Steven Screen

If you’re applying the Ask, Thank, Report, Repeat rhythm to your donor communications, congratulations!  You are on your way to raising more money in 2016!

So here’s a challenge that will take your fundraising to the next level; remove mentions of your organization from most of your communications, and focus instead on making the content of your fundraising communication about your donors and your beneficiaries.

Here are three examples for you:

• Send an appeal letter that asks the donor to send a gift to help solve a specific problem. Don’t ask them to “send a gift so that we can…” or “join us to…” or “help us to…”
• When you thank a donor for her gift, thank her for what she did, not for what she helped your organization do. So don’t tell her about all of your programs, or all the people you help.  Thank her for making a generous gift, for having compassion, and for making the world a better place.  Don’t try to convince her that your organization is great, tell her that she is great!
• Report back to your donors by sending a newsletter that gives all the credit to the donor reading it. Tell stories about beneficiaries and how the donor helped them.  Use the word “you” far more often than the word “we.”

The more you can help your donor feel like she is helping someone, the more money you’ll raise.

Every time your donors make a donation you have a free opportunity to thank them.

If you want to really connect with your donors and build a mission-driven relationship with them, you should thank them promptly and emotionally for their gift.  Here’s why.

After a donor makes a gift they tend to ask themselves three questions:

1. Did you get my gift?
2. Did you appreciate my gift?
3. Are you using my gift for what you said you were going to use it for?

It is your job to answer these questions as soon as possible via your receipts, thank you letters, and personal phone calls.

In addition to being prompt and emotional with your ‘thank yous’ it is important that you tell her what their gift is going to do.  Don’t tell her about your programs or your processes.  (Your donor cares more about what her gift will do than she cares about how you will do it.)  And don’t thank her for helping your organization, thank her for what she has done; given a generous gift, helped a beneficiary, helped make the world a better place, etc.

Review your receipts and thank yous today.  Is your organization answering your donor’s three questions?  If so, you’ve nailed the all-important first step to building a relationship with her that can grow over time.

You can raise more money right away just by learning how to ask well.

The fundraising pros know that every time you Ask your donors you should have an “offer” – a summary of the need and how the donor can meet with with a gift.

Here are the 4 elements your offer(s) need to be most successful:

1. A problem that is easy to understand
2. A solution that is easy to understand
3. The cost of the solution seems like a good deal
4. Urgency or deadline to solving the problem

Every time you send out a letter, or have an event, or send an email, be sure those four elements are present and you’ll raise more money.

And remember, your fundraising offer will likely talk about only part of what your organization does, not everything you do or every program you run. If you find yourself adding lists of programs or explaining services or listing partner organizations, you’ll reducing your results.  Keep it simple!

Most organizations tend to think that ‘if donors know everything we do then they will be more likely to donate.’  It’s a mistake to think that way!  Countless tests have proven that you’ll raise less money if you constantly explain all that your organization does.

Here’s how to think about it; donors who understand one powerful part of what you do – and how their gift helps – will be more likely to donate.

The power of a good fundraising offer is that it asks your donors to focus on “one powerful part” instead of on everything that you do.  Plus, a good offer makes it clear what their gift does.

Create or refine your offer!  You’ll start raising more money immediately.  If you’d like help, get in touch with me @jimshapiro.

Have you built your fundraising plan for 2016 yet?

If not, now is the time. And the best place to start is to look back over 2015 and evaluate your fundraising effort. What worked and what didn’t?  Why or why not?

If you want more help building your 2016 fundraising plan, go watch this video right now. It short and will give you a simple approach to building an annual fundraising plan that raises more money every single year.

The video will also share with you one of the big secrets that most small- to medium-sized nonprofits don’t know; if you did something that worked really well last year, do it twice or three times this year.  It may feel to you like you can only do it once.  But if donors liked and contributed to it that’s a great sign that you can do more of it.