Category: Ask

How to Choose What to Underline and Why

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Underline.

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.

It’s Time to Get Ugly and Improve Your Fundraising Results

Jonathan Steck  |  Ask

As consumers, it’s fair to say that we’re attracted to good design.

Whether it’s on a billboard, in a magazine, or a sales brochure, marketers have figured out that an alluring graphic design can inspire emotions to increase the likelihood of us buying their product.

Believe it or not, the same is true of fundraising. Only it’s a little different.

Marketers, if they’re doing a good job, will design and write to a target audience – the people they want to buy something. Have you ever wondered why all the candy and sugary cereal is placed on the lower shelves at your grocery store? Because kids are the target audience.

For us fundraisers, our target audience is generally a little older and less into sugar. To be specific, you should be designing your donor communication for a female, around 69-years-old. Let’s call her Judy.

And for Judy, ugly works.

Yes, you read that correctly. What a younger audience sees as ugly, works for an audience of baby boomers and arguably, Generation Xers.

But before I go on, let me clarify what I mean by ugly. It’s basically the opposite of the kind of slick marketing we’re all used to. Jeff Brooks, best-selling author and fundraiser, says, “Ugly works. Tacky works. Corny, embarrassing, and messy all work. In print, or in digital.”

Yep.

I’ve had long and at times robust discussions with graphic designers about what the outer envelope and letterhead of an appeal should look like. You may have experienced pushback yourself, perhaps from a board member, field staff, or someone influential in your organization.

If that’s the case, then my suggestion is to stick with what works. Remember, we’re not marketers trying to reach an audience of 20- or 30-somethings, or trying to win a design award. We’re fundraisers, trying to get Judy to open our mail and (hopefully) write a check.

Take your upcoming Christmas appeal, for example — red and green holly, nativity scenes, twinkling stars, angels with big white wings, candles, Christmas trees, and gaudy decorations — for Judy, this screams Christmas.

This kind of design will motivate her to respond, rather than gold-leaf lettering or a sheet of vellum in your packages. Of course, our advice would be to test this theory rigorously at your nonprofit – but in our experience, this approach consistently rings true.

And don’t be afraid to mirror this kind of thinking across all of your donor communications. If your donor file is large enough, splitting your list down the middle and testing content or design can be a great way to learn more about what your donors respond to.

Here are a few more ugly design ideas for you to consider …

Instead of sending out a crisp, professionally designed thank you card to a new donor – something glossy that looks mass produced and impersonal – consider a handwritten note from your Executive Director. To you, this may look ugly. But to your target donor, this is beautiful.

Or instead of an expensive full-color, overprint outer envelope, try sending your donors a plain, white #10 – no teaser, no image. To you, this is super ugly. But it will work.

My advice is that it doesn’t matter if your colleagues, board members, or field staff like your fundraising design. It only matters if Judy does.

3 Fundraising Writing Tips from our New Creative Director

Jonathan Steck  |  Ask

When I first started to write fundraising appeal letters, it was really hard. I’d never written anything like it before, and I struggled to see how anyone would find the letters interesting to read, let alone respond to.

To help you become a better fundraising writer I want to share a few ideas that I learned early on. My hope is that they’ll help you become a better communicator, too.

Now, let me preface these ideas by saying that while there are oodles of tips out there for you to follow, these are the tactics that have worked for me. You need to find what works for you. But these methods helped me avoid writer’s block (yep, that’s a thing), helped me to think about the donor, and above all, removed my ego from the process.

So here are three different techniques that I’ve used to help me stay on-track and write more compelling, donor-focused appeal letters:

1. Write to Judy

I have a photo of Judy on my desk. She’s smiling at me as I write you this blog post.

Judy’s my mom. She’s religious, makes great soup, and gives to a bunch of different charities. And when I write a fundraising letter, I write to her.

Why? Because Judy is the target demographic for fundraisers. She’s older, has a higher level of disposable income, is passionate about helping others, keeps an address book in her purse, and sends grammatically perfect text messages.

I also write to Judy because it helps me to keep the letter personal. If I don’t look at Judy during the writing process, it’s easy for me to drift into writing copy that I’d want to read. Judy won’t read that.

2. Write Everything in One Sitting

One of the biggest mistakes a copywriter can make is writing the various elements of their fundraising packages at different times.

Now, there are exceptions. But it’s a good habit to write your outer envelope, reply device, receipt copy, and insert (if you have one) at the same time you write your appeal letter.

The reason I try to do this is rather simple: I get distracted. And if your nonprofit is anything like the ones I’ve worked for, then you’ll know that distractions happen all the time. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been focused on writing an appeal letter only to be told there were donuts in the kitchen.

You may not notice it, but if you separate your packages and write the components at different times, your donor will notice. I receive a lot of direct mail, and it’s a tragedy to see a compelling appeal letter hidden inside an uninspiring outer envelope.

3. Keep it simple

I often struggle to keep my own ego in check when writing.

As someone who loves to write, it’s tempting to introduce a beneficiary in an appeal letter with the same detail a novelist would use to introduce a character. But it’s an ego-filled waste of time! To avoid that trap I always write to Judy – because I need to remember my audience!

And to that end, I write my fundraising letters, emails, and every other piece of donor communication as simply as I can. I’m not submitting a college essay; instead, I’m writing a deeply personal letter from one person to another.

Someone once told me to write copy at a middle-school level. That doesn’t mean adding the word “like” before every sentence, but you should avoid using words that aren’t used in normal, everyday conversations. And please, please, please – don’t use jargon.

Instead, keep it simple and personal.

Take this example from an organization providing food for the hungry:

In our city, a lack of nutrient-rich food is causing children to become malnourished, and leaving them highly susceptible to the spread of preventable disease.

It might be true, but your donor doesn’t speak like that. Instead, be personal, and use short sentences and simple words…

Little Mary is very hungry. Her tummy is sore because she hasn’t eaten a proper meal in days. And her body is so weak she’s in danger of getting sick.

This is called writing donor-focused copy; when you do it well, it’s magic.

I’d encourage you to find what works for you… and practice it. It will make you a better writer, and your donors will love you for it.

Five Tips for the First Sentence of Your Next Appeal Letter

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Appeal Letter.

The first sentence of your next appeal letter is really important.

Most readers will use it to decide whether to keep reading… or start thinking about whether to recycle or delete your message.

So yeah, it’s important. We’ve written hundreds of appeals and e-appeals over the years, and studied the results. Here are five tips to make your first sentence GREAT:

1. Short and Sweet

Your first sentence should be short and easy to understand. If your first sentence is long, complex, has lots of commas and clauses, and maybe a statistic or two, would you want to keep wading through? Remember, your reader is using it to decide whether to keep reading… or not.

2. Drama, Drama, Drama

Fill it with drama or make it interesting to your donor. Drama and tension are two of the best tools you have for engaging their interest. Or make it something that would be interesting to your donor – which is likely something different than would be interesting to you!

The worst example of this I ever saw was a first sentence that said, “Recently we hosted a staff leadership seminar.” Ouch.

3. What’s The Point?

One of the best first sentences is, “I’m writing to you today because…” That sentence forces you to get right to the point – which donors really appreciate. You want to know why so few donors actually read fundraising letters? It’s because they know how long it takes most nonprofits to get to the point! So if you and your organization get to the point quickly, your donor will be far more likely to read more.

4. Who Cares?

Another great tactic is to make the first sentence about the donor. Think “I know you care about Koala bears” or “You are one of our most generous donors, so I think you’ll want to know…” Listen, most of the other organizations she donates to wax poetic about totally unrelated things or about how great they are. When you write her and talk about her, she’ll love it!

5. Less is More

After you’ve written the first draft of your appeal, you can often delete your first couple of sentences or paragraphs. This happens to me all the time in my own writing, and in appeal letters that I edit for clients. In the first draft, the first couple sentences or paragraphs are often just warmup. They can be deleted and your letter will be stronger because now it gets right to the point.

So next time you’re writing, pay special attention to your first sentence. Keep it short and easy to read. Fill it with drama if you can. And when more people read your writing, more people will donate!

Why Church Fundraising Dropped

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Church tithe.

Most churches are raising less than they used to.

Below, I’ll talk about why that is.

The solution is not easy. (If it were easy to raise money, we’d all be raising a lot more.) But there IS a solution.

Quick Backstory

In my experience, the vast majority of churches didn’t need to be good at fundraising.

Churches didn’t need to get great at fundraising because the tithe – members giving 10% of their income to the church – meant that the church raised a lot of money despite not doing much/good fundraising.

So churches didn’t need to get good at Asking. Churches didn’t need to get good at Reporting on what donors’ / members’ gifts accomplished.

In other words, most churches didn’t need to learn the skills and approaches that nonprofits have developed over the years to help them raise more money.

(Additionally, the generational shift from Builders to Boomers has hurt church fundraising, too. Builders tended to give because they were supposed to give. Boomers tend to be more skeptical; they want to know more about why their gift is needed and what it will accomplish. Personally I think this skepticism is warranted, even though it makes fundraising harder.)

Quick Story

Recently my pastor preached a fantastic sermon about why tithing was a practice that didn’t make sense in today’s world. Everything he said made a ton of sense.

And giving at the church dropped overnight.

Why?

Because many people no longer felt like they had to give. They’d been taught to tithe; tithing was a duty. The tithe was one of the main reasons people gave as much as they did.

They gave less because their main reason for giving had been removed.

And that reason was not replaced with any other reasons.

(The lesson, as always: if you remove a reason to give today, you raise less money.)

What Should Churches Do?

To solve this problem, let’s admit that the pastor and leadership team usually aren’t aware of the fundraising skills needed to thrive in today’s church fundraising environment.

But here are the two things they need to do:

  1. Give their congregations new, powerful reasons to give today
  2. Get great at the Skills and Strategies that nonprofits use to engage donors and raise money

Skills and Strategies like:

  • Give people multiple reasons to give today
  • Get good at describing the outcomes of people’s gifts
  • Develop and use great offers
  • Report back to donors on the outcomes of their giving
  • Give donors the credit for those outcomes
  • Segment donors, and treat major donors differently than mass donors
  • In addition to talking about giving from the point of view of God and the church, talk about what’s in it for the donor

The good news (ha!) for churches is that all of these are learnable skills. Because fundraising is a knowledge issue, not a talent issue.

Get in touch if you’d like to speak with us or connect us with your church!

Super Simple Segmentation

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Segmentation list.

You can save a lot of money by segmenting your mailing lists.

I’m going to make a couple of super simple recommendations here, then I’ll unpack why:

Only mail your appeal letters and newsletters to donors
who have given you a gift in the previous 18 months.

Of course it gets more complex than that, as your donor file grows.

But if you’re new to segmentation, here’s where to start: mail only to donors who have given a gift in the last year and a half.

Why Just Those People?

Two reasons:

  1. The longer it’s been since a person gave your organization a gift, the less likely they are to give you another gift. (This has been tested, analyzed and proven again and again.)
  2. The dropoff in a donor’s likelihood to give you another gift is not a straight line. There’s a real “cliff” 12 months after a donor’s last gift.

When sophisticated organizations analyze the success of their mailings, they notice something: it often costs more to mail their lapsed donors than the income they receive from those donors.

Here’s what that means for you: if you’re sending your mailings to more people than “donors in the last 18 months,” you’re almost certainly throwing some money down the drain.

So the savvy organizations stop mailing those folks – with a couple of exceptions.

Should You Ever Mail Your Lapsed Donors?

Absolutely. But do it smartly:

  1. Mail them only a couple times a year. Pick those times carefully; they are usually your Holiday / Year-end Appeal, and your other best-performing appeal.
  2. When you do, create a version of your main appeal just for your lapsed donors. That version should, right at the beginning, tell the donor that you haven’t heard from them in a while. It usually goes something like, “Dear [NAME], I haven’t heard from you in a while, but I’m writing today because [URGENT REASON].” Then use the rest of your original letter.

Nerd Nerd Nerd

Please forgive me, the Teacher / Explainer / Nerd in me is making me say something.

Most nonprofits with large mail files do not follow my recommendation above. Instead of mailing to donors in the last 18 months, they mail donors who have given a gift in the last 12 months.

You know that “cliff” I mentioned earlier? It’s real. After it’s been 13 months since a donor gave you a gift, their chances of giving you another gift really drop. Fast. So most larger organizations don’t waste money by mailing donors who are unlikely to give a gift.

But I recommended 0 – 18 months above because, through testing, we’ve found it fruitful for smaller nonprofits.

Why? Because smaller nonprofits aren’t mailing their donors often enough. They just aren’t giving their donors enough opportunities to give. So when we mail to donors 0 – 18 months, we give the 13 to 18-month donors another chance or two to give a gift. And those gifts (plus the additional revenue from reactivating those donors) make the investment to mail them a good one.

What Should You Do?

The next time you pull a mailing list, critically think through who you are selecting.

If you’re mailing more people than “donors 0-18 months,” you can save real money by cutting your mailing costs!

Unhelpful questions

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Bad questions

I get asked questions about appeals ALL THE TIME.

And I believe that all questions are good questions. But not all of the questions are helpful questions.

There are some questions that are signs that a fundraiser or organization is heading down the wrong path.

Think of it this way. Say someone asked you…

“When I’m making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, when do I add the roast beef?”

You’d know that there’s something they don’t quite understand. “There’s nothing wrong with roast beef,” you’d say, “but it’s not a good idea to put it on a PB&J.”

I call questions like that…

Wrong Path Questions

Here’s a small handful of questions where organizations are asking about “when to put the roast beef on their PB&J.”

My reason for doing this is not to poke fun at the silly things nonprofits do (though that’s fun and, let’s admit, there’s a lot of material). My hope is to help Fundraisers like you know how to answer the questions that will invariably come your way from people in your organization who aren’t trained in all this stuff.

“How can we convince people we are effective?”

In a nutshell, you don’t even want to try to convince people that you’re effective in a letter or email. In my experience, doing so will cause your letter or email to raise less money. Donors do care about whether you’re effective, but in your mass donor communications your effectiveness is NOT one of the top reasons they give or don’t give. And in a letter or email, you only have time to talk about the top reasons.

“How can I make this sound like my Executive Director (or ‘our voice’)?”

Making direct mail or email sound like a particular person or “voice” is almost always a mistake. A more helpful goal is to learn the best practices for direct mail and email, then make your materials sound like those best practices. That means short sentences and paragraphs, it means being direct and repetitive. Those approaches are tested and proven to work the best. If “sounding like your voice” means your letter doesn’t sound like effective direct response fundraising, then your voice is hurting your fundraising, not helping.

Marginally effective: direct mail written in your voice.
Effective: direct mail that follows best practices, featuring small elements of your voice

“How can I use emotion without being emotionally manipulative?”

The idea that any of us fundraisers can emotionally manipulate donors is ridiculous. Donors are adults. They can make their own decisions. What you’re trying to do in fundraising is tap into emotions the donor already has.

“We don’t like to share any bad news or Need; how can I Ask effectively?”

You can’t Ask effectively if you don’t share Need. If you don’t like to share bad news or a need, you’ve just removed one of (if not the) most effective tools you have to motivate donors to give. Most donors, most of the time, are motivated to help people (or a cause) in need. Or to avoid the loss of something. If you don’t want to share need, you’ve placed an artificial ceiling on the amount of money you can raise for your beneficiaries or cause.

“We aren’t simple like those big organizations. How can we describe everything we do?”

Those big organizations aren’t simple. They are more complex than you know. But they are incredibly disciplined with their fundraising. They only talk about the parts of their organization that raise the most money. Your job is to find out the parts of your work that donors respond most to, then be disciplined and only talk about those parts. You’ll raise more money that way.

“I don’t like the way fundraising letters look; what else can I use that’s effective?”

Professional fundraising letters look the way they look because that “look” has been proven to work best. They key here is to set aside personal preferences and trust the testing that’s been done over the last 70 years of sending mail to people and analyzing the results.

The Challenge

The challenge for smaller-shop fundraisers is to make sure the “wrong path” questions don’t take your fundraising further down the wrong path.

That’s hard work. Because at small shops there are often multiple people with no direct response fundraising training, and they’re asking questions based on their opinions, not on the science of fundraising.

I hope this helps you face your challenges – at least with these particular questions!

Good questions

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Man with questions.

I get asked questions about appeals ALL THE TIME.

The questions tend to fall into three buckets:

  1. Tactical questions
  2. Right Path questions
  3. Wrong Path questions

The tactical questions are good ones. They’re a sign of people and organizations trying to figure out the best practices for fundraising in appeals and e-appeals.

These are things like, “How long should my letter be?” and “Who should sign it?” (I should mention that I answer a number of these every week during Free Review Fridays.)

Right Path Questions

There’s a set of questions that I think are signs that a Fundraiser or organization is “heading down the right path” toward creating successful appeals and e-appeals.

Another way to put this: they are questions that people are asking about the things that really matter in the success or failure of appeals.

Because working on the things that matter will help you be more successful, faster.

My hope is at least one of them sparks a conversation about your appeals that leads you to the next level.

So here are just a few questions that I love getting, because they’re a sign that an organization is moving their donor communications forward…

  • What am I actually trying to make happen with an appeal?
  • Do we want our donors to “like” our appeal?
  • What should not be in an appeal?
  • What’s my offer?
  • Does the headline on the reply device make perfect sense after reading the letter?
  • Is the letter repetitive enough?
  • How many times should I ask?
  • Should I use “I” or “we”?
  • How do I create custom gift ask amounts?
  • Who should I send this to?
  • What should and shouldn’t go on a reply card?
  • What types of teasers work best?
  • What information should be a “headline” and what should be a “copy point”?
  • What should I leave out of the letter?
  • Should I do a different version for major donors?
  • Is my first sentence super easy to read?
  • What’s the real purpose of underlining and/or bolding?
  • How long before a deadline should I mail a letter?
  • Should I send a follow-up mailing?
  • What kinds of offers work best?
  • How can I use email to increase response to my appeal letter?

Each of these questions – to me – is a good question. It shows that the organization is wrestling with an issue that will help them better connect with their donors and raise more money.

Next Post…

Then there’s a set of questions I call Wrong Path Questions. They are questions that are usually a sign of an organization that is already on its way down a path towards raising less money.

It’s like a flock of birds arguing whether they should fly East or West for the winter when, really, they should be flying South.

Stay tuned for those in my next post.

Beliefs that Cause Small Organizations to Raise Less Money, Ranked

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Person with no beliefs

Here’s a quick list of the beliefs that – according to me – keep smaller nonprofits from raising more money.

Please note that I’m specifically focusing on when you’re talking to everybody – your “mass donor communications.” This is your direct mail, your email, your website, your social media, etc. I’m not talking about your grant application, or your major donor who is also a Board Member.

Here’s the list, and it’s ranked by things that do the most damage to fundraising effectiveness:

  1. Believing that you have to list or explain everything that your organization does
  2. Believing it’s wrong to share the needs of your beneficiaries
  3. Believing that your donors are unique
  4. Believing that your donors give because your organization is good at what it does
  5. Believing that what makes you feel good about your organization is what will make donors give

If your organization has any of those beliefs, you’ll see them in your mass donor communications. So go look for them. And if you find them, replace them with an approach that’s been proven to work better!