

When your Offer Amount is low, and your Ask Amounts are at or above how much your donor gave last time, two positive things happen:

More people respond because your barrier of entry is so low. In other words, more people respond because it costs so little for them to make a meaningful difference.
You’ll raise more money because donor’s gifts will usually be at or above what they gave last time.

Increasing the number of people who respond + keeping their gifts at the same size or larger = more money for your cause!

This post was originally published on May 7, 2019 as part of a series on creating successful offers. Click here to download the e-book we created from these posts.

“You” is the magic word for newsletters

Steven Screen | August 14, 2025July 17, 2025Report

Here’s an easy-to-follow tip to increase the amount of people who read your next newsletter:

Use the word “you” as the first word of the main headline on your cover.

That tells your donor right away that the newsletter is to her, and for her. And don’t you think she’ll be more likely to read if you signal to her that the newsletter is about her in some way? Versus what most organizations do, which is talk about themselves?

Want another tip? Use the word “you” again – in either the subhead or the first sentence of the main story.

Now you’re signaling to the donor that this really is about her. That the “you” in the headline was not just “donor-centered window dressing,” but was a signal that your organization really does care about her.

And now your donor is thinking, “Hey, this organization might be different from the other organizations I give to. They might appreciate me.”

And one final tip: use the word “you” in every single picture caption.

My rule is that picture captions should not be about what’s happening in the photo. Picture captions should be about the donor’s role in what’s happening in the photo. So instead of “Lisa and Laure enjoyed a week of summer camp at our facility” it should be, “Thanks to you, Lisa and Laura enjoyed an incredible week of summer camp!”

Now you’ve really done it. Your donor knows that you sent her a newsletter that’s about her and about what her gift accomplished.

That’s a Big Deal! Because very few (if any) of the other nonprofits she’s giving to have taken the time and money to show her what her gift did.

Some of them have sent her chest-thumping newsletters about what the organization did. But none of them have gotten in touch with her to tell her what she did.

Big difference.

And when you use the word “you,” she’s more likely to read more. And to know more about your organization. And to give more the next time you send her an appeal.

All from using the word “you” more often.

Think about it this way. As a donor, which type of newsletter would you like to receive: a newsletter that’s to everybody and all about the organization, or a newsletter that’s to you and all about what your gift did?

You know which one your donors would prefer. So follow these tips and make them one!

This post was originally published on September 10, 2019.

Why You Shouldn’t Use the Word “Vulnerable” in Your Appeals

Steven Screen | August 12, 2025July 17, 2025Ask

Though I’m a great believer in being vulnerable when you create your fundraising, I never use the word “vulnerable” when writing fundraising.

And when organizations that I work with use the word “vulnerable” or the phrase “the most vulnerable,” I delete it.

Here’s Why

When you’re Asking for support in your appeals and e-appeals, what usually works best is to present donors with a problem that is happening right now, one that the donor can solve with a gift today.

The problem with the word “vulnerable” is it accidently tells donors that there is not a problem today.

According to Webster’s, Vulnerable means:

Capable of being physically or emotionally wounded.
Open to attack or damage

Look at those definitions again. In both of those cases there is nothing wrong right now. A person is “capable” of being hurt. Or is “open to attack.”

Think about it this way. Say you received two simple e-appeals right next to each other in your inbox. One e-appeal asked you to give a gift to help a person who is in need today. The other e-appeal asked you to help a person who might be in need sometime soon. All things being equal, most donors will give to help the person who is in need today.

By describing your beneficiaries as “vulnerable,” you’re focusing donors’ attention on the fact that there’s nothing wrong yet. You’re telling donors that there might be a problem in the future. So there’s less of a reason for a donor to give a gift right now.

By using the word “vulnerable” you’ve caused fewer people to send in a gift today.

Here’s What I Replace “Vulnerable” With

Instead of focusing on what might happen, focus on what’s happening right now.

What this usually means is that instead of focusing your fundraising on all the people who might need help, you focus it on the people who need help right now.

Here are a couple of examples…

“Your gift to help vulnerable children in our schools learn to read will…” becomes, “Your gift to help a child who is a grade behind in reading level will…”

“Your gift to protect people who are vulnerable to this disease will…” becomes, “Your gift will help people who have this disease by… “

“Your gift will help the most vulnerable…” becomes, “Your gift will help the people who need it most right now…”

If your organization uses “vulnerable” or “the most vulnerable,” edit your future fundraising to talk about the people (or a person) who needs help now. You’ll start to raise more money.

The Big Picture

If you stop using “vulnerable,” will your next appeal raise twice as much money? No.

But if my experience is any indication, I think you’ll raise more money than you’re raising now.

Two reasons.

First, even though your use of “vulnerable” is a small thing, successful appeals and newsletters are made up of a hundred of small things. The better you get at noticing and improving the small things, the more money you raise.

Second, not using “vulnerable” is a very real step on the way towards a powerful principle to operate by. The principle is that you’ll raise more money with your direct response fundraising (appeals, e-appeals, radio, TV, etc.) if you share the most compelling problems your organization and/or beneficiaries are experiencing right now.

Sharing a current problem (not a potential future problem) with donors is one of the ways you can break through all the noise and increase the number of people who send you gifts.

And anything you can do to break through all the noise right now will help, don’t you think?

This post was originally published on June 18, 2020.

LIST of what to “repeat” to save time and raise more money

Steven Screen | August 7, 2025July 17, 2025Repeat

I know the idea of “repeating” fundraising you’ve done before doesn’t make sense at first. And it can feel weird.

That’s why I want to talk about the secret of “repeating” – just think of it as a tool that savvy fundraisers use to save time and (surprisingly) raise more money.

What We Mean by “Repeat”

When we say you can “repeat” something, here’s what we mean in a nutshell: do the same thing again, but slightly differently.

Send the same letter again, but slightly reword it
Send the same email again, but slightly reword it
Run the same event again, but with a different beneficiary speaker
Send the same letter again, but with a slightly different design

Are you picking up what I’m laying down?

And in some cases you can send the exact same thing. Same email. Same letter. We’ve done both of them and they’ve both worked:

My podcast partner Jeff Brooks tells a story about an organization that sent an appeal every month. One month it accidentally sent out the exact same appeal that it sent the previous month – and it raised more money the second time!
I think about an organization that took half their donors and sent them the same exact email the last four days of the year. Those donors gave more than the other half of their donors who received four unique emails.

Because remember:

Most of your donors aren’t paying that close attention
Many donors need to hear something twice (or more) before they pay attention and really think about it

When to Repeat Letters and Emails

Here’s how to repeat your appeal letters and your emails.

If you are doing something that you did the year before, you can repeat it.

Say you send out a Thanksgiving appeal last year, and you’re going to do another one this year. The first thing to do is to look at last year‘s Thanksgiving appeal and its results.

If the results were better than the previous year, repeat it. Don’t write a completely new email. Don’t design a completely new letter. Make only the minimal number of changes you need to make.

The same is true for anything you do each year. Here’s a list of things we’ve repeated to great success, and I’m sure there are more examples:

Year-end / Thanksgiving / Back-to-School / etc. – letters & emails
Facebook campaigns
Events
Giving Tuesday
Renewal
13^th Gift
Sponsorship/monthly giving upgrade campaigns
Monthly giving recruitment

You name it. If you do it every year, you should be repeating it and making slight tweaks to make it better, not reinventing the wheel.

When You Repeat, Watch Out for…

Here’s what to watch out for when you’ve decided to repeat a fundraising tactic…

Any detail that was true last year, but not this year. You need to update anything that’s not true. New ED? Update the name at the end of the letter. This year’s “Thanksgiving Meal” costs $1.93 instead of $1.92? Update the letter. Your organization now rescues Wombats? Add “wombats” to the list of animals you rescue.
Does the story need to be updated? Many letters contain a story about a person that illustrates the need. That story should be swapped out and replaced with a new story. But the rest of the letter doesn’t have to change.
Note: this is true for events as well.
Doing too much. Don’t make too many changes just because you’re in there.

Story Time with Steven

I used to write appeal letters and emails for The Salvation Army. They are a fundraising machine who has all of this down to a science. (You might read that they are a “fundraising machine” and think, “Well, that would never work with my donors.” Please be open to the idea that it would work. Many of your donors also give to the Army.)

Most of the time I would receive the following instructions when it was time to write a letter:

“Here’s last year’s letter. It worked great. Update it for this year and change only what’s absolutely necessary. Do not mess this up.”

Inspiring!

No, not really. At least if you’re a ‘creative type’ like me.

But that’s how you build a mature fundraising program that raises the big bucks. You take something that works. You repeat it. You refine it. You look for little ways to make it better. You watch the results closely and look for what donors love, as told through their giving.

Over time you build a money-raising machine that allows you to do so much good in the world that people come to learn fundraising from you.

Listen, a lot of people don’t like hearing this. They want to be creative. They want to love the fundraising they send out.

I’m the same way. I get bored writing the same emails for the second (or tenth) year in a row.

But over time, if you look at the results, it becomes really obvious that if you repeat what worked before, you’re going to raise more money.

Please trust me – I’ve banged my head against that wall enough time to have a small dent in the middle of my forehead. (Well, actually that scar is from my sister throwing a Hot Wheel at me, but it’s a better story if it’s a fundraising scar.)

You are going to be tired of what you’ve been doing. So will your boss and your Board. You’re going to want to do it differently. You’re going to want to ‘come up with a new theme for this year’!

Don’t give in. Keep doing what’s been working great. You’ll raise more money each year.

If you invent a new approach each year you’ll be causing two problems: #1, you’ll be raising less money; and #2, you’ll be taking a LOT of time you could be using to do something else. Like, you know, focusing on major donors, where 90% of your individual donations come from. Or acquiring new donors, who are the future of your organization.

But Whither Innovation?

I’m going to write a post later this month on ‘how to innovate when you’re in a culture of repeating what’s worked in the past.’ Because you have to innovate.

But you want to innovate in a way that minimizes your risk. And I’ll share how to do that. But here’s an analogy to tide you over…

If you’re Apple, do you decide to stop making the iPhone and replace it with something completely new? No. You keep on updating, tweaking the iPhone to make it better each year. And you keep releasing different versions of the iPhone to try out new ideas.

Sheesh

Enough rambling. I hope the concept of “repeating” is making sense. I know it’s not how normal nonprofits operate. But it’s one of the secrets that savvy fundraisers have discovered – and you should be using it. You’ll save time, and you’ll raise more money.

If you’d like to have me help your organization know what to repeat – or to tweak what you’re doing to make it even better – get in touch!

This post was originally published on June 7, 2018.