Steven, Author at The Better Fundraising Company

A Sentence that had Nothing to Do with the Organization

Steven | May 30, 2024May 30, 2024Ask

I was once part of a large-scale test where two versions of an appeal letter were sent to equal groups of donors:

One group was asked to sponsor a child
The other group was asked to sponsor a child whose birthday was the next month

The letters were exactly the same, apart from a sentence in the “birthday version” that said, “[Child Name]’s birthday is next month, and your sponsorship will be a life-changing gift.”

The “birthday version” was the clear winner of the test – significantly more donors responded to that version; it raised more money and resulted in more children being sponsored.

In fundraising, this type of thing happens all the time: donors are moved to action by content that has nothing to do with the organization, its programs, or the quality of its work.

Maybe better said, donors don’t give only because of what the organization does or the quality of their programs.

For instance, savvy fundraisers know that a donor is more likely to give if:

The beneficiary’s birthday is coming up (people like birthdays)
If matching funds will double their gift (people like to have more of an impact)
If donors know their gift is urgently needed (people feel great when they solve urgent problems)
If the donor knows a lot of people in their neighborhood are donating (people are more likely to donate if there’s “social proof” that people like them are donating)

I think of the bullet points above as things that a donor already likes to do. Donors like getting their money doubled, they like knowing that other people are giving, etc. They liked doing those things before they ever heard of your organization. And when a piece of fundraising gives them the chance to do those things, they are more likely to donate.

So, organizations that want to raise more and increase their impact will intentionally fill their letters / emails / events / in-person asks with reasons to give a gift that tap in to what donors already like to do.

As the “birthday version” showed, just one sentence that gives donors a reason to do what they already like to do can meaningfully increase how much money you raise.

The One Exception

Steven | May 28, 2024May 27, 2024Ask

Last week I wrote about “Ask Culture versus Guess Culture” in major gifts fundraising, and how Ask Culture results in raising more money and keeping more of your donors.

But after hitting publish I remembered something…

I know of one major gifts program that never asks donors to give but raises tons of money and has a high major donor retention rate.

Here’s how that program does it:

Every single conversation and communication contains a clear reminder of “the need” that the organization exists to serve.
- The only exception is when a donor is being Thanked for a gift they just made. Those calls / handwritten notes / receipt letters are full of thankfulness.
The organization absolutely “reports back” to donors on successes…
And they always mention what they think is needed next: from “serve the people who will need help next month” to “serve the people they haven’t reached yet” or “expand the successful program” or “start a new program.”

In a nutshell, the organization is so focused on “the situation” they exist to serve that they can’t help but mention that situation and the people they haven’t been able to help yet.

The consequence is the following three things are always being reinforced:

The need exists right now, today
What the organization would like to do about it next
That funding for “what’s next” is needed

(By the way, notice the contrast between that approach and the standard approach that focuses almost entirely on people they’ve already helped / things they’ve already done, and how they are helping today.)

To me, there’s something very pure about this organization’s approach to major donors. They do the “relational” parts of fundraising very well: they thank donors with real gratitude, they report back on progress made. They are personal and build strong relationships with donors…

But the organization always makes sure their donors are aware of the need for their work. They don’t make the foundational mistake of believing that making donors aware of their work will inspire significant giving.

This approach isn’t for everybody – in my experience it takes incredible emotional strength to be thinking about & sharing the need so constantly.

But this case shows that donors can handle it. And that you can succeed in major gifts fundraising without asking often or directly. But only if you have made the need abundantly clear and that funding is needed to meet it.

Ask Culture vs Guess Culture

Steven | May 23, 2024May 23, 2024Ask

Sometimes an idea or perspective from outside the world of Fundraising can help you see the work of Fundraising more clearly.

That’s what happened when I heard about “Ask Culture vs Guess Culture.”

Here’s a quote from when this idea first appeared online:

In some families, you grow up with the expectation that it’s OK to ask for anything at all, but you gotta realize you might get no for an answer. This is Ask Culture.  

In Guess Culture, you avoid putting a request into words unless you’re pretty sure the answer will be yes. Guess Culture depends on a tight net of shared expectations. A key skill is putting out delicate feelers. If you do this with enough subtlety, you won’t even have to make the request directly; you’ll get an offer.

When an organization is operating in Guess Culture, here are three of the behaviors you see:

Over-stewarding of donors
Never asking, or Asks that aren’t direct or clear
- Perfect example: I did a “creative review” for an organization where I looked at twelve pieces of their fundraising. In all those pieces they never actually asked the donor to give a gift.
Under-communicating out of a fear of “donor fatigue”

You’re also seeing Guess Culture at work any time you hear a Major Gifts Officer say something like, “If you do a great job of stewarding a donor, you won’t even have to ask.”

Guess Culture and Fundraising

I think the unique demands of nonprofit fundraising cause people and organizations to operate in Guess Culture more than they normally would.

Asking for money is a vulnerable experience, and it’s hard to be vulnerable. Many times, for many reasons, it’s emotionally easier to shower donors with stewardship and give them the occasional “opportunity” to give… instead of boldly preparing a specific offer and asking the donor to make a gift.

And of course the Guess Culture approach works sometimes. Because donors are generous, any approach will work sometimes.

But looking at the performance of the nonprofits we’ve worked with over the years, an Ask Culture approach to major gifts fundraising (and to direct response fundraising) works better. It results in raising more money and keeping more donors year-over-year.

Ask Culture major gifts fundraising looks like:

When setting up a conversation or meeting, telling the donor in advance whether you’re going to ask for money or not
Being willing to ask major donors for more than one gift a year
Asking for a specific amount
Asking directly with phrases like, “…so I’m asking if you’ll give a gift of $10,000”
After the ask is made, being silent and letting the donor speak next

Of course there will be a few “no”s. Of course there will occasionally be an uncomfortable silence.

But you’ll get a lot more “yes”es and you’ll raise more money for your cause.

About Younger Donors…

Steven | May 21, 2024May 15, 2024Repeat

The next time a person at your nonprofit says, “We need to get younger donors!” have them read this:

Top 5 Mistakes: Chasing Younger Donors.

The post is from Bill Jacobs at Analytical Ones. Bill’s been analyzing nonprofit databases and fundraising effectiveness for 25 years, and he knows what he’s talking about.

He lays out the two main arguments for why nonprofits should not chase younger donors, and I’ll add three more:

The research I’ve seen indicates that older donors tend to give more than younger donors. So all things being equal, a 70-year-old donor is more valuable to an organization than a 35-year-old donor in the near-term.
Older donors give you a greater chance of receiving a legacy gift. Last I heard, the average legacy gift in the United States was North of $40,000. So a 70-year-old donor is more valuable to an organization than a 35-year-old donor in the long term, too.
On average, most donors don’t stay on a nonprofit’s donor file for more than 5 years. So even if you do manage to acquire a bunch of 35-year-old donors, the vast majority of them will have stopped giving 20 years before they’ve entered their prime giving years.

Read Bill’s post and have a couple of these numbers handy the next time someone brings up younger donors.

In fact, Bill’s whole “Top 5 Mistakes” series is great. Easy-to-read, short and data-driven, what’s not to like?

And I think we all know this, but I’ll say it to be safe: there’s absolutely nothing wrong with younger donors. Welcome them! But unless your cause is massively attractive to young people, trying to acquire younger instead of trying to acquire older donors is not a good financial decision.

Change the Recipe, Change the Results

Steven | May 16, 2024May 14, 2024Repeat

When a nonprofit is first founded, its fundraising letters / emails / personal asks tend to have high response rates and high average gifts.

But in my experience, the response rates and average gifts tend to go down as the organization grows.

Here’s my theory to explain this…

The recipe for fundraising right after an organization is founded is remarkably simple and goes like this:

The founder talks about whatever “the situation” is that caused him/her to start the organization
They describe what needs to be done to help, and how it will help
They ask the donor to give a gift to fund what needs to be done

Works like crazy.

But as a nonprofit ages and expands, it develops its own programs, approach, and expertise. It develops an organizational ego.

In a nutshell, this results in fundraising that talks more about the organization itself than it used to. The recipe changes to:

They talk about the work they are already doing
They describe how they do that work
They ask the donor to give a gift to fund their ongoing work

This fundraising recipe does not raise as much money. It lowers donors’ awareness about whatever “need” the organization exists to serve because “the situation” is rarely mentioned. And it lowers response rates and average gifts because the fundraising is mainly focused on work that has already been completed – most of the compelling reason to give a gift today has disappeared.

I don’t enjoy this truth, but it’s still true: fundraising to individual donors that talks about “powerful work that’s already done” will cause less money to come in than talking about “powerful work that needs to be done now that the donor can help make happen.”

Organizations that stick to the original recipe will grow faster.

Individual donors tend to give because there’s work that needs to be done. Not because the organization is already doing the work.

Do you know Sofii?

Steven | May 14, 2024May 9, 2024Ask

If you don’t know sofii.org, you should.

It’s a website for Fundraisers, by Fundraisers.

Here’s a GREAT post to start with:

https://sofii.org/article/how-i-wrote-it-the-make-a-wish-foundations-prospect-letter

The post is about a successful donor acquisition letter written by Harvey McKinnon, a pro who I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a couple of times.

There’s a lifetime’s worth of fundraising wisdom in this post – seriously, get a cup of coffee and read it. You’ll get so many ideas. If your next piece of fundraising isn’t better, I’ll eat my hat.

Sofii and Harvey – you can’t go wrong!

Voice

Steven | May 9, 2024May 3, 2024Ask

Quick story.

A few years ago I wrote a letter for a large, national organization you know the name of.

The letter was a huge success – it doubled the number of gifts they projected, and the average gift was higher than expected, too.

The President of the organization was pleased with the letter’s performance… and thought it would have raised even more if it was more in his voice. So he wrote the letter the following year.

His letter brought in half the number of gifts.

The president is a very smart person and a great public speaker. But his communication style – his “voice” – was not effective in direct mail.

There’s no judgment here; there’s absolutely nothing wrong with his voice. But no one voice is always the best voice for all contexts.

Quick common example: an organization decides that as part of their voice they will always describe their beneficiaries with one particular phrase, and that phrase is highly academic. That phrase is perfectly appropriate in a grant application to a foundation with subject-matter expertise. However, in a fundraising email to individual donors who don’t immediately know what the phrase means, the phrase will usually cause the organization to raise less money.

A nonprofit’s “voice” needs to be flexible enough to be modified for whatever context it’s communicating in. To be most effective, a speech to a state legislature should sound a little different than a direct mail letter to individual donors, which in turn should sound a little different than a grant application.

If your Executive’s voice, or your brand voice, isn’t flexible enough to be adapted to meet the requirements for success in whatever context you’re communicating in, slavishly following any voice is costing you more than it’s helping you.

If you use the appropriate voice for each context, instead of using the same voice in every context, you will raise more money.

How to Take a Successful Email to the Next Level

Steven | May 7, 2024April 23, 2024Repeat

Say you’ve sent out an appeal and it was successful. And you’re sold on the strategy of “sending it out again at the same time next year.”

It’s like you’ve discovered a new “tool” that works really well, and you’re wondering how to get the most out of it.

Let me tell you a story to tell you how we normally do it…

A decade ago we were serving an organization that helps mothers and children who are experiencing homelessness.

They didn’t have any fundraising planned for summer, and we didn’t want them to “go dark” for a couple of months. So we asked them if they did anything for the children of their beneficiary families when it was time for them to go back to school.

Turns out the organization provided each child with a new outfit, new shoes, and a backpack filled with school supplies. (This organization knew that kids who had been homeless had experienced more than enough trauma, and didn’t want the kids to feel like “the poor kid on the first day of school.” We love them for this!)

The organization was low on budget, so direct mail wasn’t an option. We put together an e-appeal that asked donors to provide an outfit and backpack for a child.

It worked great.

And we worked under the assumption that if more people saw this offer, more people would give. So here’s what we did in the subsequent years to turn a successful piece of fundraising into a full-blown campaign.

Year #2, we sent the email again and we did a direct mail letter with the same offer. We raised even more.
Year #3, we sent the email and letter, and added a 3-email series on the last 3 days before the first day of school. We raised even more.
Year #4 we did all of the above, plus updated their website to feature the campaign for the entire month of August. We raised even more.
Year #5 we did all of the above, plus we asked a major donor to provide a match. We raised even more.
Year #6 we did all of the above and used the campaign as a way to increase major donor giving over the summer. We raised even more.

Today, this campaign is a pillar of the organization’s fundraising plan. In addition to raising several buckets of money, it raises awareness about what happens to kids who experience homelessness. It’s brought new donors into the organization. It brought some donors deeper into the organization’s programs.

And it all started with one email that worked.

So if you send out something that works, do two things:

Notice what the campaign asked for. In this case, it asked donors to provide a new outfit and backpack with school supplies for a child.
Then ask yourself how you can get that same ask in front of even more people, even more times, at the same time of year.

After you go through this process a few times. you’ll have multiple proven campaigns with predictable, increasing revenue. These campaigns become very real “assets” that reliably raise money year after year.

Send the Same Thing at the Same Time to Save Time

Steven | May 2, 2024April 23, 2024Repeat

When you send out a fundraising letter or email that works great, I want you to do something: plan to send out the same message, in the same format, at the same time next year.

Think about how much time you could save!

And wouldn’t you love knowing that what you send next year is going to work great?

If you’re not already using this strategy, here are some examples of letters / emails / campaigns that nonprofits we serve are successfully repeating each year…

March “Send a kid to the museum for a day”
Late January “Monthly donor recruitment” campaign
July “Stop a girl from becoming a child bride”
Early August “Back to school”
Late October “Thanksgiving meals”
Early May “Send a kid to summer camp for a day”
Summer “Provide clean water for a family”
Early November “Christmas Newsletter”
Late October “Fall gift catalog”
Early March “Easter appeal”
September “Persecuted Church” campaign
Early June “Summer Book Drive”
Early May “Help a graduating student with disabilities get a job interview”

All of the above letters / emails / campaigns are reliable performers where the nonprofit can count on raising a bunch of money.

They all started when we sent a letter or email, noticed that it did particularly well, and we decided to “do it again next year.”

Specifically, we sent the same message (with the same “offer”), in the same format, at about the same time. The writing and design was updated only as much as absolutely necessary.

When you use this strategy, four powerful things happen:

You do less work because it takes less time to “update last year’s letter / email / campaign” than it does to “create a new letter / email / campaign from scratch.”
You have more energy for other projects because of the “lighter lift” required by mail and email fundraising.
Over time, your annual plan fills up with proven winners, so your annual revenue becomes more predictable
You start raising more money every year because you get better and better at knowing what makes each letter / email / campaign work well.
1. For instance, say you’ve done a “Stop a girl from becoming a child bride” letter for three years in a row. You notice that one of those three letters raised more than the other two. You open the PDF of the one that worked best and use it as the “template” for the next “Stop a girl from becoming a child bride” letter. You’ve learned from your experiments and you’ve leveled up!

So… look at the results of your fundraising pieces from last year. Did you do anything that you can “do again” this year with minimal updating?

Or if you’ve been “repeating” letters, emails and campaigns for years, what did you learn from last year’s fundraising that you can use to make this year’s fundraising more effective?