Steven, Author at The Better Fundraising Company

Need an emergency fundraising email because of the LA fires?

Steven | January 16, 2025January 15, 2025Ask

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

If you’re at a small nonprofit, and the fires in LA have caused you to need extra/emergency funds, we’d like to help: we will write an emergency fundraising email for you.

<< If you don’t work in/around LA, but know someone who does, please feel free to forward this post to them. >>

Watching the fires unfold this week has been heartbreaking. We work with people who have lost their homes.

Knowing how the nonprofit community jumps into action at times like this, there are hundreds (thousands?) of smaller nonprofits in LA who could use some emergency cash. And they don’t have the time or 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:

Send an email to info@betterfundraising.com
Give us a brief snapshot of what’s happening for your beneficiaries or organization
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 detail 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.

We made this offer after hurricanes Helene and Milton last fall, and it was a joy to meaningfully help the organizations who took us up on our offer.

We are inspired by all that nonprofits in the LA area are doing 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 an email, please get in touch!

Approach to Appeals

Steven | January 14, 2025January 14, 2025Ask

This month we’re sharing the ideas and strategies that had an outsized positive impact on the nonprofits we serve.

Today’s idea is that there’s an approach to appeals (appeal letters and e-appeals) that, in our experience, tend to work the best.

Here’s the simplest summary of what the performance data leads us to believe:

The most successful appeals tend to be about the help that your beneficiaries or cause needs now, and how the donor’s gift will provide that help.
The less successful appeals tend to be about help that the organization has already provided, and request support for the organization.

When organizations change their appeals to be about the help that’s needed, and how the donor’s gift will help provide it, two things happen. First, each appeal raises more money. Second, the organization retains more donors year-over year.

Put another way, they start raising more money in the short term and in the long term.

Of course, appeals like this are only one element in an effective donor communications plan. And they take a lot of thought to create. For instance, appeals like this only describe part of an organization’s work. You have to choose which part of your work to talk about, and you have to talk about it in an accessible way.

But if you create appeals that follow this approach, you’ll start raising more money immediately.

***

If you’re interested in what it would look like to have Better Fundraising write and design your fundraising, fill out the “get in touch” form on this page. We’ll reach out to schedule a chat.

And if you fill out the form before the end of the month, we’ll give you our 2024 pricing for all of 2025, a savings of $3,500.

Foundations

Steven | January 9, 2025January 9, 2025Repeat

There are some core, basic principles in fundraising. (As an industry, we tend to not talk about them enough because we silly humans like shiny things.)

But these core principles are part of every successful, national organization I know of. They should be the roadmap for the fundraising programs that small and medium-sized nonprofits are building.

Principles like:

Communicate with your donors regularly.
Focus more on improving the metrics that matter most, like “net revenue” and “retention rate,” and focus less on metrics like “likes” and “awareness.”
Infuse your individual donor communications with emotion.
You have to Ask, you have to Thank, and you have to Report.
Create as many fundraising assets as you can, and fewer fundraising art projects.
Use language your donors understand immediately.
Major Donor Management systems work better than ad-hoc approaches.
Build a donor pipeline. Have steps and benchmarks for everyone from “email list subscribers” to legacy givers.

The surest path to success is to build your fundraising program on and toward these principles.

Then, defend them and enshrine them. Make sure they don’t leave when your current staff do.

You could say these principles are boring, in the same way you could say that a foundation for a building is boring. But you cannot build a reliable, ever-expanding organization without a good foundation.

Take More Steps

Steven | January 7, 2025January 7, 2025Repeat

This post is the first in a series of special posts for January. Last year we kept track of the ideas that had outsized impact on the small and medium-sized nonprofits we serve. Each of the posts this month is about one of those big ideas.

I hope they are helpful as you think about your fundraising this year.

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Every piece of fundraising you make & send is a step on your journey to raising more money.

Here’s the simple truth: the more steps you take each year, the closer you are to raising more money, because you get better when you practice.

You know those organizations that send out 10 appeal letters, 6 printed newsletters, and 50 fundraising emails? They can do that because they’ve practiced so much that their fundraising works great.

They don’t have different donors than you. They don’t have a better cause than you. They’ve just practiced more.

At some point in the past, someone at those organizations said, “Let’s figure out a way to make and send more fundraising.”

If your organization needs someone to say that, you can be that someone.

Don’t be afraid of making & sending more fundraising. The more steps you take, the better you get at taking steps.

For Overcoming the Resistance, We Thank You

Steven | December 24, 2024December 13, 2024Ask

There are a LOT of reasons not to ask for money.

At a conference earlier this year, we asked people to share what their biggest challenge in fundraising was. The following list is just a small sample of the resistance that many fundraisers must overcome in order to ask for support…

“I’ve worked from age 10 to pay my way in life so it’s hard to ask for money”
“Being very new and not knowing where to start and expecting people to say no”
“My boss and his ideas”
“Fear about making a direct ask”
“Knowing how much to share due to the traumatic nature of our work”
“We have a private community that doesn’t want their photos taken or their story touted due to cultural tradition”
“Being too timid or just being intimidated by asking”
“Being new and don’t want to do something wrong”
“Managing all the tasks grants, major gifts, events etc. all by myself”
“Amount of permission / reviewers of fundraising pieces”
“I am a quiet person”
“Having the courage to talk about emotional stakes of children dying”
“Lack of any personal connection with our audience”
“My organization has a general unspoken theory of don’t ask”

There’s a lot that holds people and organizations back from asking for support.

So if you and your organization sent out fundraising this year-end, you overcame the resistance. You overcame the fears, the bosses, and the hurdles.

You showed vulnerability and courage.

You served your beneficiaries or cause, and you served your donors.

Thank you.

Matte, Not Glossy

Steven | December 19, 2024December 13, 2024Ask

In the midst of the holiday hubbub, here’s a tactical tip for you…

I was once part of a test to see if using matte paper, as opposed to glossy paper, would change fundraising results.

Here’s how the test worked:

We took the organization’s active donors (about 80,000) and randomly split them into two equal groups.
After writing and designing their newsletter, we printed half of the newsletters on matte paper and half of the newsletters on glossy paper.
- Just to be super clear, the design and content of the newsletter was exactly the same. The only difference was the finish of paper.
One of the groups of donors received the matte version, and the other group received the glossy version.

The matte version of the newsletter raised more money. Both the Average Gift and the Response Rate were slightly higher.

I’ve replicated these results in other tests, and so have lots of other Fundraisers.

The general understanding for why this happens is that glossy paper reflects more light than matte paper, and the reflections make anything printed on glossy paper a little harder to read. This is especially true for older donors whose eyes don’t adjust between bright and dark as well as they used to.

And as you already know, when your fundraising is harder to read, fewer people read your fundraising. And when fewer people read your fundraising, fewer people give.

The difference in money raised was not astronomical, but it was significant enough that the organization started using matte paper for almost everything (even over the objections of somebody in leadership who thought glossy paper was “more professional.”)

Using matte instead of glossy doesn’t apply to everything. Does the outside of your holiday card to donors need to be matte? No. Can your annual report be on glossy stock? Sure.

But when you desire a response from the piece, and therefore readability matters more, go matte.

Call a Major Who Hasn’t Given Yet (and here’s what to say)

Steven | December 17, 2024November 12, 2024Year-End

Here’s another quick tip for you as the year-end approaches…

Call a major donor who hasn’t given a gift yet.

Here’s what to do (this will be easy for some nonprofits, hard for others):

Make sure you know exactly who your major donors are.
Run a report to see which of them haven’t given in the second half of this year.
Call each Major who hasn’t given recently, or who you think could give another gift
this year.

Here’s What to Say

Our approach is that this call is a reminder – a service to the donor – not a direct Ask.

Take as much of the following script as is helpful to you and the context of each donor.

“I’m calling because I know how much you love helping [beneficiaries/cause], and I noticed that we hadn’t received a gift from you yet, here at the end of the year. You and your generosity have been extraordinary. So I wanted to call to see if there’s anything you need from me, or [your organization name], to help you make a gift or decide to make one.”

Then stop talking. Be comfortable with tension (if there is any). Let the donor speak next and take the conversation from there.

Pro major gift fundraisers will also be prepared with three things:

How much you’d like the donor to give
What her gift will do / the outcomes her gift will create
Reasons her gift is needed before the end of the year

But even if you don’t have those things, make the call. Making the call is the most important element.

If your call goes to voicemail, leave the message on voicemail.

And if you can’t make the call, send an email. But only if you can’t call.

It Won’t Work for Every Major Donor –

Because nothing works for everyone.

But for some majors who have been busy, or traveling, or were on the way to sending you a gift but put down your letter and forgot – you’ll be providing them a great service. You’ll be helping them give a gift that they would love to make!

And you’ll be raising more money!

This post was originally published on December 12, 2019.

Fundraising Portfolio

Steven | December 12, 2024December 12, 2024Repeat

When investing, one of the first principles is to have a diversified portfolio.

You want to have some bonds because they are incredibly stable, which insulates you from risk if something bad happens in the stock market.
You want to have some stocks so that if the economy takes off, you can make serious money.
You want to have some international investments so that, if things go sideways in your country, you’re insulated.

You get the idea.

Now, have you ever thought that your fundraising program is essentially your “fundraising portfolio”? Because the same principle is true in fundraising – you want to be diversified:

You want to have a good in-person relationships with major donors because that’s where most of the money is.
You also want to be good at direct response fundraising (mail, email and phone) because not every major donor will want to meet with you, and because you can inexpensively talk to lots of donors at the same time.
You want to be good at events because there are some donors who will only go to events.

So, now that you’re thinking of your fundraising program as your “fundraising portfolio,” I have three questions for you today:

What’s in your fundraising portfolio?
Is your portfolio diversified? Does it both insulate you from risk and give you a great chance at growth?
Is your portfolio appropriate for your size? (For instance, spending money on “awareness” is appropriate for a $25m organization, but ill-advised for a $1m organization.)

Two Quick Stories

Here are two real-life examples of how a lack of diversification can be harmful…

Example #1 — Five months into the pandemic, a large national organization called us. They were already $20,000,000 behind budget for the year because they primarily raised money at events… but couldn’t do events because of the pandemic. Their organization didn’t know how to raise money through the mail and email, and were hair-on-fire-scrambling to learn how.

Example #2 — Up in Canada right now, because of the Canadian Post strike, it’s tough for nonprofits who rely on the mail because they can’t send letters to their donors! So the organizations who don’t have strong relationships with individual major donors, and/or strong email fundraising, are in real trouble.

Now, if you’re a smaller nonprofit, most of us don’t have large enough budgets to just say “Let’s diversify our revenue streams” and go do it the next year. Diversifications takes both time and money.

But as you plot your growth, diversification of revenue streams should absolutely be a goal.

Nelson Mandela

Steven | December 10, 2024December 6, 2024Repeat

When Nelson Mandela was in prison (for 27 years!) he studied the language of the Afrikaner people who put him in prison.

Mandela shared that “the way to understand people is speak and understand their language.”

Mandela credited his understanding the Afrikaans language with his ability to establish good relationships first with the prison wardens, and later with the Afrikaners who ran South Africa.

Mandela understood the language of the Afrikaners, spoke the language of the Afrikaners, yet advocated for his people.

The same principle is true for highly effective Fundraisers: they understand the language of their donors, speak the language of their donors, yet advocate for the organization’s beneficiaries or cause.

Any time you’re responsible for bridging a gap – whether it’s between different races or between nonprofits and donors – the bridge is more likely to get built if you understand and use the language of the person you’re trying to build it with.