Category: Ask

Authenticity Isn’t Always Useful

Steven Screen  |  Ask
authentic

In the nonprofit world we tend to embrace authenticity.

It’s assumed that if we’re authentic, and the fundraising we create is authentic, that we’ll attract more people to our cause. More money will be raised, and we’ll do more good.

But there are clear limits to this line of thinking. 

Say you’re at an organization that has eighteen different programs. But your fundraising is most successful when it focuses on one particular program. Furthermore, that program has a holistic, whole-person approach to caring for people of all ages.  But the fundraising clearly works best when it asks donors to “feed one child.”

In that scenario, any fundraising you create that focuses on “feeding a child” will feel wildly inauthentic to program staff and anyone who understands the depth and breadth of your work.

However, the fundraising you create that focuses on “feeding a child” serves your mission by helping donors understand a powerful part of your organization’s complex approach.

Think of a college professor. Can you imagine how an accomplished astrophysicist – tenured and with a long track record of publishing cutting-edge research – feels when teaching “Astronomy 101” to a bunch of college freshmen (some of whom are hung over)?

Do we think she feels “authentic” giving those lectures when she could be discussing the latest findings with her peers? 

Probably not. She does it because it’s part of the job, and because it’s likely there are some future astrophysicists in her class.  How will they get excited about the subject if she doesn’t show up in an engaging way? Furthermore, she can’t show up in class and talk to the freshmen like she talks to her peers.  She makes the generous choice to speak to them in language they’ll understand.

Fundraising is the same. There are some donor communications we need to make – even if we don’t prefer them – because it’s part of the job. 

And how will the future volunteers / donors / advocates get excited about our work if we don’t show up – speaking to them at their level – in an engaging way?

There’s nothing wrong with communicating authentically. The trap is when “communicating authentically” comes to mean “we talk about our work in one particular way that feels authentic to us.” 

Nonprofits should make the generous choice to talk to different audiences in different ways: we should communicate about our work differently to institutional funders who are experts in our fields differently than we communicate to mass donors.

Our primary focus should not be on being authentic to ourselves, it should be on being relevant to the particular audience being communicated to.

Custom Gift Asks Increase Newsletter Net Revenue by 36%

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Increase revenue.

A nonprofit recently made one change to their print newsletter that helped them raise quite a bit more money:

BEFORE: the reply card for their newsletter used to have “static” gift ask amounts. This means every single donor’s reply card had the same gift ask amounts as every other donor.

AFTER: their updated reply card has customized gift ask amounts for each donor. This mean each donor sees amounts that are based on their own previous giving to the organization.

There were no design changes to the reply cards. There were no changes to the newsletter itself. The only thing that changed was each donor was asked to give amounts that were based on their previous giving.

Net revenue went up 36%.

That’s a big increase!

Minuses, But Mostly Plusses

It takes more time to create custom gift asks than it does to slap some ask amounts on one RD and send it to everyone.

The printing costs are often slightly higher because you’re customizing/lasering each reply card as opposed to printing them all at once.

The lettershop costs are often slightly higher because you have to match the reply cards to the outer envelope (unless you’re using a window envelope and the donor’s address on the reply card drives the window).

Yet despite all those time and cost increases, customized gift asks on reply cards is standard operating procedure for nonprofits who have their direct mail act together.

Why is that?

Two reasons:

  1. They raise more money. The increased gross revenue from using customized gift ask amounts far more than pays for the increased costs of doing it. So the organization’s net revenue increases and they are able to do more of their mission work.
  2. Customized gift asks are an outcome of donor-centric fundraising. A reply card with ask amounts tailored to a donor communicates to that donor that they are known. It communicates to the donor that the piece of fundraising they are holding was made for just for them.

If your organization is already using customized gift asks, good on you.

If your organization hasn’t made the leap yet, check out Work Less Raise More. Each training module for printed fundraising pieces includes step-by-step training for how to create customized gift asks for your donors (and a pre-built spreadsheet tool to help you do it).

Why “Look Nice and Use Our Brand Colors” Persists

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Brand colors.

Our previous post noted that organizations who design all their fundraising pieces to “look nice and use their brand colors” accidentally cause their organization to raise less money.

Yet this approach persists. It’s arguably the most common approach!

I think there are two reasons it persists, and each of them is a good lesson for all of us Fundraisers to remember:

Lack Of Differentiation

At the vast majority of nonprofits, people aren’t taught that the design considerations for designing appeal letters are different than the consideration when designing a brochure or an annual report.

In direct response fundraising, there are some design approaches that are proven to work better than others.

It’s not your fault because you weren’t trained how to do this stuff.

And the first step towards an organization’s design helping them raise more money instead of less is the ability to differentiate between different types of fundraising.

Misplaced Branding Principles

There are many product- and corporate-branding principles that have been widely misapplied to the nonprofit world.

Here’s a summary of the resulting approach: “If our fundraising stays on brand all the time, that is good for our brand and will cause more people to give money over time.”

That’s true IF (and only if) your brand is effective in all the contexts in which you fundraise.

For instance, say one of a nonprofit’s brand colors is cyan (light blue) or something similar. And in order to stay on brand, the nonprofit uses cyan for some of the text in its newsletter.

Cyan, because it is so low contrast, is almost impossible to read by most people. Look at what using cyan (compared to black) does for reading comprehension:

(Data from Type & Layout: Are You Communicating or Just Making Pretty Shapes by Colin Whelldon.)

While this color can be very effective in creating a feeling as part of a brand’s palette, it’s ineffective when used as a text color.

So the brand is effective in one context, but not in others.

In that case, ‘staying on brand all the time’ absolutely does not help the organization raise more money now, or in the future.

The lesson here is that brand consistency (looking and feeling the same in all contexts) matters less than brand relevancy (being relevant and effective in whatever context you’re working in at the moment).

The next time you’re asked to design a piece of fundraising – or you ask someone to design a piece of fundraising for you – ask these two questions:

  1. What type of fundraising are we creating here?
  2. What are the hallmarks of effective design in this context?

The ability to differentiate, and then to know what effective design looks like in different contexts, will help an organization achieve more of its mission than an over-devotion to using its brand colors.

Exactly How to Run a Fiscal Year-End Email Campaign

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Send email.

Using email to raise money at fiscal year-end is exactly like using email to raise money the last week in December.

This week I’m giving you tips on fiscal year-end fundraising.

And today, here’s how to use email to take your campaign to the next level and raise even more money.

Below is exactly what to do in the mail to raise money at Fiscal Year-End. It’s pretty simple…

Big Picture: Send Three Emails

Your first email should be:

  • Almost a word-for-word copy of your mailed appeal letter. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Instead, repeat what’s in the letter, because repetition helps your fundraising.
  • Sent approximately 3 days after you send your snail-mail appeal letter. Your goal is for it to arrive in your donor’s inbox the same day it arrives in their mailbox.
    • If your donors are spread across the country, or if you’re using nonprofit postage, you may want to wait 5 or 6 days after you send your appeal.

Your second email should be:

  • A copy of the first email you sent, but a little shorter. Say that you’re reminding your donor about the deadline on the 30th, and then use the same words, phrases and paragraphs that you used in your letter.
  • Sent the morning of June 29th.

Your third email should be:

  • A copy of the second email you sent, but a little shorter. Say that you’re reminding your donor about the deadline on the 30th, and then use the same words, phrases and paragraphs that you used in your letter.
    • One tactic we’ve used with great success: don’t write a third email; just “forward” your second email with a note at the top. The note should say something like, “Dear [NAME], I wanted to make sure you saw this. Thank you!”
  • Be sent the morning of June 30.

The trick here is to send the same message in every email. It’s the repetition of the same message that helps drive it home!

Where Should the Links Go?

Every link in every email should go directly to your giving page. Don’t have links to your website’s home page, your Facebook page, or your Instagram account. We call those “attention leaks,” and they tend to reduce the amount of money you’ll raise.

Ideally, your giving page has updated copy at the top that mentions your “fiscal year-end campaign” and the important deadline of midnight, June 30th. You want that page to reinforce the message that your donors read in the appeal letter or email!

Who Should Receive Them?

Your emails should go to your entire list – every email address you have – with the following exceptions:

  1. If there are any Board members or staff members who won’t want to receive the emails, feel free to take them off the list.
  2. If you’re able, remove people who have given to the appeal or email from subsequent emails. For instance, if they give to the email on the 29th, they ideally would not receive the email on the 30th.
    1. If you’re not able to do that, add a sentence in the email that says something like, “If you’ve already given a gift, thank you so much! If you haven’t, please give by midnight, Saturday night…” That will ‘get you off the hook’ for donors who give early but still receive the later email(s).

Our Goal For You

It’s a simple goal. If your fiscal year ends on June 30th, our goal is for you to fundraise for it and use the tips and tactics we’re sharing. If you follow our time-tested advice, we know you’ll be surprised by how much money you can raise!

This post was originally published on May 10, 2018.

Why Fundraising at Fiscal Year-End Will Work for You

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Fiscal year-end.

I want to talk to you about fundraising for “Fiscal year-end” – why it works and how to do it for your organization.

I’m focusing on this because fundraising for “fiscal year-end” works great. And we want you to raise more money and do more good. If you’re not using this fundraising opportunity, you should be.

It Doesn’t Make Sense…

The first thing to say is that no one believes that fiscal year-end fundraising will work for their organization. No one.

And that’s reasonable! After all, what donor is thinking about when your fiscal year is, and what happens at the end of it?

On the surface, who would think that an appeal about the end of your budgeting cycle would motivate a donor to give? It’s entirely organizational-centric, and apparently not donor-centric at all. But…

…It Just Works

Fundraising for fiscal year-end (FYE) works great for our clients (and lots of other organizations) year after year.

The FYE appeal letter is usually one of the best-performing letters of the year. The emails usually perform second-best behind only the December year-end emails.

I’m telling you this because, if your organization’s fiscal year ends June 30th, you have a great fundraising opportunity that – most likely – you’re not taking full advantage of.

This the proverbial low-hanging fruit for you. And we’re going to show you how to grab it.

Why It Works

If we dig a little deeper, we see why FYE fundraising works so well:

  1. There’s a simple, powerful problem the donor can help solve. Every one of us has had the problem of being ‘a little short’ at the end of a month. That means your donor understands and can feel the problem on her own. That right there makes her more likely to respond.
  2. There’s a clear deadline. We know from experience (year-end fundraising, anybody?) that having a clear deadline is magic for motivating donors to take action.

A lot of people will read those two things and think, “Really? That’s it? That’s too simple.”

I know. I think the same thing.

But it works like crazy every year! The power of a deadline and a simple, solvable problem work again and again and again.

We recommend this to every client whose fiscal year ends on June 30th or September 30th.

Our Goal

It’s a simple goal. If your fiscal year ends on June 30th, our goal is for you to fundraise for it and use the tips and tactics we’re sharing. If you follow our time-tested advice, we know you’ll be surprised by how much money you can raise!

This post was originally published on April 30, 2018.

“Trust, then give” or “Give, then trust”?

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Trust.

You know me – I’m always talking about how the “stories an organization tells itself” about fundraising have a lot to do with an organization’s success or failure.

There’s another “story” we should talk about. It’s specifically around acquiring new donors:

“We need a person to know and trust our organization before they will give a gift.”

This is true when organizations are just getting started – maybe up to a couple of hundred donors. And occasionally in the major donor context.

But the problem with that approach is that it doesn’t scale. There aren’t very many people, in the grand scheme of things, that want to take the time to get to know and learn about your organization.

So it turns out that if you want to acquire significantly more donors than you’re acquiring now, it’s a better use of time and money to learn to be effective at “just asking potential donors to give a gift” than it is to “get to know people and then asking them to give a gift.”

Important note: I should mention that this post isn’t just me philosophizing over here. It’s me attempting to summarize what I (and others) have learned watching organizations spend millions of dollars attempting to acquire new donors.

So for smaller organizations who want to acquire more new donors, ask yourself if you have the belief mentioned at the top of this post. If you do, I suggest you replace that “default” belief with this new belief:

At this moment, potential individual donors care more about our cause, and about their ability to make a difference with a gift, than they care about our organization.

So our fundraising materials should spend less time talking about our organization, and more time talking about a) the cause or issue we work on, and b) how a donor’s gift will make a difference.

If you follow this advice when creating your mass, outbound fundraising communications and marketing, you’ll acquire more new donors.

Should you think differently when having lunch with a potential major donor who was introduced to you by your Board Chair? Of course. That’s because you’re a savvy Fundraiser and you differentiate.

If you and your organizations can do the other-centered thing and focus your communications on what individual donors tend to be most interested in (instead of what you and your co-experts are most interested in), you’ll be rewarded with more donors.

And they will come to trust your organization over time.

To scale your organization, it’s not “build trust and then they’ll give.” It’s “get them to give, and then they’ll trust.”

People Make Donations to Tell Ourselves…

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Self-talk.

You and I make donations in order to tell ourselves who we are.

Each donation we make is a small step to:

  • Become who we want to be
  • Continue to be who we want to be
  • Remake the world in the way we think it should be

Those are CORE motivations for individual donors.

Does your fundraising to individual donors speak to those core motivations?

Because doesn’t it seem obvious that, if you tap into those motivations, your organization would raise more money?

To tap into those motivations, your fundraising will need to tell donors that they’ll love giving to your organization. Your fundraising will need to tell them that your organization has the same values that your donor has. Your fundraising will need to communicate, “people like you give gifts to this organization.”

And then the donor’s intellect will find the facts it needs to justify the donation.

Fundraising that says those things feels very strange at first, because most organizations are used to talking about themselves, their organization, and what they do.

But it’s always good to remember that ineffective fundraising to individuals is about your organization and the services it provides. Effective fundraising to individuals is about your donor and their life.

Of course your fundraising should mention your organization. And even mention some of what you do. But your fundraising to individuals should not be ABOUT your organization or what it does – big difference.

Here’s an example:

Your gift to the Hospital Foundation allows us to provide top-notch healthcare to members of our community. Our leading cancer research team is diligently working to discover new treatments.

That’s about the organization.

Your giving to the Hospital Foundation shows that you’re a hometown hero. You care about people fighting cancer and want new treatments available as soon as possible.

That’s about the donor.

Make more of your fundraising to individual donors about the individual, and watch the magic happen.

How to Choose What to Underline and Why

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Underlining your letters.

I’m going to teach you to raise more money by showing you what to emphasize in your fundraising letters.

Because if you underline or bold the right things, you’ll raise more money.

NOTE: for brevity, I’m going to lump all forms of visual emphasis as “underlining.” You might use underlining, or bolding, or highlighting, doesn’t matter. All of those are different tactics. I’m talking about the strategy of visually emphasizing small portions of your letters and e-appeals.

First, let me tell you why your underlining is so important.

Underlining has two purposes in fundraising writing. Almost nobody knows the second – and more important – purpose.

  1. Bolding or underlining signals that a sentence is important. This is true of almost any writing.
  2. But underlining also serves a second, more important purpose. The most effective fundraisers use underlining to choose for your donor which things they are most likely to read.

Because remember, most of your donors won’t read your letter from top to bottom. They will scan your letter – briefly running their eyes down the page. And as they scan, when they see a sentence that has been emphasized, they are likely to stop scanning and read.

It’s this second, more valuable purpose that most organizations don’t know about. So they underline the wrong things.

My Rule of Thumb

Here’s what I try to do. This doesn’t apply to every letter, but I try this approach first on every single letter I review or write:

  • The first thing underlined should be a statement of need, or a statement describing the problem that the organization is working on.
  • The second thing is a brief explanation of how the donor’s gift will help meet the need or solve the problem mentioned in the first underlined section.
  • The third thing is a bold call-to-action for the donor to give a gift to meet the need / solve the problem today.

If you do that, I can basically guarantee that your letter will do well. A MASSIVE number of fundraising letters don’t even have those elements, let alone emphasize them. If you have them, and you emphasize them, here’s what happens:

  • Donors know immediately what you’re writing to them about
  • Donors know immediately what they can do to help
  • Donors know immediately that they are needed!

Because of those things your donors are more likely to read more. And more likely to donate more.

There Are Some Sub-Rules

  1. No pronouns. Remember that it’s very likely that a person reading the underlined sentence has not read the prior sentences. So if you underline a sentence like “They need it now!” the donor does not know who “they” are and what “it” is. The sentence is basically meaningless to the donor. Their time has been wasted.
  2. Not too many. You’ve seen this before; there are four sentences that are bolded, five that are underlined, and the result is a visual mess that only a Board member would read. Be disciplined. I try to emphasize only three things per page, sometimes four.
  3. Emphasize what donors care about, not what your Org cares about. If you find yourself emphasizing a sentence like, “Our programs are the most effective in the county!” … de-emphasize it. Though it matters a lot to you, no donor is scanning your letter looking to hear how good your organization is at its job. But donors are scanning for things they are interested in. So emphasize things like, “Because of matching funds, the impact of your gift doubles!” or “I know you care about unicorns, and the local herd is in real danger.”
  4. Drama is interesting. If your organization is in a dramatic situation, or the story in the letter has real drama, underline it. Here are a couple of examples from letters we’ve worked on recently: “It was at the moment she saw the ultrasound that life in her belly stopped being a problem and became a baby” and “The enclosed Emergency Funding Program card outlines the emergency fundraising plan I’ve come up with.”

And now, I have to share that I got the idea for this post when I saw this clip from the TV show “Friends”. It turns out that Joey has never known what using ‘air quotes’ means – and he’s using them wrong (to hilarious effect). I saw it and thought, “That’s like a lot of nonprofits trying to use underlining effectively.”

If you’re offended by that, please forgive me. I see hundreds of appeal letters and e-appeals a year. I developed a sense of humor as a defense mechanism. 🙂

The good news is that learning how to use underlining is as easy as learning to use air quotes!

You can do this. Just remember that most of your donors are moving fast. Underline only what they need to know. That’s an incredible gift to a compassionate, generous, busy donor!

And if you’d like to know how Better Fundraising can create your appeals and newsletters (with very effective underlining!) take a look here.

This post was originally published on March 15, 2018.

How to Avoid the “What does that mean?” Offramp

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Off ramp.

I have a rule I follow when creating fundraising:

Avoid any statements that could cause a reader to think, “What does that mean?”

It seems like a simple rule, no? But it gets broken all the time – and most damagingly in a specific, important part of fundraising: phrases or sentences that are emphasized with underlining or bolding.

Here are several real-life examples of emphasized copy that have come across my desk in the last couple of weeks.

All of these were the first sentence in the appeal that was emphasized. Because most readers scan before they read, that means that for a large percentage of readers, these sentences were the first thing donors read in the letter.

Ask yourself as you read these: did this immediately make sense to the donor?

“One thing led to another… but you took care of that!”

“Your investment will make a real, lasting impact in the lives of those who are struggling in silence.”

“I wish for a good night’s sleep.”

“That is why I’m reaching out to you for a donation today.”

None of those sentences are easy to understand without additional context.

Which means that each of them was an “offramp” – an opportunity for the reader to delete or put down the appeal.

Good Examples

If you visually emphasize any words in your appeals, make sure they can be easily understood on their own. Here are some examples of first emphasized sentences that were effective:

“Today kicks off [ORGANIZATION NAME]’s fundraising campaign to launch our Comedy Bootcamp classes in San Diego and Indianapolis later this year.”

“The seal pup has several stingray barbs lodged in its face.”

“You can follow in the footsteps of your faith and feed needy children and their families by making a gift today.”

“There is still a $14,000 shortfall to reach our fiscal year fundraising goal.”

Each of those sentences is easy to understand. If a donor wants to know more, they can keep reading.

But they don’t need to read more to understand.

Here’s What to Do

If this is a new idea for your organization, here’s a roadmap for what to do:

  1. Create your direct response fundraising with the assumption that donors will scan your fundraising, not read it.
  2. Think of your emphasized copy as the parts of your letter or email that people are likely to read.
  3. Make sure that everything that’s emphasized is understandable on its own.
  4. Taken together, all the emphasized words and phrases should provide a summary of the piece of fundraising.

Follow that roadmap and you’ll create what we call “two letters in one.” Your letter will be effective both for people who are moving fast, and for people who read every word.

And that, my friend, is effective direct response fundraising!