Category: Ask

From Higher Ground to Common Ground

Steven  |  Ask
ground

Most nonprofits have a “higher ground” understanding of their work and their cause. 

And they should!  They are experts.  They understand the cause they are working on, and they understand the complexities of what needs to be done.  They’ve built programs that are effective.  Their expertise makes them good at what they do. 

But when organizations create fundraising that invites individual donors to join the organization on its higher ground – instead of creating fundraising that meets donors on shared common ground – they put barriers between their donors and giving.

They make their fundraising exclusive.

The hallmarks of higher ground fundraising are things like:

  • Spending more time explaining the process the organization uses (your programs, or a particular approach) instead of the change in the world that the process makes possible…
  • Focusing more on the organization itself, and less on the cause or beneficiaries…
  • Sharing statistics to illustrate the size of the need or the scope of the organization’s work…
  • Educating the donor about everything that the organization does, rather than focusing on what donors tend to be most interested in…
  • All while using the organization or sector’s jargon to sound professional.

It’s like higher ground fundraising requires the donor to know about the organization in order for them to help the beneficiaries.

Two Problems

Higher Ground fundraising causes two problems.

First, it raises less money.  Every one of the bullets above, in our experience, causes individual donors to give less.  Individual donors tend to be more interested in what’s happening with the cause or beneficiaries today, and the change that the donor’s gift will make (or has made).  Individual donors tend to be less interested in the organization itself.

The bulleted points above are highly relevant to staff, organizational partners, grant-funding organizations, etc.  But they aren’t as relevant to individual donors.  Hence the old phrase, “Individual donors give through organizations, not to organizations.”

Second, the “higher ground” approach results in exclusive fundraising.  It creates a filter where the people likely to donate are the people who are willing to put in the time, the people who are willing to learn about the organization’s approach, and the people who are willing to speak the way the organization speaks.

Each of these is a barrier that some people will not cross.

From Higher Ground to Common Ground

Do the hard work to make your fundraising simple and inclusive.  Have a good offer.  Create fundraising for individual donors that any person who cares about your beneficiaries, at any level of understanding, at any reading level, will find relevant.

This means consciously deciding to leave the high ground.  It means you’ll have to defend your fundraising from internal audiences who love the high ground and want everyone to join them there.

Here’s why: there are a LOT of people out there who care about your beneficiaries and would like to give a gift to help.  There are far fewer people out there who are willing to wade through an education in your work before they can give a gift.

So if your communication and fundraising are always on the higher ground – and inviting donors to join you there – you will remain smaller than you could be.  You will remain doing less than you could be.

If your communication and fundraising are aimed at the common ground you share with donors, you will raise more money and have a larger impact.

In fundraising, the high ground is lonely.

This post was originally published on March 2, 2023.

Start on Common Ground

Steven  |  Ask
Brain fog.

If you would like your letters and emails to raise more money, they should begin by talking about something the donor already understands, as opposed to asking the donor to learn something new.

Here’s a made-up example of an appeal that starts by asking the donor to learn new things.

Did you know that 19% of the families in our community have no exposure to the Arts? We call them L.E.A.H.s (Lacking Arts Exposure Households) and a LEAH might be arts-curious, but never had an enjoyable introduction to the Arts that was relevant to their life.

Look at all the work the reader has to do:

  • Understand a statistic
  • Learn a new acronym
  • Learn a new phrase (“arts-curious”)

All that and they haven’t reached the second paragraph!

A Neuroscientist would say, “That paragraph puts a large cognitive load on the reader.” So do you think the reader is more likely to keep reading, or less likely to keep reading, after a paragraph like that?

Now, here’s an alternative approach to the first paragraph, one that begins with what the donor already knows…

A lot of families in our community don’t have the same relationship with the Arts that you and I do. And I know you’d love for everyone to experience the same fulfillment and joy that you feel. But too many people were never introduced to the Arts in a way that was relevant to their life.

In addition to sounding more personal and less like a teacher, that paragraph opens by talking about things the donor already understands and cares about.

A paragraph that speaks to the common ground the organization shares with the donor will create connection with the donor.

The donor is now more likely to keep reading. Which means the donor is now more likely to donate.

Is there ever time for a statistic or bit of education? Sure. But most likely at an event or in some other context (lunch with a major donor, blog post) where both you and the donor have more time.

In a context like the mail or email where donors are moving fast (when was the last time you read a fundraising email top to bottom on your phone?) start with something the donor already knows. Not an education barrier.

This post was originally published on August 8, 2023.

News Speed vs Nonprofit Speed

Steven  |  Ask
Send main fast.

There’s a lot of unease in fundraising right now.  It kind of feels like anything could happen this year. 

So yesterday, while helping an organization review their plan for the rest of the year, I reminded them of the following principle:

If something happens in the world that causes your organization or beneficiaries to be in the news, create and send fundraising fast.

You want to have the first e-appeal in your donors’ inboxes, not the seventh. 

This is when it’s good to remember that your individual donors operate at the “speed of news,” while most organizations operate at the “speed of nonprofit.”

“News speed” is fast.  Things change every 24 hours.  The news points your donors’ attention in different directions almost every day.

“Nonprofit speed” can often be sloooow.  Need to get an appeal out?  It could take 4 weeks…

The reason it’s important to move fast when your nonprofit or beneficiaries are in the news is that the news provides awareness for your situation, and your fundraising will always raise more money when there is more awareness. 

So when something happens in the world that you should be fundraising about, move fast.  Stop, “do not pass go,” write & send that email today.  

And if my Monopoly reference hasn’t done it already, let me further date myself: back in the ‘90’s and early 2000’s I served multiple national organizations that had “emergency appeals” pre-printed and sitting in storage.  When an emergency happened, all we had to do was quickly write a few lines of copy about the disaster.  The copy was lasered on the front page of the letter.  The letters would be in the mail 24 hours later.

The nonprofits went to the expense of pre-printing letters because we knew that losing even a day would mean raising less and helping less.  This is hard for smaller organizations with less time and money to spend on fundraising.

But everyone can write and send an e-appeal.

The news moves fast.  If the news focuses attention on your organization or beneficiaries, you should move fast, too.

Kudos for the Wrong Thing

Steven  |  Ask
You are awesome.

Every nonprofit has its own preferences.

The preferences are things like “we use this particular phrasing to describe our work” or “we talk about the people we serve in this particular way” or “we believe donors should support us because of X and Y.”

All good things. 

But one of the hard parts about creating effective fundraising at smaller nonprofits is that the fundraising is evaluated according to the preferences of the nonprofit.

For instance…

When you create an appeal that uses the particular phrasing that the staff likes, you get kudos from the staff.  The piece of fundraising gets approved & sent.

When you create a newsletter that thoroughly describes a program, the program staff give you kudos.  The newsletter gets approved & sent.

When you write something that gets your ED’s “voice” exactly right, the ED gives you kudos, and the piece of fundraising is approved & sent.

The problem here is obvious to anyone who has been reading this blog for a while:

  • Fundraising that makes staff feel good is probably going to raise less money – when a donor is looking at an email on her phone, how she feels about the message is more important than how staff feel about it. 
  • Thoroughly describing a program is probably going to raise less money – when a donor is looking at a newsletter, how it makes the donor feel about her previous giving matters more than how thoroughly the program is described.
  • Getting your ED’s “voice” right is a total crapshoot – when a donor is reading an appeal, how quickly he knows it’s relevant to his life & values matters so much more than how faithful the writing is to the ED’s “voice.”

Here’s the result of a nonprofit evaluating its fundraising based on its own preferences: more kudos are given to pieces of fundraising that raise less. 

One of the lessons that nonprofits learn as they grow larger & better at fundraising is that the preferences of the staff are most likely different than the preferences of donors.

Once organizations realize that, they begin to give kudos not for “matching internal preferences,” but for results like “percent response” and “net revenue” and “average gift size.”  They pay less attention to staff preferences, and more attention to donor preferences (as gleaned from fundraising results).

Share Stories That Support Your Ask

Sarah Lundberg  |  Ask
What's your story?

Before my time at The Better Fundraising Co, I used to be a Director of Marketing and Communications for a nonprofit. But then the nonprofit I was working at needed me to create their fundraising materials from scratch, and I discovered a whole new world of expertise — it challenged the beliefs that my nonprofit and I had for how fundraising worked.

But we started raising a LOT more money. 

When we learned more about the role of stories in our fundraising, it helped us shape our fundraising pieces to perform better.

Our organization had GREAT stories, but we didn’t always share them in a way that worked effectively for fundraising.

Sometimes we would share a long story that would be full of details and symbolism and references to historical happenings. We loved these stories, but they didn’t seem to work when we were asking donors to give in direct response fundraising.

When we learned to use the right story for the right fundraising piece, our fundraising results increased.

Based on expert advice, we gave each fundraising piece ONE purpose, either asking donors to give or reporting back on what their giving had done.

We started sharing incomplete stories in our fundraising appeals, to show the donors the need that existed. These stories featured someone facing a problem that hadn’t yet been solved. This was an effective part of a piece where we were asking donors to give.

We shared completed stories in our newsletters, to show the donors what their giving had accomplished. These stories featured someone who had been facing a problem and also how the donor’s gift helped to solve the problem. This helped us report back to the donor and show that they made a difference.

This felt different to us internally.

For one thing, our stories were shorter and simpler.  But once we got the hang of it, finding and sharing stories was easier. We knew exactly what kind of stories we were looking for, depending on whether we were asking in an appeal or reporting back in a newsletter.

Something that makes me chuckle… back in the day when I was on staff at a nonprofit, the more I learned about best practices for direct response and email fundraising, the more I realized we’d been doing things the hard way.

Once we learned the fundamentals of what worked, everything became easier, including sharing stories. We knew what to do and how to do it.

When we started doing something that was easier AND raised more money – that was a win for us!

Read the whole series:

Make Your Copy Clear and Easy to Understand to Raise More Money

Sarah Lundberg  |  Ask
Make it easy.

Before my time at The Better Fundraising Co, I used to be a Director of Marketing and Communications for a nonprofit. But then the nonprofit I was working at needed me to create their fundraising materials, and I discovered a whole new world of expertise — it challenged the beliefs that my nonprofit and I had for how fundraising worked.

But we started raising a LOT more money.  Let me share my journey…

Something that made a big difference for my organization was creating fundraising materials that people could easily understand by writing at a lower reading level, using simpler sentences, and eliminating jargon.

As we started communicating differently, a whole host of worries came up. We worried donors would think we were talking down to them. We worried we wouldn’t come across as the “experts” we were.

We decided to try it anyway.

And none of the things we worried about actually happened.

We started to treat donors like the busy, caring people they were, and they appreciated it. We did the work to make our fundraising writing clear, so THEY didn’t have to do the work to read something dense and full of jargon.

Here are the main issues we focused on to make our writing clear and easy to understand:

  • Using short sentences and short paragraphs
  • Not using internal jargon that our donors wouldn’t easily understand
  • Writing at a reading level between 6th and 8th grade so donors could understand our fundraising writing quickly

It didn’t take a lot to make our materials easier to understand. It didn’t cost any more money or take that much more time. It just took working through some discomfort internally.

But changing these three things to make our copy clear and easy to understand helped us raise more money for our mission!


Read the whole series:

Get to the Point FAST to Raise More Money with Your Appeals and E-Appeals

Sarah Lundberg  |  Ask
Get to the point.

Before my time at The Better Fundraising Co, I used to be a Director of Marketing and Communications for a nonprofit. But then the nonprofit I was working at needed me to create their fundraising materials, and I discovered a whole new world of expertise — it challenged the beliefs that my nonprofit and I had for how fundraising worked.

But we started raising a LOT more money.  Here’s a bit about my organization’s journey…

One thing that made a huge difference in our direct mail and email fundraising efforts was getting to the point fast in our communications.

First, a funny (slightly mortifying) story.

When I started learning about direct mail fundraising, I had to face an uncomfortable reality that nearly every instinct I had as a marketing and communications professional was wrong for fundraising.

I remember telling Steven Screen (co-founder of The Better Fundraising Co. and now my boss) that I used to include the fundraising “ask” at the end of the appeal as a reward for the people who read to the end.

I wish I could include a snapshot of the look on Steven’s face.

What I didn’t know at that point was that almost nobody reads to the end to an appeal.

So almost nobody had been SEEING the fundraising ask in our appeals.

Gulp.

We adapted our appeal and e-appeal format to get right to the point in the first four paragraphs. We shared the problem and the solution right away. AND we asked the donor to give in the first four paragraphs.

It was bold. It was uncomfortable. Internal staff didn’t like it as much. Wasn’t it —impolite — to get right to the point like that?

But it worked.

More donors started to respond to our appeals. And the average gift went up.

Over time, it felt less uncomfortable internally. The team started to appreciate the new approach to appeals and e-appeals. It’s amazing how raising more money can help a team get over discomfort.

If your team is struggling with trying a new fundraising tactic, it helps to acknowledge with your team that change is uncomfortable and be willing to try it anyway. Raising more for your mission is worth it!


Read the whole series:

5 reasons the Myth of “Donor Fatigue” Persists

Steven  |  Ask
Donor fatigue.

“Donor Fatigue” – that mythical beast that haunts the futures of Fundraisers everywhere – doesn’t exist. I’m neck-deep in donor data and fundraising performance all the time. And I can tell you that this creature simply doesn’t exist for 99.9% of nonprofits.

But it still affects the behavior of too many fundraisers. And without question, the fear of “donor fatigue” causes organizations to raise less money and do less good.

This is such a brutal fact that I’m going to repeat it: the fear of something that doesn’t exist – “donor fatigue” – causes hundreds of thousands of nonprofits to raise less money and do less good.

For the vast majority of nonprofits, letting “donor fatigue” affect your behavior is like not going outside because you might get hit by lightning.

I’ve identified 5 reasons that “donor fatigue” continues to haunt our sector and lower revenue. If you know of others, please share them with us. Here are my five:

  1. The complaints of a donor or three, occasionally a Board member, that your organization is asking for money too often.
  2. The fear that comes from thinking those complainers might speak for all your donors.
  3. The awkwardness some people feel about asking for money in the first place.
  4. The lack of understanding that nonprofits can be communicating to their donors far more often than they think.
  5. “Donor fatigue” is sometimes used as a scapegoat for bad fundraising. If an appeal or newsletter or campaign doesn’t work well, that elusive “donor fatigue” is blamed. Then no one has to feel bad, take responsibility, or learn from the mistake.

The first four items above are all real things. They matter.

But complaints and fears should not matter as much as the hundreds and thousands of additional gifts that will come in when you communicate with your donors more often about things they care about.

Look, if you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know we believe in Asking more – because all our data shows that it works like crazy, with almost zero negative consequences.

One of the reasons Better Fundraising has been so successful is that we show our clients how organizations their size are communicating to their donors more often and raising a lot more money doing it. (And of course there are other things an organization has to do well, but Asking more is a one of the biggest levers you can pull.)

So next time someone brings up “donor fatigue,” tell them that “donor fatigue” isn’t the problem. And don’t let “donor fatigue” be used as a reason or excuse in your organization.

Acknowledge the fear that caused “donor fatigue” to rear its hideous head, then move forward.

You owe it to your beneficiaries.

Your donors will thank you for it with increased engagement and giving.

You’ll love raising more money and getting to do more good.

This post was originally published on January 22, 2019.

Weird but True (and Important)

Steven  |  Ask
Strange but true.

Here’s something weird but true:

Your Staff and Board receive more of your fundraising communications than your donors do.

That might not seem possible, but here’s how it works:

The Staff and Board of a nonprofit tend to open and read everything the organization sends out… but donors don’t. 

Let me give you an example, and then I’ll share why this is so important.

For example, if you send out a fundraising email, almost everyone on your Staff and Board notice and look at it.  But if your email open rate is 30%, then 70% of the people on your email list did not see the email.

So your Staff and Board received an email, but effectively 70% of your donors did not.

And if you send out an appeal letter, everyone on your staff and Board will notice and take look at it.  But maybe 50%* of donors opened the letter.

So your Staff and Board received an appeal letter, but about half of your donors didn’t.

Play this out over the course of a year and your Staff and Board have received a lot more of your fundraising than your donors have.  Put another way, the Staff and Board understand how many pieces the organization is sending to donors, but they don’t understand how few pieces the donors are receiving.

Consequently, most nonprofits have an over-inflated sense of how much they are communicating with their donors. 

The Consequence

When Staff and Board don’t know this truth, they often inadvertently keep an organization smaller than it could be.

The Staff and Board base their advice on “how much communication is enough” on their own inflated perception, NOT on their donors’ lived experience.

Consequently, nonprofit Staff and Boards consistantly advocate for less communication than the organization could be sending out, which results in less money raised from individual donors.

At Better Fundraising, our general rule of thumb is that most individual donors see a little less than half of the fundraising an organization sends out.  Keep that in mind as you build annual plans and campaigns, and you’ll communicate more effectively and raise more money.

And if you’re at a smaller nonprofit where your Staff or Board are handicapping your fundraising because of a mistaken understanding of “how much we’re communicating with our donors,” please share this post with them.

Getting Staff and Board to recognize the situation, and then moving past the stage where “my Board/boss won’t let us send out any more fundraising because s/he thinks we send too much,” is a step made by every organization with a thriving individual donor fundraising program.

***

* This is an educated guess.  The published data on direct mail open rates is self-reported data, which is notoriously inaccurate.