Steven Screen, Author at The Better Fundraising Company

You Must Earn Your Donors’ Attention (they don’t read the whole thing)

Steven Screen | April 17, 2025April 16, 2025Ask

Most nonprofits, without realizing it, make a big assumption when they write their fundraising.

They assume their donors will read the whole thing. The whole email. The whole letter.

That’s a really unhelpful assumption.

Here’s a heatmap of a 1-page direct mail letter. It shows what a donor’s eyes tend to look at, and in what order it happens:

We could spend a lot of time talking about what this means for your fundraising writing and design. But there’s one main lesson I want you to take away…

You Have to Earn and Keep a Donor’s Attention

You cannot assume your donor will read the whole thing.

Well, you can. But you’ll raise a lot less money.

So first you have to earn your donor’s attention. That’s having a great teaser on your envelope. Or a catchy subject line for your email. You need to get good at those things.

For your mass donor fundraising to excel, you need to be better at earning attention than you need to be at describing your organization or your programs.

That might feel like a “sad truth.” But it’s a really helpful truth if you want to raise more money and do more good.

How to Earn Donor Attention

There are three main ways to earn donor attention. You need to make your fundraising:

Interesting to donors. This almost always means talking about your beneficiaries and your cause more than your organization and your programs. Remember: your donor first got involved because
of your beneficiaries or cause, not because of your programs.
Emotional. Emotions are what keep us reading. You want to constantly be using the emotional triggers: Anger, Exclusivity, Fear, Flattery, Greed, Guilt, Salvation.
Dramatic. You want your fundraising to be full of drama and conflict.

Here’s an example. You already know that your first sentence of any fundraising appeal is super important. Take a look at these two:

“[NAME] Theatre is dedicated to producing high-quality, daring productions that take on challenging topics.”

vs.

“I’m writing you today about something you care about – and it’s in danger.”

I can basically guarantee you that more people are going to keep reading the second example. It’s written directly to the donor, it’s about something she cares about; it’s emotional, and it’s dramatic.

The first example – from a real letter from my files – is a classic example of telling the donor something the donor probably already knows and doesn’t really care about.

Note: Arts organizations often say that their fundraising can’t be emotional or dramatic because they don’t have babies or puppies to raise money for. I think the first example above shows that Arts organizations can absolutely be dramatic and emotional in their fundraising – they just need to think about it differently. After all, if a Theatre can’t get dramatic, it’s probably not that great a Theatre!

The Big Lesson

Your donors are moving fast. They don’t read the whole thing, watch the whole thing, or listen to the whole thing.

You need to get great at getting and keeping their attention. Study it. Know what your donors care about and then borrow tactics from advertising and social media to get your donor’s attention. And remember; we have 70 years of best-practices for earning and keeping donor attention. Smart fundraisers have learned a LOT over the years. Tap into it!

Because if you can earn your donors’ attention, they are more likely to keep reading.

And if you can keep your donors’ attention, they are more likely to give you a gift.

This post was originally published on March 12, 2019.

Creating Tension or Revealing Tension?

Steven Screen | April 15, 2025April 16, 2025Ask

I was speaking with a founder of a nonprofit recently, and she said something that was so good I knew I had to share it with you…

We were talking about sharing the needs of beneficiaries in appeals and e-appeals. I shared that we believed in sharing those needs, even though sometimes doing so made donors uncomfortable. Her reply was fantastic:

She knew those stories sometime caused tension in donors, she said.

Then she continued…

“When we nonprofits tell a story that shares the needs of a beneficiary, we don’t create the tension that the donor feels. The story just reveals the internal tension the donor holds between how the world is and how they believe the world should be.”

I love that! It jives with how I’ve always felt: great-performing appeals remind a donor that “something’s not right in the world, but it could be if you help.”

And it hints at why sharing the need is so effective in appeals and e-appeals: it taps into something the donor already knows and feels.

No education is needed. No programs or processes need to be discussed.

It’s like a shortcut to the donor’s heart. To what she cares about most.

Your donors want to make the world a better place. So share “stories of need” in your appeals and newsletters. (Save your “stories of triumph” for your newsletters and other Reporting tactics.)

Use a story to remind your busy donors that the problem your organization is addressing is affecting people right now, today. And that their gift will make a meaningful difference.

When you do, more donors will exercise their values by giving a gift through your organization.

And later – in separate communications – be sure to remind your donors of the good that their gift and your organization has done. Because if you’re going to reveal the tension, you should also reveal the triumph.

Organizations that only do one or the other aren’t raising as much money and doing as much good as they could be.

This post was originally published on October 5, 2021.

The Gap and The Gift

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

There’s a gap between your organization and your donors.

Savvy fundraising organizations know that donors don’t know as much about your beneficiaries or cause as your organization does.

That donors often don’t care quite as much as you care.

That donors often use different words and phrases than you would.

Savvy fundraising organizations know that the people on the other side of the gap are not likely to close the gap themselves. Donors are quite happy as they are, thank you very much. They don’t have a felt need to be educated, learn new jargon, or grow to an expert’s level of understanding.

So savvy fundraisers make the generous act of crossing the gap and meeting donors where the donors are.

That means writing to donors at donors’ level of understanding. It means no jargon. It means being specific, not conceptual.

It means figuring out what motivates donors to give and crafting your fundraising around those motivators – even if those motivators are not what motivates the organization’s staff.

And when you’ve done the generous thing – crossed the gap to meet the donor where they are – then you can ask them to take a first step towards involvement and greater understanding.

That first step? It’s usually a financial gift. A check in the mail or a donation online.

And that gift happens because you gave them a gift, first. You crossed the gap. You went to them.

This post was originally published on November 17, 2020.

Direct mail and… Kale?

Steven Screen | April 8, 2025April 16, 2025Ask

Direct mail is like kale – nobody likes it the first time they try it.

Kale is a tough, leafy vegetable that tastes like a hedge.

But over time, a person can come to see the benefits of eating kale. You start to appreciate kale. And with the right prep and dressings, even enjoy it.

Direct mail is a tough, counter-intuitive, expensive way to raise money.

But over time, an organization can come to see the revenue that direct mail brings in and the relationship it builds. You start to appreciate direct mail. And with the right approach and understanding, even enjoy it.

Kale will never be as enjoyable as a cheeseburger. Direct mail will never be as enjoyable as a great conversation with a major donor, or the emotional high of a beneficiary’s story at an event.

You might not like direct mail or kale. But both of them are still good for you.

This post was originally published on February 6, 2024.

It Can Be Hard to Change Your Ideas about Fundraising

Steven Screen | March 20, 2025April 16, 2025Repeat

I wrote a couple days ago about how smaller nonprofits must often create fundraising messages that they don’t prefer for their fundraising to be more successful.

Today, I want to take a moment to acknowledge that changing your ideas about fundraising can be emotionally difficult.

For a Founder, or for someone who is passionate about their fundraising, it can be a very real struggle to try a fundraising message or strategy that doesn’t personally resonate.

Let me share my own experience with this, in hopes that it’s helpful.

Here’s the thing to know about me: I strongly prefer not to make mistakes. In fact, I hate mistakes. I fear being wrong. I fear being judged.

My fear around avoidable mistakes has positive consequences – for instance, it made me a fantastic student.

But it also has negative consequences. For instance, I’m occasionally a pain in the neck to work with.

So it was challenging for me when I learned that the easiest way for smaller nonprofits to raise more money is to send out more fundraising.

Wait, I thought, wouldn’t the best way be to make each piece of fundraising more perfect? We’ll eliminate all the mistakes, get everything up to best-practices… wouldn’t that bring all the money in?

Nope. I saw again and again that the nonprofits that grew their individual donor fundraising the fastest were seeing that “showing up regularly in donors’ lives” is more important than “showing up perfectly in donors’ lives.”

It didn’t seem possible that “sending more fundraising” could work. It didn’t seem possible that the occasional typo or “wrong thing showing through the envelope window” could work.

But if I’m honest, the real conflict was with my personal preferences and fears. I was thinking, If we have to move faster we’re going to make mistakes. I don’t want to focus on the total number of pieces, I want each piece to be an un-critique-able jewel box of fundraising brilliance. <<pounds podium>> I’m a copywriter and a storyteller, dammit, not some cheap content machine!

I’m poking fun at myself here, but my feelings of discomfort were real.

And you’ll smile at why my thinking on this issue eventually changed; I saw the strategy of “showing up regularly is more important than showing up perfectly” succeed so many times for so many organizations that eventually I realized I would be making a mistake if I didn’t change my thinking. And you know I don’t like to make mistakes. Sheesh.

Anyway. I still don’t prefer the “showing up regularly is more important than showing up perfectly” approach to mass donor fundraising. But I embrace it because it so obviously helps small nonprofits raise more money and increase donor retention rates. And because making the world a better place is more important than my own personal preferences and fears.

So… acknowledging that we all have preferences and fears… and acknowledging that doing things in a non-preferred way can be difficult… is there anything about your organization’s fundraising that should be changed in order to raise more money and fund more work, even if you don’t prefer the change?

Kudos for the Wrong Thing

Steven Screen | March 18, 2025April 16, 2025Ask

Every nonprofit has its own preferences.

The preferences are things like “we use this particular phrasing to describe our work” or “we talk about the people we serve in this particular way” or “we believe donors should support us because of X and Y.”

All good things.

But one of the hard parts about creating effective fundraising at smaller nonprofits is that the fundraising is evaluated according to the preferences of the nonprofit.

For instance…

When you create an appeal that uses the particular phrasing that the staff likes, you get kudos from the staff. The piece of fundraising gets approved & sent.

When you create a newsletter that thoroughly describes a program, the program staff give you kudos. The newsletter gets approved & sent.

When you write something that gets your ED’s “voice” exactly right, the ED gives you kudos, and the piece of fundraising is approved & sent.

The problem here is obvious to anyone who has been reading this blog for a while:

Fundraising that makes staff feel good is probably going to raise less money – when a donor is looking at an email on her phone, how she feels about the message is more important than how staff feel about it.
Thoroughly describing a program is probably going to raise less money – when a donor is looking at a newsletter, how it makes the donor feel about her previous giving matters more than how thoroughly the program is described.
Getting your ED’s “voice” right is a total crapshoot – when a donor is reading an appeal, how quickly he knows it’s relevant to his life & values matters so much more than how faithful the writing is to the ED’s “voice.”

Here’s the result of a nonprofit evaluating its fundraising based on its own preferences: more kudos are given to pieces of fundraising that raise less.

One of the lessons that nonprofits learn as they grow larger & better at fundraising is that the preferences of the staff are most likely different than the preferences of donors.

Once organizations realize that, they begin to give kudos not for “matching internal preferences,” but for results like “percent response” and “net revenue” and “average gift size.” They pay less attention to staff preferences, and more attention to donor preferences (as gleaned from fundraising results).

Your Printed Newsletter: The final Big Idea that brings it all together

Steven Screen | August 29, 2024August 9, 2024Report

Your printed newsletter should be raising a lot of money – as much as your appeals and, in some cases, even more.

The goal of this series has been to give you a tested, proven approach to creating a donor-delighting, money-raising printed newsletter:

Direct mail experts ran a series of head-to-head tests of different types of printed newsletters. The approach detailed here beat all the other approaches.
We’ve used this approach since 2004 to reliably (and sometimes incredibly) increase the money nonprofits raise from their newsletters.
We’ve taught this model at conferences, seminars and webinars. We’ve received hundreds of pieces of feedback about how the approach increased newsletter revenue. You do not need to be an expert to follow this model and raise more money!

So take it this approach and apply it to your organization. Test it against your current approach, or any other approach.

**Be Intentional with Your Newsletter**

Figure out what your organization’s approach is. Discover and name your organization’s underlying assumptions.

Maybe your organization believes that printed newsletters are obsolete. (They aren’t.)
Maybe your organization believes that printed newsletters shouldn’t or can’t raise money. (Neither is true.)
Maybe your organization believes the way you’ve always done your newsletter is the only way your organization can do a newsletter. (Not true.)
Maybe your organization fears that if you change your newsletter in any way, your donors will leave. (Also not true.)
Maybe your organization believes you could do a newsletter like the one taught here, but you could never do an Ask along with it, because it would offend donors. (You guessed it, not true!)

I’ve run into all of these beliefs before. And it doesn’t matter what you believe – what matters is that you identify what you believe that results in your current approach. Then you compare it with the approach outlined in this series and decide which approach to take.

Great newsletters don’t raise money by accident. Content is included for a purpose, and content is excluded for a purpose.

And remember: the primary reason donors read your newsletter is not to hear about your organization. They’re reading because they’re hoping to hear about themselves. Specifically, donors are reading to find out if they and their gift made a difference.

So start with this proven approach that shows and tells donors how they made a difference. And good luck!

This post was originally published on August 11, 2020 in a series of 10 posts on Donor-Delighting Newsletters. This series has been published as an e-book that can be downloaded here.

The Back Page: How to Turn Those Good Feelings into Donations

Steven Screen | August 27, 2024August 9, 2024Report

The back page of your print newsletter is where your donor’s good feelings can turn into another gift… or not.

What’s Happened So Far

If you’ve followed the newsletter approach I laid out starting here, your donor has scanned three pages of your newsletter. Those pages have been full of stories that show and tell the donor how she and her gift made a difference.

You’ve proven to her that her gift to your organization was a good decision.

Unlike other organizations who have sent your donor chest-thumping puff pieces about how busy and heroic their organization is, you have made your newsletter about the donor who is reading it.

She’s thinking, “Finally, an organization that gets me and what I’m trying to do.”

And she feels great!

Let’s Turn Those Feelings into Action

Here’s how to get a regular percentage of those donors to make a gift right then and there:

Feature one story on the top of back page.
That story should be a “story of need” (this is different than the “stories of success” mentioned in this post in this series)
The need should be a need that your beneficiaries or organization are currently facing, or are going to face in the next two months.
Describe how the donor’s gift today will perfectly meet the need. This is your Offer, and you can download this free eBook if you’d like to know more about how Offers work and how to create a great one.
The bottom of the back page should be what we call a “faux reply card.”
- The faux reply card is not meant to be cut off and sent back. The separate reply card you include with your newsletter is what will be sent back. The faux reply card is added because in head-to-head testing it increased the number of people who sent in a gift by 15%.

A successful back page tends to look like this…

Or this…

Want to Get Even More Donors to Take Action?

Pro-level newsletters select their stories to set up the offer that’s used on the back page.

In other words, if the back page is going to tell a story of need about feeding children, the stories in the rest of the newsletter will all be about children who the donor helped feed. Or if the back page is going to share a need to do advocacy work on an issue, the stories in the rest of the newsletter will all be about how the donor has helped fund successful advocacy work.

Put slightly differently: each newsletter has a theme, and the theme is directly related to the offer. The greater the percentage of content that is not on-theme, the lower the amount of money the newsletter will raise.

Your newsletters do not need to be perfectly themed to succeed. But in our experience it increases the chances you will raise more money.

Feelings

It may feel weird to have a story of need and a reply card on the back of your newsletter.

Your newsletter is a Report, after all.

But it works great. This approach raises more money than any other approach that was tested.

And there are no negative consequences to doing your newsletter this way. People do not complain about it. You do not lose donors because of it.

You simply start raising more money with your newsletters. And retaining more of your donors.

Because remember, your donors love to give. All you’ve done with this method is proven to your donor that her previous gift made a difference, then given her a reason to give another gift today.

This post was originally published on August 6, 2020 in a series of 10 posts on Donor-Delighting Newsletters. This series has been published as an e-book that can be downloaded here.

Print Newsletter Design: Readable and Scannable Above All Else

Steven Screen | August 20, 2024August 9, 2024Report

For the smaller nonprofits out there, who don’t have super-pro Designers creating their newsletters, do not worry.

Your newsletter does not need to have fancy or complicated design to be successful.

In fact, fancy and complicated design usually lowers readability – which lowers the effectiveness of your newsletter.

What you’re going for is “clean and easy to read.”

Here are a bunch of examples – kept purposefully small. You will be able to tell at a glance which ones are readable… and which aren’t.

This, Not That

This cover…

Not this cover…

That second cover has too much going on. I think there are six elements in the header alone. Too much copy. Seven different type treatments.

This interior page…

Not this interior page…

That second interior page has far too much copy. The one photo is too small.

This back page…

Not this back page…

The second back page has waaay too much “reverse text” (white text on a dark background) which is very hard to read for older donors. Plus it’s a self-mailer, which raises less money than newsletters that follow the format taught in these blog posts.

The lesson here: look at your newsletter from a few feet away. Does it look friendly? Easy to read? Or does it look thick with information and visually cluttered?

That’s Fine, But What Do I Do?

Here are the general newsletter rules we live by:

Not too much text
13 point typeface or larger
Headlines, subheads and picture captions should always be in a high-contrast color (preferably black)
Use reverse text only when it’s a couple/few words in larger type
Black text on a white background is always the most readable
Don’t put your text in colors that are low contrast (they are harder to read for older donors).
2 or 3 text columns max

Know What’s Most Important

The trick is to know what’s most important.

If you’re judging your newsletter by asking, “Does it look nice and use our brand colors?” you’re asking the wrong question.

The first, most important question is, “Is it easy to read and convey our main message in a couple seconds?”

Nail that. Then add graphic elements and flourishes but keep the text readable.

Because remember, it’s all about readability. If fewer people read your fundraising, fewer people give to your fundraising. So make your fundraising newsletter easy to read!

This post was originally published on July 23, 2020 in a series of 10 posts on Donor-Delighting Newsletters. This series has been published as an e-book that can be downloaded here.