Steven Screen, Author at The Better Fundraising Company

Make “The Leap” to Acquire a LOT of new donors

Steven Screen | February 18, 2021February 17, 2021Ask

This post is about acquiring new donors.

But it’s for nonprofits at a very specific stage in their development.

Keep reading if the following three things are true for your organization:

You’re actively trying to grow
You realize that to achieve that growth you need more new donors each year than you’ve been acquiring
You know that your current ways of acquiring new donors won’t achieve your new goals

I’ll give you an example. We work with a handful of organizations that have between 500 and 4,000 donors. These organizations want to grow… but the ways they acquire new donors are labor-intensive and are hard to expand:

Tours of their facility
An event or two a year
Word of mouth
A major donor connects them to another major donor
Vision Meetings

All good things – but small nonprofits can only do so many of them each year.

So the organization is stuck: they want to grow, know they need more donors, but don’t have the staff to do more.

If That’s You, What Do You Do?

If that’s you, please know that you’re in good company. A LOT of organizations are in your shoes.

But your question remains: how do you begin to acquire significantly more new donors than you have in the past?

It starts with thinking differently about acquiring donors. The Big Idea is that there is a cost associated with acquiring new donors. You’re going to need to pay for the attention of potential donors via media like radio, the mail, Facebook ads, etc.

In my experience, most smaller nonprofits never make the leap from homegrown, labor-intensive methods of acquiring donors. These smaller nonprofits don’t want to pay (or don’t think they can’t afford) the costs needed to do this.

But if they really want to grow, they need to.

Making the Leap

Below are my tips for “making the leap” to a new way of acquiring new donors.

And I need to say right away that I’m not providing the solution to your donor acquisition problem. This is not “7 easy tricks to more donors than you can count!” (That post would probably get a lot of readers, but it wouldn’t hold water because there is no silver bullet.)

The Current Situation

Most small nonprofits have no line item in the budget for donor acquisition. They also really don’t know their current cost for every donor acquired, because those costs are buried in other expenses.

For example, they might spend $50,000 on an event that acquires 100 new donors. But the expenses are only looked at in relation to how much revenue came in, not how many new donors were acquired.

What’s needed is a dedicated budget for donor acquisition.

How to Grow

Smaller nonprofits basically have two options for growth. You can pursue either one, or both:

Start a scalable Donor Acquisition program. This means doing specific activities like buying radio spots and/or mailing lists, upping your online donor acquisition game, etc.
- For example: doing a radio share-a-thon for $15,000, getting 500 new donors, then doing that every year moving forward. And this is scalable because you could do two radio share-a-thons for $30,000 and acquire 1,000 new donors. Or 3 radio share-a-thons for $45,000 and acquire 1,500 new donors.
Do more of what you’re currently doing. (For clarity’s sake, I would define what most smaller orgs are doing in donor acquisition as not scalable. Could you expand your event and get 250 more donors? Maybe. Could you add three more events and get 750 new donors? Probably not.)

In my experience, “doing more of what you’re currently doing” almost never results in the type of growth a motivated organization is looking for.

So they have to bite the bullet. They have to pay the costs to start up a donor acquisition program.

Ask a Good Question

The most successful organization leaders, when they want to grow, are asking one of these questions:

“I have $XX,XXX to spend on getting new donors in 2018. How many new donors could we get for that?”
“I need X,XXX new donors in 2018. How much is it going to cost me?”
“By 2020 I need to have our income be 50% higher than 2017. How many new donors do we need to reach that level, and how much will it cost?”

If you know how much you have to spend, we can estimate how many new donors you can acquire.

If you know how many new donors you want to acquire, we can estimate how much it will cost you.

If you know how much you want to be raising 5 years from now, based on how your current donors are performing, we can tell you how many new donors you’ll need, to reach your goals.

Helpful Big Ideas

For organizations who want to begin scalable donor acquisition, there’s a set of ideas that more-or-less must be present in your organization for it to work:

If your organization is serious about acquiring new donors, you’ll have a line item in your budget for Donor Acquisition.
Measuring the Cost Per New Donor is a sign of maturity for an organization. It means you’re running the thing like a business, with known (and measured) inputs and known (and predictable) outcomes.
Scalable methods of donor acquisition require an investment mindset. Usually in donor acquisition you lose money in the short term, but you make money in the long term. For example, you might spend $1,000 and get 10 donors who each give you $50. So you spent $1,000 to raise $500. BUT, if you do a good job retaining those 10 donors they’ll give you $3,000 over the course of their time with you. So you actually spent $1,000 to raise $3,000.
There’s no way to know exactly how much a new donor will cost for an organization without testing. But there are industry standards and deep experience for every media channel – even Instagram, believe it or not. Find somebody or some organization who is doing a lot of donor acquisition, and ask them. In my experience, people will help you.
The Cost Per New Donor is always higher when you first start scalable acquisition methods. That’s because you do not know what will work best. Over time, you figure out which messages and mediums work best, and the cost per new donor comes down over time. (This is another reason it’s so important to have an investment mindset when you start to scale your acquisition.)
There is a “minimum level of investment” to start a donor acquisition program. For instance, if a radio share-a-thon costs $20k and gets you 200 donors, you can’t buy half a share-a-thon for $10,000 and get 100 donors. And by the way, Dear Reader, I don’t think you need to hear this. But I share it because there’s always someone on a Board that says, “Could we just buy seven commercials and see if that works?” What you want to do is figure out what the “minimum effective test” is, and do that. Not half of that.

Moving to this type of donor acquisition is a great sign of growth and maturity for an organization. It’s almost always a sign of a nonprofit being run like a business – and I mean that in the best way possible. It’s being a great steward of the resources given to us by donors to maximize their impact.

Good luck out there – and get in touch if you’d like to talk about donor acquisition!

This post was originally published on September 13, 2018.

“If you serve one audience, you’ve let another down.” – Seth Godin

Steven Screen | February 16, 2021February 16, 2021Ask

That quote explains why some organizations have trouble “making the leap” to their next level of fundraising success.

Too many nonprofits create fundraising that serves an internal audience. And their fundraising lets another audience down: their donors.

Here’s how this happens. An organization’s fundraising is often written and designed to make internal audiences happy. Members of that “audience” tend to be Executive Directors, the program team, the Board, or a Major Donor who is super-involved.

We can’t ever forget that their intentions are good. They’re trying to help.

They prefer fundraising to be a certain way. And they hold sway. So fundraising is created to serve that internal audience.

But… “If you serve one audience, you’ve let another down.”

The audience that gets let down is their donors.

Want to Make the Leap?

Create fundraising that serves donors and “lets down” internal audiences.

Creating fundraising that serves donors instead of internal audiences is often a seismic shift for organizations. Seth calls this “the difficult choice of disappointment.”

It’s hard to choose who to disappoint. It creates conflict. I’ve seen people lose jobs and leave jobs.

I’ve seen organizations become aware of the choice, yet continue to let their donors down. Even despite testing data that shows that donor-serving fundraising would raise more money and allow the organization to do more good!

And I’ve seen organizations who shift their fundraising to serve donors and very quickly make the leap to their next level of fundraising success.

What to Do?

For the “internal audiences” reading this, I hope you’ll make the difficult choice to create fundraising that serves your donors. Set aside what you like and what you think will work. Then research what donor-serving fundraising looks like. Follow this blog. Sign up for Free Review Fridays. Make the Big Shift. Be willing to try things that will make you uncomfortable.

I often encourage Fundraisers to do the “hard, other-centered” work of creating fundraising that generously “crosses the gap” to meet your donors where they are.

Because fundraising is supposed to be for donors. Not for internal audiences.

My 25+ years of experience tells me that if you choose to disappoint the internal audience by choosing to serve donors, you’ll raise more money and do more good.

Quick Thanks & Encouragement

Steven Screen | February 11, 2021February 11, 2021Crisis

Today’s post is a little different: it’s the text of an email I sent out yesterday. It made a number of Fundraisers like you “feel seen and encouraged” — and I hope it does the same for you.

— Steven

Dear NAME/Fundraiser,

If there’s one thing I know right now, it’s that Fundraisers are tired.

Most of us aren’t “about to quit” tired. But there are a lot of us who are second-week-of-December-tired even though it’s only February.

There are a lot of us who used to push hard until 5:00 or 6:00 each day… and are now finding themselves (finding myself) kind of… losing steam around 3:30.

One day last week I had three meaningful, unprompted conversations with Fundraisers who were tired. A high-powered V.P. An experienced leader with a long track record of success. The founder of a growing organization.

Then the next day I spoke to a young woman who’s been in fundraising for two years. She can’t decide if working in fundraising is the best thing ever, or it’s going to burn her out before she’s 30.

I won’t get into comparisons – most of us haven’t been in PPE on the front lines this last year – but I will say that fundraising is more emotionally draining than many jobs because of the amount of empathy required.

But I’m not a motivational speaker. Nor am I a counsellor. So why am I writing you today?

Two things.

First, if you haven’t recently, I encourage you to talk about the tiredness at your organization or team. And if you aren’t more tired than normal, thank your lucky stars – and then ask if other people are. Because chances are, they are.

Naming what’s going on will help us all have a little more grace for each other.

Second, I just want to say thank you for being a Fundraiser.

Thanks for all the good you’ve done for your beneficiaries or cause, especially over the last year. Thanks for all the times you’ve shown #donorlove and let donors know the difference they’ve made. And for all the times you’ve shown #donortoughlove by reminding donors about real needs and injustices, and asking donors to help meet those needs and right those wrongs.

Your fundraising makes a meaningful difference for your cause or beneficiaries. Your fundraising makes a meaningful difference for your organization. Your fundraising makes a meaningful difference in the lives of your donors.

That’s pretty good news for Fundraisers to hear. All of us Fundraisers should hear it more often. Not because we’re more virtuous or heroic than anyone. But because we’re part of the solution. And that should occasionally be called out and honored.

I love the MLK quote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

In this “inescapable network of mutuality,” you are making everyone’s world better.

Thank you.

Steven & the Better Fundraising team

All Cars are the Same and Unique

Steven Screen | February 9, 2021February 9, 2021Ask

When we work with nonprofits for the first time, we run into a situation again and again.

We present fundraising we’ve created for them and someone will say…

“But… this will make us look like all those other organizations. How can that be good?”

(Perhaps weirdly, when I hear them say it, I know we’re on the right track. But I’m getting ahead of myself.)

There’s a deep vein of distrust of fundraising that “looks and sounds alike.”

Many small- to medium-sized nonprofits I know actively work hard to make their fundraising look and sound different from other fundraising they see.

They want their fundraising to be unique.

Unfortunately, in their pursuit of uniqueness, most nonprofits cause themselves to raise less money than they could.

The best way to illustrate this is through a simple analogy. I want you to think about cars…

What Cars Can Teach Us About Fundraising

From one perspective, there’s a remarkable amount of uniqueness among cars. There are two-door cars, there are four-door cars. There are trucks. There are family cars. There are sports cars. There are different colors, there are different curves. Massive differentiation.

But from another perspective, all cars all “look and sound alike.” They all have four wheels. They all have windows on the front, back, and sides. They all have doors. They all have steering wheels. They all have mirrors so you can see behind you. Cars are all the same!

That “sameness” is a result of 100+ years of trial and error as the car industry identified the common set of attributes that a car needs to have to be functional and successful.

And after a car has those attributes, it gets customized to become unique.

The same is true for direct response fundraising…

The “sameness” of successful direct response fundraising is a result of 70+ years of trial and error as the fundraising industry identified the common set of attributes that an appeal or e-appeal needs to have to be functional and successful.

And after an appeal or e-appeal has those attributes, it gets customized to become unique.

The trick is to know what the attributes are. And to start with them.

These are things like “an appeal needs to be easily readable by a 75-year-old” and “the writing has to work for people who read and for people who scan.”

Those – and a host of others – are the windows, the steering wheels, the four wheels.

What happens too often is that nonprofits design cars that have five wheels, no windows on the left side, and the steering wheel in the back.

Can you get somewhere in that crazy car? (In other words, will you get some donations?) Sure. But you’re not going to make it as far as you could.

So What Do I Do?

I wrote this to help the organizations who “don’t want our fundraising to look like those other guys” to have another way to approach this situation.

Here’s my advice:

Know that doing direct response fundraising (appeals, newsletters, e-appeals, etc.) is different from other types of fundraising.
Learn the “attributes” and best-practices
As you create your direct response fundraising, focus first on the attributes that will increase your chances of success.
Then (and only then) focus on how those attributes look and sound coming your organization.

All successful direct response fundraising tends to look, sound, and feel the same. When your fundraising starts to sound like other professionally-produced fundraising, it’s a sign of success, not failure.

Uniqueness in fundraising, in and of itself, usually leads to raising less money.

But you know what’s unique and successful? Your organization sending out fundraising that has all the attributes of successful direct response fundraising. You are the only organization in the world who can do it. And when you do it, your donors will respond far beyond your expectations.

Offer Amount vs. Ask Amount

Steven Screen | February 2, 2021February 2, 2021Ask

Today’s post shares an email exchange with the Executive Director of an organization on the East Coast.

I’m sharing this with you because the ED had a very common fear: if he highlighted a low dollar amount in his appeals and e-appeals he would cause his donors to send in lower gifts than usual.

This fear often happens to organizations who are using a strong fundraising offer for the first time.

The email exchange below helped the ED set aside his fear enough to try what we were recommending. And our conversation helped him understand two helpful ideas:

The “offer amount” is different than the “ask amounts.”
Having a lower “offer amount” will not result in high-value donors giving lower amounts of money.

I’ve placed the emails in the order they were sent. I’ve edited them lightly for clarity and to anonymize the organization.

Hi Frank,
Great meeting today. At the end of our time together it was suggested that we have the offer for our first appeal be based on the cost for one of your team members to learn Spanish.

I would not focus the offer on this. Given the list of powerful activities you guys are doing this summer (working in hospitals, caring for the poor, volunteering in food banks, etc.) I think that learning Spanish is not the most impactful thing in the list that’s included in the letter.

In our experience, the best place to focus the offer is on an outcome or action that your donors will immediately see and feel the value of.

So I’d be working to find the cost to serve in a hospital for a day. Or to serve the poor.

I think those things would be more likely to result in a gift.

Steven

Note: I know from experience that it’s important (and even vital) for members of their team to learn Spanish. However, most donors would be more likely to value the acts of service performed than they would value learning the language that allows for the act of service.

What I’m trying to do is focus the fundraising on the outcome (the act of service) as opposed to focus the fundraising on the process (learning Spanish in order to provide the act of service).

Hi Steven,
I totally get that point. However, the reality is that we don’t pay much of anything for a team member to serve in a hospital or a soup kitchen. All we pay are the travel costs to and from our HQ for the summer assignment. The real costs are the language study which involve sending a team member abroad to learn the language in the actual culture.

This year, we are spending $20,000 for the team members to do language studies. But since the language study is not the real motivator to donors, could we perhaps say something generic like “The average cost of supporting a team member in a summer of service to others is $400.” ($20,000 divided by 50 team members)

What do you think?

Frank

My Reply to Frank . . .

Hey Frank,
Totally get it.

I like how you broke down the cost per team member to arrive at the $400 number. (It’s always a great service to your mass donors to help them see impact.). However, I wouldn’t recommend using the $400 amount because it’s too high. To have the most success, the amount we use needs to be low enough (usually below $50) so that any donor can afford it.

Here’s what I’d do; divide the travel costs for the team members who serve at hospitals/soup kitchens by the number of days served. That gives you the “cost per day of service” for a team member in those places.

Two reasons:
1. As mentioned earlier, the type of service offered in hospitals and soup kitchens is far more interesting to donors (in my experience) so it would be crazy not to focus a donor’s attention there.
2. Because all your organizations pays for is the travel, the “cost per day” is going to be really low. That will feel like a great deal to donors – which is always a good thing. I would even say something like, “Their food and lodging costs are covered, all we need to pay for is their travel and they’ll serve people for the entire summer! And if we write the letter correctly the funds will be undesignated and can be used for all of the team members this summer and anything else your organization needs the money for.
That’s my reasoning. Does it hold water with you?

Frank replied…

Okay. The approximate travel costs for all of the team members is $15,000. If we divide this by 35 (the number of team members doing the service work), and then divide that by 40 (number of work days), that comes to a little over $10 per day, per team member. Since the $15k above include some other things besides travel from HQ to the different cities, e.g. lunch money, commuting expenses to the work sites, etc., I think we could simply say it costs $10 per day to support a team member in their service.
I understand the pitch you want to make. My concern is that we’ll get lots of $10 gifts, but very few larger gifts that will make the mailing profitable.

Can you help ease my concern here?

My reply…

Your concern is reasonable, and I think can ease it.
First, let me call out the difference between the “offer” and the “ask amounts.” The offer is “$10 provides one day of service.” The offer shows donors a) what their gift will accomplish and b) how much it costs to make a meaningful difference.

The gift ask amounts — how much we ask for — will be higher than the offer amount. For example, the suggested gift ask amounts on the reply card will be something like “$30 to provide 3 days of service” and “$70 to provide a week of service” and “$300 to provide an entire month of service.”

When you have a low offer amount and higher gift ask amounts, a couple things happen:
- More people give because the barrier of entry is so low. If we’d gone with the “$400 supports a team member for a summer” offer – that’s a high barrier of entry and fewer people would have given.
- - - At risk of repeating myself but to make a point: if we provide a low offer amount then almost all donors will see that they can make a meaningful difference with even a small gift. This will increase the number of people who respond.
- We have tons of experience seeing that the majority of donors will give about the same amount that they gave last time — or higher. (Will you get a couple $10 gifts? Sure. But the overall revenue is consistently higher.)
I hope that helps. We wouldn’t recommend this technique if we didn’t have a LOT of experience with it working.

Finally, to make this technique work even better, we will customize the gift ask amounts that each donor receives based on the size of their most recent gift. This is done by taking each donor’s last gift, then calculating the appropriate-sized gift ask amounts for that donor, then printing those amounts on each donor’s reply card.

Does this help? Does it prompt any questions?

Frank was still slightly worried that focusing the letter on a low offer amount ($10 provides a day of service) would result in lower-than-normal gifts. However, he was willing to try it once.

And thankfully the appeal was a great success. It raised more money than it ever had before, completely funded the program for the year, and even raised additional undesignated funds.

After a string of successes, the organization now looks for low offer amounts for every appeal they send.

I realize that focusing on a low dollar amount is counterintuitive. But organizations who switch to this approach with their mass donors reliably raise more money than they previously did.

If you’re interested in trying this out for your organization, get in touch!

Trust

Steven Screen | January 21, 2021January 21, 2021Repeat

Organizations become trusted by donors when organizations show up, again and again, with communications that are relevant to the donor.

Those donors have lots of interactions with you. Those interactions over time, repeated and reinforced, lead to trust.

You cannot earn trust very quickly when you have one event and two pieces of fundraising a year.

And remember, the primary things that a donor cares about are:

What’s happening directly to the beneficiary group or cause that she cares about
How her gift can make a difference
How her past made a difference

That’s what she cares about most. That’s what your fundraising should be about to be most relevant to her.

If your communications are mostly about your organization, you’re not talking about what she’s passionate about.

In 2021, resolve to talk more about what she’s passionate about. Tell her about the negative things that are going on with the people you serve for the cause you work on, and tell her what her gift will do to help. That’s asking. Then be sure to report. Tell her the positive news about how her gift made a difference.

Don’t stay silent for long periods of time. Don’t go dark. Earn her trust.

Not very many organizations have it in them to build a habit of regularly contacting their donors with relevant messages. It’s hard work.

That means there’s an incredible opportunity for you and your organization.

Repeat What Works

Steven Screen | January 19, 2021January 19, 2021Repeat

After a difficult year, and a not-so-simple start to 2021, we’d be excused for wanting to wipe the slate clean.

But does starting over with a clean sheet of paper work for fundraising?

Sounds nice, doesn’t it? But it’s usually the wrong thing to do.

The best way to move into 2021 is by looking at what worked best in 2020 and copying it. Even during the pandemic, many organizations saw better than average results. Some set records. So, it would be a shame to not repeat what worked, right?

You can save yourself a LOT of time by doing this, AND you’ll raise more money doing it. Why? Because your donors voted with their wallets and told you that some of your fundraising last year was really effective. It caught and kept their attention. They wanted to get involved. And it moved them to action.

If you think of your fundraising as a series of experiments, some of your experiments worked better than others.

So, your fundraising this year should include more of the things that worked well. Take some time to identify those successes, and repeat them:

Copy the offers and creative approaches that worked.

Use those offers and creative approaches in other scenarios.

Find relevant, real-time opportunities for your donor to give today.

And don’t be afraid to Ask more often.

As you move into the new year, spend a couple of minutes brainstorming the reasons your donor gave last year. And if you give her those same opportunities, she’s likely to help your cause again.

Don’t Be Afraid to Ask

Steven Screen | January 12, 2021January 12, 2021Ask

I wrote this blog a few years back but it’s more relevant now, than ever. The summary is that there’s an easy way for you to raise more money in 2021 with very little work.

It’s worked for years, and it worked again in 2020. Even in the midst of the pandemic…

Every one of our clients who Asked their donors for support more often in 2020 (compared to 2019) raised more net revenue than they did the year before.

And there were almost zero negative consequences. To be more specific, there was a complaint or two, a worry from a board member, and some unsubscribes from their email lists.

But those negatives were completely overwhelmed by the additional donors that were engaged and extra money that was raised. In short, donors wanted to help.

The nervous fundraisers, EDs and organizations who weren’t sure whether they should do this were handsomely rewarded with more net revenue for very little cost.

There were no breakouts of “donor fatigue.” No massive numbers of people unsubscribing.

These organizations just raised more money, did more good work, and learned more about their donors.

Which now sets them up for an even more successful 2021.

Let me put it this way…

The easiest way to raise more is to Ask more often.

This means adding another appeal or two. Or more e-appeals.

Not replacing what you’ve been doing. In addition to what you’ve been doing.

Here’s an easy way to add an Ask:

Look at your fundraising calendar for 2021
Look for a gap where your donors don’t hear from you for a while
Think back through your most successful appeals and e-appeals last year (other than year-end)
Pick the most successful appeal that’s appropriate to send during the “gap” in your calendar, then create a version of that appeal to send in the gap

What you’re trying to do here is add another appeal with the least amount of effort possible.

And if you want easy ways to improve all your appeals or e-appeals, download our free eBook, “Asks That Make Your Donors Take Action.”

Please Try It

Almost no one believes me when I say, “The easiest way to raise more money is to Ask a couple more times this year.”

Almost every organization has an awful, no-good, very-bad, organization-shackling assumption that they can’t Ask their donors any more often than they already are. Especially after the year we’ve had.

But it’s a bad assumption. Let your donors make the decision not to give. Don’t make it for them.

So please, try it. You can even just try it with an e-appeal so there’s basically no cost. Track the results. Look at the expenses, the revenue, your retention rates, everything. You won’t see the negative consequences you fear.

And you’ll LOVE the amount of additional money you raise with very little work.