Steven, Author at The Better Fundraising Company

Got Complaints? Get Specifics.

Steven | May 18, 2021May 18, 2021Repeat

It’s easy to get fired up when someone comes in and nervously says, “Oh my gosh, we’re getting so many complaints!” Panic sets in!

But rather than escalating the fear, get specific. We recommend creating a report that is just as specific as a report on giving.

Main Info:

Time period?
How many complaints were there?
How many gifts came in?
# of “Please remove me from your mailing list” compared to normal?
# of “unsubscribes” compared to normal?

For each complaint:

What is the person’s name or email address?
Are they a donor or non-donor?
If they are a donor, are they a mass donor or a major donor?
What was their complaint?

In my experience, reports that there were “so many” complaints and that “donors are really hating this appeal” have an outsized, negative affect on organizations.

But then when specifics are reviewed, like a light being turned on in a dark room on a scary night, it’s usually just a couple of complaints. And half of them are from non-donors.

Quick Advice

In addition to having a report that requires specifics, keep these things in mind:

Don’t Overreact. You know how sometimes, when you send out an appeal or an e-appeal, there’s an initial flood of gifts and you know you have a winner on your hands? When that happens, does your organization immediately change your budget for the year and spend more money? No. You wait for all the results to come in and then decide what to do. Follow the same process for complaints. When complaints come in – which they will – wait for all the results to come in and then decide what to do.
Context Matters. A complaint from a long-time donor should be listened to. Complaints from non-donors should basically be ignored. Seven unsubscribes doesn’t deserve any attention if you normally get six.
Count Everything. If you’re talking about the number of complaints, you also need to talk about the number of gifts. It’s counter-productive to focus on the five complaints that came in without viewing them in the context of the one hundred and sixty-seven gifts that also came in.

Don’t Let Complaints Hold Your Organization Back

Many organizations feel like they are held back from raising more money by complaints.

However, I don’t think it’s the complaints that hold the organization back.

It’s the organization’s reaction to complaints, and fear of complaints, that holds them back.

Make sure your organization is comfortable with a few complaints. Because the occasional complaint is a “cost of doing business” for fundraising organizations.

Set up a simple system to track and evaluate complaints. Like that light going on in a dark room, you’ll find the specifics far less scary than the emotions.

How to Make Good “Fundraising Bets”

Steven | May 13, 2021May 13, 2021Repeat

At the beginning of your fundraising career – or when you start doing more direct response fundraising than you have in the past – you need to make “bets” on what you think your donors will be most likely to fund.

You’re writing an e-appeal and wondering, “Should I talk about this program, or that program?”

You’re writing an appeal letter and wondering, “Should I ask donors to fund this, or to fund that?”

Each decision is a bet.

The more bets you make, if you pay attention to the results, the better you’ll get at making bets. And ultimately, the better you get at making bets, the more money your e-appeals, appeals, newsletters, and events will raise.

The way to get better at this is for your organization is to practice.

Let me give you an example. It’s an outlier for most of us, but it makes the point.

My mentor spent his career doing direct response fundraising for some of the biggest nonprofits in the country in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, including most of the national Christian nonprofits.

True story: by the end of his career, he had sent so many pieces of direct mail, to so many of the lists available, that he could make accurate predictions for how each letter would perform.

He would hold the mockup of the letter in his hand, look at the offer, and look at the writing and the design. Then he would look at the mailing list that it was being mailed to. Cultivation, acquisition, didn’t matter – he could tell you with relative certainty how many people would respond, what the average gift would be, etc.

I walked into his office once and he was concentrating so hard he didn’t notice me for a couple minutes. He was as “in the zone” as it’s possible to be. I watched him write some numbers in the margins of a printed-out spreadsheet, then I asked him what he was doing.

He said, “I’m writing down my predictions for how each letter to each mailing list is going to perform.”

Here’s the amazing thing: he was usually correct to within a 10th of a percentage point on response rate, and within a dollar or two on average gift size.

It was remarkable. It was otherworldly.

He was able to do it because he had done it so many times before. He was very, very good at making “bets” for what an organization should talk about, how they should talk about it, and who they should talk about it to.

And when he was wrong – when one of his predictions didn’t match up with what actually happened, he would say, “Huh, I wonder what I missed?” And then he’d look at the letter and the list to figure out where he had gone wrong, so that his next bet was more accurate. So that his next bet raised more money for whatever nonprofit he was serving.

You and your organization can get great at knowing what to talk about, how to talk about it, and who to talk about it to.

But you have to practice. A lot.

It’s not a gift, not a talent, not an ability. It’s an acquired skill.

Before & After

Steven | May 11, 2021May 11, 2021Ask

Here’s another fundraising “before & after” for your reading pleasure.

It’s the first sentence of an appeal, and it feels like a great example of all the thinking that goes into successful first sentences – and into successful direct response fundraising in general.

Here’s how it arrived on my desk:

I send this urgent letter to you because our organization-supported orphanages are overwhelmed, and in desperate need of help.

This is very strong fundraising. It’s clearly urgent. The word “you” is used. It’s clear that there’s a specific problem that the donor can help with.

But I thought it could be stronger. Here’s how it looked when I was done with it:

You’re receiving this urgent letter because there’s an orphanage that’s overwhelmed and in desperate need of help.

Let me break down the changes and tell you why I made them…

You > I

Notice how the first word of the letter changed from “I” to “You.”

“I send this urgent letter to you…” changed to “You’re receiving this urgent letter…”

“I sent…” puts the focus and the action on the letter writer. “You’re receiving…” immediately puts the focus and action on the recipient.

Plus, we humans are trained to be more likely to read and respond to the word “you” … so I moved “you” to be the very first word of the appeal.

Our organization-supported

I deleted the phrase “our organization-supported” from before “orphanages.”

Mentioning that the orphanages are supported by the organization doesn’t help make the case that the donor should send in a gift today.

In fact, it weakens the case because it spends valuable time focusing on who has funded things in the past instead of focusing on what the need is today.

And finally, always remember how fast donors are moving. Go back and read the first sentence again. But quickly, like a donor. Doesn’t it say that the orphanages are supported by the organization? Wouldn’t it be reasonable for the quickly-scanning reader to think, “If the orphanages are supported by the organization, why do they need my help?”

“Orphanage” Is Better Than “Orphanages”

Note that “orphanages” became “orphanage” (singular).

Why? At the beginning of any direct response fundraising, I want to present the donor with a problem that is solvable. If I tell her that a bunch of orphanages are overwhelmed, I’ve likely presented the donor with a problem that is too big for her to solve.

In our experience, when you focus fundraising on problems that are too big for the donor to meaningfully help with a gift, you get fewer gifts.

So rather than saying “orphanages are overwhelmed” (potentially a very big problem), I changed the sentence to read, “an orphanage is overwhelmed” (a smaller problem where a donor is more likely to feel like she can make a meaningful difference).

Many nonprofits believe that sharing the large size of a problem makes donors more likely to give a gift. In direct response fundraising, it’s generally the opposite; if you present your donors with a smaller problem where they feel they can make a meaningful difference with a gift today, they’re more likely to make a gift today.

Remove the Comma!

My general rule is to make first sentences as simple and easy-to-understand as possible.

So “…overwhelmed, and in desperate need of help” became “…overwhelmed and in desperate need of help.”

It’s a tiny little change. But you want to think of the first sentence as the onramp to your whole appeal. If your onramp is easy to understand and keeps your reader moving forward, your reader is more likely to continue reading your letter or email.

If your onramp is a perfect, well-formed, multi-clause sentence that your high school English teacher would reward you for, and the comma-induced pauses add richness and complexity… well, it’s statistically less likely that people will continue to read your letter or email.

All That From One Sentence?

Yup. It’s a curse of the trade. When every word matters, and lives or livelihoods or real life consequences are on the line, you tend to obsess about each word.

Even as I’m writing this blog post I’ve thought of a way to make it better. And I’m annoyed at myself for not noticing it on my initial pass.

But here’s the thing for you: just practice. You’ll get better and better. With email fundraising, the positive feedback loop is almost instantaneous. You can get very good at this stuff, very quickly, if you’re willing to practice.

Don’t treat each piece of fundraising as precious. Write e-appeals, do the best you can, and send them out.

After all, for most smaller organizations it’s easy to make the argument that the volume of fundraising you send out is more important that the quality. Just practice.

Most likely, you’re not communicating to your donors enough.

Go practice! What can you write and email out this week to learn from?

A Generous Ego

Steven | May 6, 2021May 5, 2021Ask

If your organization wants to do more fundraising (which we obviously believe in) we’d recommend that you do so with what we call a “generous ego.”

You need to have enough ego to know that what you’re doing is important, that it matters, that your organization is making a difference. You need to believe those so strongly that you want to share them with other people.

But you also need to be generous. When you do your fundraising, you need to make the generous act of crossing the gap to your donors’ level of understanding. You need to make the generous act of asking more often than you think you can, on behalf of your beneficiaries.

When asking for support, make the generous act of focusing on your donor’s role, telling her how her gift that makes a difference. When reporting back on previous giving, make the generous act of giving the credit to the donor, and directly telling her how her gift made a difference.

Too many nonprofits have a hard time being generous in their fundraising. They make their fundraising all about themselves. About their process. About their programs. About their staff. About their volunteers. About how they think about their issue. They ask the donor to support their organization instead of asking the donor to help people.

Of course, what your organization does is important. What your organization does makes the world a better place.

Your organization should have a healthy ego. Your ego should cause you to want to do more fundraising, because you know more good would be done if you raised more money.

But be generous about it in your fundraising. Be generous about it in your branding.

Generously focus on how your donors’ gifts will meet beneficiaries’ needs. Do that, instead of raising money for your organization, and you’ll raise more money for your organization.

Don’t Hide Behind Polish

Steven | May 4, 2021May 4, 2021Ask

Many smaller organizations have a very hard time increasing the number of communications they send to their donors.

It’s a human resources question/issue. There’s only so much time.

However, many of those organizations are… self-sabotaging.

It’s not their fault, either. Somewhere in the nonprofit-o-sphere we were all taught that our donor communications need to reach a certain level of fit & finish or they’re not going to work at all.

That single belief has resulted in an astonishing amount of money NOT raised.

Today, hundreds of thousands of smaller organizations desire for their fundraising to look and sound as professional as organizations 100 times their size. So it takes them far longer than it should to create and send their fundraising communications.

And so they send fewer communications than they should.

But here’s the thing: their donors know that they’re small. The donors’ expectations for small organizations’ fundraising are different.

So my advice to smaller nonprofits is to embrace your smallness. Don’t prioritize looking like one of those massive organizations with perfect email templates and a fancy website.

Instead, just write. Just send it.

Send one email a week that’s 250 words that shares a quick detail of some good thing that happened that week. Give the donor the credit. Doesn’t have to be anything close to perfect. Typos are fine. Do that every week for a year and you’ll have an expanding tribe of devoted followers and incredible donor retention.

When some acute need or surprise expense happens, dash off an email to your email list. Provide a couple links for them to click on that go directly through your donation form, tell them that their gift will help with that acute need or a special expense and support the work of your whole organization. Now your funds are undesignated. Do that 12 or 15 times a year and you’ll raise more money than you expect and have a higher donor retention rate. And you’ll have a higher engagement rate.

For smaller organizations, getting good at communicating more often and direct response basics (things like effective landing pages and reply cards) is so much more important than perfectly written and designed donor communications.

Don’t try to be perfect. Your goal should be to create breathless dispatches from the field, not fundraising emails and communications that look like they went through the standard nonprofit pastel-colored hope machine.

And always remember, you learn more about what works by doing more and paying attention to the results. You learn less by trying to be perfect and doing less.

Your donor values knowing the problems in the world that you’re working on more than she values perfect, professional communications.
Your donor values reading a story about how her gift made a difference in the life of one person more than she cares about perfect, professional communications.
Your donor values having a one-to-one relationship with a human who is working like crazy to make the world a better place more than she values perfect, professional communications.

In your donor communications, do not hide behind a need to appear professional.

There’s nothing in that hiding spot that helps you help more people.

“We are unique” is Halfway to a Good Idea

Steven | April 29, 2021April 29, 2021Ask

Only “halfway,” because it’s about your organization.

Talking about your organization’s uniqueness is self-centered, when the most effective fundraising is generous.

Additionally, the word “unique” is neither positive nor negative. It just means you’re the only one. It doesn’t mean your organization is a good place for your donor to give a gift.

So you just spent a few of your precious seconds telling your donors something neither good nor bad… when you could have been busy telling them something good.

But! If you keep pushing on the idea of your uniqueness, if you can be generous in how you present it, it can be a strength.

You can tell your donor that her gift through your organization is the only place where she can have her gift do this.

You can tell her she’s part of a tribe, a special group of people who see things a little bit more clearly. You can tell her she’s part of a generous, smart community of donors who are doing things more effectively than they’ve been done before. Who are doing something the best that it can be done right now.

You can tell her that she’s unique in that she “gets it,” that she cares, and that she does something about it.

If you can push past talking about how your organization is unique, and get to where you’re talking about how your donor’s gift will help your beneficiaries or cause in uniquely powerful ways, then you’ve got something that will increase donations to your organization.

Because the fact that you’re the only organization doing something is not effective at motivating people to give gifts.

But the fact that their gift will do something uniquely powerful and effective is very effective at motivating people to give gifts.

Three Things All Direct Response Fundraisers Should Know

Steven | April 27, 2021Ask

Recently I received a brilliant email from a friend.

It perfectly sums up why direct response fundraising is so hard:

“I’ve started telling people there are only three things they need to know about development.

1. It’s the most counterintuitive thing you’ve ever done. (What people like isn’t motivational. What’s motivational, you won’t like.)
2. The only way to know what works is A / B testing.
3. You can spend years, and lots of $’s doing your own testing, or you can hire those who have done it and see immediate results.”

Everything you need to know to succeed in direct response fundraising is all right there.

“It’s the most counterintuitive thing you’ve ever done.”

The things most people think will work in direct response fundraising don’t work very well.

For instance, there’s the assumption that “to get a first gift from someone, that person needs to know that our organization is good at what we do.” Nope. Not true. Your organization’s effectiveness is not even in the Top 5 reasons why most new donors give a gift.

There’s another assumption that says, “we need to always tell stories of success.” Nope. Not true. You only want to do this some of the time, and less often than you think.

“The only way to know what works is A / B testing.”

The reason I can state so strongly that “your organization’s effectiveness is not in the Top 5 reasons why your new donors give” is because we’ve tested it.

We know, from direct head-to-head testing, that including content about how effective your organization is in a donor acquisition piece will reduce the number of people who respond.

You can certainly acquire donors while accentuating how effective your organization is. But you can acquire more donors if you focus your message on the things that matter more.

I was taught this as a young fundraiser in the early ‘90’s. And it’s just one of the many nuggets of wisdom available from our industry’s roughly 70 years’ worth of A / B testing. Each one of those nuggets can help you and me know how to raise the most money in a given situation.

“You can spend years, and lots of $’s doing your own testing, or you can hire those who have done it and see immediate results.”

Smart organizations are constantly looking for ways they can work less while raising more money. So they’re always looking for successes from The Fundraisers Who Have Gone Before, successes that they can apply to their organization.

Sometimes that means going to AFP seminars or spelunking on SOFII. Or purchasing the latest book from Erica Waasdorp, or Jeff Brooks, or Tom Ahern. Or hiring experts like the team at Better Fundraising.

Regardless of how you tap into all that knowledge, be sure you’re seeking out the learnings of “those who have done it” so that you can “see immediate results”!

This post was originally published on February 4, 2020

Why You Shouldn’t Use the Word “Vulnerable” in Your Appeals

Steven | April 22, 2021April 21, 2021Ask

Though I’m a great believer in being vulnerable when you create your fundraising, I never use the word “vulnerable” when writing fundraising.

And when organizations that I work with use the word “vulnerable” or the phrase “the most vulnerable,” I delete it.

Here’s Why

When you’re Asking for support in your appeals and e-appeals, what usually works best is to present donors with a problem that is happening right now, one that the donor can solve with a gift today.

The problem with the word “vulnerable” is it accidently tells donors that there is not a problem today.

According to Webster’s, Vulnerable means:

Capable of being physically or emotionally wounded.
Open to attack or damage

Look at those definitions again. In both of those cases there is nothing wrong right now. A person is “capable” of being hurt. Or is “open to attack.”

Think about it this way. Say you received two simple e-appeals right next to each other in your inbox. One e-appeal asked you to give a gift to help a person who is in need today. The other e-appeal asked you to help a person who might be in need sometime soon. All things being equal, most donors will give to help the person who is in need today.

By describing your beneficiaries as “vulnerable,” you’re focusing donors’ attention on the fact that there’s nothing wrong yet. You’re telling donors that there might be a problem in the future. So there’s less of a reason for a donor to give a gift right now.

By using the word “vulnerable” you’ve caused fewer people to send in a gift today.

Here’s What I Replace “Vulnerable” With

Instead of focusing on what might happen, focus on what’s happening right now.

What this usually means is that instead of focusing your fundraising on all the people who might need help, you focus it on the people who need help right now.

Here are a couple of examples…

“Your gift to help vulnerable children in our schools learn to read will…” becomes, “Your gift to help a child who is a grade behind in reading level will…”

“Your gift to protect people who are vulnerable to this disease will…” becomes, “Your gift will help people who have this disease by… “

“Your gift will help the most vulnerable…” becomes, “Your gift will help the people who need it most right now…”

If your organization uses “vulnerable” or “the most vulnerable,” edit your future fundraising to talk about the people (or a person) who needs help now. You’ll start to raise more money.

The Big Picture

If you stop using “vulnerable,” will your next appeal raise twice as much money? No.

But if my experience is any indication, I think you’ll raise more money than you’re raising now.

Two reasons.

First, even though your use of “vulnerable” is a small thing, successful appeals and newsletters are made up of a hundred of small things. The better you get at noticing and improving the small things, the more money you raise.

Second, not using “vulnerable” is a very real step on the way towards a powerful principle to operate by. The principle is that you’ll raise more money with your direct response fundraising (appeals, e-appeals, radio, TV, etc.) if you share the most compelling problems your organization and/or beneficiaries are experiencing right now.

Sharing a current problem (not a potential future problem) with donors is one of the ways you can break through all the noise and increase the number of people who send you gifts.

And anything you can do to break through all the noise right now will help, don’t you think?

This post was originally published on June 18, 2020

Your Fundraising Should Be More Vulnerable

Steven | April 20, 2021April 19, 2021Ask

Today’s post is all about vulnerability – a quality your organization needs to have if you want to be more successful when raising money.

I’m going to illustrate vulnerability using four quotes from Brene Brown. Brene is a research professor who’s done deep research on courage and vulnerability. (She probably doesn’t know it, but much of her work applies directly to fundraising!)

If you apply the principles she discovered to your fundraising, you’ll be better at engaging and keeping your donors.

“Through my research, I found that vulnerability is the glue that holds relationships together. It’s the magic sauce.”

Donor relationships are a lot like human relationships. Donors like to feel needed, and they like to feel appreciated.

Weirdly, most nonprofits in my experience are lousy at doing this. And it starts with an inability to be vulnerable.

For instance, they might ask their donors to “partner” with them, or ask for “support.” But most nonprofits rarely ask for help as if they really need it.

Go look at your fundraising materials. Just scan them. Do you get the impression that your organization or your beneficiaries really need help?

I’d like to suggest that if your nonprofit was more vulnerable to your donors you would engage your donors more deeply, keep them for longer, and raise more money.

In my experience, organizations raise a lot more money when they are vulnerable.

“Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection.”

I think one of the reasons there’s a massive donor retention problem in Fundraising is that most donors feel so little connection with the organizations they donate to. And I blame that mostly on poor donor communications. Most nonprofits are constantly talking about themselves and taking credit for everything they’ve done. You can look at the materials of many organizations (especially their websites!) and never know they even have donors.

Think about your relationships with other humans. Do you feel connected to, and valued by, the people who are always talking about themselves? Nope.

If you want to experience connection with your donors, be vulnerable. Tell them that their gift (or their volunteer hours, or their Board service) are needed. Tell them that you’re doing as much as you can, but you need their help. Tell them that you’re not reaching everyone who needs help, but that you could reach more people if they donated.

“Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness.”

It’s hard to ask for money. For most of us, it’s unnatural. And I think that’s why organizations tend to pussy-foot around it.

It takes real courage to ask boldly for money! Much of my work is with leaders of organizations helping them overcome fears about Asking. They don’t like it. Or they think it will reflect poorly on themselves or the organization. They come up with all kinds of crazy rationalizations for why they shouldn’t ask.

This week I heard a doozy from an ED: “I need to be the positive leader, but staff can encourage donors to give…”

I submit to you that’s not good leadership. Nor is it courage. It certainly isn’t vulnerability.

Here’s what that ends up looking like in appeals and e-appeals (as always, these are actual sentences from actual appeals):

“Will you help us do more of this good work?”
“Will you partner with us to help those in need?”
“Thank you for your determination to support our staff.”

Do you see any real need or vulnerability there? Neither do it. Neither do their donors.

When looked at through this lens, is it any wonder that an appeal that ends with…

“There are people right now who need help, but we don’t have the budget to reach them. Will you please send a gift today to help them?’

…will raise more than an appeal that ends like this?

“Will you help us do more of this good work?”

Ask courageously! The things you fear won’t come to pass. Or if they do, it will be in such small measure compared to the incredible generosity you see from your donors.

“I don’t have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness – it’s right in front of me if I’m paying attention and practicing gratitude.”

As a nonprofit, here’s how to pay attention and practice gratitude: watch every gift come in with joy and amazement. Think of the incredible connections you just formed between your donors and your beneficiaries! Think of the incredible good you just did!

Because remember: your donors LOVE to give! They love to support you. They love to help your beneficiaries or cause.

I think there’s incredible joy to be had in courageously stating a need, asking for help, and then watching generosity pour in.

I know you get numb to it after a while. Unless you are careful, the amazing generosity of donors pretty quickly just gets thought of as “monthly revenue” – every single time a gift comes in to your organization.

If there’s a ‘spiritual practice’ that most nonprofits should be doing, it’s practicing gratitude.

Because if you practice gratitude regularly, you become more grateful. And when you’re truly grateful for your donors, you will be comfortable being vulnerable with them. Vulnerability is where connection and relationship happens. You do that, and you’ll build a tribe of donors and an organization that can change the world.

This post was originally published on March 20, 2018