Category: Ask

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!

They Didn’t Believe It

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Yes you can.

I’ve written many times about how an organization’s beliefs about fundraising play a major role in how much money they can raise. 

Case in point:

“The ‘stories an organization tells itself’ about fundraising have a greater effect on how much money they raise than the stories they tell their donors.”

Well, I have a new one for you.

I just returned from the fantastic Elevate conference, which is focused on helping nonprofits use their events to raise more money and cause more connections. 

While at the conference, I had a conversation with a group of nonprofits who were extremely skeptical that they could raise money using the mail and email.  It was clear that these smaller, event-driven organizations did not believe that it was possible to communicate powerfully enough in a letter or email to inspire a person to give.

Here was my advice to them.  Don’t worry about the power of a letter or email to communicate your work.  Instead, believe in the power of how much a donor cares about what your organization is trying to accomplish. 

The donor’s desire to do something to help is so strong that a letter or email is all many donors need to send in a gift.

In the mail and email, you don’t need to convince donors.  You need to believe that they already care, then give them a timely invitation to help fund compelling work that’s happening soon.

Are You Preaching to the Choir, or Sending Out Invitations?

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Preach to the choir.

What is an appeal letter for?  What’s the reason appeal letters exist?

(I ask this because if you know more about what a tool actually is, you’re more likely to be successful using it.)

An appeal letter is not for the donor to “learn more about the nonprofit.”  All the donors receiving the appeal already gave to the organization.  They already know enough to have donated.  They don’t need to know more.  Don’t preach to choir.

Here’s my take, based on the appeals that are working the best for Better Fundraising’s clients: the job of an appeal letter is to let donors know about compelling work the nonprofit plans to in the next couple of months, and to invite the donor to get involved in that work by giving a gift today. 

“Knowing more about your organization” is not stopping any of the donors receiving your mail from giving another gift.

What’s stopping them is the lack of a timely invitation to get involved in compelling work that’s happening soon.

Un-planned Gifts

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Surprise gift.

A well-rounded fundraising program generates an unexpected benefit: un-planned gifts.

We all know what a planned gift looks like; it’s the gift left in the will or estate of a donor.  And I’d argue it’s barely-involved major donor who says, “we give you a gift of this amount every year at this time.”

But un–planned gifts?  Those are all the gifts in March because your e-appeal was so strong.  Those are the all the gifts at your event from major donors who had already give earlier this year. 

And here’s the thing – the donors love giving those gifts!  They are thrilled to be able to help.

There are two hallmarks of fundraising programs that regularly produce unplanned gifts:

  • Showing up in donors’ lives regularly with relevant content.  You’re not going to get a lot of unplanned gifts if you’re only sending two or three appeals a year.
  • Focusing your Asks on needs that are happening soon.  This gives your donors a chance to play a meaningful role in a part of your work that’s happening soon – as opposed to the more standard (and less compelling) “be a part of our ongoing work.”

And the consequence of all those unplanned gifts is something that every smaller nonprofit wants – meaningful fundraising revenue coming in all year long, not just during a couple of months.

If your organization would like to get more unplanned gifts, the first thing to do is believe that they are possible.  Assume abundance.  Believe that the effect of sending out another piece of fundraising is going to be a bunch of un-planned gifts, not the mythical “donor fatigue.”

Once you begin to assume abundance, everything else is possible.  All the big organizations have made this shift.  What’s holding you back?

The ‘Frosted Flakes’ of Fundraising

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Frosted flakes.

“Sugar cereals” were everywhere in the 80’s and 90’s.

But there was always one caveat – they were marketed as “part of a balanced breakfast” and pictured with orange juice, toast and usually some fruit. Like so:

Peer-to-peer fundraising should be marketed the same way – as “part of a balanced fundraising program.”

People love peer-to-peer for the same reason they love sugar cereals: it’s grrrrrreat in the short term.  In peer-to-peer, you get that spike of revenue, a bunch of new donors, and a ton of social media mentions.

But there’s a crash coming.  

You know your donor retention rate for all those new donors will be maybe 5%.  You know that all those social media mentions will amount to… a few new followers and not much else.  You know that unless you do that fundraiser again next year, all that revenue and all those relationships go away.

There IS absolutely a place for peer-to-peer fundraising in an otherwise healthy fundraising environment, just like there’s a place for the occasional bowl of Frosted Flakes.*

All those new donors, and revenue, and social media mentions are good and helpful, after all.

But our goal in fundraising should be to begin and cultivate long-term relationships. Donors who give to you for years.  

In the same way you can’t build a healthy body when your meals are predominantly sugar cereal, you can’t build a healthy fundraising program when your revenue and new donors predominantly come from peer-to-peer.

***

* Personally, I prefer Cap’n Crunch with “Crunchberries.”  And those little pink spheres stretch the definition of “berries” so far as to be unrecognizable… but dang they taste great.

Questions?

Steven Screen  |  Ask

Do you have any questions for us?

Maybe there’s a new tactic you want to try, your boss isn’t likely to approve it, and you’d love to know how we would convince them.  Maybe there’s a question you’ve just always wanted to ask.  Maybe there’s a specific situation in your organization that you’d like feedback on.

We can keep you and your organization anonymous if you’d like.  🙂

We’re going to do a series of posts and videos asking questions like yours – and maybe yours if you’ll send it in!

If you’re reading this blog post in your email, you can hit “reply” and we’ll get your question.  If you’re reading this on our website, fill out the form below to submit your question.

I look forward to hearing from you!

How to Make a Moment

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Special moment.

One of the most reliable reasons a letter, email or event resonates with donors is when it contains a moment that engages their emotions.

So I wondered, in the successful fundraising that Better Fundraising has created, what are the “ingredients” in the most powerful moments?

After reviewing a ton of top-performing fundraising, here are the ingredients that I noticed again and again…

Primarily about one “unit” of the nonprofit’s work.  In other words, it was primarily about a child, not “the children.”  It was about one acre, not entire ecosystems.  It was about what needed to be done next month, not “the future of the community.”

There was real conflict.  A person was in a brutal situation because they were unable to afford legal representation.  The library had 50 children’s books, but 200 kids who need to learn how to read.  The young man was struggling in college, but had aged out of the foster care system and didn’t have a trusted adult to help them. 

There was real, obvious emotion.  The piece of fundraising either highlights emotions of the people or situation, or brings emotion into the storytelling. 

The stakes were meaningful.  If the middle schooler didn’t catch up in math, their prospects for a good job were in real trouble.  If the Missionary Kid doesn’t make friendships, they are likely to leave the church. 

The donor can make a difference.  It’s made clear to the donor that their gift will make a meaningful difference, and that difference was clearly described.

The gift needed isn’t large.  The “cost to help one unit” was small, usually under $100.  (If you read this and think that your organization doesn’t have anything meaningful that costs less than $100, you need to narrow your focus and “zoom in” a little further.)

The donor is asked to help.  The letter or email doesn’t say things like “we value your partnership” or “please consider making a gift.”  The donor is clearly asked to make a gift with language like, “Please, will you send in a gift today?”

There is a hopeful future.  The letter talks about the change that will take place if the donor gives a gift.  The donor knows and feels how the world will be better if they send in a gift today. 

These ingredients, all used at the same time, create fundraising that causes donors to take action. 

When combined, these ingredients create fundraising that’s full of emotion.  And all that emotion can feel scary, which is why many nonprofits hide their emotion behind numbers, statistics, and qualifications.

But when creating your fundraising for individual donors, moments and emotions are more important than numbers.  Why?  Because information leads to conclusions, but emotions lead to action.

***

PS — If you’re not sure how to do this for your organization, or not sure you have the right team in place to do it, get in touch!

‘Front Load’ Key Words

Steven Screen  |  Ask
First things first!

When you think about how to capture donor attention when there are so many things competing for your donors’ attention, here’s a tactic for you: “front-load” the most important ideas for your readers or listeners.

Sketchplanations recently published the following graphic that does a brilliant job describing what “front-loading” is and how to do it.  The author is talking about writing for the web, but it’s 100% applicable to any fundraising writing that’s going to individual donors, from a direct response email to a major donor proposal…

Our donors are moving quickly, and this is a great way to get your point across more quickly.  Because it’s a non-starter to make people wade through a bunch of content to figure out what you’re talking about if you want to grow.

Front-loading applies to sentences, but it also applies to your fundraising in general.  For example, front-load the ask in your appeals in the first few paragaphs.  If you’re meeting with a major donor to thank them for their gift and report back to them, front-load the idea that you are not going to ask them for a gift today.

You’ll see the same idea expressed in my posts Three Editing Principles and Put The Most Important Information First, but it’s great to have the official name for this tactic.

Now, the next time someone asks you why you’re writing in this slightly strange way, you can tell them that you’re front-loading, that you’re placing the words with the most signal right at the start – instead of buried in the middle or at the end.