Steven, Author at The Better Fundraising Company

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.

How to Increase Your Email Open Rate by 14%

Steven | June 2, 2022June 1, 2022Report

A client of ours started sending monthly “e-stories” last November. And since November, their average email open rate has increased from 24% to 38%.

Most organizations would sacrifice a Board member for a 14% increase in open rates!

So you might ask, “What’s an e-story?”

An e-story is a low-fi, simply-formatted email from your E.D. to your donors. It tells one “before and after” story.

Here’s the outline:

Warm, personal greeting
Directly tell the donor that you are going to tell them a story that’s a good example of how their gift made a difference
Tell a “before and after” story from your organization’s work
Reaffirm to the donor that they helped make that ‘before and after’ happen
Let the donor know that they can give again if they’d like to
Thank the donor for their generosity

You want your e-stories to look like they came from your E.D.’s personal email. No formatting, no header image, no photo, no links to social, you get it.

It should feel personal.

Why E-stories?

Most “reporting” to donors via email answers questions that nobody is asking.

Typical “e-news” or “e-newsletters” have abysmal open rates. No one was reading them.

So how can organizations fulfill the need to “report back on a donor’s gift” via email?

If they aren’t reading the e-newsletters, that means e-newsletters aren’t relevant for most donors.

So we asked ourselves, “What would be relevant to most donors?”

Telling and showing the donor that their gift made a difference.

The Results

Your e-stories will raise more money than your e-newsletter.

Your e-stories will have higher open rates than your e-newsletter.

Your e-stories will cause more engagement than your e-newsletter (you’ll know this because of the replies and feedback you’ll receive).

Some organizations have been able to cease their e-newsletter all together. (And there was much rejoicing!)

Relevance

It all comes down to relevance. The organization I mentioned found that e-stories contained information that was relevant to their donors. (After all, donors want to know what their gift did more than they want to know what your organization is up to.)

When the content of the email was more relevant, more people opened the emails. And now, because their donors are more likely to find relevant content in their emails, their donors open all of their emails at a higher rate.

You can guess what’s going to happen next:

More relevant emails → higher open rates

Higher open rates → more people reading their fundraising

More people reading their fundraising → more people giving

More people giving → more mission work done!

Go look at your organization’s email communications. Are you reporting in a powerful, relevant way? If not, add a few e-stories. You’ll be glad you did!

Note: if you want me to walk you through creating an e-story (or donor reporting letter) for your organization, there’s inexpensive training at Work Less Raise More.

Why “Look Nice and Use Our Brand Colors” Persists

Steven | May 31, 2022May 31, 2022Ask

Our previous post noted that organizations who design all their fundraising pieces to “look nice and use their brand colors” accidentally cause their organization to raise less money.

Yet this approach persists. It’s arguably the most common approach!

I think there are two reasons it persists, and each of them is a good lesson for all of us Fundraisers to remember:

Lack Of Differentiation

At the vast majority of nonprofits, people aren’t taught that the design considerations for designing appeal letters are different than the consideration when designing a brochure or an annual report.

In direct response fundraising, there are some design approaches that are proven to work better than others.

It’s not your fault because you weren’t trained how to do this stuff.

And the first step towards an organization’s design helping them raise more money instead of less is the ability to differentiate between different types of fundraising.

Misplaced Branding Principles

There are many product- and corporate-branding principles that have been widely misapplied to the nonprofit world.

Here’s a summary of the resulting approach: “If our fundraising stays on brand all the time, that is good for our brand and will cause more people to give money over time.”

That’s true IF (and only if) your brand is effective in all the contexts in which you fundraise.

For instance, say one of a nonprofit’s brand colors is cyan (light blue) or something similar. And in order to stay on brand, the nonprofit uses cyan for some of the text in its newsletter.

Cyan, because it is so low contrast, is almost impossible to read by most people. Look at what using cyan (compared to black) does for reading comprehension:

(Data from Type & Layout: Are You Communicating or Just Making Pretty Shapes by Colin Whelldon.)

While this color can be very effective in creating a feeling as part of a brand’s palette, it’s ineffective when used as a text color.

So the brand is effective in one context, but not in others.

In that case, ‘staying on brand all the time’ absolutely does not help the organization raise more money now, or in the future.

The lesson here is that brand consistency (looking and feeling the same in all contexts) matters less than brand relevancy (being relevant and effective in whatever context you’re working in at the moment).

The next time you’re asked to design a piece of fundraising – or you ask someone to design a piece of fundraising for you – ask these two questions:

What type of fundraising are we creating here?
What are the hallmarks of effective design in this context?

The ability to differentiate, and then to know what effective design looks like in different contexts, will help an organization achieve more of its mission than an over-devotion to using its brand colors.

Exactly How to Run a Fiscal Year-End Email Campaign

Steven | May 26, 2022May 25, 2022Ask

Using email to raise money at fiscal year-end is exactly like using email to raise money the last week in December.

This week I’m giving you tips on fiscal year-end fundraising.

And today, here’s how to use email to take your campaign to the next level and raise even more money.

Below is exactly what to do in the mail to raise money at Fiscal Year-End. It’s pretty simple…

Big Picture: Send Three Emails

Your first email should be:

Almost a word-for-word copy of your mailed appeal letter. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Instead, repeat what’s in the letter, because repetition helps your fundraising.
Sent approximately 3 days after you send your snail-mail appeal letter. Your goal is for it to arrive in your donor’s inbox the same day it arrives in their mailbox.
- If your donors are spread across the country, or if you’re using nonprofit postage, you may want to wait 5 or 6 days after you send your appeal.

Your second email should be:

A copy of the first email you sent, but a little shorter. Say that you’re reminding your donor about the deadline on the 30th, and then use the same words, phrases and paragraphs that you used in your letter.
Sent the morning of June 29th.

Your third email should be:

A copy of the second email you sent, but a little shorter. Say that you’re reminding your donor about the deadline on the 30th, and then use the same words, phrases and paragraphs that you used in your letter.
- One tactic we’ve used with great success: don’t write a third email; just “forward” your second email with a note at the top. The note should say something like, “Dear [NAME], I wanted to make sure you saw this. Thank you!”
Be sent the morning of June 30.

The trick here is to send the same message in every email. It’s the repetition of the same message that helps drive it home!

Where Should the Links Go?

Every link in every email should go directly to your giving page. Don’t have links to your website’s home page, your Facebook page, or your Instagram account. We call those “attention leaks,” and they tend to reduce the amount of money you’ll raise.

Ideally, your giving page has updated copy at the top that mentions your “fiscal year-end campaign” and the important deadline of midnight, June 30th. You want that page to reinforce the message that your donors read in the appeal letter or email!

Who Should Receive Them?

Your emails should go to your entire list – every email address you have – with the following exceptions:

If there are any Board members or staff members who won’t want to receive the emails, feel free to take them off the list.
If you’re able, remove people who have given to the appeal or email from subsequent emails. For instance, if they give to the email on the 29th, they ideally would not receive the email on the 30th.
1. If you’re not able to do that, add a sentence in the email that says something like, “If you’ve already given a gift, thank you so much! If you haven’t, please give by midnight, Saturday night…” That will ‘get you off the hook’ for donors who give early but still receive the later email(s).

Our Goal For You

It’s a simple goal. If your fiscal year ends on June 30th, our goal is for you to fundraise for it and use the tips and tactics we’re sharing. If you follow our time-tested advice, we know you’ll be surprised by how much money you can raise!

This post was originally published on May 10, 2018.

Why Fundraising at Fiscal Year-End Will Work for You

Steven | May 24, 2022May 23, 2022Ask

I want to talk to you about fundraising for “Fiscal year-end” – why it works and how to do it for your organization.

I’m focusing on this because fundraising for “fiscal year-end” works great. And we want you to raise more money and do more good. If you’re not using this fundraising opportunity, you should be.

It Doesn’t Make Sense…

The first thing to say is that no one believes that fiscal year-end fundraising will work for their organization. No one.

And that’s reasonable! After all, what donor is thinking about when your fiscal year is, and what happens at the end of it?

On the surface, who would think that an appeal about the end of your budgeting cycle would motivate a donor to give? It’s entirely organizational-centric, and apparently not donor-centric at all. But…

…It Just Works

Fundraising for fiscal year-end (FYE) works great for our clients (and lots of other organizations) year after year.

The FYE appeal letter is usually one of the best-performing letters of the year. The emails usually perform second-best behind only the December year-end emails.

I’m telling you this because, if your organization’s fiscal year ends June 30th, you have a great fundraising opportunity that – most likely – you’re not taking full advantage of.

This the proverbial low-hanging fruit for you. And we’re going to show you how to grab it.

Why It Works

If we dig a little deeper, we see why FYE fundraising works so well:

There’s a simple, powerful problem the donor can help solve. Every one of us has had the problem of being ‘a little short’ at the end of a month. That means your donor understands and can feel the problem on her own. That right there makes her more likely to respond.
There’s a clear deadline. We know from experience (year-end fundraising, anybody?) that having a clear deadline is magic for motivating donors to take action.

A lot of people will read those two things and think, “Really? That’s it? That’s too simple.”

I know. I think the same thing.

But it works like crazy every year! The power of a deadline and a simple, solvable problem work again and again and again.

We recommend this to every client whose fiscal year ends on June 30th or September 30th.

Our Goal

This post was originally published on April 30, 2018.

Should You Sponsor or Start a Podcast?

Steven | May 19, 2022May 18, 2022Report

I’ve been asked some form of the following question three times in the last week:

“We want to get new donors, and we’re thinking about sponsoring a podcast. What do you think?”

Spoiler alert: the short answer is “probably not.”

There’s nothing wrong with sponsoring or even starting a podcast. However, it’s likely that the cost for each donor you acquire via a podcast will likely be higher than the cost to acquire a donor through more traditional methods.

In short, there are three main reasons why…

#1 – Most Donors Are Old, Most Podcast Listeners Are Young

The most recent Blackbaud study shared that the average age of a donor in the United States is 67 years old. (It’s good to recognize that this means half of the donors are older than 67.)

And according to Riverside.fm, only 22% of podcast listeners are over 55.

Right there we have an immediate mismatch. Generally speaking, nonprofits generally want older donors because older donors tend to give more, and tend to be donors for longer lengths of time. But the audience for podcasts is younger donors – who tend to give less, and for shorter lengths of time.

Is there anything wrong with this? No. But targeting younger people tends to be a less efficient use of resources.

#2 – But Steven, We Need Younger Donors, This Is Great!

The “but we need younger donors!” argument was part of all three conversations I had.

But it doesn’t hold much water.

For most organizations, the average length of time a donor will give to the organization is about 5 years.

So, say you sponsor a podcast and you’re acquiring donors who average about 35 years old.

Most of those donors will have left your organization by the time they are about 40 years old. That’s roughly 25 years before they enter their prime giving years.

Is there anything wrong with this? No. Will you have raised some money and acquired some “younger donors?” Sure.

But if you have limited resources, wouldn’t you rather acquire 60-year-old donors who would give more and for longer periods?

#3 – Donating Is A Little Harder

In the context of listening to a podcast, there’s a little bit more “friction” between a person and their donation than there is compared to traditional fundraising channels.

For instance:

When a person reading your letter wants to give a gift, the reply card and reply envelope are right there
When a person reading your email wants to give a gift, they click on a link
When a person listening to a podcast wants to donate, they have to press “stop” on the podcast, then they have to search for the link to your donation page. This assumes that the link is in the show notes and that the notes are included in the app the person is using to listen to the podcast.

Is there anything wrong with this? No, it can still work. But always pay attention to friction – it matters far more than most people think.

There Are Exceptions

It’s easy to think of two exceptions to this advice:

Organizations whose donor base is overwhelmingly younger, like many social justice organizations. If the average age of your donors is 35, then a channel that reaches that audience makes sense.
Organizations that have already maximized the ROI from traditional donor acquisition channels, but still require more new donors to meet organizational goals, so are willing to expand outside of the “tried and true.”

I’m sure there are more exceptions.

If you’re considering getting in the podcast game, those two exceptions are probably good “starting filters” to see if it makes sense for your organization.

Be “Platform Agnostic”

The three hard-won lessons I’m trying to share really have nothing to do with podcasts:

There are lots of ways to acquire new donors
Each one has a different audience and a different return on investment
When our resources are limited, it’s our job to figure out how to get the best return

Be “platform agnostic.” It doesn’t matter which platform or media channel you or your friends prefer, or what would be “cool” to do. What matters is looking at all the available choices and making the best choice for your organization.

Sometimes that means making unsexy choices. Sometimes that means alienating younger members of the fundraising team. Sometimes it means pissing off the spouse of the board member who has strong feelings.

It means looking at all the options. Estimating the ROI of your possible choices. And then achieving as much of your mission and vision as you can.

Repurpose the Proven

Steven | May 17, 2022May 17, 2022Repeat

In a movie directed by Oliver Stone in the second half of the 1980’s, Charlie Sheen plays a young man who follows a bad father figure, then turns to follow a good father figure. Can you name the movie?

If you said Platoon, you are right. If you said Wall Street, you are right. Both movies told the same story, and both were a huge success. The primary difference was that Platoon took us into the green jungles of Viet Nam circa 1967, and Wall Street took us into the concrete jungles of Manhattan circa 1985.

Here’s my point: Wall Street premiered less than 12 months after Platoon, but no one who saw it complained, “Hey, we were told this story last year!”

That’s a quote from Roy H. Williams, one of my favorite writers.

It’s one of those quotes that’s not about fundraising, but it’s absolutely about fundraising.

Because if you’re going to get good at fundraising, you’re going to find yourself telling the same “story” over and over again.

The beneficiary will change. The circumstances and details will change. But it’ll be the same “story” in the way Platoon and Wall Street are the same story.

Because when you find a particular “story” that elicits the response in your donors that you’re looking for, you want to repeat that “story.” Again and again and again.

You’ll get tired of it. But no one will complain and say, “Hey, we were told this story last month.” Because a vanishingly small number of donors will notice that the “story” was the same.

There are types of stories that work better than others. For instance, there’s a type of story that works best for appeals and e-appeals. There’s a type of story that works best for newsletters and “report backs.”

Again, you or your organization might get tired of the story types that work best for you. But don’t let your organization’s boredom with any particular story type get in the way of creating effective communications for your donors.