Steven Screen, Author at The Better Fundraising Company

Guest-Post Bonanza!

Steven Screen | October 19, 2017October 19, 2017Ask

This month I was honored to write three guest blog posts for Analytical Ones, the leading nonprofit donor data analysis firm.

The three posts tell the story of how we came up with our Ask, Thank, Report, Repeat system – and how to use it to raise more money and build trust with your donors. Plus there’s a short section on using the simple system with Mass donors as opposed to Major donors.

Here are the links:

Part I: The story that successful fundraising organizations tell their donors

Part II: Simplicity Before Complexity

Part III: Building Trust

Enjoy!

What I Wish I Knew Then

Steven Screen | October 18, 2017October 18, 2017Ask, Report, Thank

Note from Steven: This is a guest post from Lisa, an experienced Development Director who is on the Better Fundraising team.

When I was a new development director, there never seemed to be enough time, money or man power to get everything done. It was overwhelming. Sound familiar?

I knew I needed to prioritize . . . but even that was hard.

As you sit in your seat today, wondering how you can have the biggest impact possible, take this advice from a person who played every role in her development department. Here are three things I wish someone would have told me right at the beginning . . .

Make it clear what the donor’s gift will do

Specifically, make it clear enough so a donor could easily repeat it to their friends.

Your organization probably does a lot of great things, but you need to focus on just one powerful thing. It’s ok if what you ask donors to do is only part of what your organization does. I’ve noticed that most donors respond better to one simple thing than having to learn about all your organization does.

Always have a system to thank your donors promptly

Donors should be thanked and receipted 24-48 hours after you receive their donation. If they give online they will get a digital thank you right away, but follow that up with a thank you in the mail. For larger gifts, you may want to call and personally thank the donor.

As I built relationships with donors over the years I learned that you cannot thank a donor too quickly. But, thanking a donor to slowly is a surefire way to losing donors over time.

Show each donor the difference their gift made

People give because they want to make a difference. So let them know how their gift made a difference! For most of your donors, this can be done in your organization’s newsletter. Or an e-update, but in my experience e-updates aren’t nearly as good at engaging donors as a printed newsletter.

And for major donors, do whatever it takes to show them.

Take them on a site visit, prepare a special report just for them, whatever it takes to show them how their gift made a difference!

Do these three things and you WILL see improvements in your program. Better Fundraising gets this. Their Ask, Thank, Report, Repeat formula teaches and emphasizes the fundamentals of fundraising, helping you prioritize and work on the things that really matter!

3 ways to maximize your year-end fundraising letters

Steven Screen | October 16, 2017October 17, 2017Ask

The most successful year-end fundraising campaigns all share some key features. They use tested, proven strategies that win year after year. And year after year, organizations just update the letters and send them out again.

That’s right.

They send the same message year after year. And get a fantastic response, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars!

You can get the same fantastic response by taking the three tips below to heart.

Tip 1: Ask boldly. Ask often.

Don’t wait until the end of your letter to ask the donor to give. Try asking in at least five or six places throughout. It helps to be specific and concrete when you ask a donor to give. Remind them that the people or cause you serve need help. Tell them what will happen if the money isn’t raised, and the specific impact their donation will have.

Tip 2: Talk about the people who need help, not your organization.

It’s a common mistake to make your organization the hero of your story. It’s also a big one. Your donor should be the hero of the story. Use your letter to explain how the donor can directly make an impact, not how they can help your organization make an impact.

Tip 3: Create urgency, include a deadline and a goal.

Year-end is a natural deadline to highlight in your letter, especially since December 31 is also the deadline for federal charitable tax deductions. Repeat the “midnight, December 31” deadline throughout your letter, on the OE, and the response device. Remember to always pair it with a clear monetary goal.

Get proven year-end fundraising letter samples

Would you like to see some real letters that used the principles above — and brought in more and bigger donations at year-end? And what if we said you could steal from these letters to create your own letter to your own donors?

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We want you to raise more money for your great cause.

Better than a class

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The “S” Word That Is Good, Not Naughty

Steven Screen | October 13, 2017Uncategorized

The “S” word that I’m talking about is “Segmentation.”

It’s the art and science of not treating all of the people in your database the same. Instead, you want to break them into smaller “segments.”

Here’s why this is important: good segmentation will let you save money on what you’re currently doing while raising more money. Segmentation is a 2-for-1 improvement to your organization.

Here’s what I want to provide:

A super-simple guide to segmentation for smaller nonprofits.

And here’s why I want to do it: most of the small nonprofits I get to work with don’t do enough segmentation. They tend to treat every person in their database the same. They waste money and miss opportunities.

Here’s a simple summary. It’s not perfect for everyone, but it’s a good start:

Send your appeal letters to all donors who have given a gift in the last 18 months. (Don’t send them to non-donors, or to volunteers, or to in-kind donors, or to donors who last gave years ago – it’s not worth the money.)
Send your newsletters to all donors who have given a gift in the last 18 months. (Same as above — as a rule, you will spend more money on printing and postage than you will receive in gifts.)
However, send your Christmas/Holiday/Year-end letters to all donors who have given a gift in the last 36 months. This is the time to include your non-donors and your volunteers.
Send your e-appeals to everyone on your email list.
Send your e-newsletters or e-updates to everyone on your email list.

That’s it. There are about 15 ways that it quickly becomes complex. But the main thing to remember is that the people most likely to give you gifts are your donors. And organizations that really analyze their results quickly figure out that it’s not worth their money to send mail to people who haven’t donated in a while.

And here’s how you can use segmentation to raise more money . . .

Identify your “segment” of major donors and send them special versions of your direct mail.

Because your major donors can give you such large gifts, it is worth spending extra money on your mailings to them. Here’s what to spend your money on:

Larger envelopes
Nicer paper
Customized proposals in the mailing

The purpose of spending the extra money is pretty simple: it’s to increase the chance that a major donor will OPEN your mailing. And if you do that with your major donors, you will raise more money!

For Major Donors, November > December

Steven Screen | October 11, 2017October 11, 2017Major Donor Fundraising

“Most major donors make their giving decisions prior to December.”

That’s a powerful lesson that I learned the hard way. My background was mass donor fundraising; sending out millions of letters, and creating donor-acquition TV shows, and doing radio campaigns.

In that world, December is the most important month to focus on.

But when I started doing major donor fundraising I was taught two incredibly powerful things for major donor fundraising at this time of year:

Know exactly which of your major donors have not given a gift yet during this year
Ask those majors to give a gift no later than early November.

What I learned was that a large portion of major donors make their giving decisions before Thanksgiving. And there are lots of stories about major donor families meeting during Thanksgiving weekend to decide what organizations to support that year.

Not all majors are like this. But in my experience, enough of them are that soliciting your majors before Thanksgiving works better than after Thanksgiving.

For the majors that you are going to meet with and ask in person, aim for before thanksgiving. (Which means you should start setting up those meetings in October.) For the majors who you are sending a major donor proposal or mailing to, send it the first week of November.

Could you make a reminder call in December? Of course? If they haven’t given yet, should they still be included in your year-end direct mail and emails? Of course.

And remember:

For most organizations major donors provide between 80% and 90% of total revenue from individual donors.

This is important. This is worth your focus. It’s worth doing early.

tl;dr? For majors, November > December

And if you need help making a plan for your majors, check out our webinar. We created it expressly to help smaller organizations maximize their major donor revenue and relationships! It will walk you through the easy way to make a proven plan to get major gifts before the end of the year.

How to use photos in fundraising

Steven Screen | October 11, 2017June 10, 2020Podcast

Take note of this:

A picture is worth a thousand words. So choose your pictures carefully!

We take a look at the ways photos can emotional depth and measurable pull-power to your fundraising … or undermine your message entirely!

A good fundraiser knows when to use “negative” images and when to use the positive ones we prefer. Find out in this episode the rhythm and balance of images that motivate donors to give. And to keep giving.

Click here to listen

No Mystery, Just a Major Donor System That Works

Steven Screen | October 9, 2017October 9, 2017Major Donor Fundraising

Hopefully you’ve heard that Jim is hosting a webinar expressly designed to help you get major gifts before December 31st.

This is your last chance to sign up for the live webinar, where you’ll be able to get Jim’s advice and your questions answered.

Listen, this thing is the real deal. It’s about giving you an easy-to-follow system to get major gifts AND deepen your relationships with major donors.

Because major donor fundraising shouldn’t feel like an unsolvable mystery. I’m in all the meetings, hearing questions like ‘How do I know who to talk to first?’ and ‘What do I do if I can’t get a meeting with them?’ and ‘That donor already gave last year, what do I ask them to give to this year? And how much?’

Jim has the answers.

Well, he doesn’t have all the answers. He has a system. And that system gives you your best shot at getting gifts. And the system is built to honor your donors and deepen your relationships with them. Because we believe the same thing our friends at the Veritus Group do: it’s not just about the money!

Take a look at this graphic from the webinar. Jim is teaching you his 4-step Identify, Rank, Move, Ask system. It’s easy. And after this page you’ll know who to focus your time, efforts and money on first. And second. And third.

We built you a spreadsheet that you’ll receive with your purchase. It’s built so that you can enter your donor data, rank and track your majors. For a small shop without a sophisticated donor software system, this alone is gold and worth the price of the webinar.

But I need to be clear; you’ll still have to do some work. This isn’t some magical unicorn of a webinar that solves all your major donor problems. There is no silver bullet.

Let’s just call it a shortcut. This webinar allows you to download the accumulated wisdom of the really smart fundraisers who have gone before you. They know that successful major donor fundraising is about having a system —> that generates a plan —> that tells you who to talk to next and what to say to them —> which gives you the best chance for major donor fundraising success.

Especially at this time of year.

Because there are no guarantees. But you CAN stack the odds in your favor.

Sign up for Jim’s webinar today. It’s October 12 at 10:00 am Pacific Time. If you can’t make it, we’ll record it for you so you can watch it as soon as you want to start raising more money.

It’s $179. It’s in the territory of “the best $179 you’ve ever spent.” With the seminar and a little work (which you were already going to do, but now it will be more focused) you’ll raise thousands (or tens of thousands) more. And you’ll have a system that you can use for ALL of next year to raise even more from your donors. Go sign up!

“Remind, Don’t Persuade”

Steven Screen | October 4, 2017October 4, 2017Ask

When I said it, everybody in the room wrote it down.

That’s generally how I know I’ve said something helpful. Here’s what it was:

“At the end of the year your job is to remind, not persuade.”

Here’s why I said that. We’ve done a lot of year-end campaigns for a lot of organizations. We analyze the results of every single one.

When you look at them as a whole a pattern emerges. The successful campaigns? They aren’t beautiful writing that would make Shakespeare weep. They aren’t powerful case statements or success stories.

Here’s what the best campaigns tend to do:

Remind donors of the problem that your organization exists to help solve
Ask them to give a gift before the end of the year to help solve that problem

That’s it. You’re going to want to talk a lot of other things. And that’s fine — as long as the main messages you send — the first things your donors see and read — are the Need and your Ask for a gift.

You see, you don’t have time to persuade. In November and December, your donors are moving FAST. Your donors love it when your organization is clear about what you want the donor to do and how their gift will help. Because your donor is also getting a lot of other mail — mail that spends three paragraphs talking about the color of the leaves this time of year, or how excellent the year has been, or telling a story that makes it sound like they’ve already helped everyone.

The time for Thanking and Reporting to your donors for their previous gifts? That was before. Make sure you’ve done that by mid-November. Year-end is a time for Asking.

In our tests, year-end fundraising that spent significant time Thanking or Reporting raised less money

This is not just theory. This whole post is an attempt to explain testing results!

It may be hard. It may be counter-intuitive. (And it’s especially hard for smaller organizations that don’t communicate with their donors more than a couple times a year).

But trust me. The job of your fundraising from mid-November on is to remind your donor to send in a gift, not to persuade them. Just Ask. Ask Boldly. Ask without fear. Ask knowing that your donors love your cause and your organization’s role in helping them make the world a better place!

A Mistake I Wish I Didn’t Make

Steven Screen | October 3, 2017October 3, 2017Repeat

Note from Steven: This is a guest post from Lisa, an experienced Development Director who is on the Better Fundraising team.

It was a typical nonprofit workday when my boss walked into my office. He had a direct mail piece in his hand. It was from a non-profit he supported. He gave it to me and said . . .

“I like this. I bet it brought in a lot of money. Don’t you think we should do something like this?”

Uh-oh.

Has this happened to you? Speaking as someone who’s been in your seat; if it hasn’t happened yet, it will soon!

The next day my boss came in again and shared an idea for a fundraising project. The idea had been brought to him by a board member. Like the direct mail piece, it was for a different kind of non-profit and audience. He said it raised a lot of money and asked me that same question, “Don’t you think we should do it?”

Feeling the pressure and wanting to please my boss, I caved in. Within a few weeks my team and I were neck deep into the new project. We didn’t have the time or the resources needed to execute it properly – but by then we were too far along to stop.

When we finished we were all exhausted. And as you may have guessed, it didn’t make any money. Plus in our efforts to see the project through, we weren’t able to get to our regular work. So we missed deadlines and lost revenue.

Here’s what I learned:

Know what works for your organization. Then do it again, again, and again

Or as we say here at Better Fundraising, Repeat, Repeat, Repeat. You’ve spent time and money in the past figuring out what your donors like and don’t like. For me, in every case I can remember, I’ve raised more money by doing another of what the donor’s responded to instead of trying something new.

Jim and Steven tell me they see this all the time – organizations who have successful tactics but replace them (or only use them once a year) because they think their donors will get tired of them. I can tell you from experience that so much time and money is wasted doing this!

How To Try New Tactics

Don’t get me wrong, I like trying new things but NOT at the expense of my staff and NOT if it puts ongoing successful fundraising projects in jeopardy.

So here’s how I ended up running things. If we wanted to try something new, we did our research, planned, and put it in the next year’s budget. In the meantime, we repeated what worked well for us in the past and we did it more than once. For example, we had a Thanksgiving letter that always worked great. So instead of trying something new, we sent two Thanksgiving letters the next year. It worked great.

The Two Big Lessons

It’s very risky to replace a tried-and-true fundraising tactic with something new. Know how much revenue is at risk when you make the decision!
If you did something that really worked with your donors, figure out how to use the same concept twice the following year. I should note that this doesn’t really go for events, but it has worked for me more times than I can count in the mail, email, and major donor proposals!