Steven Screen, Author at The Better Fundraising Company

The Habit

Steven Screen | January 7, 2021January 6, 2021Repeat

There’s a habit your organization can develop that will result in raising more money and keeping more of your donors each year.

It’s the habit of regularly using the mail and email to stay in relationship with your donors.

Here’s why the habit of regularly sending mail and email to your donors is so powerful…

The habit of regularly Asking your donors to do meaningful, powerful things with a gift through your organization results in more gifts. Donors in motion tend to stay in motion. Donors at rest tend to stay at rest.

The habit of regularly Reporting to your donors shows and tells them that their gifts make a difference. Donors who know their previous gift made a meaningful difference are more likely to give to you again than donors who don’t.

The habit of regularly contacting your donors always works better than “going dark” for weeks or months at a time.

The habit of regularly contacting your donors via letters and emails is more effective than Social.

The habit of regularly contacting your donors always works better than sending nothing.

Getting in the habit of regularly sending out mail and email, paying attention to the results, always works better than any other approach.

It’s a habit you must develop

First, you must get past the idea that mailing your donors more than a couple times a year will somehow result in the mythical “donor fatigue.” If you need help with that, look here. Or here.

Then you have to realize that each piece you send out is not precious. Each piece you send out is an overwhelmingly positive incident that raises money, keeps you in touch with your donors, and learning opportunity.

Then you just have to practice. You need repetition. Sending out mail and email is like any other skill; you get better with practice.

Show me an organization that has developed a habit of regularly mailing and emailing its donors and I’ll show you an organization that has deeper relationships with its donors and keeps more of its donors every year.

A Note to Leaders

Steven Screen | January 5, 2021January 6, 2021Ask

This is a note to Leaders of organizations who want to raise more money this year through the mail and email, or who need to raise more money through mail and email because you are still unable to have events and meet with donors.

You’ll raise more money faster if you can cultivate an attitude that each piece of mail or email your organization sends out is an experiment and an opportunity to get better.

Organizations that get better at direct response quickly do not treat every piece of fundraising as precious. They look at each piece as:

An opportunity to raise money
An experiment that might work
A data-producing effort that will be learned from
A chance to stay “top of mind” with their donor (in contrast to all those organizations that “go dark” for weeks and months at a time)

And here’s what I see in organizations that do not get better quickly:

A belief that each piece is something precious.
A deep fear of offending anybody, and a belief that any offense would cause outsized negative consequences.
Large approval teams. Everyone who sees it is allowed to make changes.

A Structure for Quick Improvement

It’s probably too much to ask a blog post to change the beliefs an organization has about mail and email fundraising, the “story they tell themselves” about mail and email fundraising.

But here is a structural recommendation for how the fundraising gets created that can help…

After a draft of an appeal or e-appeal is created, a very small number of people review it.
Reviewers can submit suggested changes, but not make changes.
No more than three people are allowed to make changes, and preferably fewer.
If a Reviewer’s suggested edits or changes are not accepted, they are told why.
After appeals or e-appeals are sent to donors, anyone in the organization can comment on it. The person in charge of the fundraising decides whether to take the comments into consideration for future fundraising, or not.

Cascading Benefits

This structure has several cascading benefits…

The person or team who creates the fundraising saves time and can focus on their expertise → The team then creates more pieces of fundraising → This allows more fundraising to be sent to donors → This speeds up the pace of learning what works and what doesn’t → This increases donations → This increases donor retention.

Another benefit: this structure will help you attract and retain better fundraising talent.

But you have to trust the structure and the process. You have to trust the fundraising team. You have to trust the skills they’ll develop.

Show me an organization structured like this, with a team that uses data and best practices to make decisions instead of having to make the edits from Bob in Accounting, and I’ll show you an organization primed to learn quickly and raise more money in 2021.

Two Lessons from 2020

Steven Screen | December 22, 2020December 17, 2020Ask

I thought a lot about how to sum up a ridiculous year.

And I noticed two things that – again and again – showed up in the organizations that exceeded their goals for the year.

Story about Fundraising

Borrowing from Brené Brown, every organization has a “story” they tell themselves about fundraising. Their “story” is a set of beliefs about how fundraising works, what their organization can and cannot do, can and cannot say, etc.

Some stories cause more effective fundraising than other stories. That’s never been more clear than this year.

If you look at the “story about fundraising” told by organizations that succeeded this year, here are some of the beliefs you’ll see again and again:

We believe many of our donors would love to give second, third and fourth gifts
We believe that regardless of what else is happening in the world, our cause is urgent, it matters, and we’re going to fundraise like it
We believe that fundraising is a form of leadership, and we can’t lead if we go silent for long periods of time
We believe that demographics are in our favor this year: if the average age of a donor is 69, that means more than half of donors didn’t have a job to lose, had investments that performed incredibly, had fewer places to spend their money this year, and would love to help
We believe that our donors are adults and have no problem deciding when to give or not give
We believe that giving makes a donor feel great

As we near 2021, how does your organization’s “story about fundraising” need to be changed so that you can raise more money?

Vulnerability

The second thing I noticed was that the organizations who practiced vulnerability raised more money.

They were vulnerable enough to ask for help like they really needed it. They shared problems the pandemic caused. The shared their revenue shortfalls and their cancelled events. They made it very clear to donors that the beneficiaries and/or the organization needed help and needed it now.

They shared what would happen if they didn’t raise the money.

When they did that – without fail – they were inundated with gifts. Multiple gifts from Majors. First-time gifts from people on their email list. Upgraded gifts from Mass donors. In my 27 years of fundraising I’ve never seen anything like the scope and length of this fundraising surge.

Asking with vulnerability is a skill that can be developed. It’s uncomfortable at first. It’s (unfortunately) not what’s taught in our sector. But vulnerability leads to connection. And connection leads to donations.

Thank You for Being a Fundraiser

You were needed more than ever this year. Thanks for showing up. Thanks for working so hard.

Thanks for hitting the wall, taking a breath, and hitting the wall again.

The initial signs are pointing to a great year-end fundraising season – I pray that’s the case for you and your organization.

And I hope you get a few days off for the holidays. I know I sure need them.

And I breathe a little easier knowing that donors are incredible. And they aren’t done yet.

But your donors can’t change the world through your organizations without you.

Thank you.

The Three Practical Empathies

Steven Screen | November 24, 2020November 24, 2020Ask

The work of a Fundraiser involves empathy for others.

Empathy for your beneficiaries or cause so you can tell their story.

Empathy for your organization and its programs so you can share about them.

Most nonprofits are full of empathy… but they often miss empathy in three key places…

Empathy for Donors

Practical empathy in fundraising allows you to give a gift to donors by ‘crossing the gap’ to their level of understanding.

To understand what it’s like to be in a donor’s chair. To know what she knows. To know what she doesn’t know. And speak to her in language she understands, at a level of knowledge that makes sense to her.

That’s empathy for donors. (Which is helpful, because fundraising is for donors, not for internal stakeholders.)

But the problem with fundraising that’s empathetic to donors is that internal stakeholders don’t prefer it.

Empathy for Internal Stakeholders from Fundraisers

Another necessary practical empathy is from Fundraisers towards internal stakeholders who don’t understand as much about fundraising as Fundraisers do.

Because when you create fundraising that’s empathetic to donors, it’s often not liked by internal audiences.

For instance, program staff, board members and executive leadership often don’t understand that:

While internal conversations are (and should be) full of industry jargon, fundraising communications should avoid jargon because most of your donors don’t know what it means. But internal stakeholders prefer jargon because its accuracy is helpful to them.
Direct response fundraising is different than interpersonal communication. While a 1-to-1 conversation might wander around to establish relationship and common ground, a direct response e-appeal needs to get to the point immediately. But internal stakeholders aren’t usually familiar with direct response best-practices and – reasonably – would never use them themselves.
While a grant application might detail the finer points of your organization’s programs and approach, the average reader of an appeal letter isn’t interested in those details. But internal stakeholders know those details make your organization effective! To not include them in an appeal feels wrong.

But internal stakeholders weren’t trained in direct response or any other types of fundraising. Empathy is needed to understand the concerns of internal stakeholders, to speak directly to their concerns, to help them understand what you’re doing with a generous spirit and solid explanation. Share your knowledge.

**Empathy From Internal Stakeholders Towards Donors**

The final necessary practical empathy is from internal stakeholders towards donors.

In my experience, the best approach is for Fundraisers to help Board and Staff through the same transformation you went through when you learned to cross the gap.

Share with Board and Staff that the same empathy they use to understand your beneficiaries can (and should) be used to understand your donors. For example, your organization is effective because it understands the problem you’re working on, meets it where it is today, and creates small, practical steps to make things better.

Great fundraising uses the same approach: understanding the donors, meeting them where they are today, and creating small, practical next steps donors can take to make things better.

Embracing the three empathies is often what unlocks an organization’s fundraising potential.

Which helps an organization help its beneficiaries even more.

The Gap and The Gift

Steven Screen | November 17, 2020November 17, 2020Ask

There’s a gap between your organization and your donors.

Savvy fundraising organizations know that donors don’t know as much about your beneficiaries or cause as your organization does.

That donors often don’t care quite as much as you care.

That donors often use different words and phrases than you would.

Savvy fundraising organizations know that the people on the other side of the gap are not likely to close the gap themselves. Donors are quite happy as they are, thank you very much. They don’t have a felt need to be educated, learn new jargon, or grow to an expert’s level of understanding.

So savvy fundraisers make the generous act of crossing the gap and meeting donors where the donors are.

That means writing to donors at donors’ level of understanding. It means no jargon. It means being specific, not conceptual.

It means figuring out what motivates donors to give and crafting your fundraising around those motivators – even if those motivators are not what motivates the organization’s staff.

And when you’ve done the generous thing – crossed the gap to meet the donor where they are – then you can ask them to take a first step towards involvement and greater understanding.

That first step? It’s usually a financial gift. A check in the mail or a donation online.

And that gift happens because you gave them a gift, first. You crossed the gap. You went to them.

A Plea for Help

Steven Screen | November 10, 2020November 10, 2020Ask

At its simplest, an appeal letter or e-appeal is a plea for help.

And to be most successful, an appeal needs two things:

A problem. This is the reason for the plea.
A solution to that problem that the donor can provide with their gift.

Do your appeals get this right?

For instance, many organizations send appeals that primarily ask donors to “‘support our organization.”

But asking donors to “support our organization” doesn’t raise as much money as asking donor to “solve a problem with your gift.”

Why?

Because when an organization asks for “support,” they end up trying to prove that they are worthy of that support. So those appeals spend a meaningful part of their letter or email telling the donor that the organization is effective, and sharing a story of a person who has already been helped.

But that approach reduces engagement and money raised.

Think of it this way: in the Emergency Room, when someone’s life is on the line and help is needed “STAT,” do the nurses first share about people they’ve helped in the past? No. They yell for exactly what they need.

When a ship at sea is sinking and they sent out an SOS message, do they also include stories of all the successful voyages they’ve made before? No. They send their location and they plead for help.

A plea for “support” simply isn’t as strong – and doesn’t get as good results – as a plea for help.

The Big Shift

Steven Screen | October 27, 2020October 27, 2020Ask

When most organizations write an appeal letter, they believe that the letter needs to convince the donor to support the organization.

That approach results in appeals that don’t raise as much as they could.

There’s a simple shift in thinking that results in appeals, e-appeals and newsletters that raise more money…

The Big Shift

The “shift” is this: moving from “trying to get the reader to support our organization” to “trying to get the reader to do one powerful thing for one beneficiary.”

That’s the Big Shift.

And when you write a letter that asks your reader to do one powerful thing for one beneficiary, you end up with a letter that raises more money.

It raises more money for a host of reasons, but here’s the main one: you’ve asked your donor to do something easier. And when you ask your donors to do something easier (as opposed to something harder) you get more gifts.

Because asking a donor to support your organization is a Big Ask. It means supporting your vision, your strategy, your cause, your accounting, your staffing structure, your… everything.

That’s a Big Ask because it asks your donor to do a lot. That’s fine when you’re talking to a Foundation, or submitting a long application for a grant.

But not when you’re doing direct response fundraising and you have your donor’s attention for a few seconds.

You want to make it easier for them to say “yes,” not harder. You need to make the shift.

To make this happen, customize the “one meaningful thing” for your organization. Maybe it’s moving a piece of legislation forward by one small step. Maybe it’s giving one person the tools they need to advocate for your cause. Maybe it’s making the experience of a cancer patient just a little bit easier.

You get the idea.

When you ask for something smaller, you’ll get more yesses. And you’ll get more second yesses and third yesses. Then you’ll raise more money.

What Happens Next

Here’s what happens when you internalize this shift…

Your appeal letters become easier to write. Because rather than trying to convince them to support your whole organization, you’re just trying to convince them to do one thing for one beneficiary.

And you raise more money. It’s a proven approach.

Pushback

As you make the Big Shift, you’ll notice something.

When you write appeals, you’ll find yourself (out of habit) inserting boilerplate copy about your organization – those phrases you’ve always used in the past.

And you immediately notice that those boilerplate phrases make your letter less interesting and less powerful.

You’ll start to see how the way you used to communicate was boring to everyone but insiders and core donors.

Additionally, when you circulate a draft of a letter that has made the shift, some well-meaning person will say “But we also have to mention our program that does X…” And someone else will say, “We need to add a couple paragraphs about how effective we are…”

And you will see how neither of those things make your letter more likely to convince a donor to do one meaningful thing for one beneficiary.

The Big Fear

The big fear that organizations tend to have around this approach is this: if I ask for something smaller, will my larger donors start giving smaller gifts?

In my experience (27 years and counting) this doesn’t happen. In fact, what’s more likely to happen is that you’ll start getting second gifts from your major donors – gifts that are in addition to what they normally give!

The Leap

The “big shift” is one of the shifts in thinking that helps organizations make “the leap” to the next level of fundraising success.

It helps them create fundraising that is attractive to more people than just insiders and core donors. It helps them create fundraising that acquires more new donors. It helps them grow.

The Big Shift at Year-End

If you want to make the Big Shift in your year-end letter, check out our new training.

It’s just $40 and when you’re done with the training, you’ll be done with your year-end letter.

It shows you exactly how to write a powerful letter – that asks your readers to do something easy instead of something hard – that will raise you more money at year-end this year.

The training is video-based and step-by-easy-step. One option has you finished with your letter in 30 minutes. The other option has you done with an even better letter in about 90 minutes.

The Time to Shift is Now

I hope you and your organization have made the Big Shift. I believe in the extraordinary generosity of donors – we’ve seen it this year more than ever. But I also believe this is going to be a competitive fundraising environment for at least the next several months.

Making it easier for your donors to say “yes” is a tool – a way of thinking – you should use to fund your mission. So make the “big shift” and start raising more money!

New Kind of Training for Year-End

Steven Screen | October 20, 2020October 20, 2020Year-End

This blog post is a little different.

You may have heard me talking over the past few months about the big project / new thing we were working on.

We kept it a secret, but now it’s time to “lift the curtain” and share it with you!

For this year-end, we’ve created a new kind of fundraising training. It’s built on a simple idea…

When you’re done with the training, you’re DONE with your year-end letter.

Done in 30 Minutes

For instance, you can take the 30-minute version of the new training and have a very effective year-end appeal letter completely written in half an hour.

No more ‘finish the training/webinar’ and then stare at a blank document trying to figure out how to turn all the advice you just received into a letter for your organization.

How can you do it that quickly? I’ve already written your first draft for you.

So, say it takes 3 minutes to click over and join. That means you can have a GREAT year-end appeal written 33 minutes from now.

Want to Raise Even More?

You can take the “Gold” version of the training. This version takes between 1.5 and 2 hours. I will teach you my process for writing effective year-end appeals and help you write yours.

I will take you through, step by easy step.

When you’re done with either the 30-minute version or the Gold version, you’ll have an effective year-end appeal letter written. You’ll also be more effective at writing any appeal.

Both versions are included in the training.

Free Reply Card Template

After your letter is written, keep going in the training and you’ll learn how to make your envelope do its job (get opened!).

Then you’ll be given a proven template for a Reply Card that works great.

Then you’ll learn the easy way to design your letter.

And you’ll see exactly who to send your letter to, so that you raise the most at the lowest cost.

The “Get Your Boss to Approve It” Videos

Lots of people don’t like effective direct response fundraising. They think “it doesn’t sound like us” or “it’s too aggressive.”

The training includes five friendly “direct response fundraising fundamentals” videos for the express purpose of helping people understand and approve the fundraising you create.

There’s no lecturing. Just a short introduction to the ideas that make direct response fundraising work best, how it’s different than other types of fundraising, and what will give you the best chance at success.

Some early customers purchased the training just because of these videos!

Coming Shortly…

In the next weeks we’ll be adding another training module for your year-end fundraising emails.

Then a module for creating an annual plan for 2021.

And a “My First Gift” campaign to acquire new donors from your email list.

All of them are built on the same idea: when you’re done with the training, you’re done with the task. I’ll walk you through, step by step, and you’ll be ready to go!

Every one of those modules will be included in the . . .

Low, Low Price

$40 per month.

Why monthly? Because $40 for an effective year-end letter is ridiculous.

And then you’ll get your year-end emails done. And you’ll get your 2021 fundraising plan done. And you’ll get your “My First Gift” campaign done (and acquire a bunch of new donors).

But if you don’t want those, no problem. Seriously. You can just join for a month, write a record-breaking letter, and cancel.

We’re trying to help as many organizations as possible during this year’s extra-competitive year-end fundraising season.

You can choose to pay monthly, or get two months free when you sign up for the year.

Remember, when you’re done with this training, you’re done. Sign up today and be done writing your year-end appeal 30 minutes from right now!

Why “Does this sound like us?” is not a good question.

Steven Screen | October 13, 2020October 13, 2020Ask

A quick note to anyone who has said or heard the following when reviewing a fundraising appeal or e-appeal:

“But this doesn’t sound like us!”

The next time you hear that – or say it – I want you to ask a different question:

“Will sounding like this raise more money than we normally do?”

That’s what I’d call a better question. And better questions lead you to raising more money.

“Does This Sound Like Us?” is Not a Good Question

“Does this sound like us?” is one of the first questions people ask when reviewing direct response fundraising (appeals, e-appeals, newsletters, radiothon scripts, etc.).

They believe that “sounding like us” is one of the main keys to fundraising success.

But “sounding like us” is rarely one of the keys to fundraising success in direct response.

In my experience, “sounding like us” usually causes organizations to raise less money, retain fewer donors, and do less good.

At this point in my career, I’ve probably written a hundred appeals that did not “sound like” the organization yet still raised more than any appeal the organization had ever sent before.

A Better Question

The better question for someone reviewing fundraising to ask is, “Does this sound like successful direct response fundraising?”

It’s hard to get organizations to ask themselves that question. Many smaller organizations don’t realize that the specialty of direct response fundraising even exists.

Fewer still know or have access to the best practices.

But getting organizations – and anyone who reviews fundraising – to ask “Does this sound like successful direct response fundraising” is the best place to start.