Category: Repeat

Why your direct response fundraising should be like a Hallmark Christmas movie

Sarah Lundberg  |  Repeat
Hallmark

Something strange happens to me at the end of October.

I’m a smart, logical, educated person who appreciates arts and culture.

But at the end of October when Hallmark Christmas movies start playing 24/7, I turn into… someone else. Someone who will watch movie after movie with essentially the same characters and the same plot. Someone who tears up at the end of the movie when the lovers FINALLY kiss and then a gentle snow begins to fall.

Sigh. It’s so sappy.

But I’m a direct response fundraiser, so I notice something else.

A Hallmark Christmas movie reminds me of effective direct response fundraising. It’s formulaic. You know what’s coming next. The plot is easy to follow. And you may tear up because, gosh dang it, it’s emotional!

And it works.

Every year, the Hallmark Channel makes more of these movies because people – like me – are watching them!

Sometimes we try to make our direct mail fundraising appeals into something more like a Cannes Film Festival entry. Complex. Ironic. Edgy. Different.

But that just doesn’t work as well.

If you want to appeal to the highest number of donors, your direct mail fundraising should be more like a Hallmark Channel Christmas movie.

Here’s the basic formula:

  • Tell them why you are writing to them
  • Share the problem that needs to be solved
  • Tell how the problem could be solved
  • Ask the donor to give a gift to solve the problem
  • Go into more detail about the problem and solution
  • Include a story that illustrates the problem (optional)
  • Ask them to give again
  • Signature and title
  • P.S. Ask them to give again and include the deadline.

Listen. I get it. Near the end of every single Hallmark Christmas movie, I grumble and complain and wonder why I watch these sappy movies.

Then the snow starts to fall and there’s a magical kiss and I’m dabbing my eyes with a tissue.

There’s something about that feeling…

The direct response formula isn’t a secret. Simple. Easy to follow. Emotional. Maybe a little bit of magic… These things help donors get to the point where they will write a check to make something good happen.

Follow the formula with your next direct response fundraising appeal or email and see how it goes!

Mr. Rogers and Fundraising After a Hurricane

Steven  |  Repeat
Helpers.

Mr. Rogers used to tell a story about something his mother would say:

“When I was a boy and would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers.  You will always find people who are helping.’”

That little story always comes to mind after disasters like Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton. In the pictures and videos you’ll see rescue workers and volunteers who are helping.

It’s also when we Fundraisers play a small role in thousands and thousands of regular people who become “Helpers” – the people who see the news or read our appeals, stop what they are doing, and help by making a gift.

The way humans generously respond to needs will never cease to thrill me.  I hope you have the same experience.

Of course, I would prefer that there never be another disaster, large or small.

But when they happen, I’ll appreciate and rejoice in the generosity every time.

PS — If you’re a small nonprofit, and you need extra/emergency money due to hurricanes Helene or Milton, please read this post for our offer to (for free) write an emergency email for you.

It’s The Ones Who Keep Going

Steven  |  Repeat
Keep pushing forward.

You know all those big charities you know by name?  The ones raising tens and hundreds of millions of dollars?

At one point they were all raising exactly as much as you are now.

They had the same struggles you have, the same doubts, the same looming fears about year-end.

And they kept going.

Sometimes it was all they could do just to make it through the end of the year.  Sometimes they added one more small thing.  Or tried a new offer.  Or focused on a core strategy.

Your beneficiaries and your donors need what you’re doing.

Keep going.

What Neil DeGrasse Tyson Can Teach Us About Fundraising

Steven  |  Repeat
Solar system.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson is a famous astrophysicist.  Millions of people love him for his ability to explain complex scientific ideas in ways that non-experts can understand.

But you know what?  At any given time there are hundreds of scientists who are deeply annoyed at Tyson.  Why?  Because his explanations oversimplify the complex realities of astrophysics, or the space-time continuum, you name it.

But the videos and TV appearances that Neil makes aren’t for those experts.  The videos and appearances are for you and me.  The job of those appearances is to get more people interested and involved in the sciences.

In order to do that job, Neil has taken the occasional potshot from an annoyed expert. 

The exact same thing is true of individual donor fundraising: in order to get more people interested and involved in a nonprofit, the leader of the organization has to simplify complex realities.  This makes the organization more accessible and raises more money, and results in potshots from friends at sister organizations, Board members, and program staff who are experts.

The Red Cross oversimplifies the complex realities of disaster relief.  World Vision oversimplifies the complex realities of childhood poverty.  St. Jude’s oversimplifies the complex realities of pediatric cancer research and treatment.

The experts in those fields are deeply annoyed at the oversimplification going on in the fundraising done by those organizations.

But the fundraising is not for those experts.  And the fundraising done by those organizations has resulted in millions of people being more involved, and billions of dollars raised to make the world a better place.

So this is a call to all the creators and approvers of fundraising out there.  If Neil will take a few potshots in order to get more people interested and involved in the sciences, will you take a few potshots to get more people interested and involved in your cause and helping your beneficiaries?

New eBook Released! [download]

Steven  |  Repeat
Core Four.

We’ve excited to share the launch of our new free eBook!

You can download it right here.

Here’s the story behind what you’ll see…

The eBook contains the answer to a question we asked ourselves:

“What strategies & actions made the biggest impact helping our clients raise more than $1,000,000 annually from their individual donors for the first time?”

We wrote this eBook to share the four main strategies that helped organizations leave “six figures” behind and make the leap to raising “seven figures.”

One thing that was encouraging to see: this approach is accessible to even the smallest organizations.  None of the organizations we looked at had everything buttoned up in the first couple of years.  It was always a phased/iterative approach where they would get a little better each year.  And then the improvements they’d make in one area would reinforce the improvements they’d make in other areas.

And for the people we’ve shared this with who have yet to break the $1m barrier, they love having a roadmap and seeing how everything works together.

Download your free copy today, we know it will be helpful for you!

Free Sample ‘Creative Brief’ [download]

Steven  |  Repeat
Creative brief.

My last post gave you a helpful, proven process to follow to write and design direct mail fundraising.

One of the steps in that process is the writing of a Creative Brief – a step that’s unfamiliar to many smaller organizations.

If having an example creative brief would be helpful for your organization, at the end of this post I’ve included a link to an example Creative Brief you can download for free.

And if you’re not sure why you’d want to start making Creative Briefs for your projects yet, here’s why a Creative Brief is so helpful…

To review, a Creative Brief is a document that contains all the details for a piece of fundraising (and often for an entire fundraising campaign).  These details include who the package will be mailed to, the mail date, the offer, the specs, the creative approach, which story to tell, which photo(s) to use, the production schedule for the project, etc.

Creative Briefs are so helpful because they work for you. 

When you write and share a good Creative Brief, you instantly create what amounts to an “External Brain & Project Manager” whose only job is to save you time and help you succeed:

  • When the copywriter doesn’t remember what to do, they look at the brief.
  • When the data person wonders which donors to pull for this mailing, they look at the brief.
  • When the Boss wants to know what the plan is for the April Appeal, you show them the brief.
  • When you wonder what you did on this project last year, and what the thinking was, you look at the brief from last year.
  • When you’re teaching a new staff member what you do for fundraising and how you do it, you show them the briefs.

All of which gives you more time to get other stuff done.

And when everyone is working from a brief, you end up with fundraising that’s more cohesive and on-target.  You also avoid out-of-left-field situations like “the brochure for the capital campaign looks like a video game” because the freelance designer thought that would be cool.  (True story.)

We use briefs for direct mail, email, campaigns, events, radiothons, you name it.

So if it’s helpful to you, here’s a link to download a sample creative brief that I created years ago.  I’ve been using some version of this document for over 25 years.  Some are 6 pages, some are 1 page, depending on the project and the organization.  I’m sure you’ll want to customize it for your needs.

There’s nothing magic about this particular format or the exact info it contains.  But what is magic is “thinking it through in advance” and then letting the Creative Brief work for you!

Sample Direct Mail Process

Steven  |  Repeat
Design process.

What’s your process like for creating direct mail fundraising?  Does your process help or hinder your organization?

To (perhaps torturously) borrow from the famous first line from Anna Karenina,

“All organizations that have a successful process for creating direct mail are alike; each organization that has an unsuccessful process for creating direct mail is unsuccessful in its own way.”

After helping a couple organizations improve their process recently, I thought I’d share the process that I’ve seen be the most successful in case it’s helpful to you. 

  • Creative Meeting: this is where the goals of the project are confirmed, the offer and audience decided, the creative approach is determined, and which story to tell is decided.  The more details thought through at this stage, the better.
  • Creative Brief: all the details for the project are written down in the Creative Brief.  The Brief then becomes the roadmap for the project.
  • Copywriting: the copywriter follows the Creative Brief and writes the copy.  The resulting “copy package” includes everything needed to design the package, including suggested art direction as well as copy for things like the outer envelope and reply card.
  • Copy editing: the copy package is circulated, to as small a group as possible, for edits and feedback.  One designated person makes the edits and resolves conflicting opinions.  Additional rounds of edits are done only when necessary.   
  • Copy approval: the Project Lead gives final approval on the copy and it is sent to be designed.
  • Design: the Designer designs the package, following the Creative Brief and the copy package.
  • Design Review: the package is circulated for edits and feedback.  Again, one designated person decides which edits will be made.  The Designer makes the changes.
  • Design approval: the Project Lead gives final approval on the design.

Then you’re off to the races…

Of course, there are all sorts of tweaks and changes that can be made.  For instance, smaller organizations tend to have one person doing most or all of the steps, and the steps sometimes get combined.  Larger organizations tend to have teams of specialists doing just one or two steps each.

But the most successful processes tend to follow the same principles:

  • Think it all the way through at the beginning
  • Follow the plan
  • Keep approval teams small
  • Empower one person (ideally someone who has experience with direct response fundraising) to make all final decisions, because decisions made by committees result in fundraising that doesn’t work well.

I hope this helps with your process.  If you have any advice to share, or improvements to this process, mention them in a comment.

In my next post, I’ll show you the power of having a Creative Brief, and include a sample brief you can download.

Misleading Metrics (and Unintended Consequences)

Steven  |  Repeat
Metrics.

I wrote recently about a test that gives compelling evidence why nonprofits should not ask online givers to pay the credit card fees associated with their donation. 

The test reveals a very handy principle to bake into your thinking as a Fundraiser:

Trying a new tactic is likely to have unintended effects.

In the case of the test above, asking online givers to pay the credit card fees resulted in 60% of donors choosing to pay the fees.  That seems like a great result, right?  It almost feels like free money.    

If the only thing the organization measured and tracked was “what percentage of givers chose to pay the fees,” the tactic would feel like a great success.

However, the tactic also caused more people to abandon the giving form without giving a gift at all.  Many people reached the point in the process where they could choose to pay the credit card fees or not… and chose to close the page without giving a gift.

Unintended consequences like this happen all the time to nonprofits.  Here’s how to insulate your organization from them:

  • Be aware they exist.  They happen all the time. 
  • Never look at one metric in a vacuum.  It is easy to happily focus on one metric while not noticing that other things are being affected, too.  If your conversion rate is going up, celebrate it – but also check the size of your average gifts.  More conceptually, if you make changes to your fundraising that make your Board happier, celebrate it – but also check to see if your fundraising is still raising as much.
  • Always always always look at Net Revenue (and, when applicable, retention rates).  Net Revenue and Retention are the “mother metrics” – they matter more than anything else.

After you’ve done fundraising for a while, you realize that it’s relatively easy for small nonprofits to increase short term revenue if that’s all you care about.  But you’ll tend to burn out your donors.

It’s also relatively easy for small nonprofits to increase retention rate.  But if that’s your main goal, you’ll leave a LOT of money on the table and grow very slowly (if at all). 

Sales plug – this is why I’m always talking about increasing revenue and retention rates.  Increasing both at the same time is the holy grail, and our evidence-based approach is designed to do it.

Here’s my final thought for you today: pay close attention to tests run by large nonprofits and fundraising agencies.  Learning from their results will help smaller nonprofits avoid the common potholes on the road to growth.  And watch out for unintended side effects!

Your Envelope’s Job

Steven  |  Repeat
Envelope.

Say I send out 1,000 pieces of mail and you get 38 gifts back.

That gives you a 3.8% response.  Not too bad.

But I want to point out something helpful…

It’s true that 38 out of 1,000 people sent in a gift.  But it’s also true that 38 of the people who noticed the envelope and opened it responded with a gift.

It’s helpful to notice that, because you can increase the number of people who notice and then open your envelopes.  (And it’s not that hard to do.)

After all, you can’t control who is on vacation and won’t get your letter.  But you can control using a large, colorful envelope that stands out in a crowded mailbox and gets noticed.

You can’t control the post office “batch-delivering” all the nonprofit mail on one day so that your donor gets 7 appeals all at once.  But you can control writing a killer teaser that makes your donor want to open your envelope.

Your donor must notice and then open your envelope before you even have a chance of getting a gift.  And if you increase the number of recipients who notice and open your envelope, you’ll get more donations.

The ROI on the time and money you spend on your envelopes is fantastic.

This fall, with the election and the batch-delivering we’re hearing about, it’s more important than ever that your envelope get noticed and opened.  Read this post for help with your teasers, and the last half of this post for help with your envelopes. The first job of your envelope is to carry your letter. 

Then the job of your envelope is to get noticed.  Then the job of your envelope is to get opened.