Category: Ask

The ‘Good Bad Idea’ That Raised $9,000

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Good or bad idea.

I just returned from the always-excellent GiveCon with a fun story to tell you.  It’s a great example of how small nonprofits often underestimate their donors.

A man named Jon and I were chatting, and we got to talking about the small nonprofit he serves (they have about 160 active donors).  Jon mentioned that they’d recently made a large payment to one of their local partners, and were short on cash. 

I said, “Jon, I hesitate to say this, but I have a good bad idea.”

“If you would be willing to write the first draft of an email about this, I’ll edit it for you.  If you send it out tonight, I bet we’ll raise a bunch of money.  My goal is to raise at least as much as it cost for you to come to the conference.”

Jon was game.  It was on!

Before he left the Better Fundraising booth, he and I talked about what the ask should be for.  He was thinking it would be to “refill our coffers after this large payment.”  I encouraged him to not make it about their cash flow, and instead make it about the services the money would eventually provide.

Their organization helps women in Africa who are victims of kidnapping and sexual slavery, and the money would eventually be used to help women recover.

I asked him for some program specifics, and we came up with the following: your gift of $250 will help a woman recover for a month by providing a box of food, assistance paying her rent, and 2 visits from a licensed psychotherapist from her own community.  And we included language to make the funds undesignated in case they raised more than they needed.

Jon sent the email late morning of Day 2 of GiveCon.

After lunch Jon came up to me with a huge grin on his face.  “We’ve raised $2,500 thus far!”

A few minutes after the last session of the day, Jon came back.  “We’ve raised $4,500!”

The next morning, Jon came to a session I was giving.  Near the end I asked him if he would share the current total with the people in the room, and he shared that it was over $9,000. 

This is a meaningful amount of money for their organization.  And it all came in because they had the courage to ask.

I share this story because it’s a perfect illustration of two things you’ve heard me say if you’ve read this blog for any length of time:

  • If you have a need, share it with your donors!  You can do this far more often than you think, donors will love helping, and donors will feel more connected to what’s going on at your organization.
  • Make it easy for donors to know what their gift will make possible.  Jon could have explained the “inside baseball” context of partner payments and cash flow.  And that might have been appropriate in a conversation with a major donor.  But this was a quick email, so instead he talked about what the money would do in the field, using specifics that everyone would understand.

I’m proud of Jon and his organization for sending out the email.  And I’m not the least bit surprised that it raised far more than they thought it would.

At Better Fundraising, we find donor generosity to be both amazing and predictable when donors are given acute, understandable reasons that their support today will make a difference.

Jon’s donors were ready.  Yours are, too.

It’s OK to Ask for a Smaller Approval Team

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Approval team.

If you’re a fundraiser whose appeals have to wind their way through four (or six, or eight) reviewers before they go out the door, you’re allowed to push back.  In fact, you should.  Here’s the case to make.

You were hired to do two things (well you were probably hired to do lots of things but there are two main things you were hired to do in regard to this): understand donors & what motivates them, and understand how direct response fundraising actually works.  That’s your job, and is one of the main ways you add value to your organization.

But a long approval chain takes those exact skills out of your hands.  Every reviewer who can change your copy is, in effect, overriding your expertise.  By the time a piece survives six approvers, it doesn’t sound like a fundraiser wrote it.  It sounds like a committee wrote it.  Because a committee did.

Let me acknowledge something up front: the heavy approval process doesn’t exist because anyone is being unreasonable.  Boards want to protect the brand.  Leaders want to make sure nothing embarrassing goes out under their signature.  Program staff want their work represented accurately.  Marketing wants the language consistent.  All of those instincts come from a good place.

Let me give you an analogy: the best performing appeals are like a screwdriver; they do one thing and they do it perfectly.  A large approval process tends to turn the screwdriver into a Swiss Army Knife that does a lot more things – but none of them well.

I’ve watched this scenario at hundreds of organizations.  And I’ve noticed that the orgs that grow their individual donor revenue the fastest have a few things in common, and one of them is this – they keep their approval teams small, and one person, not a group, makes the final decision.

When committees decide, fundraising gets compromised in predictable ways.  The bold ask gets softened.  The emotional language gets neutralized.  The specific gets generalized.  The urgent gets diluted.  Nobody in the room is trying to make the piece less effective, but the cumulative effect of “let’s also add…” and “could we soften…” and “I’d feel better if we mentioned…” is fundraising that doesn’t work.

It’s also slower.  Every reviewer adds days.  Every round of revisions adds more.  Every piece that takes a month to clear is a piece you didn’t send while you waited.  The hidden cost isn’t just the quality of the pieces – it’s the volume.  The orgs that send more, raise more.  Approval bottlenecks suppress volume.

Here’s a small structural change worth proposing to your leadership:

  • A small group reviews each piece – three or four people, max.
  • Reviewers can suggest changes, but not make them.
  • One person – ideally someone who knows direct response – makes the final call on what gets changed.
  • After a piece goes out, anyone in the org can comment on it.  Those comments go to the person in charge of fundraising, who decides whether to take them into account for next time.

That’s it.  Same care.  Same brand protection.  But the fundraiser gets to do their job, the pieces stay sharp, and the volume goes up.

If this is something you want to bring up, here are three things to say, in this order:

“You hired me to understand donors and to understand how fundraising through the mail and email works.  The current approval process makes it hard for me to do what you hired me for.  I’d like to propose a small change that keeps everyone involved but lets me move faster and keep the pieces effective.”

“It’s a well-known truth that fundraising written by a committee performs worse than fundraising an experienced person. That’s not a criticism of anyone on the team – it’s just how committee decision-making works.  The pieces get smoothed out, and smoothed-out fundraising raises less money.”

“What I’m proposing isn’t ‘no review.’  It’s right-sized review.  Reviewers can suggest.  One person decides.  After the piece goes out, everyone can give feedback for the next one.”

And one note for any leader reading this: the trade-off is real.  You can have careful fundraising, or you can have effective fundraising.  The organizations I see grow the fastest have learned to choose the second – by trusting the person they hired to do the job they were hired for.

Importantly, when the person doing the job feels trusted, they will tend to stay in the job longer.

You hired a fundraiser.  Let them be one.

It’s OK to Write Fundraising That’s Emotional

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Sad puppy.

If you’ve ever written a fundraising piece you knew was going to work, only to have someone in the room say “this is too emotional” – I feel you.

And I want to give you a couple tools to help you get your great fundraising approved.

Because what has happened to you is pretty common: a Fundraiser drafts an appeal that’s vivid, urgent, and emotionally honest.  They send it around for review.  And someone – usually program staff, or the branding lead, or a senior leader – pushes back: “This is too emotional.  Donors will feel manipulated.  We need to tone it down.”

Even though every word is true!

What makes this objection so hard to argue against is that it sounds reasonable.  Even ethical.  Nobody wants to feel like they’re being manipulative, or be accused of being manipulative.  And the person raising the objection usually holds real authority and means well – they understand the work deeply and they care about how the organization shows up in the world.

So the piece gets toned down.  And it raises less money.  And the Fundraiser feels frustrated.

But here’s why you want emotion in your fundraising.  More than 70 years of head-to-head testing & research on giving consistently shows that people give for emotional reasons, the vast majority of the time:

  • One well-known study compared donations in response to images of a sad child, a happy child, and a neutral child.  Same need.  Same ask.  Same beneficiary.  The sad-child version raised donations from 77% of viewers.  The happy-child and neutral-child versions?  52% each.  When there’s less emotion, there’s less giving.
  • After the Notre Dame fire in 2019, donors from around the world sent hundreds of millions of unsolicited (!) dollars to repair an old building.  Curing cancer is arguably more important – but what happened to the building was emotional, and people responded.

Emotion isn’t a flaw in giving.  Emotion is how giving works.

When you write emotionally, you’re not manipulating your donors.  You’re reminding them why they care.  The reasons they got involved in the first place were emotional – and the most respectful thing you can do is meet them in the same place they entered from.

So the next time someone in your organization calls a piece “too emotional,” here are two things worth saying – in this order – to keep the emotional version alive:

“You know everything we do and why we do it.  You’re an expert.  But our individual donors aren’t experts.  They became donors because their emotions were touched – by a story, a moment, a need.  When we tap into those same emotions in our fundraising, we’re not manipulating anyone.  We’re reminding them why they care.  What feels ‘too emotional’ to you doesn’t feel that way to a donor.  To a donor, it feels real.”

“If we change this to be the way you’d describe the work to another expert, donors will experience it as a dry lecture.  And in test after test, that approach to individual donors raises less money.  The most respectful thing we can do is meet our donors where they actually are.”

One real boundary worth naming: manipulative fundraising distorts, lies, or exaggerates.  That is NOT what we are talking about here.  We’re talking about sharing the emotions of our beneficiaries, and the emotions of our team around the work, and the emotions a donor might be feeling.  Because emotions aren’t manipulative any more than the truth is manipulative.  As long as we are telling the truth, we’re not crossing a line.

And we’re giving a gift to our donors, because we’re letting them know the full picture of what’s going on and what’s at stake.  Not a dry lecture with numbers and program details, but real lives with real consequences.

The people who became your donors did so because something touched their hearts.  Fundraising that touches their hearts again is the surest way to get them to give again.

It’s OK to Tell Your Donors When You’re Behind on Your Fundraising

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Broken pig.

If your organization is behind on its fundraising goals, you’re allowed to tell your donors.

If you’re behind your budget right now, you’re probably feeling a little sick about it.  I’d like to help with that because in my experience, telling your donors is one of the best things you can do!

Of course, this feels dangerous.

So when an organization is behind its fundraising targets, here’s what tends to happen: someone offers up the idea to share the budget gap with donors, and someone else says, “We can’t do that, people will think we are bad at managing money, and our leadership will never approve it because they think it makes them look bad.”  (And if you have a Marketing or Branding department, they’ll say you can’t do it because it’ll hurt the long-term image of the organization.)

The instinct to hide a shortfall comes from a good place – staff and leaders want to protect the organization’s reputation, and you want donor confidence to remain high.

And there’s a layer that makes the whole thing even harder: even though shortfall campaigns happen all the time, nobody ever talks about them.  The organization doesn’t want to share that they had to do one.  Shortfall campaigns never get talked about at conferences.

And so we find ourselves operating in the dark on this issue, afraid of some consequences that we’ve never actually seen happen.

But (and this is a big “but”), please let me share with you the results of the 60 to 70 times I’ve run campaigns where nonprofits let their donors know that they were behind their fundraising goals.

Here’s what actually happens:

  • The campaign almost always raises significantly more than the nonprofit’s regular campaigns.  It’s usually the best campaign of the year.  One of Better Fundraising’s clients usually raises about $150k at year-end, and their shortfall campaign raised $650k.  Here’s that story.
    • Specifically, response rates and average gifts are higher than average.
  • The feared negative consequences don’t happen.  I’ve measured – there’s no drop in retention rates, and there’s no drop in long-term giving.
  • The number of calls the organization gets from “concerned donors” is usually less than five.

In a nutshell, here’s why a campaign that lets donors know a nonprofit is behind their fundraising goals or budget is usually so successful: donors know that the organization is a nonprofit.  They know that funding is uneven.  They don’t want any of the nonprofit’s services to be cut.  A shortfall is a clear, urgent need – and humans respond to clear, urgent needs.

And if this is something you are open to, it’s the conversation with your boss or your Board where the idea to share the shortfall gets killed.  Here are three things to say to your boss, in this order, to help them be more open to the idea:

“I know this feels risky.  I had the same instinct.  But shortfall campaigns have been run successfully for a long time, it’s just that nobody talks about it.  Here’s what one experienced fundraiser saw as he ran more than 50 of these campaigns… (show them this blog).”

“Our donors know that we’re a nonprofit.  They know that funding varies from year to year.  When we tell them we’re behind our budget, we’re building trust – we’re treating them like partners instead of just calling them partners.”

“We know our donors care about our work.  Let’s tell them what’s going on and give them a chance to help, not hide it and take the decision out of their hands.”

When you’re behind budget, trust your donors.  They care about what your organization is working on, and they care about your organization.  They want you to keep going.  Give them the chance to help.  You don’t have to hide what is happening.

Your donors can handle the truth.  They will thank you for telling them.  And they will surprise you with their generosity.

Never Interrupt Your Donors When They’re Being Generous

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Generous people.

My mentor used to tell a story about “the $100 donors.”

He was serving a large national charity that had approximately 250,000 active donors at the time.  The charity noticed that every time they sent out an appeal, a large group of donors would each give $100.

A person at the charity was worried they were going to “burn out” those $100 donors, so he decided to remove all $100 donors from the next few appeals.

My mentor always talked about how “three bad things happened, two in the short term and one the long term”:

  1. The $100 donors stopped giving.  They just stopped.  Thousands of them gave to one appeal, and none of them gave to the next appeal. 
  2. The organization raised a lot less money.  Their appeals simply raised less than they used to, and the organization accomplished less. 
  3. When the $100 donors were added back into appeals months later, some of them started giving again, and a significant percentage of them never gave again.

One person’s fear that “their donors were going to get burnt out” was given more weight than the behavior of thousands of donors.  Because of that, the organization raised less money and lost many of those donors.

Hearing this story, you can see how that was a big mistake.  But at the time, the person’s worry sounded strategic.  I’m sure the reasoning was something like, “Let’s not burn these donors out.  Let’s let them rest, and then they will give more later.”

That reasoning sounds smart because we all have fears around asking too often.  And the idea that “we can ask less often and will somehow raise more” is very attractive.  So it’s easy to say yes to suggestions like this.

But because of stories like this one, and 30+ years of fundraising experience, at Better Fundraising we’ve learned to assume abundance instead of letting our fears put boundaries around donor generosity.

There’s a great quote from Napoleon, who said, “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”

Here’s how that applies to this story and fundraising: “Never interrupt your donors when they’re being generous.”

Simple Test

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Simple test.

Here’s a simple test to run on your next piece of fundraising before you send it:

Glance at it and ask yourself: if you only had a few seconds to scan it and didn’t know your organization, would you know concretely how the world would be a better place if you gave a gift?

Because you’ll raise more money if your readers can quickly tell why their gift is needed and what it will make possible.

If you want to keep your organization around the size it is now, send out fundraising that takes readers a long time to learn what is being asked of them and what their gift will do.  Because the only people who will read long enough to find out are your “true believers.”

But if you want to grow, a different approach is needed.  To make your organization more accessible to people who aren’t “true believers,” you need to make it easy for a reader to understand, in around 5 to 7 seconds, why their gift is needed today and what their gift will make happen.

We have a tactic called “two letters in one” that we use to make the main idea accessible to anyone who glances at your fundraising and to give more of the details that a “true believer” might want, when they read more.

Because your ability to grow your mail and email revenue – and ultimately your organization’s impact – is unlocked when you send fundraising that activates everyone on your list.

What If Apple Advertised Like a Nonprofit?

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Smart phone ad.

Here’s a fun thought exercise for you.

What if the companies that make phones (Samsung, Apple, Motorola) had to make TV commercials selling phones using the same messaging approach that many nonprofits use?

First of all, there would be no 30-second commercials.  All the commercials would be 5 minutes long because someone at the company would say “we need to tell people everything about us before they will buy a phone from us.”

All the commercials would start by sharing what year the company was founded in.

The commercials would not talk about phones you could buy right now.  They would only talk about phones they already sold a few months ago.

Each commercial would painstakingly detail how the phone was made and list any subcontractors.  “Our previous model was so effective because we thoroughly vet our high-quality partners; the display was made by Samsung, the camera module was made by Sony, the display was made by LG, and our supply chain delivered all components to be lovingly assembled by Foxconn, our Chinese assembly partner.”

The ads would avoid naming any specific features of their phones, and would instead use concepts like “your purchase, like a pebble thrown into a pond, will cause ripples in your communicating power.”

There definitely wouldn’t be any urgency, because the CEO thinks urgency makes him look needy.

And at the end of these long commercials, the company would mention that their phones were available, but certainly not ask you to buy one today, that would be rude.

If that’s what commercials for phones were like, when a phone ad came on TV, people would switch shows or leave to go to the bathroom.

But, weirdly, that’s the approach fundraising letters take all the time!    

My hope is that this thought exercise helps people see how deeply flawed the standard nonprofit approach is.  When looked at in another context, when our fears around money and vulnerability aren’t part of the equation any longer, the standard approach just looks silly.

This blog, and Better Fundraising, have been growing for more than 10 years because our data-driven approach works far better than the standard approach.

If you’re reading this, and any of the fictional phone company approach resembled your organization’s approach, click here and say hi.  Your donors have what we call “pent up giving” and you can be raising more money from them starting next month!

Email and Snail Mail: in the way or on the way?

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Snail mail.

As a follow up to my recent post about why organizations are still using email and snail mail to raise money, there’s one other idea I want to address.

This is for the people and organizations who are annoyed that they have to do fundraising in email and the mail.

This is like getting annoyed at having to go through Oregon when driving from Washington to California.

Oregon isn’t in the way, it’s on the way — if you want the fastest route.

Can you drive around Oregon and get to California?  Sure, but it’ll take longer and be more expensive.

Can you get lucky and have someone give you a ticket on McKenzie Scott Airlines so you can fly to California?  Sure, but the chances are pretty slim.

Fundraising in email and the mail isn’t “in the way” of a nonprofit raising more and having more donors; they are “on the way” to raising more and having more donors.

Why Use Email and Snail Mail?

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Mail.

There’s a conversation we’re having more and more as young people enter the fundraising profession and older people on Boards are replaced with the next generation.

The conversation always starts with a question that goes something like this…

“Why should a nonprofit like ours get good at raising money via email and the mail, both of which seem like ‘legacy’ communication methods?” 

We could talk about this for hours, but if this is coming up for your organization, let me give you a couple of quick reasons these tools are still so useful to so many nonprofits.

  1. Email and the mail help small organizations scale.  There are only so many people you can personally know, and only so many people who will go to your event.  So the ability to communicate effectively with thousands of people at once is necessary in order to scale (particularly to break the “raising $1m annually from individual donors” threshold.)
  2. Email and the mail make your organization more resilient and less fragile.  Two ways.  First, you want to have the skill of fundraising and being in relationship with donors even when you can’t meet with them.  (We all saw what happened to event-driven organizations during the pandemic.  Ouch.)  Second, having a good mail and email program spreads your revenue across the entire year, so you’re not so dependent on the world running smoothly (no wars being started, no natural disasters) the month of your event.
  3. The mail and email help you identify new mid- and major-donors.  You watch giving patterns, you identify prospects, and you raise up your next generation of majors.  (A friend of mine used to run the individual donor program for a national organization with hundreds of thousands of donors.  He said, “Yes, we raise a lot of money with the mail and email, but our real job is to identify major donor prospects.”)

And that’s just three reasons.  There are all sorts of other reasons, like “lots of majors still give via the mail” and “mail & email keep you in touch with Majors who don’t answer your attempts to get in touch” and “you aren’t dependent on the whims of the social media algorithm because you own the relationship.”

The mail and email are proven and effective; that’s why they’re still in use!