Steven, Author at The Better Fundraising Company

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!

Your Envelope’s Job

Steven | September 3, 2024August 30, 2024Repeat

Say I send out 1,000 pieces of mail and you get 38 gifts back.

That gives you a 3.8% response. Not too bad.

But I want to point out something helpful…

It’s true that 38 out of 1,000 people sent in a gift. But it’s also true that 38 of the people who noticed the envelope and opened it responded with a gift.

It’s helpful to notice that, because you can increase the number of people who notice and then open your envelopes. (And it’s not that hard to do.)

After all, you can’t control who is on vacation and won’t get your letter. But you can control using a large, colorful envelope that stands out in a crowded mailbox and gets noticed.

You can’t control the post office “batch-delivering” all the nonprofit mail on one day so that your donor gets 7 appeals all at once. But you can control writing a killer teaser that makes your donor want to open your envelope.

Your donor must notice and then open your envelope before you even have a chance of getting a gift. And if you increase the number of recipients who notice and open your envelope, you’ll get more donations.

The ROI on the time and money you spend on your envelopes is fantastic.

This fall, with the election and the batch-delivering we’re hearing about, it’s more important than ever that your envelope get noticed and opened. Read this post for help with your teasers, and the last half of this post for help with your envelopes. The first job of your envelope is to carry your letter.

Then the job of your envelope is to get noticed. Then the job of your envelope is to get opened.

Your Printed Newsletter: The final Big Idea that brings it all together

Steven | August 29, 2024August 9, 2024Report

Your printed newsletter should be raising a lot of money – as much as your appeals and, in some cases, even more.

The goal of this series has been to give you a tested, proven approach to creating a donor-delighting, money-raising printed newsletter:

Direct mail experts ran a series of head-to-head tests of different types of printed newsletters. The approach detailed here beat all the other approaches.
We’ve used this approach since 2004 to reliably (and sometimes incredibly) increase the money nonprofits raise from their newsletters.
We’ve taught this model at conferences, seminars and webinars. We’ve received hundreds of pieces of feedback about how the approach increased newsletter revenue. You do not need to be an expert to follow this model and raise more money!

So take it this approach and apply it to your organization. Test it against your current approach, or any other approach.

**Be Intentional with Your Newsletter**

Figure out what your organization’s approach is. Discover and name your organization’s underlying assumptions.

Maybe your organization believes that printed newsletters are obsolete. (They aren’t.)
Maybe your organization believes that printed newsletters shouldn’t or can’t raise money. (Neither is true.)
Maybe your organization believes the way you’ve always done your newsletter is the only way your organization can do a newsletter. (Not true.)
Maybe your organization fears that if you change your newsletter in any way, your donors will leave. (Also not true.)
Maybe your organization believes you could do a newsletter like the one taught here, but you could never do an Ask along with it, because it would offend donors. (You guessed it, not true!)

I’ve run into all of these beliefs before. And it doesn’t matter what you believe – what matters is that you identify what you believe that results in your current approach. Then you compare it with the approach outlined in this series and decide which approach to take.

Great newsletters don’t raise money by accident. Content is included for a purpose, and content is excluded for a purpose.

And remember: the primary reason donors read your newsletter is not to hear about your organization. They’re reading because they’re hoping to hear about themselves. Specifically, donors are reading to find out if they and their gift made a difference.

So start with this proven approach that shows and tells donors how they made a difference. And good luck!

This post was originally published on August 11, 2020 in a series of 10 posts on Donor-Delighting Newsletters. This series has been published as an e-book that can be downloaded here.

The Back Page: How to Turn Those Good Feelings into Donations

Steven | August 27, 2024August 9, 2024Report

The back page of your print newsletter is where your donor’s good feelings can turn into another gift… or not.

What’s Happened So Far

If you’ve followed the newsletter approach I laid out starting here, your donor has scanned three pages of your newsletter. Those pages have been full of stories that show and tell the donor how she and her gift made a difference.

You’ve proven to her that her gift to your organization was a good decision.

Unlike other organizations who have sent your donor chest-thumping puff pieces about how busy and heroic their organization is, you have made your newsletter about the donor who is reading it.

She’s thinking, “Finally, an organization that gets me and what I’m trying to do.”

And she feels great!

Let’s Turn Those Feelings into Action

Here’s how to get a regular percentage of those donors to make a gift right then and there:

Feature one story on the top of back page.
That story should be a “story of need” (this is different than the “stories of success” mentioned in this post in this series)
The need should be a need that your beneficiaries or organization are currently facing, or are going to face in the next two months.
Describe how the donor’s gift today will perfectly meet the need. This is your Offer, and you can download this free eBook if you’d like to know more about how Offers work and how to create a great one.
The bottom of the back page should be what we call a “faux reply card.”
- The faux reply card is not meant to be cut off and sent back. The separate reply card you include with your newsletter is what will be sent back. The faux reply card is added because in head-to-head testing it increased the number of people who sent in a gift by 15%.

A successful back page tends to look like this…

Or this…

Want to Get Even More Donors to Take Action?

Pro-level newsletters select their stories to set up the offer that’s used on the back page.

In other words, if the back page is going to tell a story of need about feeding children, the stories in the rest of the newsletter will all be about children who the donor helped feed. Or if the back page is going to share a need to do advocacy work on an issue, the stories in the rest of the newsletter will all be about how the donor has helped fund successful advocacy work.

Put slightly differently: each newsletter has a theme, and the theme is directly related to the offer. The greater the percentage of content that is not on-theme, the lower the amount of money the newsletter will raise.

Your newsletters do not need to be perfectly themed to succeed. But in our experience it increases the chances you will raise more money.

Feelings

It may feel weird to have a story of need and a reply card on the back of your newsletter.

Your newsletter is a Report, after all.

But it works great. This approach raises more money than any other approach that was tested.

And there are no negative consequences to doing your newsletter this way. People do not complain about it. You do not lose donors because of it.

You simply start raising more money with your newsletters. And retaining more of your donors.

Because remember, your donors love to give. All you’ve done with this method is proven to your donor that her previous gift made a difference, then given her a reason to give another gift today.

This post was originally published on August 6, 2020 in a series of 10 posts on Donor-Delighting Newsletters. This series has been published as an e-book that can be downloaded here.

Who To Mail Your Newsletter To

Steven | August 22, 2024August 9, 2024Ask

Your donors. Mail your newsletter to your donors.

More specifically, here’s who to send your newsletter to:

If you send three or fewer newsletters per year, send your newsletters to all donors who have given a gift in the last 24 months
If you send 4 or more newsletters per year, send your newsletters to all donors who have given a gift in the last 18 months

**Who Not to Mail Your Newsletter To**

Here’s who not to send your newsletter to:

Non-donors
Volunteers
Local organizations and businesses who are not donors

Why? Because every time we’ve analyzed the results of sending newsletters to that group we find the same thing: you lose money because it costs more to send the newsletter to that group than the revenue you’ll receive from mailing those groups.

Send Your Newsletter to Your Major Donors

Here’s a tactic we often use to increase the number of major donors who read (and donate to) your newsletter:

Instead of sending them a folded newsletter in a #10 envelope, send the newsletter unfolded in a 9”x12” envelope
Hand-write their address on the envelope
Add a cover letter that thanks the donor for their donation, and tells them that they’ll see how their donation made a difference when they read the newsletter.
Hand-sign the cover letter. You can even write a personal note on it if you’d like.
Include a customized reply card and reply envelope

If you’d like to take this a step further, email the major donor on the day you send the newsletter to let them know to look for it. If that email is sent by your Executive Director, your ED will receive replies from some majors thanking her for letting them know! It’s a great opportunity to deepen the relationship with those donors.

What Postage to Use

For your Mass donors, send your newsletter using nonprofit postage.

The only regular exception to that rule is if there’s a deadline to respond to your newsletter and you’re sending it out later than you planned. For instance, say your newsletter has an offer (on the back page, of course) to write a note of encouragement to hospital patients who are stuck in the hospital for the holidays. But you’re mailing just 3 weeks before the holidays begin. Then, by all means, use first class postage.

For your Major donors, use first class postage. Use a live stamp if you can. And set the stamp at a slight angle so it’s obvious that a human put the stamp on the envelope, not a machine (thanks for that tip, John Lepp!)

This is a Great Beginning…

The recommendations above are a solid foundation for who to send your newsletter to, and how to send it out.

Over time, your system will get more complicated. You’ll discover things like, “it’s worth it for us to send our newsletter to donors who gave between 24 and 36 months ago, who have given $1,000 or more, because we reactivate enough lapsed major donors to make up for the expense.”

Or you’ll discover things like, “When we have a newsletter with Offer X, it’s worth it to mail all donors who have given to Offer X in the last 36 months.”

Great. Love it. And if you’re not there yet, start here!

This post was originally published on July 30, 2020 in a series of 10 posts on Donor-Delighting Newsletters. This series has been published as an e-book that can be downloaded here.

Print Newsletter Design: Readable and Scannable Above All Else

Steven | August 20, 2024August 9, 2024Report

For the smaller nonprofits out there, who don’t have super-pro Designers creating their newsletters, do not worry.

Your newsletter does not need to have fancy or complicated design to be successful.

In fact, fancy and complicated design usually lowers readability – which lowers the effectiveness of your newsletter.

What you’re going for is “clean and easy to read.”

Here are a bunch of examples – kept purposefully small. You will be able to tell at a glance which ones are readable… and which aren’t.

This, Not That

This cover…

Not this cover…

That second cover has too much going on. I think there are six elements in the header alone. Too much copy. Seven different type treatments.

This interior page…

Not this interior page…

That second interior page has far too much copy. The one photo is too small.

This back page…

Not this back page…

The second back page has waaay too much “reverse text” (white text on a dark background) which is very hard to read for older donors. Plus it’s a self-mailer, which raises less money than newsletters that follow the format taught in these blog posts.

The lesson here: look at your newsletter from a few feet away. Does it look friendly? Easy to read? Or does it look thick with information and visually cluttered?

That’s Fine, But What Do I Do?

Here are the general newsletter rules we live by:

Not too much text
13 point typeface or larger
Headlines, subheads and picture captions should always be in a high-contrast color (preferably black)
Use reverse text only when it’s a couple/few words in larger type
Black text on a white background is always the most readable
Don’t put your text in colors that are low contrast (they are harder to read for older donors).
2 or 3 text columns max

Know What’s Most Important

The trick is to know what’s most important.

If you’re judging your newsletter by asking, “Does it look nice and use our brand colors?” you’re asking the wrong question.

The first, most important question is, “Is it easy to read and convey our main message in a couple seconds?”

Nail that. Then add graphic elements and flourishes but keep the text readable.

Because remember, it’s all about readability. If fewer people read your fundraising, fewer people give to your fundraising. So make your fundraising newsletter easy to read!

This post was originally published on July 23, 2020 in a series of 10 posts on Donor-Delighting Newsletters. This series has been published as an e-book that can be downloaded here.

Newsletter Picture Captions that Help, not Hurt

Steven | August 15, 2024August 8, 2024Report

People read picture captions.

So make sure your picture captions do a great job delivering your newsletter’s main message.

Thankful there’s an easy way to do this…

One Simple Rule

Here’s how we think about every newsletter picture caption.

The caption should not be about what’s happening in the photo.

The caption should be about the donor’s role in what’s happening in the photo.

Which means every single picture caption should mention the donor.

Example Time

Here are a bunch of examples from real, money-raising, donor-retaining newsletters…

Thanks to you, Linh and her baby are both getting the food, basic necessities and long-term support they need!

Because of your generosity, doctors were able to repair Jun Jun’s cleft lip. Jun Jun will join his adoptive family soon!

Your generosity helped Maria re-discover the courage and strength she had lost while she was homeless.

Devi was able to begin her freshman year (making her dreams come true!) with everything she needed for her dorm room at Georgia Tech thanks to you.

Your gift helped women in Uganda receive the physical and emotional healing they desperately needed.

This year’s graduating class celebrates – thanks in part to your generous giving!

Your generosity has trained more than 500 police officers and first responders to stop and prevent child abuse.

Answer the Question Your Donor is Asking

One of the questions running through a donor’s mind as she looks at your newsletter is this: “did my gift make a difference?”

Photo captions that follow this model show and tell her, again and again, how her gift made a difference.

They answer her main question.

And remember: when your donor knows that her gift made a difference, she trusts your organization more.

When she trusts your organization more, she’s more likely to respond to the next appeal you send her.

So, because newsletter photo captions are one of the most widely read parts of your newsletter, they are wildly important for you to use correctly to let your donor know that she and her gift made a difference.

Follow the simple rule above and you’ll be on your way to raising more money and retaining more of your donors!

This post was originally published on March 12, 2020 in a series of 10 posts on Donor-Delighting Newsletters. This series has been published as an e-book that can be downloaded here.