Category: Repeat

Complaints, Fees and Fines

Steven  |  Repeat
complaint

There’s a difference between a fee and a fine:

  • A fee is what you pay in exchange for something. You pay a fee, and you get into Disneyland.
  • A fine is what you pay when you’ve done something wrong. You drive too fast, and you pay a fine for speeding.

Most nonprofits think of donor complaints as a fine for doing something wrong.  

I want to you to think of donor complaints as a fee you pay in exchange for raising more money and retaining more of your donors.

Most complaints happen for two reasons:

  • When you send your fundraising to more and more people – somebody is going to complain… because people will complain about anything.
    • Large nonprofits have whole departments of people that handle complaints. Why? Because they have so many donors that there will always be somebody who complains.
  • When you share the truth about what’s actually happening in the world – somebody is going to be uncomfortable, and they are going to complain.

Sending your fundraising to more people and sharing the truth about what’s happening in the world increases the amount of money you raise. 

At the same time, it increases the number of complaints you receive. 

The complaints are a “fee” you pay in order to do more of your mission.

Trying to grow your fundraising without increasing the number of complaints you get is like asking the kitchen staff of a small restaurant to feed a lot more people but have the same number of spills or drips as before. 

You wouldn’t ever ask that! You know that spills and drips are a “cost of doing business” in a kitchen that’s working hard and growing.

But nonprofit fundraising staffs are expected to grow without increasing complaints. Instead, complaints should be seen like a “cost of doing business” for a fundraising program that’s working hard and growing.

Complaints are like “fees” to make the leap to the next level of fundraising.  In exchange for raising more money, you have to deal with a few more complaints.

Complaints aren’t fun. But they’re not a sign that “a lot of people don’t like our fundraising.” They are just the occasional fee.

And isn’t paying a few fees worth it in order to raise more money, retain more of your donors, and do more of your mission?

LIST of what to “repeat” to save time and raise more money

Steven  |  Repeat
Repeat.

I know the idea of “repeating” fundraising you’ve done before doesn’t make sense at first. And it can feel weird.

That’s why I want to talk about the secret of “repeating” – just think of it as a tool that savvy fundraisers use to save time and (surprisingly) raise more money.

What We Mean By “Repeat”

When we say you can “repeat” something, here’s what we mean in a nutshell: do the same thing again, but slightly differently.

  • Send the same letter again, but slightly reword it
  • Send the same email again, but slightly reword it
  • Run the same event again, but with a different beneficiary speaker
  • Send the same letter again, but with a slightly different design

Are you picking up what I’m laying down?

And in some cases you can send the exact same thing. Same email. Same letter. We’ve done both of them and they’ve both worked:

  • My podcast partner Jeff Brooks tells a story about an organization that sent an appeal every month. One month it accidentally sent out the exact same appeal that it sent the previous month – and it raised more money the second time!
  • I think about an organization that took half their donors and sent them the same exact email the last four days of the year. Those donors gave more than the other half of their donors who received four unique emails.

Because remember:

  1. Most of your donors aren’t paying that close attention
  2. Many donors need to hear something twice (or more) before they pay attention and really think about it

When To Repeat Letters And Emails

Here’s how to repeat your appeal letters and your emails.

If you are doing something that you did the year before, you can repeat it.

Say you send out a Thanksgiving appeal last year, and you’re going to do another one this year. The first thing to do is to look at last year‘s Thanksgiving appeal and its results.

If the results were better than the previous year, repeat it. Don’t write a completely new email. Don’t design a completely new letter. Make only the minimal number of changes you need to make.

The same is true for anything you do each year. Here’s a list of things we’ve repeated to great success, and I’m sure there are more examples:

  • Year-end / Thanksgiving / Back-to-School / etc. – letters & emails
  • Facebook campaigns
  • Events
  • Giving Tuesday
  • Renewal
  • 13th Gift
  • Sponsorship/monthly giving upgrade campaigns
  • Monthly giving recruitment

You name it. If you do it every year, you should be repeating it and making slight tweaks to make it better, not reinventing the wheel.

When You Repeat, Watch Out For…

Here’s what to watch out for when you’ve decided to repeat a fundraising tactic…

  • Any detail that was true last year, but not this year. You need to update anything that’s not true. New ED? Update the name at the end of the letter. This year’s “Thanksgiving Meal” costs $1.93 instead of $1.92? Update the letter. Your organization now rescues Wombats? Add “wombats” to the list of animals you rescue.
  • Does the story need to be updated? Many letters contain a story about a person that illustrates the need. That story should be swapped out and replaced with a new story. But the rest of the letter doesn’t have to change.
    • Note: this is true for events as well.
  • Doing too much. Don’t make too many changes just because you’re in there.

Story Time With Steven

I used to write appeal letters and emails for The Salvation Army. They are a fundraising machine who has all of this down to a science. (You might read that they are a “fundraising machine” and think, “Well, that would never work with my donors.” Please be open to the idea that it would work. Many of your donors also give to the Army.)

Most of the time I would receive the following instructions when it was time to write a letter:

“Here’s last year’s letter. It worked great. Update it for this year and change only what’s absolutely necessary. Do not mess this up.”

Inspiring!

No, not really. At least if you’re a ‘creative type’ like me.

But that’s how you build a mature fundraising program that raises the big bucks. You take something that works. You repeat it. You refine it. You look for little ways to make it better. You watch the results closely and look for what donors love, as told through their giving.

Over time you build a money-raising machine that allows you to do so much good in the world that people come to learn fundraising from you.

Listen, a lot of people don’t like hearing this. They want to be creative. They want to love the fundraising they send out.

I’m the same way. I get bored writing the same emails for the second (or tenth) year in a row.

But over time, if you look at the results, it becomes really obvious that if you repeat what worked before, you’re going to raise more money.

Please trust me – I’ve banged my head against that wall enough time to have a small dent in the middle of my forehead. (Well, actually that scar is from my sister throwing a Hot Wheel at me, but it’s a better story if it’s a fundraising scar.)

You are going to be tired of what you’ve been doing. So will your boss and your Board. You’re going to want to do it differently. You’re going to want to ‘come up with a new theme for this year’!

Don’t give in. Keep doing what’s been working great. You’ll raise more money each year.

If you invent a new approach each year you’ll be causing two problems: #1, you’ll be raising less money; and #2, you’ll be taking a LOT of time you could be using to do something else. Like, you know, focusing on major donors, where 90% of your individual donations come from. Or acquiring new donors, who are the future of your organization.

But Whither Innovation?

I’m going to write a post later this month on ‘how to innovate when you’re in a culture of repeating what’s worked in the past.’ Because you have to innovate.

But you want to innovate in a way that minimizes your risk. And I’ll share how to do that. But here’s an analogy to tide you over…

If you’re Apple, do you decide to stop making the iPhone and replace it with something completely new? No. You keep on updating, tweaking the iPhone to make it better each year. And you keep releasing different versions of the iPhone to try out new ideas.

Sheesh

Enough rambling. I hope the concept of “repeating” is making sense. I know it’s not how normal nonprofits operate. But it’s one of the secrets that savvy fundraisers have discovered – and you should be using it. You’ll save time, and you’ll raise more money.

If you’d like to have me help your organization know what to repeat – or to tweak what you’re doing to make it even better – get in touch!

This post was originally published on June 7, 2018.

“Donor Pointer”

Steven  |  Repeat

Someone called me a “donor-whisperer” last week.

While I was complimented, that term has always felt a little… off… and I finally figured out why. 

A “whisperer” sounds like it’s an innate skill.  It sounds like a talent that a person was born with, that they probably can’t teach, for something that very few people can do. 

Being a “whisperer” also seems a little manipulative, like you’re using a talent to make people do something they didn’t want to do.

None of those things are true.

What I do in fundraising is teachable, and almost anyone can do it.

Instead of “whisperer,” the term I’d use is “pointer.” 

Because what I do is point out things and let donors react.

I help organizations point out things that are happening in the world. I help organizations point out the concrete ways a donor can change the world by giving to them. I help organizations point out the concrete ways the donor has changed the world by giving to them. 

There’s no manipulation.  Everything is true.  There’s no secret skill.  It’s just a series of choices for what to point at.

Your fundraising can point at what donors are most interested in… or not. How donors react is up to them. (Because remember: fundraising doesn’t create tension in donors, it reveals tension they already hold.)

Ultimately, every post on this blog is an attempt to share what we’ve learned about what to point your donors’ attention towards if you’d like to raise more money and do more good. It’s a learnable skill and you can do it.  

Fundraising is a Pie-Eating Contest

Steven  |  Repeat
Pie eating.

It’s the best line I’ve ever heard about fundraising:

Fundraising is a pie-eating contest and the prize for the winner is… more pie!

Feels true, doesn’t it? You have a great fundraising year, and the result is that you’re asked to raise 7% more the next year.

It’s a great, crazy job we have.

My hope for you is that you ate a lot of pie this year, and you get a few days off to enjoy it.

Enjoy your holidays… more pie awaits!

Imagined Constraints Can Lead to Real Revenue

Steven  |  Repeat
Boy in a box.

The following is a guest post from Mike Duerksen of Buildgood in Canada.

The exercise he proposes is a GREAT way for your organization to uncover (quickly, in my experience) actions you can take next year to help you raise more money and keep more of your donors.

Think of the exercise as making your fundraising healthier & more robust and increasing your organization’s immunity to difficulties.

The little boy isn’t limited by the shape of the cardboard box.

Yesterday it was a secret cave. Today it’s a plane flying through the skies. Tomorrow it might be a pirate ship.

His only constraint is his imagination, not the four walls that box him in.

And that’s the power of constraints: they force creativity.

Right now your nonprofit might be in a cardboard box. And you feel stuck. And you’re waiting for the day when the walls come down again.

But what if the pandemic is giving you a rare chance to think creatively about how you can free yourself of the ways you’ve always done things?

What if you can use the new limits imposed on you to re-imagine the ways you show up in the world?

And what if you can actually improve your fundraising and future-proof your revenue to protect yourself from the next crisis?

Chances are you can…by playing a game of constraints.

What Is A Game Of Constraints?

A game of constraints is a simple exercise where you imagine a scenario that might seem impossible or unlikely.

Then you brainstorm as many ways as possible to overcome the problem.

You’ll be surprised how quickly you can free your mind from thinking:

  • “We can’t do that!” to
  • “This is tough, but maybe not impossible” to
  • “Here’s one way we could respond that would solve the problem”

You can have a lot of fun playing these games and stretching your imagination. But you’ll also feel energized about the opportunities ahead.

You’ll be more confident in your ability to solve potential problems. And you’ll identify where you are weak today, so you can become more resilient for tomorrow.

Ready to play some games?

5 Games You Can Play Today

Here’s a few scenarios to get you started…

1: A WORLD WITHOUT THE MAIL

Imagine a world where the postal service is no longer operating. From one day to the next, you can no longer reach your donors by mail. How will you communicate with them?

This is a great game to start with because we have seen postal strikes before. And when COVID hit, some print houses weren’t sure at first if they would keep operating

Chances are the options you came up with were to email, call or use social media to reach your donors.

Now ask yourself: How many emails do we have on file? What’s our email open rate? How many phone numbers? How many cellphone numbers? What do we need to do today to make sure we increase emails and phone numbers on file?

What you’ll discover: You likely need a better strategy to harvest donor email addresses and phone numbers.

2: A WORLD WITHOUT EVENTS

Imagine a world where you are no longer able to host any fundraising events in person. How do you engage current donors so they feel like they are still part of a community of givers? How do you attract new donors? What tools or approaches do you use instead?

This one hits close for many nonprofits right now. Some are finding success (and profitability!) moving to online formats.

Others are discovering that simply moving your event online is not a sound strategy — you have to re-invent the entire experience.

And some are letting go of events altogether, replacing them with something else.

What you’ll discover: There are many ways to draw donors closer to your mission outside of special events that may yield higher net revenue, save you time and give your donors a greater sense of connectedness.

3: A WORLD WITHOUT GRANTS & GOVERNMENT FUNDING

Imagine a world where you can no longer get funding from public and private foundations, governments and other institutional funders. How will you raise your yearly budget? How much more will you need to raise from individual donors? How many more individual donors do you need to get there?

This is one of the most important games you can play if you rely on applying for large grants and government funding every year.

Priorities for funders change. Governments change. Key relationship players at foundations change.

Don’t wait until you are denied funding before creating a strategy to diversify your income.

What you’ll discover: You may need to invest in your individual giving program a lot more in the coming years to protect your mission from future volatility.

4: A WORLD WITHOUT MAJOR DONORS

Imagine a world where the largest gift you can secure from anyone is $10,000. How many $10,000 donors would you need? How many $5,000 donors? Or $2,500? How would you identify who in your donor file can upgrade to give close to $10,000? How would that change the way you treat your donors?

Some organizations are getting the highest gifts in their history right now. Others are seeing major donors sit back a bit while they evaluate the situation.

Meanwhile, foundational donors — those in the “mass” file — are stepping up. Many just needed to be challenged with a clear and urgent problem to solve.

What you’ll discover: You likely have hidden value in your middle donor file — and you likely need a strategy to help each donor in your mass file give the best gift they can.

5: A WORLD WITHOUT DONOR ACQUISITION

Imagine a world where you can no longer acquire new donors. All you have to work with is your existing records in your database. How will you ensure your active donors don’t lapse? How will you convert your loyal donors to monthly givers? How will you upgrade your active donors to middle donors? How will you upgrade your middle donors to major donors? How will you re-activate your lapsed donors?

The point of this game is to help you realize that you can grow the value of your current donor file. You just need to pay some attention to the donors you’re at risk of losing.

Because the donors you already have are a lot more valuable than the ones you hope to acquire.

After playing this game, you’ve probably identified a few ways you can become a smarter fundraiser using the resources at hand.

What you’ll discover: You have a lot of room to improve your donor retention, and win back donors who haven’t engaged in a while.

Your Next Steps: Play A Game With Your Team

Now it’s your turn.

  1. Pick one of the games above. Or create your own scenario. Then gather your team.
  2. Split into smaller groups and brainstorm. Make sure each person knows there are no bad suggestions, as long as they stay within the given constraints.
  3. Share your answers. Have each team read out their answers to each other.

What you’ll end up with is an invaluable source of raw ideas that will help you uncover better ways to serve your donors, make your fundraising more resilient and position your nonprofit for growth.

And you’ll notice your mindset will shift.

You’ll feel more prepared to meet this moment in time. You’ll be more optimistic about your ability to raise funds.

You’ll start to see the cardboard box you’re in not as a limitation, but as an opportunity to create something new.

And you’ll feel more confident that you can emerge stronger…thanks to the power of constraints.

Big thanks to Mike for letting us share his post with you. And if you’re interested in more from Mike, here’s a link to his podcast that’s focused on practical fundraising tips and strategies.

The Master of Monthly Giving

Steven  |  Repeat
Time.

The following is a guest post from Erica Waasdorp of A Direct Solution.

Erica has more experience at every level of monthly giving than anyone I’m aware of. Big orgs, small orgs, programs just starting, you name it, Erica understands how it works and knows what to focus on next.

I’m sharing her post below because of the list in the middle. Regardless of whether you’re thinking about starting a monthly giving program or you have a thriving one, if you read the list you’ll find at least one actionable thing you can do to help your program work a little bit better.

During a recent webinar, someone asked me: “Does the timing of the launch of your monthly giving program make a difference? Are there certain times of the year that are better to start a monthly giving program?”

My answer is twofold:

If your organization is really gung-ho about monthly giving — as in, you almost care more about generating sustainers than one-time gifts — then by all means, go for it!

There is really no bad time to launch your monthly giving program. HOWEVER, it’s crucial that you have everything ready before you launch.

If you don’t have the people or the time to prepare, please do yourself a favor and hold off for a bit. Year-end is a busy time, so the last thing I’d want to do is add any more stress to your plate.

Knowing how you are probably as busy as a one-armed paper hanger, here’s what I recommend you do instead:

Just focus on getting as many one-time gifts in now during the year-end giving days — Giving Tuesday, holiday giving, etc. Then take one hour a week during the next two months, and chip away at getting everything ready for a launch in January.

Print out this list and just cross off each item as you go along:

  1. Decide who’s going to be responsible.
  2. Add monthly to your one-time donation page, if it’s not there already.
  3. Create a monthly giving page if you don’t have one already.
  4. Link the monthly giving page to other areas of your site and the pull-down menu.
  5. See how the monthly gift will flow into your database.
  6. If you can do pop-ups on your one-time giving page, create a pop-up to convert someone to give monthly.
  7. Create the thank-you landing page/auto-responder, emails, direct mail, etc.
  8. Create a letter to send out as a special invitation to those donors who gave at year-end.
  9. Create a few emails to send out in January, inviting your email names to give monthly.
  10. Create a special part in your homepage slider to link to your monthly giving page.
  11. Create a launch email to send to your board, staff and volunteers first thing January, so everybody is aware of it.
  12. Test everything before you go live!

If you just cross off the items on the list above, you’ll be ready to launch come January. What a great time to ask the donor to help 12 months a year.

Don’t worry too much about benefits or names if you think that’s going to take too much time; you can always add that later. The key is to ask your donors to give monthly first and make sure the recognition email and letter are in place. Send those right away. It’s always OK to “surprise” your monthly donors later with a special benefit. They’re getting the big advantage of feeling good by making a difference in a way they can afford.

Erica recently published a book on monthly giving and it’s brilliant. Here’s where to get it on Amazon – I can personally vouch that what she shares in the book will help you acquire more monthly donors, keep them for longer, and increase their lifetime values. It’s that good!

Optimistic or Pessimistic?

Steven  |  Repeat
Think positive.

Organizations that are optimistic about their fundraising are more likely to raise more money than organizations that are pessimistic about their fundraising.

It’s a classic case of how beliefs shape actions, and then actions shape results.

Beliefs Shape Actions

If an organization is pessimistic, you think “we don’t want to overwhelm our donors” so you don’t send a second year-end appeal or follow-up emails. Because of this, all the people who didn’t see your first appeal, and all the people who might otherwise give you another gift, don’t get the chance.

If an organization is pessimistic, you think “everyone is doing Giving Tuesday and donors’ inboxes are overwhelmed” so you don’t participate in Giving Tuesday. Because of this, your donors who thought of you on the morning of Giving Tuesday and would have loved the chance to help… don’t.

If an organization is pessimistic, you think “if a major donor hasn’t given a gift by this point, they probably aren’t going to.” Because of this, instead of calling all the major donors who haven’t given a gift yet to give a friendly reminder and providing a very real service to many donors, organizations move their focus on to other things.

Actions Shape Results

If you’re optimistic at year-end and mail two printed appeals, you’ll raise more money and retain more donors than if you send just one appeal.

If you’re optimistic at year-end and participate in Giving Tuesday, you’ll raise money from donors (and non-donors!) who like to give Giving Tuesday gifts.

If you’re optimistic at year-end and call all of your major donors who haven’t given a gift yet, you’ll receive many gifts and have conversations with donors who tell you, “Thanks so much for calling! It’s been a crazy year and I hadn’t gotten to sending you a gift yet, so I appreciate it!”

All of which result in raising more money.

Beliefs Drive Tactics

My point is that an organization’s beliefs – the “stories we tell ourselves” about fundraising and donors – determine the shape and boundaries of the organization’s fundraising programs.

Of course, human resources, cash on hand, knowledge about how to set up a giving page, all of those very real variables also affect fundraising programs.

But in my experience, beliefs are the primary strategy-setters and boundary-creators.

So this year-end, are you optimistic or pessimistic? That will tell you a lot about how you can expect your next 6 weeks to go.

If, after reading this, you decide to be more optimistic, it’s not too late to:

  • Mail a second year-end appeal
  • Send out three emails on Giving Tuesday
  • Call major donors who haven’t yet given a gift this calendar year
  • Ask Board Members who haven’t give a gift yet this year to give so that you can enter next year saying that your organization has 100% Board participation
  • Send out three to five emails on the last three days of the year

You can use optimism as a tool to help your organization raise more money and do more good.

Long Emails vs Short Emails

Steven  |  Repeat
Many emails.

Here’s a bit of fundraising wisdom found in an unexpected place.

It’s from a musician named Gabe Anderson who is writing about emails that musicians send to their fans. But what he’s saying absolutely applies to a nonprofit’s email strategy:

Shorter emails, sent consistently, sustain connection much better than one long one every few months.

Packing an email with links and offers and stories and updates and discount codes is too much… all under the idea ‘we’ll make up for our lack of consistent communication by sending out an email that includes everything because it’s really important that they know everything.’

The solution is to send more emails… to people who look forward to getting emails from you… and then don’t overwhelm them with long paragraphs and links.

You don’t usually enjoy getting long emails either.

The lesson, as always: never go dark. It’s a generous act to show up regularly in your donors’ lives!

h/t to Josh Alcorn for the idea for this post.

Crossing the Chasm

Steven  |  Repeat
Messaging Approach

There’s a surprising parallel between fundraising and selling technology products.

I found it in Geoffrey Moore’s famous book from 1991, Crossing The Chasm.

The graphic above is a direct “translation” from a graphic featured in the book. Except in this case I’ve made it about fundraising, not about selling tech products.

One of the main theses of the book is that the messaging used to attract “early adopters” will not work well when trying to attract what’s called the “early majority.” And technology companies miss this all the time because the company itself is filled with experts and early-adopters.

Sound familiar?

Doesn’t that “rhyme” with how the messaging nonprofits use in the early years does not work well when trying to achieve their next level of growth? And how nonprofits miss this because the nonprofit itself is filled with experts?

I know the graphic above takes some thinking about, but I’ve never seen a clearer picture that illustrates how the donors at your organization’s next stage of growth are different than your current donors – and therefore will likely require different messaging and tactics to be acquired.

Of course, this isn’t true for all organizations. But in my experience it’s true for a) smaller organizations who aren’t growing as fast as they’d like, and b) organizations whose growth has plateaued for many years.

If you think your organization is having a hard time crossing the chasm, keep reading this blog and check out Work Less, Raise More. The copywriting practices and communications strategies we help you with are exactly the types of things that help organizations cross the chasm.

And if you’d like Better Fundraising’s help crossing your chasm, take two minutes to fill out this form! We’d love to chat.

Remember: your organization is perfectly designed to raise what you’ve raised this year. If you’re looking for breakthrough growth, you’re probably going to have to start doing something different. And recognizing that is the first step.