Category: Repeat

You Don’t Have to Change Your Fundraising Because of a Complaint

Steven Screen  |  Repeat
Complain.

When a complaint comes in, you do not have to change your fundraising.

In fact, you probably shouldn’t change your fundraising.  Let me take that worry off your plate.

Here’s the situation: a complaint comes in, there’s a flurry of anxious emails, people get worried, and sooner or later someone proposes that “we should pull the campaign” or “well, we can’t use that phrase again.”

But if an organization follows those instincts, it builds a habit that will keep the organization small.  It sets a precedent that 1 or 3 people’s opinions can drive the organization’s communication strategy.

Let’s not let that happen!  Here’s what to do instead…

First, realize that a complaint is a fee, not a fine.  (A fee is something you pay in order to do something, a fine is something you pay when you’ve done something wrong.)

As you communicate with more donors more often, you will get complaints.  This isn’t a sign of failure; it’s a sign that you’re talking to more people.  And any time you’re talking to more people, more things happen: more complaints, more gifts, more returned envelopes with bad addresses, more unsubscribes, more unexpected large gifts. 

So when a complaint comes in, let’s not think, “we’ve done something wrong.”  Instead, think, “we’re operating at scale now, and these things are going to happen.”

Second, realize that the complainer doesn’t speak for all donors. 

I’ve heard it called “the most expensive assumption in fundraising” – treating one loud voice as representative of the thousands of donors who you didn’t hear from.  But that often happens when a complaint is received.  You hear things like, “If one person said this, imagine how many thought it but didn’t write in.”

You want to give each complaint the same amount of weight that you give each gift.  Don’t let one complaint be more important than all the gifts that came in.

Finally, right-size your organization’s reaction.

Complaints almost never actually damage an organization, but an organization’s response to a complaint – the breathless drama and worry, the time wasted, the effective fundraising cancelled – has a very real chance to reduce the organization’s impact.

So, build a process that gives a complaint its due.  Don’t escalate it.  Contact the donor and apologize.  Listen.  Ask if they’d like any changes in their communication preferences.  Tell them that their gifts have been incredibly helpful.  Match the energy of the response to the size of the issue.

You are allowed to handle a complaint in 15 minutes and get back to work.

***

Your beneficiaries or cause are counting on you to keep raising money.  That requires communicating with more and more donors.  And communicating with more donors will, occasionally, generate a complaint.  That’s the deal.

You don’t have to change your messaging.  You just need a process, and the confidence that one complaint is not a verdict on your fundraising.

PS — If you’d like to know more about what causes complaints, have a script for how to respond to a complainer, and help setting up a system for handling them, click here to download our free eBook, “The Sanity-Saving Magic of Understanding Donor Complaints.”

How to Figure Out if Your Fundraising is ‘Working’

Steven Screen  |  Repeat
On target.

I was giving a webinar recently and was asked the following question: “should we still be sending a printed annual report to our donors?”

It’s a perfectly good tactical question and I answered it… but later I found myself thinking that what I should have done was teach the person how to figure out the answer for themselves. 

Because it’s a real sign of growth when a nonprofit learns how to answer the question, “is [INSERT TACTIC or STRATEGY] is working or not?”

I should mention that what I’m about to share is easy to understand, but difficult to put into practice.

Here’s the deal…

You can always figure out whether a fundraising strategy or tactic is working if:

  1. Every fundraising activity has a declared core purpose, and
  2. You have an empirical way to measure its effectiveness.

Here’s why it’s difficult to do this at a smaller nonprofit.  Smaller nonprofits tend to have multiple purposes for each project, and personal forms of measurements. 

Let’s take appeal letters as an example…

A smaller nonprofit will usually give multiple core purposes for sending an appeal letter: “We send appeal letters to update our donors on our work, and to inspire our donors, and to raise money.” 

And most of the ways the appeal performance is judged are personal: the ED judges whether it was in his voice, the Board Member judged whether his mother would read a letter that long, and (maybe) someone has expectations for the gross revenue. 

It’s almost impossible to measure whether something is “working” or not when you’re juggling three unranked criteria and multiple personal forms of measuring success. 

Contrast that to the following…

When each fundraising activity has one core purpose: “We send appeal letters to raise money.”

And the appeal is judged according to empirical fundraising metrics: “was the response rate above 3.5%, the average gift above $75, and did we meet our Net Revenue target of $43,500?”

With that kind of clarity of purpose and metrics, it’s easy to figure out whether the appeal “worked” or not. 

So, back to question in the webinar about whether to send printed annual reports.  The challenge (and it can be a formidable challenge, sometimes) is to define the core purpose for sending the printed annual reports to donors, as well as empirical measurement targets.

For instance, we could use metrics like:

  • Donors who receive the printed annual report are 5% more likely to be retained than donors who don’t; or
  • The annual report will raise more than it costs to produce and send.

Great, now we’ve got something we can measure.

What doesn’t work are criteria like:

  • “Our major gifts officers really like to have it when they go meet with donors in person,” or,
  • “[NAME] on the Board says we must have one if we are going to be perceived as professional.”

Criteria like that hold nonprofits hostage, because when deciding between different people’s wants and preferences, someone always loses.  It’s often easier to “just keep doing the thing” because the alternative is hurt feelings, the highest-ranking person getting their way, or people leaving their jobs. 

(I could write several blog posts on this alone because it’s partially responsible for the crazy turnover in our sector, and it’s what causes many nonprofits to be unable to grow – they don’t really know how effective their fundraising is or isn’t, and they can’t cancel anything because every project and strategy is someone’s pet.)

So… if your organization has limited resources… and you want to be able to make good decisions in order to grow… what you want are defined core purposes and empirical metrics.

Then you can have more fruitful discussions about how to improve your fundraising, which will lead to raising more, which will increase your organization’s impact.

Want Your Fundraising to Get Luckier?

Steven Screen  |  Repeat
Lucky clover.

Jason Roberts is an entrepreneur and writer who has a simple idea he calls “luck surface area.”  It’s a useful tool for how to think about your organization’s fundraising, and here’s the gist:

The amount of good luck that comes your way is roughly equal to how much you do, multiplied by how many people know about it.

Doing × Telling = Amount of Luck  

I love this idea because it names something we all already intuitively know: the more you do, and the more you’re out there, the more things tend to happen.  (And it’s good to mention that some of those things that happen are good, and some are bad.)

This aligns perfectly with something we see in fundraising all the time: when organizations increase the amount of fundraising they send to individual donors, they receive more “unplanned” (lucky) gifts.

But there’s one thing to watch out for: you can’t just “tell” people what your organization is doing.  That results in the kind of awareness that’s not particularly valuable.  Make sure you are asking people to get involved. 

The asking is where the lucky breaks come from:

  • The donor who upgrades her gift because your e-appeal happens to land on a good day for her
  • The board member who forwards your appeal letter to a friend who’s been looking for a cause
  • The lapsed donor who comes back because you invited her to get involved
  • The major donor who finally takes the meeting because she missed the first three messages

None of those things happen if your organization stays quiet.  They only happen if your organization shows up – often, and on purpose.

(And yes, I know what some of you are thinking: “We don’t want to bother our donors.”  I’d gently suggest that your donors are less bothered than you fear, more forgetful than you’d like, and far more tolerant of additional asks than you think.  But that’s a different blog post.)

So if you want 2026 to be a luckier year for your nonprofit, that means one more email in October.  It means an ask at the end of your spring newsletter, along with a reply card, instead of a hint and a URL.  It means sending a new mailing in February.  It means picking up the phone and calling a donor you haven’t heard from in a while.

Each one of those actions is a small expansion of your surface area.  Each one is another chance for something good to happen.

Transactional Donors

Steven Screen  |  Repeat
True believers.

If anyone at your nonprofit has ever said something like, “We don’t want transactional donors,” keep reading.

This belief sounds good on the surface, but it’s limiting your growth.

Instead, you want to purposely make your nonprofit attractive to “transactional donors” for two reasons:

  1. Revenue.  A lot of “transactional donors” giving gifts can add up to a lot of revenue and mission impact.
  2. Many “transactional” donors, through the action of giving, will develop into true believers over time.   

Larger nonprofits have long known that many of their best donors are “transactional donors” who gave one small gift, had a good experience, gave again, and developed through habit and experience into true believers.  (Recent brain science is catching up to this phenomenon.  In his incredible book Atomic Habits, James Clear calls this “identity-based habits.”  He says that most people believe that “belief drives action” when it’s more often true that “action drives belief.”)

So, it’s smart for nonprofits to develop low-priced offers, and to make your fundraising accessible, so that your organization becomes attractive to “transactional donors.”  And once you attract and cultivate “transactional donors,” some of them will through their actions develop into true believers.   

It’s emotionally easy to prefer true believers.  It’s enjoyable to meet with true believers, and talk to them at events, and be appreciated by them.

But don’t accidentally let personal preference cause your organization to have less impact.

You want both kinds of donors if you really want to grow.

The Wave

Steven Screen  |  Repeat
Beach waves.

Each individual donor is like a wave rolling across the ocean.

The wave formed before they met your organization.  Their wave will continue rolling after they’ve left you.

Fundraising allows you to use some of a wave’s energy for your purposes.

But the creator of effective fundraising never forgets: your organization is tapping into their wave.

More Unsubscribes

Steven Screen  |  Repeat
Unsubscribe.

I’ve talked before about how you want a regular flow of unsubscribes to your email list.  This is what we see from organizations with growing email fundraising revenue.

So I was thrilled to find out that there’s a name for this phenomenon: The newsletter paradox.

Here’s the paradox:

  • When you offer your e-newsletter (or any email signup, really) people will join.  Your list grows.
  • As soon as you send something to your list, you get unsubscribes and your list shrinks a little.

Put even more simply: your list grows when you do nothing; your list shrinks when you send things.

The result is what’s called a “sawtooth growth pattern” that looks like this:

This happens because when you send a fundraising email, some people on the list will look at it and think, “Oh, I don’t want to get these any longer” or “You know, I don’t care about this anymore.”  And so they unsubscribe.

These unsubscribes often cause people to panic.  However, they are a natural part of list building.

And if you only build your list but never ask anything of it, then you’re maximizing the wrong outcome: you’re optimizing “list size” instead of “money raised.”

The lesson here is that unsubscribes when you send out an e-appeal are natural.

Writing for TV and Writing for Fundraising

Connor Owen  |  Repeat
Editing.

Working in television would likely be a writer’s dream… and probably a nightmare. Tight deadlines.  Limited budgets.  Constant revisions.  Wait – that sounds like life in a nonprofit, too! 

Maybe you have more in common with a writer in Hollywood than you realized.  You’re both up against a deadline.  You’re both dealing with executives speaking into your copy.  So, what else could we learn from our fellow writers in Southern California?

For some television shows, after their first few episodes, there is a quick realization that they are focusing on the wrong characters.

Let me tell you two quick stories where this happened.  

First, let’s look at The West Wing.  This show was originally intended to focus on the staff who worked inside the West Wing, not the President.  Main characters were set to be the Chief of Staff, Communications Director, Press Secretary, and everyone who makes the White House work.  They did not plan to have the President as a prominent character with lots of storylines.

But something happened after the first episode.  At the tail-end of the Pilot, Martin Sheen stepped in front of the camera as the President of the United States and delivered a handful of lines.  Soon after, his role in the show grew! 

Why? 

Because the writers and producers of the show were smart enough to realize that when the President showed up, viewers loved it!  So, story lines for the supporting cast were decreased, and the President’s story lines increased.

The same is true of the show Family Ties.  Michael J. Fox’s character was supposed to be a supporting actor to the lead actors who played his parents.  But after a few episodes, executives realized that Fox was why people tuned into watch.

So they made a shift, and Family Ties became centered around Fox’s character.

Now, how does this relate to your fundraising?

Think of your programming like characters in a television show.  You likely have one or two programs you focus on (these are your lead actors).  And then you have a few other programs (or supporting actors) you feature here and there.

As you write about different programming in your fundraising, your audience responds differently.  The really smart orgs that are growing are listening to that data, just like successful television executives, writers, and producers.  They might even shift what was once a supporting actor into a lead actor role because of how well it performs!

So, as you send your appeals and newsletters, be sure you’re tracking your data to see which programs your audience loves responding to.  And if the data says you need to feature one more than another – do it!  You’ll love the results. 

PS: If a show like Family Ties missed the fact that they had a star in Michael J. Fox who needed more story lines, maybe you have a program out there that needs featured in more of your appeals and newsletters!  Follow the data, and watch your fundraising results increase!

PPS: Not tracking your data?  You could start now.  Download our proforma so that you can know exactly how every fundraising communication you send is performing, helping you raise even more money.

Trust the Expertise

Steven Screen  |  Repeat
Build trust.

Want to know what “letting a Fundraiser do their job” looks like?

Here’s a quick story.  I recently caught up with a longtime friend who is a “fundraising lifer” like me.  He shared a story from earlier in his career when he was brought in as a Director of Development with a specific task of growing the organization.

A couple months in, he presented a fundraising campaign to the Executive Director for approval.  The campaign was different than what the organization had done in the past.  And in an example of leadership and trust, the ED said,

“This makes me deeply nervous.  It is approved without any changes.”

It’s hard to express how much I love and admire that response: the ED acknowledged their feelings, then let my friend do the job he was hired to do.

The nonprofit fundraising world could use more leadership like this.  It’s good to acknowledge our feelings, because feelings are real and strong.  And it’s good to let Fundraisers do the jobs they were hired to do and live with the consequences. 

When a boss regularly doesn’t let a Fundraiser try a new tactic or a new message, that boss dooms the nonprofit to underachievement.  The organization never achieves its potential because any Fundraiser with talent and ambition will leave.

Let me put it this way: for a tiny bit of risk (trying something new), the organization has the chance to discover a way to raise more money AND increase the chance that a talented employee will stay. 

And the campaign my friend put together?  It was a remarkable success.  It was the beginning of a four-year run that tripled the revenue of the organization.  That growth would not be possible without the trust and leadership shown by the ED.

In my experience, the upside of that trust and leadership is FAR greater than the downside.

Hit Songs

Steven Screen  |  Repeat
Hit songs.

You know the songs that were hits years ago, but you still love listening to?

Those old hit songs are what allow a band or artist to make a living making music.  Because to have a career in popular music you need at least a couple hit songs that people still love years later.

The same thing is true in direct response fundraising for nonprofits – you need a couple hits, a couple fundraising offers or campaigns that people love. 

The nonprofit equivalent of “hit songs that stand the test of time” are things like:

  • You can sponsor a child for $X
  • You can provide surgery to repair a cleft palate for $X
  • You can give a goat for a family for $X

Does your organization have a hit song you can rely on?

Are you doing the work of trying different things, paying close attention to your audience’s reaction, and looking for potential hits that people will listen to again and again?

Because your goal is not to do something “fresh and new” every time.  Your goal is to experiment, find out what works well, and then get the most out of that “hit” that you can.

And later on, you might get tired of your fundraising “hit song,” but the people giving won’t.