Steven, Author at The Better Fundraising Company

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.

Twelve Percent

Steven | September 12, 2024September 10, 2024Ask

At a conference this summer, I was asked to speak about “why and how to use direct mail.”

I began with the following statistic (from Blackbaud):

Last year the percentage of charitable giving donated through online sources was 12%.

The 12% figure was a total surprise to a significant portion of the audience. I heard one person say, “Wait, WHAT?”

It’s easy to understand why so many people were surprised; the fundraising world is mainly populated with people under 40, and people under 40 do almost everything online. Plus, most of the people were from smaller nonprofits so they didn’t have the context that comes from working in larger, mature fundraising programs.

If you, too, are incredulous that just 12% of funds are coming in online for most organizations, let me share some helpful thoughts for you and your organization.

If your organization is raising more than 12% of your revenues online, that’s fantastic, you’re ahead of the curve. Online fundraising is growing (though not as quickly as everyone assumed it would), so it’s a strength to be getting good at raising money online.
If you’re doing well raising money online, it almost certainly means you could successfully raise money offline. This will give your organization another regular, dependable stream of income.
- Note: if you’ve tried raising money offline and failed, it most likely means the campaign wasn’t executed well, as opposed to meaning that “offline donors don’t like us.”
You actively want to have an online fundraising program and an offline fundraising program because they reinforce each other. It’s a “1 + 1 = 3” situation. An offline program reaches people who aren’t reached by email. An online program reminds people that they forgot to give to the piece of direct mail they set down when the phone rang.

So, what percentage of your organization’s revenues come in online?

And regardless of your percentage, we recommend developing both strong online and offline fundraising programs. The average age of a donor in the U.S. is around 68, so you need both programs if you want to reach both today’s donors and tomorrow’s.

Misleading Metrics (and Unintended Consequences)

Steven | September 10, 2024August 30, 2024Repeat

I wrote recently about a test that gives compelling evidence why nonprofits should not ask online givers to pay the credit card fees associated with their donation.

The test reveals a very handy principle to bake into your thinking as a Fundraiser:

Trying a new tactic is likely to have unintended effects.

In the case of the test above, asking online givers to pay the credit card fees resulted in 60% of donors choosing to pay the fees. That seems like a great result, right? It almost feels like free money.

If the only thing the organization measured and tracked was “what percentage of givers chose to pay the fees,” the tactic would feel like a great success.

However, the tactic also caused more people to abandon the giving form without giving a gift at all. Many people reached the point in the process where they could choose to pay the credit card fees or not… and chose to close the page without giving a gift.

Unintended consequences like this happen all the time to nonprofits. Here’s how to insulate your organization from them:

Be aware they exist. They happen all the time.
Never look at one metric in a vacuum. It is easy to happily focus on one metric while not noticing that other things are being affected, too. If your conversion rate is going up, celebrate it – but also check the size of your average gifts. More conceptually, if you make changes to your fundraising that make your Board happier, celebrate it – but also check to see if your fundraising is still raising as much.
Always always always look at Net Revenue (and, when applicable, retention rates). Net Revenue and Retention are the “mother metrics” – they matter more than anything else.

After you’ve done fundraising for a while, you realize that it’s relatively easy for small nonprofits to increase short term revenue if that’s all you care about. But you’ll tend to burn out your donors.

It’s also relatively easy for small nonprofits to increase retention rate. But if that’s your main goal, you’ll leave a LOT of money on the table and grow very slowly (if at all).

Sales plug – this is why I’m always talking about increasing revenue and retention rates. Increasing both at the same time is the holy grail, and our evidence-based approach is designed to do it.

Here’s my final thought for you today: pay close attention to tests run by large nonprofits and fundraising agencies. Learning from their results will help smaller nonprofits avoid the common potholes on the road to growth. And watch out for unintended side effects!

Credit Card Fees

Steven | September 5, 2024August 30, 2024Ask

Should you ask your donors if they would like to pay the credit card fees for their gift?

Turns out you probably shouldn’t – look at this test done by the always-helpful NextAfter.

Their test showed that asking people making a gift online if they would like to cover the credit card fee of their donation resulted in raising 20.5% less than not asking donors to cover the fee.

Many people chose to pay the credit card fees. However, what also happened is that many people saw the option to pay the credit card fees and chose to not give at all. The result was a 20.5% drop in net revenue. (Click through to the post itself for all the details, which are fascinating if you like that kind of thing.)

Keep this study handy the next time “giving donors the option of paying credit card fees” comes up at your nonprofit!