Steven, Author at The Better Fundraising Company

Your Uniqueness is the Eighth Most Important Thing

Steven | October 15, 2024October 10, 2024Ask

A lot of smaller nonprofits believe that sharing their uniqueness will cause them to have fundraising success.

But in my experience, when an organization talks about their uniqueness in their fundraising to individual donors, it causes them to raise less. (In fact, when we start working with organizations that have been making a big deal of their uniqueness, we stop mentioning it and they start raising more money.)

Here’s the deal: there’s nothing wrong with uniqueness, and it’s an important idea in a couple of contexts; but in your letters and emails to individual donors it’s something like the 8^th most important idea.

Here’s an off-the-cuff list of things that are more important to get right in your fundraising to individual donors than mentioning your organization’s uniqueness:

Earning and keeping the donor’s attention
Sharing the situation the beneficiaries or cause are in today
Sharing the size of a gift a donor needs to give to make a meaningful difference
Sharing what the donor’s gift will do to help
Sharing how the donor’s past gift made a difference
Making the letter/email effective for both Readers and Scanners
Making it clear that the donor’s gift is needed

If you’ve done all seven of those things well, and adding a mention of your uniqueness doesn’t diminish any of those seven, then by all means talk about it.

The lesson we’ve learned looking at fundraising results over the years is that uniqueness matters most to insiders and experts. For instance, your unique approach is often a very important point to include in a grant application.

But when you’re talking to your individual donors – the vast majority of whom aren’t insiders or experts – the results make it clear that there are other, more important messages to communicate first.

Mr. Rogers and Fundraising After a Hurricane

Steven | October 10, 2024October 9, 2024Repeat

Mr. Rogers used to tell a story about something his mother would say:

“When I was a boy and would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”

That little story always comes to mind after disasters like Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton. In the pictures and videos you’ll see rescue workers and volunteers who are helping.

It’s also when we Fundraisers play a small role in thousands and thousands of regular people who become “Helpers” – the people who see the news or read our appeals, stop what they are doing, and help by making a gift.

The way humans generously respond to needs will never cease to thrill me. I hope you have the same experience.

Of course, I would prefer that there never be another disaster, large or small.

But when they happen, I’ll appreciate and rejoice in the generosity every time.

PS — If you’re a small nonprofit, and you need extra/emergency money due to hurricanes Helene or Milton, please read this post for our offer to (for free) write an emergency email for you.

Need an emergency fundraising email because of Helene or Milton?

Steven | October 8, 2024October 8, 2024Ask

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

If you’re at a small nonprofit, and hurricane Helene or hurricane Milton has caused you to need extra/emergency funds, we’d like to help; we will write an emergency fundraising email for you.

Our hearts have been broken by what’s happened in the past couple of weeks – and what might happen in the next few days. We know of several organizations that are waaaay beyond capacity. And staff people who don’t have the time, 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:

Fill out this form, and
Give us a brief snapshot of what’s happening for your beneficiaries or organization, and
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 detailed 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.

It’s possible that we won’t be able to write an email for every organization that asks for one. We’ve never done this before, and we have no idea how many people will take us up on this offer.

But we are inspired by the thousands of people who are helping as much as they can 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 help, please get in touch!

It’s The Ones Who Keep Going

Steven | October 3, 2024September 24, 2024Repeat

You know all those big charities you know by name? The ones raising tens and hundreds of millions of dollars?

At one point they were all raising exactly as much as you are now.

They had the same struggles you have, the same doubts, the same looming fears about year-end.

And they kept going.

Sometimes it was all they could do just to make it through the end of the year. Sometimes they added one more small thing. Or tried a new offer. Or focused on a core strategy.

Your beneficiaries and your donors need what you’re doing.

Keep going.

Is Your Email List Trained to Give or to Receive?

Steven | October 1, 2024September 24, 2024Ask

Follow me on this one…

Once people are on your email list, you want them to give you a gift.
If they don’t give you a gift, you want them off your list.
Because the best way to get people on your email list to become donors is to regularly send e-appeals, you should send e-appeals regularly.

The purpose of your email list is a step towards making a donation. Your email list is place for people who are interested to find out a bit more about your organization and then to decide whether to become a donor or not.

So be sure you’re asking them regularly – I’d recommend at least one e-appeal per month asking them to help your beneficiaries or cause.

This will cause the occasional unsubscribe. It will also cause far more people to “take the next step” and make a donation.

For instance, you could send out an e-appeal and get 5 new donors and 1 unsubscribe. That’s preferrable to sending another e-news and getting… nothing.

If you don’t regularly ask your email list to give, your email list will be larger but it will not produce much revenue or many new donors.

You will have trained your email list to receive things from your nonprofit, but not to give to your nonprofit.

Our recommendation: conversations about your email list should center on “Revenue” and “# New Donors”… not size.

What Neil DeGrasse Tyson Can Teach Us About Fundraising

Steven | September 26, 2024September 18, 2024Repeat

Neil DeGrasse Tyson is a famous astrophysicist. Millions of people love him for his ability to explain complex scientific ideas in ways that non-experts can understand.

But you know what? At any given time there are hundreds of scientists who are deeply annoyed at Tyson. Why? Because his explanations oversimplify the complex realities of astrophysics, or the space-time continuum, you name it.

But the videos and TV appearances that Neil makes aren’t for those experts. The videos and appearances are for you and me. The job of those appearances is to get more people interested and involved in the sciences.

In order to do that job, Neil has taken the occasional potshot from an annoyed expert.

The exact same thing is true of individual donor fundraising: in order to get more people interested and involved in a nonprofit, the leader of the organization has to simplify complex realities. This makes the organization more accessible and raises more money, and results in potshots from friends at sister organizations, Board members, and program staff who are experts.

The Red Cross oversimplifies the complex realities of disaster relief. World Vision oversimplifies the complex realities of childhood poverty. St. Jude’s oversimplifies the complex realities of pediatric cancer research and treatment.

The experts in those fields are deeply annoyed at the oversimplification going on in the fundraising done by those organizations.

But the fundraising is not for those experts. And the fundraising done by those organizations has resulted in millions of people being more involved, and billions of dollars raised to make the world a better place.

So this is a call to all the creators and approvers of fundraising out there. If Neil will take a few potshots in order to get more people interested and involved in the sciences, will you take a few potshots to get more people interested and involved in your cause and helping your beneficiaries?

New eBook Released! [download]

Steven | September 24, 2024September 18, 2024Repeat

We’ve excited to share the launch of our new free eBook!

You can download it right here.

Here’s the story behind what you’ll see…

The eBook contains the answer to a question we asked ourselves:

“What strategies & actions made the biggest impact helping our clients raise more than $1,000,000 annually from their individual donors for the first time?”

We wrote this eBook to share the four main strategies that helped organizations leave “six figures” behind and make the leap to raising “seven figures.”

One thing that was encouraging to see: this approach is accessible to even the smallest organizations. None of the organizations we looked at had everything buttoned up in the first couple of years. It was always a phased/iterative approach where they would get a little better each year. And then the improvements they’d make in one area would reinforce the improvements they’d make in other areas.

And for the people we’ve shared this with who have yet to break the $1m barrier, they love having a roadmap and seeing how everything works together.

Download your free copy today, we know it will be helpful for you!

Free Sample ‘Creative Brief’ [download]

Steven | September 19, 2024September 18, 2024Repeat

My last post gave you a helpful, proven process to follow to write and design direct mail fundraising.

One of the steps in that process is the writing of a Creative Brief – a step that’s unfamiliar to many smaller organizations.

If having an example creative brief would be helpful for your organization, at the end of this post I’ve included a link to an example Creative Brief you can download for free.

And if you’re not sure why you’d want to start making Creative Briefs for your projects yet, here’s why a Creative Brief is so helpful…

To review, a Creative Brief is a document that contains all the details for a piece of fundraising (and often for an entire fundraising campaign). These details include who the package will be mailed to, the mail date, the offer, the specs, the creative approach, which story to tell, which photo(s) to use, the production schedule for the project, etc.

Creative Briefs are so helpful because they work for you.

When you write and share a good Creative Brief, you instantly create what amounts to an “External Brain & Project Manager” whose only job is to save you time and help you succeed:

When the copywriter doesn’t remember what to do, they look at the brief.
When the data person wonders which donors to pull for this mailing, they look at the brief.
When the Boss wants to know what the plan is for the April Appeal, you show them the brief.
When you wonder what you did on this project last year, and what the thinking was, you look at the brief from last year.
When you’re teaching a new staff member what you do for fundraising and how you do it, you show them the briefs.

All of which gives you more time to get other stuff done.

And when everyone is working from a brief, you end up with fundraising that’s more cohesive and on-target. You also avoid out-of-left-field situations like “the brochure for the capital campaign looks like a video game” because the freelance designer thought that would be cool. (True story.)

We use briefs for direct mail, email, campaigns, events, radiothons, you name it.

So if it’s helpful to you, here’s a link to download a sample creative brief that I created years ago. I’ve been using some version of this document for over 25 years. Some are 6 pages, some are 1 page, depending on the project and the organization. I’m sure you’ll want to customize it for your needs.

There’s nothing magic about this particular format or the exact info it contains. But what is magic is “thinking it through in advance” and then letting the Creative Brief work for you!

Sample Direct Mail Process

Steven | September 17, 2024September 16, 2024Repeat

What’s your process like for creating direct mail fundraising? Does your process help or hinder your organization?

To (perhaps torturously) borrow from the famous first line from Anna Karenina,

“All organizations that have a successful process for creating direct mail are alike; each organization that has an unsuccessful process for creating direct mail is unsuccessful in its own way.”

After helping a couple organizations improve their process recently, I thought I’d share the process that I’ve seen be the most successful in case it’s helpful to you.

Creative Meeting: this is where the goals of the project are confirmed, the offer and audience decided, the creative approach is determined, and which story to tell is decided. The more details thought through at this stage, the better.
Creative Brief: all the details for the project are written down in the Creative Brief. The Brief then becomes the roadmap for the project.
Copywriting: the copywriter follows the Creative Brief and writes the copy. The resulting “copy package” includes everything needed to design the package, including suggested art direction as well as copy for things like the outer envelope and reply card.
Copy editing: the copy package is circulated, to as small a group as possible, for edits and feedback. One designated person makes the edits and resolves conflicting opinions. Additional rounds of edits are done only when necessary.
Copy approval: the Project Lead gives final approval on the copy and it is sent to be designed.
Design: the Designer designs the package, following the Creative Brief and the copy package.
Design Review: the package is circulated for edits and feedback. Again, one designated person decides which edits will be made. The Designer makes the changes.
Design approval: the Project Lead gives final approval on the design.

Then you’re off to the races…

Of course, there are all sorts of tweaks and changes that can be made. For instance, smaller organizations tend to have one person doing most or all of the steps, and the steps sometimes get combined. Larger organizations tend to have teams of specialists doing just one or two steps each.

But the most successful processes tend to follow the same principles:

Think it all the way through at the beginning
Follow the plan
Keep approval teams small
Empower one person (ideally someone who has experience with direct response fundraising) to make all final decisions, because decisions made by committees result in fundraising that doesn’t work well.

I hope this helps with your process. If you have any advice to share, or improvements to this process, mention them in a comment.

In my next post, I’ll show you the power of having a Creative Brief, and include a sample brief you can download.