Steven Screen, Author at The Better Fundraising Company

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.

The Angels’ Share

Steven Screen | October 14, 2025October 8, 2025Ask

You already know that when a donor gives a gift to an appeal with matching funds, the donor’s gift is doubled.

But did you know that when a nonprofit uses matching funds, the matching funds themselves are more than doubled?

It’s kind of magic, and here’s how it works…

When a match is used in fundraising, it has two well–researched effects:

“Response Rate” goes up. So, if you normally have around 500 people respond to your appeals, if you feature matching funds, you’ll have maybe 600 people respond.
“Average Gift” goes up. If the average gift to your appeals is usually $100, if you feature a match the average gift might increase to $120.

In sum, more people will send in gifts than normal, and the gifts will be larger than normal.

The magical thing is that these things happen at the same time! (Normally response rate and average gift size have an inverse relationship – when one goes up, the other goes down.)

What this means is that, when an organization or donor provides matching funds, the matching funds aren’t just doubled. They are actually multiplied by 2.4!

Here’s how I share this idea with people:

You might think providing $1 in matching funds would cause the organization to raise another $1, producing a total of $2.

But what happens is that the $1 in matching funds causes more people to give than normal, and the gifts are larger than normal, so the organization raises another $1.40, producing a total of $2.40.

This 40 cents of revenue appears out of nowhere! So if you have an appeal that normally raises $10,000, if you add a match you won’t just raise a total of $20,000, you’ll raise $24,000. That’s $4,000 out of thin air.

(By the way, if that doesn’t encourage your Board or major donors to provide matching funds to your next campaign, I don’t know what will.)

Today, I’d like to propose a name for this additional revenue that magically appears: the Angel’s Share.

I’m “stealing like an artist” from the world of wine and whisky distilling, where the term “Angel’s Share” refers to the small amount of liquid that is lost to evaporation during the aging process in a wooden barrel. I’ve always thought that was a beautiful way to frame the loss of a little of their product through evaporation.

And what I like about using “Angel’s Share” to describe the additional money that comes in from using a matching grant is that it’s a gain,not a loss. It’s like a little blessing that’s given to the causes we care about.

Now that you know about the Angels’ Share, be sure to use matching funds in your year-end campaign so you can experience this very real blessing.

And like me, I hope you’ll raise a glass at the end of the year and toast to the Angel’s Share!

True Believers, Casuals, and Onramps

Steven Screen | October 9, 2025October 9, 2025Repeat

Most small nonprofits have beliefs about what they would like their donors to be like.

These beliefs tend to sound something like:

“We want someone to fall in love with our vision for the future” or “We want donors to know that they are investing in creating something” or “We want to connect with our donors in a more partner/visionary way.”

These are great, but limiting, desires.

They are great because donors who do those things tend to give a lot for a long time. Donor who are “true believers” like that are fantastic!

But it’s limiting because organizations that feel this way often create fundraising messaging and programs that are only attractive to true believers.

You know this has happened any time you hear someone say, “To really know what we do, you need to come on a tour.” Or “Come to our event and you’ll really understand.”

That may be true, but wow – that puts a barrier between a person who is interested in your organization and them giving you a gift.

In my experience, organizations that do this rarely grow larger than 50o to 1,000 donors because there are only so many true believers. (There are exceptions to this; if you’re working on a cause that’s incredibly popular or well known, or if people are highly aware of and compassionate about your beneficiaries.)

The trick is to build a fundraising system for your organization that identifies true believers and has put in the work to make your organization accessible to what we might call “casual” donors.

Large organizations have learned over time that most of their true believers are people who have come up through their donor pipeline; they started as $50 donors, upgraded to mid-level, then became major donors, often (but not always) going deeper in relationship with the organization.

So, while we may want all our donors to be true believers and in love with our vision, we make it more likely that we’ll actually achieve our vision if we create fundraising messaging and annual plans that give “casuals” a good onramp into our organization.

Ingredients vs. Main Dishes

Steven Screen | October 7, 2025October 3, 2025Ask

Today I want to point you to a fantastic blog post by Jeff Brooks over at the Moceanic blog.

Jeff writes about one particular letter…

I’m going to show you a four-page direct mail appeal I wrote awhile back. I had an unusually strong story to work with, and I was tempted to over-focus on it by using the techniques of creative writing and journalism. Fortunately, I caught myself in time and turned it back into a fundraising message.

I’m encouraging you to read this because the letter is very good, and it’s always good to be exposed to effective fundraising. And because, as Jeff walks you through the letter, he also shares helpful lessons about how to tell stories that move people to give.

Give it a read!

How to ‘Keep It Simple’ When What You Do Isn’t Simple

Steven Screen | October 2, 2025October 2, 2025Ask

My previous post was about why it’s so effective to focus a piece of fundraising on a specific and low-cost part of your nonprofit’s work.

But many organizations don’t believe they have anything specific or low-cost that they can highlight for their donors. They’ll say, “What we do isn’t quantifiable. How can you put a price on inner peace / justice / the environment?”

So today I’d like to give you a few examples of how to identify and price a specific part of your organization’s work – even if your work seems unquantifiable.

(I should mention that I have tried before to write down all the “rules” for how to do this well, and it results in a multi-page document with decision trees that only a deep fundraising nerd would read. And in my experience, what people really want are real-life examples that they can learn from and apply to their own organizations. So here are some examples that show you the process in action.)

I’ve divided the examples into work that is “quantifiable” and “unquantifiable” – though (spoiler alert) you’ll soon see that all nonprofits have work that is quantifiable.

Quantifiable

Say your organization has a goal to protect 150 acres of wetlands this year. And that preserving these wetlands is only part of what your organization does. Let’ see how specific we can get…

Make a rough determination of the percentage of your total budget that is spent on wetlands preservation. For example, say your total budget is $1.1m, and you spend about 1/3 of your organization’s time and budget on wetlands preservation.
1/3 x $1,100,00 = $366,630. That’s how much it costs you to preserve these 150 acres.
Divide your cost by the number of acres you protect. $366,630 / 150 = $2,444. So, it costs an average of $2,444 to preserve one acre.
- Note: this would make a great major donor offer; “If you give a gift of $2,444 you’ll preserve 1 entire acre of wetlands!”
There are 4,047 square meters in an acre, so divide the cost per acre by the number of square meters in an acre. $2,444 / 4,047 = 60¢ to protect one square meter.
This organization now knows that it costs, on average, 60 cents to protect 1 square meter of wetlands.

Now the organization can say things like:

“It costs less than dollar for you to protect a square meter of wetlands. Think of all the flora and fauna you’ll help protect! The square meter you protect might have a bird’s nest, or be part of a stream that’s full of life. A gift of just $49 today will protect an area of wetlands the size of a pickleball court!”

I’m sure you can see how helping a donor think about their gift in that way makes it easier for the donor to envision their impact.

And I’m sure you can see how – at the moment a donor is reading your fundraising and deciding whether to give a gift or not – seeing that their gift of just 60 cents could preserve one beautiful piece of land that they can instantly envision is more likely to give a gift than a donor being asked to support an organization’s wetland preservation programs.

And the process above works for most anything that’s easily quantifiable; the number of people going to a museum in a day, the number of “nights of safety” provided to a victim of domestic violence, the number of words translated by a Bible translator, you get it.

If you don’t know exactly how many acres of wetlands you’re going to protect (or whatever), you can use the number than you plan to do this year to calculate your cost, or you can use your average per-acre cost from last year.

But now… what should you do if what your organization does is not easily quantifiable?

“Unquantifiable”

Many organizations will say something like, “Well, what we do isn’t measurable. You can’t quantify it.”

My response to those organizations is to share my belief that every nonprofit is ultimately made up of specific, understandable actions. Those actions may produce an outcome that is unquantifiable (think “healing” or “inner peace”), but if a nonprofit utilizes any time or money to achieve its goals, there are actions that can be quantified.

So the technique here is to take anything that feels unquantifiable and break it down into smaller, identifiable actions that individual donors will quickly understand.

Here are some examples from my past, along with a couple of “specific, understandable actions”:

Unquantifiable:

“We provide justice to those who need it”

Quantifiable

Cost to coordinate the “matching” of an attorney who is donating their time and the person who is receiving legal counsel for free
- This would be the “cost per hour” of the salary of the staff member who does the coordinating, multiplied by the number of hours it costs to match one attorney with a client.
  - “Your gift of $37 to CASA provides a person who needs it with an expert attorney they can trust.”
Cost of a legal fee paid for on behalf of a beneficiary
- This would be the cost of the legal fee. (You are free to include the cost per hour of the salary of the staff member who pays the fee.)
  - “Sometimes the only thing standing between a person being free of an abusive landlord is a $115 fee, and that’s what your gift will help pay today.”

Unquantifiable:

“We create networks of peacemakers”

Quantifiable:

Cost per new person added to the network
- This could be the total budget of the organization for a year divided by the number of new people added to the network each year.
  - “The cost to add one new peacemaker to our powerful movement is just $90.”
Cost for training materials for one person
- This would be the total development and printing costs of the training materials, divided by the number of people who receive them.
  - “Just $4 prints and hands our all-important training materials to a new peacemaker so they can have an even greater impact.”

Unquantifiable:

“Help people heal at a sacred place”

Quantifiable:

Cost per visitor
- This could be the total budget of the organization divided by the total number of visitors each year.
  - “Your gift of $49 will welcome one person into the sacred land that both you and I love.”
Cost to maintain one acre of the location
- This would be the total maintenance budget, divided by the number of acres.
  - “I figured out that it costs an average of $155 to maintain one acre of this special place. Will you give a gift to provide enough maintenance funds to care for at least one acre today?”
Cost to maintain one walking path for one month
- This would be the total amount of time spent maintaining paths, times the cost/hour of the people doing the maintenance, then divided by the number of paths, then divided by 12.
  - “Because we boost your gift with volunteer labor, the cost to maintain one of our beloved walking paths is just $75 for a month.”

I think you see the methodology here. It’s breaking down what you do into easily identifiable steps, then figuring out the cost for that step.

Then, the fundraising shows the donor the value of that step.

To borrow from my previous post, when a nonprofit uses this technique they have “reduced cognitive load for the donor, answered a question donors have (‘how much do I need to give to make a meaningful difference?’), and helped show that anyone can make a difference by giving to the organization.”

All of this works together to make your organization more accessible to more people by making it easier for a person to understand what their gift will accomplish.

The Magic of ‘Specific and Low-Cost’

Steven Screen | September 30, 2025September 29, 2025Ask

You might have noticed how lots of nonprofits ask donors to donate to provide low-cost, specific things.

Here are a couple of examples:

A gift of just $37 will fund our website for a day, making all the stories from our independent news site available to everyone.
A complete Thanksgiving dinner and care costs just $5.15.
The cost of an hour of equine therapy for a child with autism is only $53.

Have you ever thought about why nonprofits use this tactic? Once you do, it’s obvious why so many nonprofits do this, and why it works to help organizations raise more money.

By focusing on something specific, with a specific price point, the nonprofit makes three things easier for individual donors:

By focusing on one action, it means the donor just needs to understand the value of that action. In other words, the donor does not need to understand the entire organization, what it does, etc. The donor just needs to understand one simple part.
By providing a specific dollar amount, the donor now knows how much they need to give to make a meaningful difference. Instead of donors asking questions like “Will my $50 do anything?” or “How much do I need to give to help somebody?” they know the answer.
By having the dollar amount be low (say, below $50), the organization communicates that almost anyone can make a meaningful difference. This approach makes the organization more inclusive and accessible, which increases the number of donors who give gifts.

I hope you’ll marvel with me for a moment at how much this tactic accomplishes for nonprofits. In just a couple of sentences, the nonprofit has reduced cognitive load for the donor, answered a question, and helped show than anyone can make a difference by giving to the organization.

No wonder this tactic works so well in individual donor fundraising.

If you feel like your organization doesn’t have something that’s low-cost and specific that your donors can fund, that’s just because no one has taught you how to find it. My next post will feature several examples that will show you how to find one for your organization.

And if you or someone on your team are worried that this tactic will cause your larger donors to give smaller gifts, don’t worry. I talk about this very thing on page 24 of this short, free eBook.

For right now, if this has sparked an idea for something specific that your donors would love to fund, start thinking about featuring it in your next piece of fundraising, or testing it in email sometime soon. I’ve seen many organizations identify something specific their donors love to fund and have their fundraising immediately accelerate to new heights…

Difficult and Joyful

Steven Screen | September 25, 2025September 23, 2025Repeat

Here’s the thing I wish more new Fundraisers heard right at the beginning of their fundraising journey…

Fundraising is hard and always will be. It’s also joyful.

Fundraisers need the emotional strength to ask people for help. You also have to figure out the right people to ask & the right time to ask them & the right way to ask them.

Additionally, you’re regularly exposed to the problem or situation your nonprofit was founded to address.

And yet… fundraising can bring incredible joy if you let it. The fundraising work you do helps fund the incredible programs your organization operates. Those programs cause the change that your organization exists to make.

And you know those donors you have? The ones who have no programs and no way of helping on their own? You make it possible for them to help in powerful ways, and they love to help.

And you get the satisfaction of doing the courageous, emotionally vulnerable hard work of asking for help.

I get deep joy in doing all the hard things to succeed in fundraising in order to fund programs and connect with donors, and I hope you do too.