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Your Donor Communications Should Be Simple & Direct

Steven Screen | November 15, 2018November 13, 2018Ask

On Tuesday, I wrote about The Curse of Knowledge. To summarize: most nonprofits are experts in their cause or niche, and so they communicate to donors at the organization’s level of expertise and understanding.

Because the organization’s level of expertise and understanding are higher than most donors, this results in donor communications that appear to donors as disconnected and even irrelevant.

Ouch.

Listen, most donors are thinking, “I care about your cause / the people you help; what can my gift do to help them?” That’s why your donor is reading your letter.

But most nonprofits don’t answer that question! Nonprofits describe how the organization does its work instead of what the donor’s gift will do to help.

“But Donors Will Never Give to That!”

The fundraising that tends to work the best – in test after test – feels overly simple to experts.

“We have 19 programs that provide a holistic approach to care” will raise less money than “$1.92 will feed a hungry person.”
“End generational homelessness” will raise less money than “$33 provides a night of safe shelter for a homeless mom and her kids.”
“Experience the Arts” will raise less money than “You can provide drama classes for junior high school students.”

In each of the above cases, the Expert will say, “But donors will never give to that. That’s only part of what we do. And it’s not even the most important part!”

But remember – your donors aren’t experts. They don’t even want to become experts. They just want to help somebody or support the cause.

The Cure for the Curse

The cure for the curse is pretty simple. Talk to your donors at their level of understanding. Theirs, not yours.

(And remember how the conversation is happening: a letter or an email where you have the donor’s attention for several seconds. You do not have time for complex arguments, or to bring her to an Expert’s level of understanding.)

You Can Be Direct & Simple

Here’s what this means for your mass donor fundraising (the fundraising you send to everybody – your letters, your emails, your newsletters):

You can keep it pretty simple. Talk about one part of what you do, or one program, instead of everything you do.
Make sure it’s compelling. Think drama, think emotion. Remember, you only have your donor’s attention for a few seconds. Her attention is precious; you have to earn it, and you have to keep it.
You can be direct. Tell her the problem your beneficiaries or cause is facing, then ask her to give a gift to solve that problem.
Present a problem that she can solve with a gift.

a. Don’t talk to her about poverty in Pittsburgh and then ask her to “end poverty in Pittsburgh” – is that a problem she can solve? No. Talk to her about what it’s like not to have food at the end of every month, then ask her to feed a family for a month.

b. Don’t talk to her about how the Arts are dying in Arizona and then ask her to “save the Arts in Arizona” – she can’t solve that problem. Talk to her about your program to provide art supplies to middle school kids, then ask her to provide art supplies for one student, or maybe for one classroom.

As I mentioned earlier this week, your internal Experts won’t like fundraising that’s simple and direct.

But your donors will. And your Experts will like the additional revenue that starts coming in when you have the discipline to tune your fundraising to your donors’ level of understanding (and amount of attention) instead of that of your Experts.

Beware… the Curse of KNOWLEDGE!

Steven Screen | November 13, 2018November 8, 2018Ask

Think of this post as a brief introduction to the idea that being an expert about your field, or about your organization, can cause your fundraising to raise less money.

I’m going to cover three things very quickly:

Define “The Curse of Knowledge”
Show how knowledge or expertise often hurts fundraising
Talk about how to get past it to raise more money

The Curse of Knowledge

Wikipedia says, “The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias that occurs when an individual, communicating with other individuals, unknowingly assumes that the others have the background to understand.”

You know the feeling, right? You’re listening to an expert talk about something and you’re thinking, “That sounds really smart, but I’m not totally sure what everything meant.”

Let me submit to you that donors have that reaction All The Time when they read fundraising.

How Knowledge Hurts Fundraising

This is very simple:

Experts use jargon. They say that a child is “food insecure” instead of “often goes to bed hungry.”
They use conceptual language. They say “Will you stand behind the victims…” instead of “Will you give a victim exactly what she needs to recover…”
The write at a high grade level that takes more cognitive effort to understand.
Experts don’t like to talk about the Need. So they talk almost exclusively about the successes – which unfortunately hides the Need from donors.
They think about groups of people instead of one person who needs help. They’ll say, “Will you support vulnerable children…” instead of “Will you help a child who needs help now…”

All of these things make the fundraising sound smart and technically accurate – to experts.

But these traits make fundraising harder to read and understand by a donor who isn’t an expert. And – this is important – who is only looking at your letter or email for a few short seconds.

How to Avoid the Curse

Always remember who you are talking to: non-experts. So instead of saying, “Our holistic approach,” say, “Your gift helps them every single way they need help.” Instead of saying, “Your support will provide employment resources to disadvantaged people,” say, “You’ll give a job-seeker everything she needs to get a job.” This approach will sound overly simple to you, and will sound just right to your donors.

Always remember how you are talking to them – in a medium (usually in a letter or email) where most donors only give you a few short seconds of attention. You don’t have time to make complex arguments. This is not a conference or a meeting with a Foundation where you have lots of time, and people want to see the data. For mass donor fundraising you need to make it easy for your reader to know exactly what you’re talking about, and do it quickly.

The Cost and the Incredible Benefit

There’s a cost to doing fundraising this way: the experts in your organization won’t like your fundraising. This is a personal, subjective reaction because your fundraising won’t be written to their level of understanding and expertise.

That’s a real cost. Some organizations never pay it.

But the benefit is clear: talking to donors about what they care about, in language that they quickly understand, absolutely leads to raising more money and doing more good.

If you’re an expert, is that benefit worth the cost?

A Transformative Conversation

Steven Screen | November 8, 2018November 7, 2018Ask

A conversation with a high-ranking official who wants their fundraising staff to talk a lot about their organization:

“It’s really hard to get new donors.”

Yup. I learned the hard way that when you have nothing to say, be careful that you don’t pay money to say it.

“Wait, what?”

Have you ever paid for a mailing list? Or for radio spots? But basically nothing happened? You spent twenty thousand bucks and got eleven new donors?

“Sure. A couple times. But everyone has paid for things that didn’t work.”

When this happened, did you realize your message was at fault? Or did your organization just move along to whatever the next urgent thing was?

“Well, it wasn’t really a failure. We raised awareness and got some name recognition.”

I hate to say this, but name recognition will only make a difference if your competitors are invisible or incompetent.

“What do you mean?”

Invisible means that they don’t have the courage to ask for donations. Incompetent means their fundraising is worse than yours.

“But our fundraising is way better than average. It looks and feels professional.”

I hate to tell you this, but most fundraising isn’t written primarily to raise funds. It’s written not to offend anyone. It’s written to please internal audiences. This is why most letters follow an outline that doesn’t work. And why most fundraising gets lost in the shuffle. And why most organizations never “make the leap” to the next level.

“Are you saying that most fundraising is ineffective?”

Even the weakest fundraising is somewhat effective. That’s because donors are incredibly generous. They are able to see past the poor fundraising because they care so much about the cause or the beneficiaries.

“Can you tell me what you mean by that?”

Weak fundraising is about the organization itself. But talking mostly about the organization in fundraising is a mistake because most donors care more about the cause and the beneficiaries than they care about the organization. Listen, they became your donors in the first place because they care about the cause. Your organization helped them do something about it – which is incredibly valuable but isn’t the primary reason they donated to you.

“So if I don’t talk about my organization, what do I talk about?”

Good fundraising is about your donor and what they already care about. About their passions and interests. About what offends them. About the problems in the world that break their heart.

“So how do I find out what my donor cares about?”

You already know what they care about! They care about your cause or your beneficiaries. They wouldn’t be your donors in the first place if they didn’t care about those things. So talk about those things at their level of understanding – not yours.

“Why their level? Why not ours? We work on such a complex, in-depth problem. And our holistic approach produces the best results! The statewide average is 37% but we produce an 89% …”

Forgive me for interrupting. Remember: she’s interested in her passions, her interests, at her level of understanding. Why did you just start talking about your approach instead of what she cares about?”

“Oh.”

Your approach makes you great at what you do. That makes your organization effective. But most donors are not experts. They don’t make their gifts based on your efficacy. Most donors make gifts based on whether you talk about something they care about.

“But if I just talk to donors about what they care about, why would they ever donate to my organization?”

That’s easy: because your organization will be the only one talking to them about what they care about. They’ll LOVE you. All of the other organizations will be droning on about their organization, their incredible processes, the stats that only experts understand, on and on. All the while your donors will keep donating – and new donors will be attracted to you – because you talk to them about what they care about. They’ll think you are a friend who can help them do the good in the world that they already want to do. It’s like you arrived in their life to help them. Doesn’t that seem like a good way to win, keep and lift donors?

“As much as I hate to say it, you’re beginning to make a little bit of sense.”

Thanks. You just started an incredibly rewarding journey where you’re going to come to appreciate donors in a whole new way – and raise a lot more money!

Editor’s Note: inspired by a Monday Morning Memo from Roy H. Williams, one of my advertising heroes.

5 Tips For Your Most Successful Digital Year-End Campaign

Steven Screen | October 30, 2018October 29, 2018Ask

Are you ready?

According to Network for Good, most nonprofits raise about 1/3 of their revenue in December. And 11% of their annual total during the last three days of the year.

Year-end is the easiest time to raise more money online! Think about it this way:

Your donors are more likely to give during the last weeks of the year than any other time of the entire year.

And because year-end is such an important time for digital fundraising, we want to give you 5 tips that will ensure a successful year-end for your fundraising.

# 1: Use the same message in every channel

Some of your donors are online, some aren’t. Pick your strongest message, then repeat it through direct mail, email, your website, and social media. It’s more powerful for your donors to see the same message in different media channels than it is for them to see two different messages. Repetition is your friend!

# 2: Ask early and often

You’ve been talking to your donors all year about what your organization does, you’ve told them how they can help. So this time of year, don’t Thank them. Or Report to them. It might feel counterintuitive, but our testing showed that Thanking and Reporting this time of year will cause you to raise less money than you could. Follow the advice below and just Ask well!

# 3: Emphasize the deadline

A deadline communicates urgency. December 31 is a natural deadline — for the tax year and for your organization. Tell donors your deadline and repeat it multiple times in your messages.

# 4: Set a goal

How much do you want or need to raise? What would it take for you to meet your budget? Feed everyone you want to feed by year-end? Shelter abandoned pets through the end of the year? Overcome a financial shortfall? Tell your donors the goal.

We need to raise $XX,XXX by midnight, December 31.

# 5: Communicate consequences

What will happen if you don’t meet the goal? Connect the donor right to the heart of your work.

We need to raise $XX,XXX by midnight, December 31 or we will have to cut back on the number of pets in our shelter in the coming year.

We need to raise $XX,XXX by midnight, December 31 or we will not be able to advocate for the arts as effectively next year.

Whatever your organization does, if having less money means you would be able to do less next year, say so!

Most important tip? Start now!

We’ve built a Year-End Digital Fundraising Toolkit so that you can develop a successful year-end digital campaign. Buy it now and you’ll save time, raise more money, and have your best year-end ever!

Order your Year-End Digital Fundraising Toolkit now!

Super Simple Segmentation

Steven Screen | October 25, 2018Ask

Most likely you can save a lot of money by “mailing smarter” – mailing your appeals and newsletters only to the people who are most likely to respond.

Put another way: a lot of nonprofits waste a lot of money by sending their appeals and newsletters to people in their database who are unlikely to respond.

Donor Segmentation

The idea of ‘donor segmentation’ is pretty simple at heart: separating your donors into groups and treating different groups differently.

Most smaller nonprofits basically “mail everybody” in hopes of raising more money and acquiring new donors. But in my experience, they almost always waste money by doing this, and have a smaller impact as an organization because of it.

Why? Because there are people in your database to whom you should not be mailing, because it’s a waste of money.

My Default Segmentations Settings

What follows is my “default mailing segmentation settings” – what I recommend most nonprofits do for appeals and newsletters.

Donor segmentation can get super-complex, but I’m keeping this purposefully simple. (In other words; for you Nerds out there using sophisticated RFM segmentation and ongoing testing results to refine your mailing selects, this is not for you.)

For almost all printed appeals and newsletters:

Each mailing should go to all donors who have given a gift in the last 18 months. This is commonly abbreviated, “all donors 0-18.”

However, if you mail your donors less than 4 times a year, each mailing should go to all donors who have given a gift in the last 20 months.

“But What About Non-Donors?”

I can hear people asking already, “But what about all the non-donors, names and volunteers on our database? We have to mail them!”

No, you don’t.

Or more precisely, No, you shouldn’t. You almost always lose money sending a regular appeal or newsletter to non-donors: the returns don’t justify the expense.

I’ll talk more about what you should do for non-donors, down below. But for now, let’s talk year-end…

Donor Segmentation at Year-End

At the end of the calendar year more donors are more likely to give gifts than at any other time.

So it makes sense to mail your year-end appeal to more of the people on your database.

Note: this could be your “Christmas” or “Year-end” or “Holiday” appeal – whatever your biggest appeal at the end of the year is.

Here are my default settings:

All donors giving in the past 0-24 months
All donors $500+ farther back, 25-36 months
All donors $1,000+ from 37 to 48 months
Additionally, year-end is basically the only time I regularly counsel smaller nonprofits to mail to the “non-donors” or “names” from their database. But even then, I’d only mail to people who were added in the last 24 months.

To Acquire New Donors

Instead of “mail everything to everybody,” here’s a better strategy to turn those “names” on your database into donors:

Mail them only a couple times a year
If they have been in your database for two years and never donated, stop mailing them
The only “normal” appeal you should send them is your Holiday/Christmas/Year-end appeal
Send them an appeal specifically designed to acquire new donors. That appeal should:
- Directly ask them to make their first donation.
- Ask them to support one specific, compelling part of your organization. Don’t ask them to “become a supporter” or “partner with us as we…” Here’s why this approach works better in test after test: it’s easier for a non-donor to understand one powerful part of your organization than it is for them to understand the whole of your organization.
- Pro tip: if this mailing works, you can use it every year without changing it!
Never send newsletters to non-donors

Follow this advice and you will likely save a lot of money that you’ve been wasting by paying printing and postage to send letters & newsletters to people who won’t respond.

And you’ll turn more of your “names” into donors by sending them targeted mailings.

So you’ve just increased your Net Revenue quite a bit: you’ve saved money, and you’ve acquired more new donors.

Resources for You

We just released our brand new eBook to help nonprofits get better at Asking. It’s free, go download it.

Our previous eBook, Storytelling For Action, is also a free download. It has the helpful “Story Type Matrix” that shows the research-based guidelines for what types of stories you should tell, and when you should tell them.

Remind, Don’t Persuade

Steven Screen | October 23, 2018Ask

When I said it, everybody in the room wrote it down.

That’s generally how I know I’ve said something helpful. Here’s what it was:

“At the end of the year your job is to remind, not persuade.”

Here’s why I said that. We’ve done a lot of year-end campaigns for a lot of organizations. We analyze the results of every single one.

When you look at them as a whole a pattern emerges. The successful campaigns? They aren’t beautiful writing that would make Shakespeare weep. They aren’t powerful case statements or success stories.

Here’s what the best campaigns tend to do:

Remind donors of the problem that your organization exists to help solve
Ask them to give a gift before the end of the year to help solve that problem

That’s it. You’re going to want to talk a lot of other things. And that’s fine — as long as the main messages you send — the first things your donors see and read — are the Need and your Ask for a gift.

You see, you don’t have time to persuade. In November and December, your donors are moving FAST. Your donors love it when your organization is clear about what you want the donor to do and how their gift will help. Because your donor is also getting a lot of other mail — mail that spends three paragraphs talking about the color of the leaves this time of year, or how excellent the year has been, or telling a story that makes it sound like they’ve already helped everyone.

The time for Thanking and Reporting to your donors for their previous gifts? That was before. Make sure you’ve done that by mid-November. Year-end is a time for Asking.

In our tests, year-end fundraising that spent significant time Thanking or Reporting raised less money

This is not just theory. This whole post is an attempt to explain testing results!

It may be hard. It may be counter-intuitive. (And it’s especially hard for smaller organizations that don’t communicate with their donors more than a couple times a year).

But trust me. The job of your fundraising from mid-November on is to remind your donor to send in a gift, not to persuade them. Just Ask. Ask Boldly. Ask without fear. Ask knowing that your donors love your cause and your organization’s role in helping them make the world a better place!

The Simple Outline for Appeals That Raise Money

Steven Screen | October 16, 2018October 15, 2018Ask

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:

Thank you for helping in the past
Let me tell you a story about someone we already helped
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:

There’s a problem right now
You are needed to solve it
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!

The Three Things to Become Great At

Steven Screen | October 11, 2018October 11, 2018Ask

I love getting into the tactics and details of fundraising. Things like “5 Tips for the First Sentence of Your Next Appeal Letter” and “How to Choose What to Underline and Why.”

Those tips really help people. They make a meaningful difference in fundraising results.

But tactics and details are not the most important things small and medium nonprofits can do to raise more money.

Keep It Simple

I’m a big fan of keeping things simple. Here’s a quote that perfectly describes fundraising success:

“Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to complex and intelligent behavior. Complex rules and regulations give rise to simple and stupid behavior.” Dee Hock, Founder of VISA

So for the small nonprofits out there (and for new fundraisers), I propose three “simple, clear purposes” that create fundraising success…

**#1 – Become great at Asking people to make donations**

Your ability to know what your donors care about, and then Ask them in a way that makes them more likely to take action, is core to successful fundraising.

Super Simple Rules:

Ask with vulnerability, as if you actually need help today.
Be honest and clear about the bad thing that’s happening in the world today that your donor can help fix.
Show your donor how their gift will make a difference.
Even Harvard Business Review agrees: keep it simple.

**#2 – Become great at Thanking a person who makes a donation**

Making a donor feel your gratitude and appreciation is the key to Thanking – and keeping – your donors.

No donor has ever given a donation and thought, “Gosh, I hope this organization sends me an impersonal, boring letter to ‘acknowledge’ my gift and tell me more about the organization!”

But that’s what organizations do ALL THE TIME in their receipt letters and Thank You notes.

Here are my Super Simple Guidelines for Thanking:

Make sure the letter in your receipt or thank-you feels like it is about the donor who gave the gift, not about the organization.
No matter what vehicle you use to thank her (card, phone, in person, etc.)…
- Make sure she knows that her gift was needed.
- Make sure she knows that her gift was appreciated.
- Tell her how her gift is going to help (not what your organization has already done).

People! A great Thank You is about what the person did, not about what your organization is doing and how you do it!

**#3 – Become great at Reporting to your donors on the impact of their gifts**

Each donor gives a gift to you in faith that you are going to use it to make the world a better place.

Are you going to show her that she helped make the world a better place? Doesn’t she deserve that? Or are you going to just keep Asking her for more gifts?

Take off your ‘fundraising hat’ for a second and put on your ‘donor hat.’ How would it feel to you if the organizations you support never took the time to show you what your gifts helped accomplish?

Listen, if you want to increase the chances your donor will give you another gift, you need to powerfully show her how her first gift made a difference. Make her feel it.

After all, if she never feels like her gift made a difference, what do you think her likelihood is of giving again?

My Super Simple Rules for Reporting:

Have a printed newsletter.
Do it at least four times per year.
Tell your donor what she did, not what your organization did
Show her impact by using stories of beneficiaries.
(Keep statistics in your top desk drawer for when foundations and high Organizational-IQ major donors come to visit.)

Reporting is the least-understood part of effective long-term fundraising. And believe it or not, it can be done so well that your donors will send in money in response to your newsletters. The manual for this is Tom Ahern’s book. Or watch this free webinar.

Fundraising’s Virtuous Circle

If your organization does those three things well – Asking, Thanking and Reporting – all kinds of good things happen.

Revenue goes up. Donor retention goes up. You “close the loop” on fundraising’s Virtuous Circle.

Of Course There Are Other Things

Things like segmentation, your online fundraising strategy, donor surveys, donor engagement, etc.

But in my experience, doing your Asking, Thanking and Reporting well are the main things that make the biggest difference. So focus on becoming great at those things first.

For instance, if your organization doesn’t know how to Ask well, having a great online fundraising strategy is expensive and inefficient. If you can get 500 people in the ballroom for your event, great. But if you don’t know how to Ask well, you’ll raise far less than you could.

As an organization, make sure your organization is good at Asking, Thanking and Reporting, because you’ll raise more money and be able to help more people.

And as a Fundraiser, make sure you are good at Asking, Thanking and Reporting. Because if you can do those three things well you will rise in the nonprofit sector and make an even bigger difference than you’re making now.

Resources For You

Last week we released our brand new eBook to help nonprofits get better at Asking. It’s free, go download it.

My friend, becoming great at Asking, Thanking and Reporting is a knowledge issue, not a talent issue. You can learn this stuff, raise more money, be more confident that your fundraising is going to be successful, and help more people!

Five Tips for the First Sentence of Your Next Appeal Letter

Steven Screen | October 9, 2018October 9, 2018Ask

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. Do 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!

PS — For more on writing appeal letters that move donors to action, check out our free e-book!