Category: Ask

Maybe, just maybe…

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Just maybe.

Every time you send a piece of fundraising to your donors, you’ll have more success if you envision your donor going through these steps…

Maybe, just maybe, your donor will open the letter.

And maybe, just maybe, your donor will start to scan your letter.

And maybe, just maybe, your donor will read a little of your letter.

And maybe, just maybe, your letter’s design will make sure your donor reads the most important part of your letter (why the donor is needed, and what you want them to do today).

And maybe, just maybe, your donor will think about taking action and look at your reply device.

And finally, maybe, just maybe, your reply device will reinforce what your donor read in the letter – and your donor will send you a gift.

Every. Step. Matters.

The reason most professionally-produced direct response fundraising (appeals, e-appeals, newsletters, TV shows, etc.) looks and sounds the way it does is because the pros making it are aware of each step and work to maximize the number of people who take each step.

They think like crazy about what should be on the outer envelope. Why? To make as many people as possible open the letter.

They think like crazy about the first words or images a donor’s eye will be drawn to when they look at the letter. Why? To make sure as many people as possible scan the letter.

They think like crazy about what content will be big, bolded, or underlined. Why? To convert as many of the “scanners” into “readers” as possible.

Or You Could…

Contrast the ‘every step matters’ approach with how most nonprofits think about their fundraising.

In my experience, most nonprofits make the following assumptions:

  • They think, more or less, that every piece of fundraising they send out gets opened.
  • They think that most people read the whole thing.
  • They think that most people read from the start to the end


Those three assumptions could not be farther from the truth.

Maybe, Just Maybe…

To make successful direct response Fundraising, you need to embrace the truth that there are a ton of “maybe, just maybe’s” between your sending out a piece of fundraising and getting a gift in return.

Every step matters.

And there’s one more “maybe, just maybe”…

Maybe, just maybe, you and your organization’s approach to fundraising are being changed by this post and our blog. That’s our fervent hope and the reason we write!

What to Take Out of Your Appeal

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Appeal.

My last post talked about how when you’re sending appeals, e-appeals, newsletters, etc. you’re doing direct response fundraising.

As you create your direct response fundraising, here’s one rule that has helped me a lot over the years…

Take out everything that doesn’t help sell the offer

Quick reminder: the “offer” is the promise an appeal makes for what will happen when a donor gives a gift today. (You can learn more about offers here in our free eBook.)

Here’s what this means…

Say your letter is asking donors to fund one particular program. Don’t mention your other programs. You’ve just distracted them from why this particular program should be supported today.

Say your e-appeal is asking donors to give to provide aid to a beneficiary group you help. Don’t talk about how your organization is already helping that beneficiary group. You’ve just told your donor that you’re currently helping those people. This means they don’t really need help today (because you’re already doing it!). And that means your donor doesn’t really need to send in a gift today.

Say your appeal letter is asking donors to give a gift to help people in need. Take out any photos that don’t show people in need. By showing images of happy, healthy people you’ve just contradicted your letter that says they need help.

Say your letter is trying to get donors to give a gift today. Don’t spend part of your letter talking about your monthly giving program. You’ve just distracted them from your purpose of getting a single gift.

Finally, a more complex thing to take out. Say you’re telling a story to illustrate why the donor’s gift is needed today. Only tell the part of the story that relates to the offer. You’ll get what I’m talking about from an example that happens all the time in fundraising for refugees. The organization will share a story about a man who lost his wife in a bombing, had to flee the country, endured tons of hardships, became really sick… and then ask the donor to provide “food and aid with a gift today.” The “food and aid” do not solve the problem that the story sets up.

The organization would be better served by telling the part of the story that the offer can help with. They’d raise more money if they shared something like, “He’s a refugee who has endured tremendous hardship. Now he’s in a refugee camp and he doesn’t have enough food for himself or his children. The children are losing weight and having trouble concentrating. He’s getting thinner by the week. Please send food and aid with a gift today.”

Much of that part of the story is a problem that can be perfectly solved by the offer. When you use stories, only tell the part of the story that relates to the offer.

Stay on Target

Keep your letter (or e-appeal, or event script, etc.) about your offer.

Make sure every single bit of content in your letter is there to make your donor see the need for and power of your offer.

Not your organization, your offer.

Take out anything that doesn’t directly lead your donor to say “yes” to your offer.

You’ll start raising more money in your very next piece of fundraising!

Direct Response Fundraising

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Direct response.

This is for all the smaller nonprofits out there.

When you’re sending letters and emails to your donors, you’re doing something called “direct response” fundraising.

It is fundraising, but it’s a very specific type of fundraising.

It’s not 1-to-1 major donor fundraising.

It’s not grant writing.

And to be effective with your appeals, e-appeals, newsletters, radiothons, etc. – it’s actually more important to understand “direct response” than it is to understand fundraising.

Direct Response

Direct Response is a discipline where the inputs and outputs are rigorously measured. It became a discipline in marketing long before nonprofits started using it to raise money.

The reason I mention this is because I’m convinced that most nonprofits would immediately start getting more effective at fundraising as soon as they realize they’re doing direct response marketing. And that direct response marketing has a bunch of proven rules and best practices.

How to Raise More

Two relatively easy ways to raise more money:

  1. Make sure your organization knows that – in your appeals, e-appeals, and newsletters – you’re doing direct response fundraising. This means that when creating and evaluating your mass donor fundraising, your organization needs to be asking “What will work best in direct response” instead of asking “What do I like?” or “What do I think will work?”

    You know how at too many organizations, Fundraisers are stymied by Bosses who won’t approve good fundraising? I imagine a day where a Fundraiser can say to her boss, “Remember how we talked about how our appeals are direct response fundraising pieces? The changes you want to make to this piece go against the best practices of direct response.” And the boss says, “You’re right. I don’t like it. But if this is what works best, we need to do it.”
  2. Learn more about direct response by reading about it. I’m reading Overdeliver by Brian Kurtz. His stories and advice about direct response have already made me a more effective fundraiser. The book isn’t technically about fundraising. But it’s about direct response marketing – and getting good at direct response marketing will immediately make you a more effective mass donor fundraiser.

Nobody talks about this at smaller nonprofits. But once your organization knows it’s doing direct response fundraising, you have a much better chance at being successful at it!

Is Your Spotlight on Your Stars?

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Spotlight.

No one at a Broadway play complains when the spotlight shines only on the stars of the play.

The stars are who the audience came to see.

Similarly, no mass donor ever complains that they only hear about some of your programs. You never hear a mass donor say, “I wish I knew everything that organization did.”

Because some of your programs are interesting to mass donors – and some are not.

The Lesson for Fundraisers

The people who put on plays have learned this lesson: they shine the spotlight on the stars. In the marketing. On the stage. In the interviews afterwards.

Many nonprofits could raise more money if they learned this same lesson – figure out which of your programs donors are most interested in, then talk exclusively about those programs.

Unfortunately, there’s a value at many nonprofits that “we need to talk about all of our programs roughly equally.”

That “value” is based in fairness, which is a good thing.

But it turns out that donors aren’t interested in all your programs getting equal time in the spotlight. Appeals that give equal time to all the programs (or even just list all the things an organization does) tend to raise less money.

Donors are simply more interested in some programs than in others.

As fundraisers, our job is to raise money, more than it is to be “fair” to internal stakeholders. Maybe better put, it’s a higher value to raise more money and help more people, than it is to be fair to internal stakeholders. After all, your organization was founded to do as much good as possible – not to ensure everybody at the organization receives equal airtime.

Focus your fundraising – your spotlight – on the programs that most people are interested in. Because that will raise you the most money.

Please Don’t Make These Two Assumptions

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Don't make assumptions.

There are two assumptions that many fundraisers make about their mass donor fundraising. The assumptions reduce how much money they raise and hurt their organizations.

If you stop making these assumptions – you’ll start raising more money right away.

Bad Assumption #1: I’m going to love our fundraising.

When most people start working for a nonprofit, they assume that they’re going to love the fundraising done by that organization. They assume their fundraising is going to make them feel good.

Is that true for you?

Because here’s the thing: some of it should make you feel good. But not all of it.

For instance, your appeal letters and e-appeals should not make you feel good. They should be about the problem that your organization was started to solve. And nobody feels good about that problem. Nobody likes talking about it.

But talking about it – sharing that problem with donors – is what helps your donors remember that the problem is happening and gives you the opportunity to show them how their gift makes a difference.

Newsletters, on the other hand, should make you feel great! Any sort of Reporting – where you’re sharing with donors the powerful changes their gifts helped make – should make you and your organization feel great.

But not your appeals. The only thing that makes most savvy fundraisers feel great about their appeals is that they like sharing with donors a way that the donor’s gift today can make a real difference.

So check your assumption. If you’re creating or judging your fundraising based on an assumption that you’re supposed to like your fundraising, you probably have some re-thinking to do.

Bad Assumption #2: We’ll get to share good news all the time!

This is the second assumption, in my experience, that most people in nonprofits make.

They assume that their fundraising will be full of good news all the time.

They know they have to ask for money – which can feel icky – but they expect to do so by sharing stories of success. So it won’t feel that bad.

This assumption is mostly played out in appeals, e-appeals, and events. It’s assumed that the nonprofit will share stories of success.

But in our testing – and we’re not the only people who have tested this, by a long shot – when stories of success are shared in appeals, e-appeals, and events – less money is raised.

By assuming that good news will always be shared, and that stories of success will be the only type of story that a nonprofit tells – a LOT less money is raised.

Are You Making These Assumptions?

If you are, realizing that you’re making assumptions is a great place to start.

Then, I’d recommend our eBooks on Storytelling and on Asking.

Because if you can take assumptions out of your fundraising – and instead make your content and storytelling decisions based on performance data – you’ll start raising more money right away!

10 Great Questions to Help You Collect Better Stories

Jonathan Steck  |  Ask
questions

As I wrote in my last post, Make Your Story a Memorable One, storytelling in your fundraising can be very effective. A good story will help to support your fundraising offer and connect your donor to what your nonprofit does.

There’s good reason for this, too. Telling stories is what humans do best. Ever since we were drawing pictures onto the side of rocks, storytelling has been our go-to form of communication. With a good story, we’re able to share our passions, our hardships, and our joys. It’s often the best way to explain how things work, how we make decisions, how we persuade others.

For us fundraisers, a good story is vital to engaging our donors. A moving story, if told simply and well, will invoke emotion and motivate her to give. But putting a story together is not always easy. Especially when you’re dealing with beneficiaries who may be embarrassed, shy, or reluctant to share about the difficulties they’ve faced.

So how can you collect the information you need to tell a compelling story in your fundraising communications?

To collect a good fundraising story (including emotional quotes that you can use to help the donor feel something) you need to first see several sides of the beneficiary. And one great way to do that is to interview a beneficiary in person, over the phone, or via email.

But it’s not just a matter of asking them to “tell their story.” You need to ask specific questions that are worded and framed correctly. Do this, and you will get the responses you need.

To help you get started, here are 10 interview questions I’ve used to get great responses from beneficiaries. If you end up using any of these questions, make sure that you adjust the wording to suit your cause and your nonprofit.

  • Tell me your first memory of (what your nonprofit prevents or supports)?
  • What did you find most challenging about (the cause)?
  • What was the best/worst thing to happen?
  • What would someone be surprised to know about you?
  • Tell me how you first got involved with (your nonprofit)
  • What did you think when you first met (your nonprofit)?
  • Tell me how (your nonprofit) helped you
  • If you hadn’t met (your nonprofit) what do you think your life would be like?
  • What does your future look like now?
  • If you had the chance to say something to those who have helped you, what would it be?

You can also pepper any answers with follow up questions like, “What makes you say that? Can you give me an example? How did that make you feel?”

Stories inspire us to act. So whatever it is that your organization does for others – providing food, clothing, safe housing, safety, or spiritual support – capturing and then telling a beneficiary story can support your offer and help you raise more money.

Happy Fundraising!

Make Your Story a Memorable One

Jonathan Steck  |  Ask
Group sitting on a sunset

How often do you find yourself telling other people what you do for a living?

Be it at a dinner party, a random event, walking the dog, or even at the grocery store, I’ll share what I do for a living at least once a week. And because it happens so often, I’ve had to find a way to tell that story in an exciting way.

Ever asked someone, “Oh, and what work are you in?” – only to immediately regret it?

The last thing you want to hear is a jargon-filled, boring explanation. It’s for that reason that I learned that the best way to tell my story was to make people feel something.

For example, I could tell people that I’m a fundraiser. That may get an interested grunt or two, but more than likely it will kill the conversation. Instead, I might say that I write letters to thousands of people every week. If nothing else, this would make someone curious and get them asking some questions.

Try applying this same philosophy to your next fundraising appeal: focus less on what your organization does, and more on making the donor feel something. Because we know that when a donor is emotionally involved, they are more likely to give a gift.

Make sense?

A great way to get our donors feeling something is to tell stories. Stories have been with us from the beginning of time. They help us learn. They inspire us. They move us. And they help us remember.

And when we use stories to communicate with our donors, whether through appeal letters, newsletters, or reports, they immediately become emotionally involved. Because just as people who ask you what you do for a living aren’t looking for a boring job description, donors aren’t looking for a laundry list of what your non-profit does.

For example, if you’re an animal shelter sending an appeal to cat lovers, then focus on the story of a cat that needs help. In your letter, explain the problem that the cat is having and what will happen if it doesn’t get help. And when you use a story to highlight a problem that the donor can solve with her gift, you position her as the hero.

Appeals work best when your donors are emotionally involved. And stories are a powerful way to introduce a problem and invite the donor to solve it.

The Simple Outline for Appeals That Raise Money

Steven Screen  |  Ask
letter outline

I noticed a pattern that I want to share with you.

We see a LOT of appeals around here and I read them all. And we spend a lot of time with the results because we want our coaching to be based on what works, not on what we like.

About a week ago I noticed the appeals that did not work well tended to follow the same general outline. It goes something like this:

  1. Thank you for helping in the past
  2. Let me tell you a story about someone we already helped
  3. Please help us continue this good work

I think this is fascinating because every step of that outline makes sense:

  • Of course you should thank your donors for their previous giving. That’s just being polite, and it reminds them that they’ve given before.
  • Of course you should tell them a story about a person (or thing) that’s already been helped. That shows the donor that their past gifts made a difference, that the donor can trust you, and that your organization is effective.
  • And of course you should ask them to help you continue the good work. You need their donations, and the work is good.

But here’s the thing; even though every step in that outline makes sense, appeal letters and e-appeals that follow this outline don’t raise as much money as they could. We know this from years of experimenting and testing. This is one of those places in fundraising where common sense isn’t the best sense. What you need is data.

So what’s the alternative? Here’s the outline that works best for our clients:

  1. There’s a problem right now
  2. You are needed to solve it
  3. Here’s how your gift will solve it

When our clients adopt this outline, their appeals and e-appeals immediately start to raise more money.

The next time you are appealing for funds, follow this model. You’ll raise more money. And your donors will love knowing that they helped solve a real, urgent problem.

I mean that. If you honor and respect your donors by sharing real problems that your beneficiaries and your organization are facing, Donors will love helping you. Be vulnerable with your donors, and they will reward you with their generosity!

If you want to go deeper on this issue, download our free eBook!

Ideas to Make Your Outer Envelopes POP!

Jonathan Steck  |  Ask
Envelopes

I open a lot of mail – a lot of fundraising direct mail.

Every day I’ll receive at least two appeals, along with the usual smattering of utility bills and pizza promotions.

I must have received thousands of letters over the years, but I only remember a handful. Yes, it takes something special to get my attention.

Your donor needs something special, too. From the moment she wakes up, she’s bombarded by messages, all competing for her attention. So don’t assume she’s going to open your next appeal letter.

But there are some things you can do to make your letter stand out in the mailbox. And it starts with the outer envelope.

Also called the “carrier,” the outer envelope serves two purposes – to deliver your letter, and then, to entice her to open it. But there are some simple guidelines it should follow:

  • The language on the outside, usually called the “teaser,” should be donor-focused – keep it about her, not your organization
  • Teaser language should focus on a benefit to your donor, the offer, the match, etc.
  • The teaser should steer away from being conceptual, cute, or clever, as it lowers response rates

The first impression your donor has – your outer envelope and your teaser – is the critical first step to getting a donation. But it can be a tightrope walk – go too far with a teaser or image, and your appeal will likely end up in the trash.

To avoid that result, here are some ideas I’ve used to help make outer envelopes pop:

  • Use a blank #10 outer envelope. Put your organization’s details, if you need to include them, on the reverse flap. But a blank envelope can really grab a donor’s attention.
  • Consider writing a handwritten note on your outer envelope (e.g. Your gift doubles, SEE INSIDE!)
  • Experiment with alternative envelope colors such as brown craft, canary yellow, light blue, pink, or even green
  • Try a different sized envelope such as a 6×9
  • Thicker envelope stock can help your appeal stand out in the mailbox, separating it from all the other communication she may receive
  • Use a reverse window (flipping the window and address block to the back of envelope and giving you more real-estate up front)
  • Use full-bleed, which is a wrap-around full-color envelope. But this can be expensive

A well-written and well-designed outer envelope has the power to draw a better response from your donor. And if the goal is to have your appeal stand out in a crowded and noisy mailbox, you should try some of these ideas!