Steven, Author at The Better Fundraising Company

What the purpose of your newsletter SHOULD be

Steven | July 5, 2022July 5, 2022Report

This is the first in a series of posts that will show you how to create donor-delighting, money-raising print newsletters.

The kind that your donors love to open, the kind that increases the chance they will keep giving to your organization year after year, and the kind that raise way more money than they cost to send out.

What Is Your Newsletter’s Purpose?

Here’s our approach, and it’s been successful for every type of organization in every sector we’ve tried:

Your newsletter exists to show your donor how her gift made a difference, and to show her what her gift today will do.

There’s a lot in that one sentence, which we’ll unpack during this series.

But it’s just as helpful to understand what your newsletter should not be:

It should not be a newspaper, full of all kinds of stories
It should not be about your organization, your programs, your staff, your volunteers, your sponsors, or your partners
It should not be about how much money you’ve raised
It should not be a “playbill” about the upcoming events and ways a donor can get involved
It should not “hide the good news” by only mentioning the donor at the very end of stories

And yet, those are the things that most nonprofits use their newsletters for.

That’s why most newsletters don’t get read.

That’s why they don’t measurably help organizations keep their donors.

And it’s why most newsletters don’t raise much (if any) money.

It’s absolutely OK if a print newsletter features one of those things, every once in a while, but here’s the Big Idea:

Your donor is more interested in reading about herself – about what she and her gift did – than she is reading about any of those other things.

So if you want her to read your newsletter, write to her and write about her.

You Need a To-do list and a Not-To-Do List

Newsletters don’t raise a lot of money by accident.

The content is curated and the offer decided. Then it’s written and designed with the intent to raise money.

Everything included in it is done with a purpose. Which means a bunch of things are excluded with a purpose.

For smaller organizations, this is hard. Because it means telling some staff that their program will never be featured in the newsletter. It means getting more stories and photos of beneficiaries. It means the ‘save the date’ for your next event needs to be an additional mailing, not in your newsletter.

It’s hard, but it’s worth it. This approach works measurably better than any other approach I’ve ever seen in my 27 years of fundraising.

If you’d like to know more, stay tuned (and subscribe to our blog if you haven’t already)!

This post was originally published on February 20, 2020. Get a free downloadable “e-book” of this whole series here.

Better Fundraising in Today’s Economy

Steven | June 30, 2022June 28, 2022Ask

The economy in the United States is under stress. Inflation is driving prices up, and the stock market is down.

Thankfully, smart fundraisers have been through situations like this before. Here’s what to do…

Stay The Course

Do not cancel any fundraising.

You need to be sold out to your mission and your beneficiaries. Your job is to advocate for them and to let donors make decisions for whether to give or not.

Make Your Case Stronger Than Ever

The media will be focusing your donor’s attention on a very narrow swath of issues. Your organization will need to “break through” that noise to get your donors’ attention.

Additionally, some of your donors may choose to give to a couple fewer charities than normal. You want to make your case so strongly that your organization is not one of the organizations a donor cuts from their giving.

Many Donors Will Not Be Affected

The last couple of years have been incredible for some donors – and many of them will become more generous during a recession… if you give them the chance to be.

The Fundraising Outlook Is Brighter Than Most People Think

Two reasons:

Economic situations like this one disproportionately affect younger people, but donors tend to be older. Fewer of an organization’s donors will be affected by this than most people assume.
Awareness of Need is high. When people’s awareness of a Need is high, they are more likely to give.

The economic situation may change your donors’ circumstances, but it will not change their priorities. And they still care about your beneficiaries and cause.

Do not take the decision to give out of your donors’ hands. Give them the chance to be the generous people they wish to be.

Donor Acquisition: Think Medium-Term

Steven | June 28, 2022June 23, 2022Repeat

If you’re thinking about doing paid donor acquisition, you need to learn to think in the medium-term.

Here’s the story…

Two organizations we’re honored to serve spent significant sums on donor acquisition right before the pandemic. One spent about $500,000, the other spent a little less than $1,000,000.

Both efforts lost money that year. The campaign that cost $500,000 raised about $390,000. The campaign also acquired new donors, to be sure. But loud voices in the organizations disparaged the campaign.

And it’s easy to see why the campaign was disliked IF you’re thinking in the short term.

However, we recently looked back at all the donors that were acquired in that campaign. The organization discovered that those donors had given over $4,100,000 since being acquired.

Getting a return of $4,100,000 on an investment of $500,000 is a pretty good deal. What looked like a “loss” of $110,000 in the short term was a gain of $3,600,000 (and counting!) in the medium-term.

(Of course there have been costs to cultivate those donors in the intervening years, but they are super minimal.)

What’s more, the organization would have been in real trouble during the pandemic if they hadn’t had those donors helping out.

If your organization is thinking about moving into paid donor acquisition, I hope this story serves as encouragement. Moving to paid donor acquisition is a big step forward in an organization’s growth. And you can read this post too, which will help you think critically about how to “make the leap” for your organization in particular.

In short-term thinking, investing in donor acquisition a losing proposition. In medium-term thinking (and beyond), investing in donor acquisition is investing in the growth and stability of your organization.

Authenticity Isn’t Always Useful

Steven | June 23, 2022June 22, 2022Ask

In the nonprofit world we tend to embrace authenticity.

It’s assumed that if we’re authentic, and the fundraising we create is authentic, that we’ll attract more people to our cause. More money will be raised, and we’ll do more good.

But there are clear limits to this line of thinking.

Say you’re at an organization that has eighteen different programs. But your fundraising is most successful when it focuses on one particular program. Furthermore, that program has a holistic, whole-person approach to caring for people of all ages. But the fundraising clearly works best when it asks donors to “feed one child.”

In that scenario, any fundraising you create that focuses on “feeding a child” will feel wildly inauthentic to program staff and anyone who understands the depth and breadth of your work.

However, the fundraising you create that focuses on “feeding a child” serves your mission by helping donors understand a powerful part of your organization’s complex approach.

Think of a college professor. Can you imagine how an accomplished astrophysicist – tenured and with a long track record of publishing cutting-edge research – feels when teaching “Astronomy 101” to a bunch of college freshmen (some of whom are hung over)?

Do we think she feels “authentic” giving those lectures when she could be discussing the latest findings with her peers?

Probably not. She does it because it’s part of the job, and because it’s likely there are some future astrophysicists in her class. How will they get excited about the subject if she doesn’t show up in an engaging way? Furthermore, she can’t show up in class and talk to the freshmen like she talks to her peers. She makes the generous choice to speak to them in language they’ll understand.

Fundraising is the same. There are some donor communications we need to make – even if we don’t prefer them – because it’s part of the job.

And how will the future volunteers / donors / advocates get excited about our work if we don’t show up – speaking to them at their level – in an engaging way?

There’s nothing wrong with communicating authentically. The trap is when “communicating authentically” comes to mean “we talk about our work in one particular way that feels authentic to us.”

Nonprofits should make the generous choice to talk to different audiences in different ways: we should communicate about our work differently to institutional funders who are experts in our fields differently than we communicate to mass donors.

Our primary focus should not be on being authentic to ourselves, it should be on being relevant to the particular audience being communicated to.

It’s a Trap!

Steven | June 21, 2022June 15, 2022Repeat

Please please please, do not get stuck in the classic nonprofit trap of thinking, “We want to raise more money but we have to sound like us.”

First, let’s take just a moment to acknowledge the strategic absurdity of expecting to raise meaningfully more money this year but “say the same things we always say in the way we always say them.”

What I want to focus on is this: I know of no nonprofit with a thriving fundraising operation that “sounds like” they sounded when they started. Instead, they experimented with and tailored their message over time, in order to raise more and do the most good.

“Sound like us” or “sound like me” are good values, but should not be the primary values.

An organization’s primary value for their fundraising communications should be something like, “we will continuously evolve our fundraising messaging so we can fund more and more of our mission work.”

(I’m assuming we’re telling the truth, etcetera etcetera.)

What’s more, an organization should “sound” different when communicating with different audiences. You should sound different when talking to an experienced professional at a Foundation partner than you sound in an email asking non-donors to make their first gift.

The primary goal for an organization’s fundraising communications should not be to “sound like us.” The primary goal should be to evolve and improve “what you sound like” over time in order to raise the most money and keep as many donors as possible each year.

Three Reasons You Should Occasionally Let Your Fundraiser Try Something New

Steven | June 16, 2022June 14, 2022Repeat

If you have some control or influence over fundraising at your organization – please take a minute to read this.

Maybe you’re the Executive Director, or a Board member, or the Head of Programs. But you have some “say” over your fundraising strategy, content and language.

Here’s what I want you to do:

Let your Fundraiser try something new every once in a while. Even something you don’t like.

There are three main reasons you want to do this…

No one piece of fundraising is going to make or break your year. So it’s fine if you try something new every once in a while, even if you’re a small organization. Most nonprofits overestimate the importance of any one particular piece of fundraising.
If a smart Fundraiser doesn’t get to try new things every once in a while, they will likely leave. One of the reasons nonprofit fundraising has a massive turnover problem is that Fundraisers are told they will be responsible for the fundraising – and usually told they need to raise more money than last year – but also must take all of the advice from non-Fundraisers. Would you thrive in that environment?
For your organization to raise a different amount of money, you must communicate differently than you have in the past. Put another way, your current communication plan and messaging are perfectly designed to raise the amount of money that you raised last year. If you want to raise meaningfully more, you need to make meaningful changes.

If you don’t accept a little risk by giving your Fundraisers the freedom and leeway they need to make changes, you haven’t given them the freedom and leeway they need to achieve the fundraising goals.

The Pandemic Fundraising Lesson That’s Applicable Tomorrow

Steven | June 14, 2022June 14, 2022Repeat

Isn’t it odd that, during the pandemic, many organizations whose work had nothing to do with the pandemic raised record amounts of money?

What should that strange fact teach Fundraisers who are paying attention? Because on the surface of things it sure doesn’t make sense.

I think there are a bunch of reasons, and here’s my attempt at a summary…

People give charitable gifts to exert a little control over the world.

All of us like feeling that we have control in their lives. The pandemic took away that control. Jobs were lost, jobs changed, we couldn’t leave the house, etc.

Yet people still had a deep need for control.

One of the things they did was give to charities. They gave, according to their priorities, to exert a little control over the world. To remake a little bit of the world into the world they wish it was.

Those people – your donors – determined their priorities long ago. They had their priorities before they started giving to your organization, and will most likely have those priorities after they have finished giving to your organization.

The pandemic changed their circumstances, but did not change their priorities.

And For Today…

The principle we’re discussing is good to remember if North America slides into a recession.

If (when?) that happens, the voices at nonprofits will start sharing their reasons that “we shouldn’t be asking donors for gifts right now.”

But remember: the recession might change donors’ circumstances, but it won’t change their priorities.

That’s exactly when you need to remember to be sold out for your cause. Give your donors a chance to “exert a little control over the world” through your organization to help your cause or beneficiaries.

Everyone (and by that I mean your beneficiaries, your donors, and your organization) will be glad you did.

(H/t to Andrew who recently reminded me of this in a meeting.)

Custom Gift Asks Increase Newsletter Net Revenue by 36%

Steven | June 9, 2022June 8, 2022Ask

A nonprofit recently made one change to their print newsletter that helped them raise quite a bit more money:

BEFORE: the reply card for their newsletter used to have “static” gift ask amounts. This means every single donor’s reply card had the same gift ask amounts as every other donor.

AFTER: their updated reply card has customized gift ask amounts for each donor. This mean each donor sees amounts that are based on their own previous giving to the organization.

There were no design changes to the reply cards. There were no changes to the newsletter itself. The only thing that changed was each donor was asked to give amounts that were based on their previous giving.

Net revenue went up 36%.

That’s a big increase!

Minuses, But Mostly Plusses

It takes more time to create custom gift asks than it does to slap some ask amounts on one RD and send it to everyone.

The printing costs are often slightly higher because you’re customizing/lasering each reply card as opposed to printing them all at once.

The lettershop costs are often slightly higher because you have to match the reply cards to the outer envelope (unless you’re using a window envelope and the donor’s address on the reply card drives the window).

Yet despite all those time and cost increases, customized gift asks on reply cards is standard operating procedure for nonprofits who have their direct mail act together.

Why is that?

Two reasons:

They raise more money. The increased gross revenue from using customized gift ask amounts far more than pays for the increased costs of doing it. So the organization’s net revenue increases and they are able to do more of their mission work.
Customized gift asks are an outcome of donor-centric fundraising. A reply card with ask amounts tailored to a donor communicates to that donor that they are known. It communicates to the donor that the piece of fundraising they are holding was made for just for them.

If your organization is already using customized gift asks, good on you.

If your organization hasn’t made the leap yet, check out Work Less Raise More. Each training module for printed fundraising pieces includes step-by-step training for how to create customized gift asks for your donors (and a pre-built spreadsheet tool to help you do it).

51 Birthday Thoughts on Fundraising

Steven | June 7, 2022June 8, 2022Repeat

Today is my 51^st birthday, and that’s a great excuse to share 51 pieces of advice and observations about the crazy wonderful world of fundraising.

In no particular order…

If you’re not occasionally amazed that you can send out letters and emails to people and they send you money back, you’re not hooked up right.
Pay close attention to all surveys and research on fundraising that are based on donor behavior. Put all surveys and research on fundraising that report on what donors say they will do into your “to read later” pile.
Every piece of fundraising should have a donor-shaped hole in it.
Fundraising is harder for younger people because they must create materials for an audience that’s primarily 40 to 50 years older than they are.
The ability to differentiate between different types of fundraising, and different audiences for fundraising, is a sign of fundraising mastery.
The older I get, I see that success in major donor fundraising is more manageable and measurable than I ever suspected.
Large nonprofits don’t send out a lot of appeals and e-appeals because they are big. They are big because they send out a lot of appeals and e-appeals.
The “stories an organization tells itself” about Fundraising have a greater effect on how much money they raise than the stories they tell their donors.
Work hard to create repeatable “fundraising assets.” Create “fundraising art projects” – which will be used once – only when necessary.
Most nonprofits should mail their donors two more times than they did last year.
A nonprofit website is only as effective as the questions asked when work starts. If you start with the question, “How can we tell people all about our work?” you’ll get one type of website. If you ask, “How can we make it easy for people to do something?” you’ll get another type of website.
Each time I hear a song by Taylor Swift I think, “She’d make a great direct response fundraising writer.” I’m aware this is a little weird.
The only good news in appeal letters should be that the donor’s gift will solve the problem. These are hard words to live by, but incredible for long-term fundraising success.
Nonprofits have egos. And they do not like to be vulnerable. But vulnerability is the path to deeper relationship with donors.
In nonprofit fundraising, your brand being relevant to a given situation/context is more important than your brand being consistent across all situations and contexts.
There are some differences between direct mail for mass donors and direct mail for major donors, but not as many as most people believe.
My ability to be compassionate is increasing as I age.
If you’re not regularly getting complaints and unsubscribes, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table. Complaints are a fee you pay to achieve a goal, not a fine you pay because you’ve done something wrong.
The most effective Fundraisers and fundraising organizations have a tolerance for pain. They endure the pain of creating messages that internal audiences don’t like, and the pain of sharing real needs, and the difficulty of being other-centered. Fundraisers endure those pains because they know that they will raise more money for the organization if they do.
Most donors care far more about what their gift did than they care about what your organization has been up to.
Every generation creates a new philosophy for why they shouldn’t share the need.
I believe that most critiques of donor-centricity are actually critiques of “donor centricity taken way too far.” Donor centricity, when exercised properly, has healthy boundaries.
For many of an organization’s donors, the fundraising you send them IS the relationship. So how are you going to show up in that relationship?
All strategy is sacrifice.
Fundraising doesn’t create tension in donors, it reveals tension they already hold.
Fundraising is so much better than “news.” When fundraising reveals tension in a donor between the way the world is and the way they want the world to be, fundraising presents the donor with something impactful they can do right now to help. News just moves on to the next story.
Letters that look like personal letters tend to perform better.
When people critique fundraising by saying, “this doesn’t sound like me/us,” I always think, “Well, if ‘sounding like you’ were the key, wouldn’t you be raising a lot more money than you currently are?”
Organizations that are optimistic about fundraising raise more money than organizations that are pessimistic about fundraising.
If you want a donor to do something, ask her to do something that’s actually doable. You have a greater chance of success asking a donor to “provide one new library book” than you will asking a donor to “provide new library books to local children.”
Fundraising success is much more a knowledge issue than a talent issue. This is particularly true in direct response fundraising.
There will always be fewer complaints than the organization fears there will be. And the complaints that do come in will be less meaningful and impactful than organizations fear they will be. And about 1/3 of complaints can be turned into donations on the spot if the person hearing the complaint is prepared.
In general, having a ratio of about 2 asks (appeals) for every one report (newsletters) seems to maximize revenue and retention.
I’ve never met a nonprofit whose fundraising failed because they were talking to the wrong people. But I’ve met lots of nonprofits whose fundraising failed because they were talking to people about the wrong things.
People tend to overvalue the importance of one piece of fundraising, and undervalue the total importance of all their fundraising.
Ineffective fundraising is about the organization and its processes. Effective fundraising is about the donor and her values.
The ability to get to the point quickly is gold in direct response fundraising.
Most fundraising isn’t written to persuade, it’s written not to offend.
A powerful piece of fundraising causes the recipient to have to choose; am I in right now or am I out?
Donors’ generosity during the pandemic is one of the most meaningful things I’ve ever seen.
An organization handing you the keys to their fundraising is one of the biggest privileges you can be given.
Fundraising, done properly, takes a toll on the Fundraiser. You have to regularly expose yourself to tragedy and injustice and need, and then you have to share those things with donors. Thankfully, the consequences of doing so are incredible instances of generosity and goodness.
The first sentence of anything you write is the onramp to the rest of the piece. If that first sentence is long or complex, fewer people will read. When fewer people read, fewer people give.
It is so hard to keep the main thing the main thing.
Irony is when a person who is an amateur at fundraising tells me that fundraising I’ve made is “not professional.”
There are no sure things in fundraising. Everything is a bet. Some bets are more likely to work than others.
Using two spaces between sentences is a small, donor-centered bet. Having two spaces between sentences is quantifiably easier for people to read, and it’s more familiar to older donors. Regardless of personal preference, if using two spaces between sentences helps more people read your fundraising, isn’t that a bet worth making?
If you want to be effective at fundraising today and in the future, get good at getting attention. It’s getting harder and harder to get donors’ attention.
In my whole career I’ve seen one instance of the data showing that the organization was asking too often. One.
Effective direct response fundraising is so hard to create because it’s other-centered: it’s more about the donor and her values, and the beneficiaries, than it is about the organization sending it.
The ability to do fundraising as a career is a gift.