Category: Repeat

Presence Implies Importance

Steven Screen  |  Repeat
Being present.

If your cause and your nonprofit are always showing up in the lives of your donors, your donors come to believe that your organization is doing important work.

Think about this in your own life: it’s likely there’s a nonprofit that you “run into” all the time because you see their fundraising and regularly hear about the cause they are working on.  And it’s likely that you, perhaps without even realizing it, come to believe that those nonprofits are doing important work.

Contrast this to the organizations that show up in their donors’ lives just once or twice a year.  One of the messages “showing up a couple times a year” sends is that the work and the organization must not be that important.  Because if it were important, they would show up more often, right?

I’m not saying this is fair.  But it sure is true.

What does this mean for you?  It means that if your nonprofit wants to grow, part of your job is to be present in donors’ lives, in a relevant way, often.

The ‘Sequel Approach’ to Successful Fundraising

Steven Screen  |  Repeat
Sequel.

Two weeks ago at the Nonprofit Storytelling Conference, I shared an idea that’s challenging to some fundraisers and organizations:

Many effective appeals & campaigns are “sequels” of previous successful appeals or campaigns.

Here’s what I mean…

Say you send an appeal in March and it works great.  When it’s time to make next year’s March appeal, you make a “sequel” of the successful appeal.  You do that by looking at last year’s package.  You make any copy improvements you can, maybe replace the story with a new one, perhaps make the design a little cleaner.    

Now you have a “sequel” to a successful appeal.  And the sequel is highly likely to raise just as much money as the first appeal, if not more.

Then the following year you make another sequel, making it better yet again, and raising even more money.  And you keep making sequels until your results start to decline, or there’s some other good reason to stop (the program ends, you discover a better idea in another appeal, etc.).

I used AI to generate an image to illustrate the concept.  This is meant to be a nonprofit with their original March appeal on the left, and the two sequels they’ve made…

As you move from left to right (in other words, as you make more sequels), they get better and more interesting than the original successful appeal.  Each year’s appeal raises a bit more money than the previous year’s.  This is what getting really good at fundraising in the mail and email looks like.

Now, let’s compare that approach with the standard approach of, “We have to come up with a new theme for every appeal.”  Here’s what that looks like…

Here we’ve got three totally unique appeals, and each year’s revenue is a bit of a guessing game.

Large organizations and agencies follow the “sequel approach” because it has all sorts of advantages over the standard approach:

  • Revenue tends to grow each year
  • Revenue is more predictable
  • Lessons are learned faster
  • Sequels take less time and effort to create

And of course, when an appeal or campaign doesn’t work, there’s no sequel.  Plus it’s important to experiment every once in a while. 

The thing I don’t like about the “sequel” analogy is that in movies, the sequel usually isn’t as good as the original.  The seventh sequel of an original movie you loved probably isn’t very good. 

But the opposite is true in fundraising: the seventh “March appeal” raises tons more money than the original, because you’re so much better at it and have learned so many lessons.

Let me really bring home the benefits of this approach for you: if you have a small handful of successful sequels to use every year, it means you have a steady stream of increasing revenue plus the time to work on other things.

As you look at your fundraising calendar for 2026, what appeal or campaign can be a sequel of a successful appeal or campaign you did this year?

‘Papa, we HAVE to get you an eyebrow pencil!’

Steven Screen  |  Repeat
Eyebrow pencil man.

Last year, a few days before I was travelling to speak at a conference, my kids asked me what it was it was going to be like when I gave my speech. 

I told them there would be several hundred people in the room, I’d be on a stage, that my face would be on a couple big video screens to that people in the back could see me, and that I was thankful that I don’t really get nervous for these things any more.

My (amazing) 15-year-old daughter’s immediate reply was as follows:

“Ohmygosh, Papa, we have to get you an eyebrow pencil!”

She said this because, as my hair has gone grey, my eyebrows have more or less disappeared.  They’re there, just super faint.

So I’m sitting at our dinner table getting fervent advice – from a person who genuinely cares about me and wants me to succeed – that boils down to “for your speech to be successful, people need to be able to see your eyebrows.”

And you probably already know this, but similar situations happen in fundraising all the time…

Fundraisers who have taken the time to write an effective piece of fundraising get feedback from a caring stakeholder who wants the fundraising to succeed.  But the person giving the feedback doesn’t know the discipline of direct response fundraising, or the behavioral science at play, or the difference between institutional and individual donors.

So the feedback is usually based on personal preference, rooted in a general nervousness about fundraising, and presented with logic.

And through no fault of their own, the feedback is about as helpful as me hearing that I “have to” get an eyebrow pencil:

“You know, we have to mention the name of the program.”

“This doesn’t have any stats in it, we have to include some stats so people know how effective we are.”

“We have to phrase it like this because that’s the term experts use.”

“Well, we have to make it shorter because nobody reads long letters.”

Yet each of these “have-tos” make the letter or email raise less money, not more. 

Of course, you and I pay attention to feedback because we want to be team players.  The feedback is coming from bosses and key stakeholders, and it’s vital to remember that they are all trying to make the fundraising work better.

So what’s a Fundraiser to do?  Socialize the idea that there’s a science and profession of direct response fundraising.  Share drops of knowledge from this blog and other data-driven experts (Jeff Brooks, Julie and Brett Cooper, Lisa Sargent, John Lepp, Kristin Steele & Samantha Swaim, Tom Ahern, Clay Buck, Erica Waasdorp).  Slowly, but surely, we’ll spread the knowledge and science around.

In the meantime, be kind.  Educate your team on the actual, proven “have-tos” for success in the mail and email.

And by the way, I gave my keynote at the conference without using an eyebrow pencil.  The presentation was still a success.  🙂

The Path is not Hard to Find – But it is Hard to Start Walking It

Steven Screen  |  Repeat
Path to success.

If your nonprofit wants to raise $1 million three years from now, ask nonprofits who are currently raising $1 million what they did three years ago. 

Here’s what you’ll find: the path to where you want to go is knowable and has been travelled before.

There are outliers of course, but for instance…

  • There’s a stage where an organization that wants to keep growing will install a major donor management system
  • There’s a stage where an organization that wants to keep growing will say, “Our email and direct mail fundraising could use some help, we’re going to bring in an expert” (this is what we primarily do here at Better Fundraising)
  • There’s a stage where an organization that wants to keep growing will add a line in their budget for “Donor Acquisition”

There are a small handful of strategies that we’ve seen work again and again.  They can often feel awkward for smaller organizations because they don’t have personal experience with the systems or approaches.

But again, the path is knowable and has been traveled before.

Don’t look at the Big Organizations and say, “Oh, they can only do those things because they are big.”  Those Big Organizations used those strategies to become big. 

So the first question a nonprofit needs to ask is, “What does the path look like?”  The second (and often harder) question is, “What changes and sacrifices do we need to make to get on the path?”

Emotional Connection > Organizational Connection

Steven Screen  |  Repeat
Emotional connection.

Your donors don’t experience your fundraising as “donors.”

They experience your fundraising as humans.

So if you want to expand the number of people who will pay attention to your fundraising, make your fundraising more interesting to humans. 

Humans who like stories with villains and triumphs and tragedies and emotions.

Because there’s a very small group of people who resonate with your organization… but there’s a very large group of people who would resonate with the stories you can tell, with stakes that matter, and the emotions woven through all of it.   

Today, what cuts through the clutter is emotion-filled content that sounds like real humans talking about what they care about.  Not “approved content” that’s passed through the pastel-colored nonprofit hope machine.

Get real. Get emotional.  Don’t make a case, make a moment.

People are More Important than Platforms

Steven Screen  |  Repeat
Online platforms.

The online fundraising platforms we’re currently using are going to change.

Think about it.  For any Fundraiser who has been fundraising online for a decade, they’ve had two dominant platforms: Facebook and Instagram.

Now podcasts, texts and TikTok are coming.

If you work in Fundraising for the next 20 years, I bet there will be three or four more platforms.

The technology changes every couple of years.  Human psychology barely changes at all.

It’s good to know the ins and outs of whatever platform you’re using now.  But what will make you an exceptional Fundraiser is knowing the ins and outs of what makes people give and then give again.

Then you’ll succeed on any platform.

***

PS — writing this post made me realize that the two channels that have the most staying power are probably the mail and email.  I suggest that’s true because mail and email are experienced by the recipient as a direct message to them.

Texts have the same feature.

If those are the three “platforms” that are going to stick around, I would prioritize getting good at them.  Plus, they have a feature that is always a benefit: they allow you to “own your list” instead of being at the mercy of the algorithm.

True Believers, Casuals, and Onramps

Steven Screen  |  Repeat
Insiders.

Most small nonprofits have beliefs about what they would like their donors to be like. 

These beliefs tend to sound something like:

“We want someone to fall in love with our vision for the future” or “We want donors to know that they are investing in creating something” or “We want to connect with our donors in a more partner/visionary way.”

These are great, but limiting, desires. 

They are great because donors who do those things tend to give a lot for a long time.  Donor who are “true believers” like that are fantastic!

But it’s limiting because organizations that feel this way often create fundraising messaging and programs that are only attractive to true believers.

You know this has happened any time you hear someone say, “To really know what we do, you need to come on a tour.”  Or “Come to our event and you’ll really understand.”

That may be true, but wow – that puts a barrier between a person who is interested in your organization and them giving you a gift.   

In my experience, organizations that do this rarely grow larger than 50o to 1,000 donors because there are only so many true believers.  (There are exceptions to this; if you’re working on a cause that’s incredibly popular or well known, or if people are highly aware of and compassionate about your beneficiaries.)

The trick is to build a fundraising system for your organization that identifies true believers and has put in the work to make your organization accessible to what we might call “casual” donors. 

Large organizations have learned over time that most of their true believers are people who have come up through their donor pipeline; they started as $50 donors, upgraded to mid-level, then became major donors, often (but not always) going deeper in relationship with the organization.

So, while we may want all our donors to be true believers and in love with our vision, we make it more likely that we’ll actually achieve our vision if we create fundraising messaging and annual plans that give “casuals” a good onramp into our organization.

Difficult and Joyful

Steven Screen  |  Repeat
Difficult joy

Here’s the thing I wish more new Fundraisers heard right at the beginning of their fundraising journey…

Fundraising is hard and always will be.  It’s also joyful.

Fundraisers need the emotional strength to ask people for help.  You also have to figure out the right people to ask & the right time to ask them & the right way to ask them.

Additionally, you’re regularly exposed to the problem or situation your nonprofit was founded to address.

And yet… fundraising can bring incredible joy if you let it.  The fundraising work you do helps fund the incredible programs your organization operates.  Those programs cause the change that your organization exists to make.

And you know those donors you have?  The ones who have no programs and no way of helping on their own?  You make it possible for them to help in powerful ways, and they love to help.

And you get the satisfaction of doing the courageous, emotionally vulnerable hard work of asking for help. 

I get deep joy in doing all the hard things to succeed in fundraising in order to fund programs and connect with donors, and I hope you do too.

Three Core Functions

Steven Screen  |  Repeat
3 Core Functions.

The following is from my friend Richard Perry, and it’s too good not to share:

There are three core functions of a nonprofit:

  1. Deliver programs to solve a societal problem.
  2. Inspire and retain supporters to fund it.
  3. Build internal systems that support both.

That is so clear, and so true. 

What I like about what Richard says, and why I want to see it spread, is that this thinking convincingly makes the case that Fundraising (“inspiring and retaining supporters”) is equally important to Program.  And it specifically calls nonprofits to “build internal systems that support both.”

But if your experience is anything like mine, you feel that most nonprofits do not treat Fundraising equally to Program. 

That happens for lots of legitimate reasons: most Founders are program-oriented and naturally focus their time & effort in that area, plus fundraising is by nature uncomfortable to most people.  Additionally, fundraising education has not kept up with the explosion of nonprofits in the U.S.

Fine.

But the shift to “treating Fundraising equally to Program” is one that immediately helps the organization.  The “flywheel effect” is obvious: the fundraising becomes more effective, the organization is better at retaining fundraising talent, the organization retains more donors each year, and the organization raises more money.

The mature, national organizations I served at the beginning of my career had all made this shift.  I think that tells you something.

If you’re a leader of an organization that hasn’t made this shift, it’s worth exploring what’s stopping you.

If you’re working at an organization that hasn’t made this shift, it’s worth sharing this thinking and having a conversation.