Steven Screen is Co-Founder of The Better Fundraising Company and lead author of its blog. With over 30 years' fundraising experience, he gets energized by helping organizations understand how they can raise more money. He’s a second-generation fundraiser, a past winner of the Direct Mail Package of the Year, and data-driven.
In my first job as a fundraising writer, my mentor regularly and rigorously edited my work.
It was painful.
But I’m forever grateful because he always explained the “why” behind the edits. And over time I became a more effective writer.
In an effort to “pass it on,” here are three edits I made in the last week. Hopefully seeing the “before” and the “after” – and knowing why the edit was made – will help you in the same way it helped me…
Start with the Most Important Info
Original copy: “Today, you have an incredible opportunity. Thanks to the generosity of [company name], your gift will be TRIPLED up to $40,000.”
Edited Copy: “Your gift will be TRIPLED up to $40,000! What an incredible opportunity to increase your impact, thanks to the generosity of [company name].”
Reasoning: Put the most important information first.
The example paragraph contains three ideas: the donor has an opportunity, the matching funds are provided by a company, and the donor’s gift will triple. Of those three, the most important idea *to the donor* is that their gift will triple. Arrange the ideas in the paragraph so that the most important idea is first.
You never want to put important information at the end of a paragraph. A significant percentage of people will scan your letter or email (instead of reading it). And “scanners” often don’t read more than the first few words of a paragraph.
“Don’t bury the lede” is in the Donor Communications Constitution for a reason.
Avoid Ambiguity
Original copy: “Her mom’s ability to work has been impacted by the pandemic.”
Edited Copy: “Her mom hasn’t been able to work as much because of the pandemic.”
Reasoning: Avoid words and phrases that can mean multiple things.
The phrase “ability to work has been impacted” is value neutral; the ‘impact’ could be either good or bad. But the job of this sentence (and the paragraph it resides in) is to provide evidence that a gift is needed today. The edited copy makes it clearer, faster, that the situation is a negative one.
Any time you require a reader to figure out exactly what you mean, you’ve increased the chances they will abandon your email or letter.
Make It About the Reader
Original copy: “We still need your help to reach our match goal.”
Edited Copy: “Your help is still needed, and your gift will be doubled.”
Reasoning: Donors are more interested in themselves than they are in organizations.
The sentence, “We still need your help to reach our match goal” is mostly about the organization. It’s the organization that needs help. It’s the organization’s goal.
But that sentence can be re-written to be about the reader. “Your help is needed, and your gift will be doubled.” And we’ve turned the slightly ambiguous phrase “match goal” into a donor benefit; their gift will be doubled.
Editing your direct response fundraising to make it more about your reader and their interests is a counter-intuitive but proven approach to raising more money.
It’s generous to cross the gap to your donor’s level of understanding instead of asking her to cross the gap to your level of understanding.
It’s generous to write and design your letter/email so that a reader doesn’t have to read the whole thing to get the point.
Both those choices are generous, and will increase how much revenue your fundraising brings in.
There’s another choice that will also increase how much revenue you bring in:
Choosing to make your fundraising about your beneficiaries and about your donors will help you raise more money and do more good.
Here’s why…
Size of Market
There are far more people who care about your beneficiaries than there are who care about your organization.
In other words, the “market” of people who would like to help your beneficiaries or cause is a LOT bigger than the “market” of people who would like to help your organization.
I tried to make this point in the following graphic (which I’ve never been completely satisfied with). But seeing it is still helpful:
So as you create your direct response fundraising, remember that it doesn’t have to focus on your organization.
Make the generous choice: create other-centered fundraising. And from a marketing perspective, it’s also the smarter choice.
Your organization will be just as effective at its work if you don’t talk about your organization in your fundraising.
If fact, you will likely be more effective because you’ll be raising more money and doing more good.
If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you understand that when donors open your appeal letters and e-appeals, they don’t read, they skim.
This means you have to make absolutely sure that whatever you’ve bolded or underlined is EASY for your reader to understand.
Now take a look at this highlighted copy from the first page of a letter that recently came across my desk …
“Your gift of as little as $44 can provide quality resources for a child at the children’s home.”
What the heck are “quality resources”?
Consequences
Does bolding or underlining a phrase that’s not easy to understand torpedo the letter and cause no one to donate?
No way.
Because if a person reads the whole letter that this sentence was part of, they can figure out what “quality resources” are. And some readers will know what the organization is referring to.
But does bolding or underlining anything that’s not immediately crystal clear make the reader have to work harder to understand?
Yes.
And the harder you make your reader work, the fewer donations you’re going to get.
Make Generous Choices
Keep your reader in mind when you write and design your fundraising.
Make these two generous choices:
Use words and phrases that your reader will immediately understand. It’s generous to cross the gap to your reader’s level of understanding (as opposed to making your reader cross the gap to your level of understanding).
Use your bolding and underlining (and other forms of visual emphasis) to emphasize text that summarizes your whole letter. In other words, a reader should be able to read just the emphasized text and know what your letter/email is about and what’s being asked of them. It’s a generous act to write and design your letter/email so that a reader doesn’t have to read the whole thing to get the point.
So… does your organization have any phrases that are equivalent to “quality resources”? Any phrases that you use often, even though they are a bit of barrier because most donors don’t quite know what they mean?
What’s a clearer way your organization could phrase them to be more generous to your readers and donors?
After all, your donors are extraordinarily generous to your organization. How could your organization’s writing and fundraising be a little more generous to donors?
Your organization has people and programs and processes that make you effective. They make your organization a force for good. They make your organization a great place for a donor to give a gift.
However, your organization is also far more than your people, your processes and your programs:
Your organization is also a vehicle that donors use to make the world a better place
Your organization is also a way for donors and not-yet-donors to be reminded of the injustices in the world
Your organization is also a way for donors to self-actualize by acting out their own personal story of giving
Your organization is also a way to donors to fight back against evil
Your organization is also a way for donors to make themselves feel good (by giving you a gift)
Your organization is also a way for donors to exert a measure of control over the world.
Here’s why this is important. In our experience, those additional things – all those “also’s” – are the primary drivers of why most donors give.
And when you focus your fundraising on the primary drivers of why donors give, you’ll raise more money.
So instead of making the easy choice to make your fundraising about the reasons your organization is effective, make the generous choice to make your fundraising about the reasons your donors give to your organization.
It’s a generous choice because you’ll be communicating to donors about why they support your organization, instead of communicating with them about why your organization would support your organization.
Don’t mistake what makes your organization effective for the reasons donors like to have you in their lives.
Concern for “asking too much” holds back a surprising number of nonprofits from raising more money and doing more good.
This (very long) post is an attempt to show that of course you can ask too much. And that being concerned about “asking too much” is honorable.
But it will also show that, in all likelihood, a smaller nonprofit doesn’t need to fear asking more.
This post is long for a reason. Here’s why. In my experience, the belief that “we are on the edge of asking too much right now” is a core belief at many organizations. The assertion than an organization can and should be asking more often challenges that core belief.
People and organizations don’t change their minds like flipping a light switch, when it comes to core beliefs. It takes time to change a worldview.
This post gives you that time. It lets the idea sink in. It shares a couple of stories. It looks at the situation from a couple of angles.
So let’s get started. Because thinking a little differently about this one issue can help a nonprofit do a lot more good…
Who Is This Post For?
This post is for smaller organizations.
This is for organizations who mail fewer than ten pieces of direct response fundraising (appeals, newsletters) per year, and fewer than twenty-five fundraising emails per year.
This is for smaller organizations with staff or board members who have concerns about donor fatigue.
If your organization fits any of those criteria – and you’d like to raise more money – keep reading.
Story Time
Let me tell you a quick story. I’m telling you this to begin the process of expanding your idea of what’s possible for smaller organizations.
I work with a handful of organizations that send out between twelve and sixteen printed appeals each year, along with between three and six printed newsletters. They also have strong email fundraising programs.
That’s a lot, no? It might even seem like their experience doesn’t apply to your organization and your donors.
But it does. Because they’re concerned about asking too often, too.
Recently, for an organization that sends out twelve appeals a year, we had a meeting to create the fundraising calendar for the year. I noticed there was a gap between two appeals where we could squeeze in another printed appeal.
They wondered if it was the right thing to do. They thought they were on the edge of asking too much.
I asked them, “Have you ever regretted adding another appeal?”
“No,” they replied.
I said, “We’ve analyzed the results of your appeals, we constantly look at your donor retention rates. Have the positives of adding another appeal always far, far outweighed the negatives?”
“Yes,” they replied.
There was a brief period of silence. Then they said…
“OK, let’s do it. When should this drop? Which donors should we send this to?” And off we went.
Even the big organizations are concerned about asking too much.
But – and this is an important “but” – they analyze the performance of their fundraising and they see that asking more often helps them raise more money and keep more of their donors.
And here’s the mind-expanding thing: it’s a statistical certainty that your organization’s donors are also giving to some of those big organizations.
If you think that asking your donors so often would never work for your donors, please know that it works all the time. It’s working right now.
Comes from a Good Place
The concern about “asking too much” comes from a good place.
It comes from a healthy desire to keep your donors. It comes from getting feedback from a couple of important donors like, “you guys are sending me too much stuff.” It comes from wanting to emphasize the positive aspects of their beneficiaries and de-emphasize needs.
Those are good and honorable impulses.
However, if you base your fundraising strategy on only those reasons, you’ll raise less than you could be in the short term and in the long term. And you’ll do less good.
Because you also need to base your fundraising strategy on a tactic that other organizations have found allows them to raise more and do more good.
Your organization should ask itself two questions:
“If other organizations are being successful asking more, why can’t we?”
“If asking more often is an established way to help us do more good, don’t we owe it to our beneficiaries to try it a couple of times?”
A Vestigial Value
There’s another reason “asking less” is perceived to be a positive value.
This reason is a holdover, a memory of when you were a smaller organization. You knew all of the donors. You knew that they were likely to read everything you sent out.
You had a personal connection with them. You didn’t want to bother them with too many asks.
But as an organization grows, donors like that are a smaller and smaller percentage of who you communicate with.
A communication strategy of asking twice a year when you have 150 donors and know most of them can work great. But asking twice a year when you have 1,000 donors and know 150 of them will not work well.
Make sure you aren’t applying a lesson from when you were smaller to your current stage of growth.
Isn’t It Weird That “Too Many” is Always “One More” than They’re Currently Sending?
When I first started talking with organizations about this I noticed a pattern:
Orgs that send one annual appeal believed they could never send two appeals
Orgs that send two appeals believed they could never send three appeals
Orgs that send three appeals believed they could never send four appeals…
You get it.
My recommendation: don’t base your understanding of “how many appeals we can send” off of how many appeals you’re sending now. Instead, base your answer on how many appeals high-performing organizations are sending.
The time and money to write, design, and purchase postage for appeals can be a real barrier (which I’ll talk about later).
But the belief that you can’t ask more shouldn’t be a barrier.
It might make your organization uncomfortable to try it. But isn’t a little discomfort worth it for the ability to raise more money and do more good?
Beware Inapplicable Information
As you think about asking more often, you’ll get some pushback. Here are some common examples:
A Board member that says we can’t ask more than we currently are
A blog post (like this one or this one) that says to stop abusing donors with so many Asks
A Major donor that says she doesn’t like appeal letters
When this happens, check to make sure the lesson applies to your organization. For instance:
That Board member who says you can’t ask more likely doesn’t know much about direct response fundraising and hasn’t done it at scale. He doesn’t know what more sophisticated organizations are doing, and his opinion shouldn’t determine your approach.
The linked blog posts above are mainly aimed at super-large organizations. They aren’t written for organizations with two-person development teams who send out three appeals. (And nothing at all against the Agitator – I love them and kind of want to be them when I grow up.) Smart advice for an organization with 200,000 donors is not necessarily smart for an organization with 2,000 donors.
A Major Donor’s communication preferences should be honored for her, but her preferences should not determine your organization’s policy. If she doesn’t like appeal letters, use segmentation to take her out of most of your appeal letters.
The fundraising world is full of good advice, opinions and research. Just make sure it applies to your organization at your stage of growth.
Don’t Fear the Bogeyman
I’ve noticed that when organizations consider asking more, they have outsized fears around the possible negative consequences.
They fear a significant number of major donors will never give agai
They fear a massive number of unsubscribes from the email list
They fear donors will give a gift now but won’t give at the end of the year
We can tell you from experience that these fears don’t materialize.
Three quick real-life examples:
A client sent four printed appeal letters in four weeks, with no greater opt-outs or complaints than normal;
A client sent twenty-four e-appeals over nineteen days, with fewer unsubscribes than normal
A client went from four appeals to seven a year with zero negative feedback.
Will you get a complaint, an opt-out or two? Of course. But they’ll be minimal. And held up in direct comparison to the additional gifts and higher retention rates, it’s a “trade” most organizations would make every day.
Step by Step, Not Overnight
The organizations that are sending out ten successful appeals per year weren’t born that way.
They probably started at two. Then they added a third. Then a fourth. Years later, they were up to eight. And so on. They measure their results. And they keep adding appeals until their data (not one person’s opinion) shows them that they should stop.
If you’re sending three appeals a year, I don’t recommend jumping to eight. But I sure recommend jumping to four or five.
It’s a multi-year process to get to that many appeals. You figure out what types of letters and subjects your donors are most likely to respond to, and add appeals step by step.
The process often looks like the following chart. In “year 1.” the organization is sending three appeals. By year six they are sending out nine appeals and raising a LOT more money:
So if you’re worried that you and your team have to immediately triple or quadruple the amount of fundraising you send out, you can relax.
It really is a multi-year process. You add a couple of appeals. You raise more money. You do more good, and you hire another Development person. Then you’re able to do a couple more appeals. Then you raise more… step by step.
If you’re becoming more comfortable with the idea, “hey, maybe we could send one more,” then I’m thrilled for you. Because for smaller organizations who are only asking their donors a couple of times a year, the ability to ask more often is the easiest way to raise more money.
Don’t Send Everything to Everybody
Please know that most organizations that send ten appeals per year don’t send all ten to everyone.
Segmentation is your friend.
To give you an example, here are some super-simple segmentation recommendations for an organization that sends out ten appeals:
To your mass donors, send all ten of your appeals.
To the major donors you’re actively in relationship with, send two appeals.
To the major donors you’re not in active relationship with, send six appeals
To your monthly donors, send three appeals and be sure to customize them to acknowledge their faithful monthly giving.
For every appeal, feel free to pull any single donor or any small group of people out. Examples: your Board, a major donor you’re preparing a major ask for, or a person who just notified you that they’ve put your organization in their will.
Knowing that you don’t send all ten of those appeals to everyone is often tension-reducing, shoulder-lowering news for smaller organizations!
Add Functionality and Skills as You Grow
As organizations Ask more often, they tend to add new skills to their fundraising repertoire. These are skills and processes like:
Setting up their CRM to automatically send a printed receipt within 24 to 48 hours
Using segmentation (as mentioned above)
“Reporting” to their donors so donors know their gift made a difference
Use more direct response fundraising best-practices, then regularly measure and analyze results.
Do you need to do all those things if you’re moving from two appeals a year to three? No.
But do savvy nonprofits add those functions over time because they are proven to work?
Yes.
More Practice = More Money
Just “asking more” isn’t a magic bullet.
If you send eight appeals full of organizational-centric fundraising that “sounds like us” and tells stories of people you’ve already helped… it’s not going to go well. (You’ll still raise more money than you were before, but you’ll leave a lot of money on the table.)
So for smaller organizations to send more appeals, they also need to get better at appeals.
If you’re a small organization, you have three incredible things going for you:
Pent-up giving. If you’ve only been asking a couple of times a year, you have what we call pent-up giving. The next appeal you send will raise money almost regardless of what’s in it. Why? Your donors have been wanting to do more but you haven’t asked them to.
You get better at appeals the more you practice. Creating effective appeals is a learned behavior, and you’ll absolutely get better with practice.
You’re living in a golden age for learning fundraising. There’s so much free, high-quality information out there. Subscribe to our blog. Follow Jeff Brooks. Read The Agitator. Follow Lisa Sargent, Tom Ahern, Mark Phillips and T. Clay Buck. Read Erica Waasdorp’s book. Follow Next After. Look up the Agents of Good. I’ve been doing this stuff for twenty-seven years and regularly get better at it thanks to these fine people.
But You CAN Ask Too Much
The way to tell whether your organization is asking too much is to do some math. And I’ll give you the two main ideas below.
It’s good to note that sophisticated organizations use a host of tools and analysis to know when they’re asking too much. But as we’ve made clear, this post is not for them.
So here’s how to know if your organization is asking too much…
The first idea is to do a Cost/Benefit Analysis to see how much of the additional revenue from an additional appeal is “new revenue” – or is revenue that’s “stolen” from the appeal that mails right before it or after it. Once you calculate the new revenue, you figure out the relative cost of that new revenue compared to other appeals and to all of your other fundraising options.
In my experience, you don’t have to worry about this until you get to at least ten printed appeals and newsletters (total).
The second is to measure and monitor the retention rates for your donors. Each different segment of your donors (New Donors, Monthly Donors, Major Donors, etc.) has known strong/acceptable/weak retention rates. If you find that a particular segment’s retention rate is dropping, one of the culprits can be asking them too often.
If you’re at a nonprofit that is small enough that you’re not measuring retention rates by segment, you almost certainly can (and should) be mailing more.
Most small organizations don’t need analysis to know whether they can add another appeal or two. In my experience, I start to pay attention to the analysis when reaching ten appeals per year. And then really start digging into the details at about twelve or fourteen appeals per year.
If you’re mailing less than eight appeals per year, my recommendation is that you can add two appeals without thinking twice.
Quick story to provide context. I once served an organization where we ran a test. We started increasing the number of mailings (appeals and newsletters) to a group of their donors. We measured the results rigorously.
We got to the point where we were mailing those donors twenty-four appeal letters and twelve newsletters each year before the data told us that we were mailing too much.
24 printed appeal letters and 12 printed newsletters!
Do I recommend you send that many mailings? Of course not.
But doesn’t hearing that make you think you could be asking your donors a couple more times each year?
Human Resources Matter
Hopefully you are now open to the idea that your organization could be asking more.
It’s entirely another thing to write, design, print and send or email the additional asks. These things take real time, energy and money.
If you’re a small shop and working at max capacity, what do you do?
This issue must be addressed, but it’s not what this particular post is about. But here are some quick ideas to help you see how it’s possible:
You can repeat your strongest appeals and e-appeals. If last year’s year-end appeal worked great, you can use it again this year with only the slightest modification. If you run a spring campaign that works well, you can likely run a fall campaign that uses the same words, phrases and paragraphs. Don’t feel like you have to re-invent the wheel each time. Savvy Fundraisers purposefully repeat things that work. Assets, not art projects.
Sign up for the program at Work Less, Raise More. The trainings there (more being added each month) will help you produce effective fundraising very quickly.
Steal like an artist. There are no new ideas in fundraising. Take an idea or tactic that another organization uses successfully, revise it to fit your organization and your context, and you’ve made a new thing.
I want you to be free of the “donor fatigue” bogeyman. (Actual sightings happen about as often as actual sightings of a Sasquatch.)
The organizations that we’ve helped communicate more have never regretted it:
They found they were overestimating the negative consequences of communicating too much
And they found they were underestimating the generosity of their donors
So if you’re an organization that is wrestling with whether to ask more, you could be asking more.
You have pent-up giving waiting to be unleashed.
You could be doing more good!
Acknowledge your concerns – they come from a good place.
Show me a smaller organization that moves past their fears about asking too much and I’ll show you an organization that is about to raise more money, keep more of its donors, and make “the leap” to the next level of growth and impact.
“Urgency” was one of the reasons so many organizations’ direct response fundraising raised so much money during the pandemic.
Fundraising that was urgent tapped into donors’ wishes to do something to help right now.
But sounding urgent all the time is tiring. Fundraisers are tired of it.
So a lot of nonprofits are dialing back the urgency.
And they are going to raise less money.
This is a plea to keep the urgency in your fundraising work this year.
You Might Be Tired of It, But Donors Aren’t
You might be tired of sounding urgent all the time, but your donors aren’t.
Remember, you and your organization read every word of every thing you send out. Sometimes you read it twice or three times because you’re involved in creating it.
But most donors read less than half of the things you send out. And they don’t usually read, they scan.
So they haven’t heard it nearly as many times. Just because you and other stakeholders are tired of it doesn’t mean donors are tired of it.
Urgency is a Signal
It’s always good to remember just how many appeals your donors see on a daily or weekly basis.
My sense is that donors use the urgency of a message to help answer the question, “Does this organization really need a gift today?” If the copy and design are urgent, you have a greater chance to break through the clutter, a greater chance that the donor will pick your organization to support.
Or you can reduce the urgency and blend in with all the other appeals on her desk and in her inbox.
Stop Being Urgent When Urgency Stops Working
Keep using urgency until urgency stops working. Let your donors decide; don’t make the decisions for them.
And as I mentioned earlier, you’ll get tired of it faster than donors will, because you pay more attention and you see it more often.
Be Urgent Even If It Doesn’t Feel Urgent to You
Some organizations are so used to their work – are so used to the new world we live in – that their work doesn’t seem that urgent any longer.
But I bet what happens today and tomorrow is urgent to your beneficiaries.
And I bet it feels urgent to the vast majority of your donors, too.
Don’t Hide the Need Behind Boilerplate Copy and Pastel Design
If your organization or beneficiaries have a need, don’t hide that need from your donors.
Your organization exists in part to share the need – to make more people aware of the need so that more people are motivated to meet the need.
The urgency of the last year helped a lot of organizations stop hiding the need behind boilerplate industry jargon and lovely pastel design. They were clear about the needs facing their beneficiaries. They used urgent oranges and klaxon reds.
And it worked like crazy.
If your beneficiaries or cause are facing needs right now, don’t let up. Especially because after a year of this, the edges are fraying and the seams are showing for a lot of children … and families … and organizations.
So now, as even the media is moving on from the pandemic and won’t be reinforcing your fundraising messages, baking urgency into your fundraising is more important than ever.
Here’s an easy-to-follow tip to increase the amount of people who read your next newsletter:
Use the word “you” as the first word of the main headline on your cover.
That tells your donor right away that the newsletter is to her, and for her. And don’t you think she’ll be more likely to read if you signal to her that the newsletter is about her in some way? Versus what most organizations do, which is talk about themselves?
Want another tip? Use the word “you” again – in either the subhead or the first sentence of the main story.
Now you’re signaling to the donor that this really is about her. That the “you” in the headline was not just “donor-centered window dressing,” but was a signal that your organization really does care about her.
And now your donor is thinking, “Hey, this organization might be different from the other organizations I give to. They might appreciate me.”
And one final tip: use the word “you” in every single picture caption.
My rule is that picture captions should not be about what’s happening in the photo. Picture captions should be about the donor’s role in what’s happening in the photo. So instead of “Lisa and Laure enjoyed a week of summer camp at our facility” it should be, “Thanks to you, Lisa and Laura enjoyed an incredible week of summer camp!”
Now you’ve really done it. Your donor knows that you sent her a newsletter that’s about her and about what her gift accomplished.
That’s a Big Deal! Because very few (if any) of the other nonprofits she’s giving to have taken the time and money to show her what her gift did.
Some of them have sent her chest-thumping newsletters about what the organization did. But none of them have gotten in touch with her to tell her what she did.
Big difference.
And when you use the word “you,” she’s more likely to read more. And to know more about your organization. And to give more the next time you send her an appeal.
All from using the word “you” more often.
Think about it this way. As a donor, which type of newsletter would you like to receive: a newsletter that’s to everybody and all about the organization, or a newsletter that’s to you and all about what your gift did?
You know which one your donors would prefer. So follow these tips and make them one!
This post was originally published on September 10, 2019.
Here’s a question I get every time an organization is thinking about using a good fundraising offer with a low price point:
“OK, so our offer is $7. Are we going to get a ton of $7 gifts? Aren’t we going to raise less money this way because our donors are going to give less?”
The short answer is:
Not if your Ask Amounts for each donor are at or above what that donor gave last time.
Let me explain…
Offer Amount vs. Ask Amount
There’s a difference between your Offer Amount and your Ask Amounts.
Your Offer Amount is the cost of your offer – the cost to do the thing you promise will happen if a donor gives a gift. (We’ve talked about how those amounts should usually be less than $50.)
Your Ask Amounts are the amounts you list for your donor to give on your reply card. They often look something like this:
[ ] $50 [ ] $100 [ ] $150 [ ] $_______
Those are your Ask Amounts. (This is also often called “gift ask string” or “gift ask array” but we’re going to refer to them as Ask Amounts for clarity’s sake.)
Think of it this way:
Your Offer Amount is how much it costs for the donor to do one meaningful thing.
Your Ask Amounts are how much you’d like the donor to give today.
Make sense? Still with me?
How Smart Organizations Raise More Money
This is simple to explain, but it takes a bit of work to do. But here’s what the smart organizations do:
They customize the Ask Amounts for each and every donor.
The customized Ask Amounts for each donor are in increments of the Offer Amount.
Here’s what that looks like. Say I had recently given a donation of $100 to an organization. And they were writing me with an offer of “$35 will train one volunteer to advocate for our cause.” My Ask Amounts would look something like:
[ ] $105 to train 3 advocates [ ] $140 to train 4 advocates [ ] $210 to train 6 advocates [ ] $______ to train as many advocates as possible
There’s a lot going on in that example that’s helpful.
First, the Ask Amounts are all in $35 increments – increments of the Offer Amount. Because remember, your whole letter (or email, or newsletter, or event) should be about the Offer. So it will make more sense to your donor if your reply card has amounts that are based on the offer you are writing them about.
Second, the beginning Ask Amount is at or above how much I gave last time. This is key to helping donors give how much they gave last time… or more!
Third, the description text (“…to train 3 advocates”) describes how many of the outcomes my gift will fund. This helps donors know exactly how much good their gift will do. It’s a proven tactic.
To do this, most smaller organizations use Excel to calculate the Ask Amounts and Outcome Amounts (“3 advocates”) for each donor. Then they merge in those amounts onto the reply card.
This takes real work. It’s worth it.
The Benefits to You
When your Offer Amount is low, and your Ask Amounts are at or above how much your donor gave last time, two positive things happen:
More people respond because your barrier of entry is so low. In other words, more people respond because it costs so little for them to make a meaningful difference.
You’ll raise more money because donor’s gifts will usually be at or above what they gave last time.
Increasing the number of people who respond + keeping their gifts at the same size or larger = more money for your cause!
This post was originally published on May 7, 2019 as part of a series on creating successful offers. Use the links below to read the entire series, or click here to download the e-book we created from these posts.
We talk often about “Repeating” the tactics and messages that work for your donors.
During one such post a while back, I brought up an important question: “how do you innovate when you’re in a culture of repeating what’s worked in the past? Because you have to innovate.”
I Was Wrong, That’s Awkward…
Let me begin by saying that I was wrong about something: you don’t have to innovate.
This might be controversial, but most nonprofits should not be innovating.
In my experience, the vast majority of nonprofits should focus on the basic building blocks of solid donor communications and fundraising before they try to innovate.
Most nonprofits should “learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist” (eternal thanks for that quote, Picasso). Most nonprofits should take advantage of the incredible body of knowledge that’s been built up over the last 60 years for how to raise money effectively.
Listen, if you’re raising less than $2 million per year, you probably shouldn’t be innovating. You should focus your time on fundamentals like getting good at Asking, Thanking and Reporting, getting receipts out on time, focusing your time on major donors, having a website that’s good at receiving & tracking gifts, etc.
For instance, say you’re currently sending out 3 appeal letters per year and have a newsletter that doesn’t raise money. My advice would be to send out 5 appeals per year and start raising money with your newsletter before trying something your organization has never done before.
Those are the “long cuts” to success.
Two Paths to Innovation
Ok. You’ve fostered a culture of Repeating: you repeat tactics that work, and you invest the minimum time and money needed to update successful tactics (and not a dollar or minute more).
Then there are two paths to innovation:
When you update your materials, work to improve We call this “incremental innovation,” and it’s what most nonprofits should be doing.
Try entirely new tactics. This looks like “launching a Facebook presence” or “trying telemarketing.”
Incremental Innovation
Here’s how you innovate incrementally…
As you update materials you’ve used in the past (e.g., your year-end appeal letter, or your fall event), you do your necessary updates and then ask, “Are there any tweaks we could make so that this works a little better?”
Here are examples of tweaks you can make that almost always work:
Use customized gift ask amounts based on each donor’s last gift
Not very sexy, eh? But it’s how most of the really successful fundraising programs got where they are today. Incremental innovation over time creates a fundraising program that predictably raises more money.
Try New Tactics (but Minimize Risk)
The big idea here is to try new things without putting large portions of your revenue at risk.
Here’s a perfect example from a couple years ago: a nonprofit that regularly raised $50,000 from their Year-End appeal letter decided to not send their letter. They chose to only send emails because email was so much cheaper.
The organization saved approximately $4,000, but raised $25,000 instead of their regular $50,000. Ouch.
Any time you are considering an idea that puts a lot of revenue at risk, your goal should be to minimize the risk as much as possible.
For instance, they could have sent the letter to their Major and Mid-level donors. That’s where about 80% of their revenue came from. That would have guaranteed 80% of the revenue ($40,000!). Then they could have experimented by doing an email-only campaign to the rest of their donors.
And you know what would have worked even better? Sending the letter to all donors, and then sending a follow-up letter, and emails.
When trying something brand new, we usually follow these three principles:
Determine the “minimum effective dose.” You want to figure out the least amount you have to spend in order to get a test with reproducible results. Maybe it’s a new Facebook presence where you need to spend 15 hours per week and $1,000 per month boosting posts. Maybe that’s a radio campaign where you need to spend $20,000 on spots to really know if the campaign is working or not. Whatever it is, do the research and figure out what you need to do to make your test a good test.
Have a budget and a timeline. Define exactly how much money and time you’re going to spend on a test. If you don’t have a specific budget and timeline, you’re at risk of over-spending, or getting out too early, or running into conflict because different people in your organization have different expectations. We see this all the time in donor acquisition. Starting to do donor acquisition is hard, and usually takes at least a year to really get going. If you know that but don’t say it, and someone in the organization thinks it’s only going to take 3 months, you’re in trouble.
Define success. You have to specifically define what success looks like. It doesn’t work to say “we’ve engaged our donors more” or “we’ve built awareness in our community.” You want to use specific metrics like “our retention rate will go up 2%” or “we’ll acquire 250 new donors.” Get specific. As Peter Drucker said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” I’ve watched a LOT of money get wasted on new initiatives where the results weren’t really measurable.
What’s Next for You?
Hopefully this helps you a) think about what you should be doing next to raise more money, and b) avoid the common mistakes many nonprofits make.
Now, make a plan and go get ‘em! And if you want help, get in touch. You can use our experience (from successes and failures we’ve learned from) to move your organization forward faster!
This post was originally published on June 21, 2018.
