Steven, Author at The Better Fundraising Company

Thanks for Being a Fundraiser

Steven | November 23, 2023November 21, 2023Thank

Today we’d like to thank you for being a Fundraiser.

You help your beneficiaries or cause with the funds you raise.

You help your organization fund needed programs and incredible impact.

You help donors see what’s happening in the world, and you give them a way to get involved.

That’s a lot for one job!

If you’re celebrating Thanksgiving here in the U.S. like we are, I hope you get a moment to breathe deep, relax your shoulders, and appreciate all the good you’ve done this year.

The work you do matters, and it makes a difference.

Thanks for being a Fundraiser!

The Power of a Belief

Steven | November 21, 2023November 21, 2023Ask

Here’s a quick story about how an organization’s beliefs about donors unknowingly drove their fundraising strategy…

We serve an organization that has a large number of monthly donors.

I asked them if they had ever asked their monthly donors to give a little more each month. “No,” came the answer, “we’ve never done that.”

I suggested we run a short campaign to their monthly donors asking them if they’d like to upgrade their giving. It’s my belief that almost every organization has a lot of donors that are willing and able to give more.

But some folks around the table were nervous – they had a different belief. They agreed that some small number of their monthly donors would and could give more. But they believed that a greater number of their monthly donors would complain or completely cancel.

In other words, they believed that their monthly donors (as a group) were giving as much as they were willing and/or able to give.

I shared a couple of stories of campaigns like this I’d successfully run in the past. And we decided to go ahead with the campaign.

The results were spectacular. A thrilling number of monthly donors chose to give more each month. Plus, those donors increased their monthly gift by even more than we thought they would.

As far as I know, there were zero cancellations.

And the impact? The organization started raising an additional $60,000 every single month.

Lesson #1

An organization’s beliefs about donors drive its strategy, its annual plan, and even its copywriting.

If you believe your donors are willing and able to give more, you do things like ask monthly donors if they would give a little more each month. You send more appeals and e-appeals, and you ask major donors to give larger amounts.

If you believe your donors are willing and able to give more, you write things like, “Will you please send in a gift today” instead of the equivocating, “Will you please consider sending in a gift today?”

Should you be smart about which donors you include when you do this? Of course. If you have a monthly donor who has told you that she’s on a fixed income and can’t give any more each month, don’t ask her to upgrade. If you have major donor who has told you that they aren’t going to give any more this year, then don’t ask them.

Your organization has a set of beliefs about donors, and fundraising, and money. Often those beliefs are unstated. But they are driving your strategy, your annual plan, and even your copywriting.

Do you believe that your donors are willing and able to give more?

Lesson #2

There are real costs to believing your donors can’t or won’t give any more.

The organization above could have been raising that additional $60,000 every month the previous year. And the year before that. Think of the impact that was missed!

My goal in pointing this out is not to make all of us (myself included) feel bad for all the opportunities we’ve missed over the years.

My goal in pointing this out is for all of us to realize that our beliefs about donors and fundraising have real-world consequences.

In my experience, believing that “many of our donors are willing and able to give more” will have positive real-world consequences. Believing that “our donors are giving as much as they are willing and able” will have negative real-world consequences.

Try It On

So here’s what I want you to do. I want you, just for a moment, to “try on” the belief that your donors are willing and able to give more. Name one thing you would do differently.

Now, make a plan to do that thing. Your organization (and the additional people you’ll help) will be thankful that you did.

Bittersweet Moments of Clarity

Steven | November 16, 2023November 15, 2023Ask

When you get better at something, there’s that bittersweet moment where you’re thinking two things almost simultaneously:

Oh man, I’ve been doing it wrong all along… and
Hey, I know how to do that better now!

In those moments, it’s as if you see the world a little more clearly than you did before. You understand how things work a little better than you did a moment before.

I had one of those “moments of clarity” recently, thanks to the impressive and irrepressible Jen Love.

We were on a panel at the Storytelling conference talking about direct response fundraising. I shared one of my writing tools: starting the first draft of every appeal and e-appeal with the sentence, “I’m writing to you today because….”

(I’ve written about why that’s an effective tool here and here.)

Jen then said something like, “Yeah, I love that. I’ve taken it a little further and what I use is, ‘You’re hearing from me today because…’.”

Cue my moment of increased clarity.

Her version is better than mine! It starts with the magical word, “you.” It places the donor in a more active role with more control. It leads to more writing about the donor and what they care about, and less about the organization.

~~I share this with you today because~~… You’re reading this today because you know that the more moments of clarity you can have, the more effective a fundraiser you’ll be.

But there are Fundraisers and organizations who don’t really want those moments of clarity. They like their way of doing things. Or they can’t believe that your moment of clarity could apply to them, their communications, or their donors. For those organizations, getting better at fundraising is a challenge.

But if you seek out those moments – if you’re eager to find out that what you’ve been doing is a little wrong, and that there’s a better way to do it – getting better at fundraising and raising more money is delightful.

In my experience, the most effective fundraisers are having “moments of clarity” all the time. Because of those moments, they see the world a little more clearly. And they create fundraising that’s more effective.

Hey, about your envelope…

Steven | November 14, 2023November 13, 2023Ask

This blog post from Five Maples shares the results of a head-to-head test of the envelope on a direct mail appeal for a nonprofit.

Their donors were split into two equal groups. One group received a letter in an envelope that included the organization’s tagline. The other group received the exact same letter, but the envelope did not have the tagline on it.

The tagline on the envelope was the only difference.

The test showed that including the tagline on the envelope reduced the number of people who responded by 65%. Put another way, putting their tagline on the envelope reduced the number of people who sent in a gift by over half.

Let’s notice that this test isn’t about all taglines. It’s about that organization’s tagline, on that piece of direct mail.

But still, that is a massive impact.

You can take three lessons from this simple test that will make you a more effective fundraiser.

Lesson #1

If your organization is putting its tagline on your outer envelope, do you know if it’s helping or hurting?

If you don’t know, it’s time to ask questions instead of making assumptions.

(By the way, there is ZERO judgement here if you’ve been making assumptions. We all do it at the beginning of our fundraising journey.)

Lesson #2

A bigger lesson this data teaches is that what you put on your envelope matters. A lot.

There are very smart people who argue that what you put on the envelope matters more than what you put in the envelope. How’s that for a brain-breaker? Because if your recipient doesn’t open your envelope, what good does the incredible message inside do?

I don’t spend much time on that argument because I think it’s a chicken-or-egg situation – but it is fun to talk about with other Fundraising nerds over a drink.

Moving forward, you want your organization to be thoughtful about what’s on your envelopes and in your email subject lines (which are more-or-less equivalent). And if you want to know more about this right now, the blog post mentioned above is a great place to start.

Lesson #3

Data about fundraising will help you know what’s important and where to spend your time.

For instance, I spend a ton of time on outer envelopes, and on the description of what a donor’s gift will accomplish. I spend almost no time trying to make sure an appeal matches a nonprofit’s “voice.” I make those decisions because data shows how much envelopes and descriptions matter, and how using an organization’s voice in the mail usually causes them to raise less money, not more.

For what it’s worth, in my career I’ve tried to develop what I think of as an “evidence-based worldview” for how to be successful in fundraising. That worldview is made up of as many test results (like this one!) and facts that I can get my hands on.

If you can build a worldview like that, you’ll have a good idea of what path/tactic/approach will have the best chance of success, regardless of the situation.

And if you’re just beginning to build your worldview, this little test about a tagline on an envelope is a great place to start!

Response Rate Goals

Steven | November 9, 2023November 8, 2023Ask

At last week’s Storytelling Conference, I was asked a really good question:

“My organization is new to direct mail. What kind of response rates should I be getting?”

In case it’s helpful to you, here’s my answer:

For printed appeals my goal is a 4% response rate

For printed newsletters my goal is a 3% response rate

Those are helpful benchmarks, and I hope they help you judge how your mail is performing.

But I have to mention, things start to get interesting right away. Take a look at these variables:

The more donors you have, the lower your response rates tend to be. For an organization with 40,000 donors, achieving 3% for an appeal and 2% or 2.2% for a newsletter might be success.
The fewer donors you have, the higher your response rates tend to be. If you have 500 donors, you might be getting a 6% response rate on appeals, and a 4% response rate on newsletters.
Finally, who you include on the mailing list is another big variable. If you include your monthly donors, your response rates tend to go up. If you include lapsed donors who haven’t made a gift in 36 months, your response rate will go down.

I hope this helps you or your team have benchmarks and goals to aim for. And that there are variables that need to be taken into account. What “success” looks like varies quite a bit from organization to organization – even from mailing to mailing.

The important thing is to measure your results so you know what works best for your organization, and then do more of that!

Trust Your Donors

Steven | November 7, 2023November 6, 2023Ask

If you’re at an organization that has a hard time approving new ideas in fundraising, keep reading.

(And maybe you’ve just arrived home from last week’s Nonprofit Storytelling Conference with your head full of new ideas you’d like to try!)

To many people working in nonprofits, new fundraising messaging and tactics can feel deeply risky. And so, some of your team will push back against your new ideas.

To those people, when they push back, here’s what I want you to say…

“I want you to trust our donors. I want you to trust that they could be giving more, and that they are adults.”

“I want you to trust that their support is deeper than a new message, new tactic, or new appeal could shake.”

“Let’s trust that our fundraising right now is not the best it can ever be. And let’s trust that, like larger organizations, we can regularly try new things and improve over time.”

Will each donor say “yes” every time we try something new? Of course not.

Will every “something new” work better than the thing it replaces? Of course not.

But until you trust your donors enough to regularly try new things, to ask for support more often, and try new messages, you’ll never tap into all the giving available to you.

Don’t let internal worries and fears put boundaries around your donors’ generosity. It’s your donors’ job to set their boundaries, not yours.

Trust your donors. Their generosity will astound you.

‘Pre-Existing Condition’

Steven | November 2, 2023October 31, 2023Ask

Your donors have what’s called a “pre-existing condition”…

They cared about your beneficiaries or cause before your organization came into their life.

Three examples:

Say your organization is a library. Your donors cared about books, literacy and your community before they had even heard of your library.
Say your organization helps a tiny village in Ethiopia. Your donors cared about kids, and people having enough food & an education before they had even heard of your organization or the village.
Say your organization provides access to activities for people with disabilities in the Tri-state area. Your donors cared about people with disabilities, and about everyone being able to participate, before they heard about your organization.

Knowing this, what should your fundraising to individual donors primarily be about?

Should it primarily be about your organization? Should it focus on your programs? Should it be about what the organization has accomplished in the past?

No! Your fundraising should focus on the values and interests that caused your individual donors to pay attention to your organization in the first place. (Note that I’m not talking about your comms to Foundations and other donors for whom your programs and your effectiveness are core necessities for them to donate.)

If you look at your appeals and e-appeals and find that they talk primarily about your organization… for instance, if you’re sharing the names of your programs and how they work… you could be raising more money from individual donors.

When we help organizations see their donors’ pre-existing conditions – and then change the organization’s fundraising to talk about what the donors cared about before they met the organization – the organization raises more money.

When you create your fundraising, don’t think, “We need to inspire our donors to give to our organization.”

Instead, think, “Let’s talk about what our donors already care about, and the difference their gift will make.”

What Small-Shop Fundraisers Should Do at Year-End

Steven | October 31, 2023October 24, 2023Year-End

You Don’t Have Time to Do Everything

Those silly consultants. They give you a list of fifty-four things to do, but you only have time to do four of them.

I get it. (And I am guilty of it at times.)

But if you only have time to do four things … do you know which four are the most important?

My List for Small-Shop Fundraisers

If I were doing the fundraising for a small organization with limited resources (and time!) here’s what I’d do, and the order I’d do them in:

Manage your major donors. Don’t just hope that they give a gift before the end of the year, manage them toward doing it! Know who your top donors are. Be in touch with them. Know exactly who hasn’t given a gift yet this year. Ask them to give a gift to help your beneficiaries or your cause (not to give a gift to your organization). Tell them their gift is needed now, and tell them their gift will make a difference.
Write and send your year-end letter. Make sure you send out a great year-end letter that powerfully asks donors to give a special gift before the end of the year.
Write and prep your year-end emails. Be sure to have at least three emails prepped for the last three days of the year. Remember that they can be very similar; you don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time.
Update your website to ask for a year-end gift. It’s been true of every organization I’ve ever worked with: a LOT of people will go to your website in December with the express purpose of making a gift. If the first thing they see on your home page is a clear call-to-action and a large button, you will raise more money than you expect.

That’s it! If you can only do four things, do those four.

Make sure you do a great job on each of those before doing anything else.

If you can only do three things, do the top three.

And so on.

Just remember that year-end is the easiest time of the year to raise more money than you expect. And your donors are wonderful but busy people! So communicate to them as much as you can. You’ll love how much money you raise!

5 Tips For Your Most Successful Digital Year-End Campaign

Steven | October 26, 2023October 23, 2023Ask

Are you ready?

According to Network for Good, most nonprofits raise about 1/3 of their revenue in December. And 11% of their annual total during the last three days of the year.

Year-end is the easiest time to raise more money online! Think about it this way:

Your donors are more likely to give during the last weeks of the year than any other time of the entire year.

And because year-end is such an important time for digital fundraising, we want to give you 5 tips that will ensure a successful year-end for your fundraising.

# 1: Use the same message in every channel

Some of your donors are online, some aren’t. Pick your strongest message, then repeat it through direct mail, email, your website, and social media. It’s more powerful for your donors to see the same message in different media channels than it is for them to see two different messages. Repetition is your friend!

# 2: Ask early and often

You’ve been talking to your donors all year about what your organization does, you’ve told them how they can help. So this time of year, don’t Thank them. Or Report to them. It might feel counterintuitive, but our testing showed that Thanking and Reporting this time of year will cause you to raise less money than you could. Follow the advice below and just Ask well!

# 3: Emphasize the deadline

A deadline communicates urgency. December 31 is a natural deadline — for the tax year and for your organization. Tell donors your deadline and repeat it multiple times in your messages.

# 4: Set a goal

How much do you want or need to raise? What would it take for you to meet your budget? Feed everyone you want to feed by year-end? Shelter abandoned pets through the end of the year? Overcome a financial shortfall? Tell your donors the goal.

We need to raise $XX,XXX by midnight, December 31.

# 5: Communicate consequences

What will happen if you don’t meet the goal? Connect the donor right to the heart of your work.

We need to raise $XX,XXX by midnight, December 31 or we will have to cut back on the number of pets in our shelter in the coming year.

We need to raise $XX,XXX by midnight, December 31 or we will not be able to advocate for the arts as effectively next year.

Whatever your organization does, if having less money means you would be able to do less next year, say so!

Most important tip? Start now!