Report Archives | The Better Fundraising Company

Don’t Mail ‘Reports’ to Lapsed Donors and Non-Donors

Steven Screen | June 23, 2026June 19, 2026Report

A lot of questions have been coming in lately and I love it. Each one is a chance to share lessons that previous nonprofits have learned. This way, your nonprofit can “skip a step” and move immediately to more efficient fundraising so you can have more impact.

Here’s today’s question:

“Why shouldn’t we mail ‘Reports’ (newsletters, donor reporting letters) to everyone in our database, instead of just sending them to recent donors?”

The short answer is, “Because it’s not worth your money.”

Here’s the deal. When you send “Reports” to lapsed donors and non-donors and track results you will find two things:

If you measure results of the mailing, you will find that it costs more money to print and send the Reports to lapsed donors and non-donors than you will receive in return. In other words, you’re losing money.
- Note: to measure this, you’ll need to be able to track the response to the mailing by segment. This can seem daunting to small nonprofits, but it turns out to be relatively easy.
If you measure the long-term results of mailing your Reports to lapsed donors and non-donors, you will find that sending them Reports has little to no effect on whether they ever give in the future.

I cannot tell you how many organizations I’ve helped stop sending their newsletter to non-donors. Hundreds?

The organization saves real money because they stop paying for printing and postage to that group every year. And they start using that budget to pay for things that generate a better return.

That, by itself, is reason enough to do it.

But it’s not even the most powerful effect, because making this change is like a “gateway” to a set of knowledge that really helps the Fundraiser.

The measuring of results, and seeing that a particular tactic or message doesn’t work to a particular group of people, leads to all sorts of other learnings like:

“Hey, we’ve noticed that sending printed copies of our annual report makes zero difference to our fundraising except for this one small group of folks.” And then they save a ton of money the following year by printing and sending fewer annual reports. Or…
“Hey, we notice that major donors are some of the biggest responders to our direct mail appeals. Maybe when someone says “don’t mail appeals to your major donors” we should question that advice.” And then they don’t make the ill-advised move of removing major donors from the mail stream. Or…
“Hey, we notice that when we don’t do our e-newsletter there is no change in our fundraising results. Maybe we don’t have to do our e-newsletter any longer.” And they save time by stopping their e-newsletter, or maybe they do half as many issues as they used to.

You get it.

So, if you’re sending printed Reports to your lapsed and non-donors, I recommend that you measure the performance, or stop. You’ll be so pleased at the money you save, and on how you can use that money for something that’s more productive for your organization.

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If someone in your organization says, “Oh no, we definitely have to send Reports to lapsed and non-donors because the Reports will inspire giving, I’ve seen it,” please ask two questions:

“What was the ROI on the mailing to that segment?” In other words, what was the revenue that resulted from the printing and postage cost to the lapsed and non-donors? You want to ask this because of course some non-donors will give – you often get a couple or even a few. But the question is not “did any donors give?” The question is, “was the result worth it for the cost?”
Then, ask the person if they also tested sending strong appeals to lapsed and non-donors. And if so, how did the results compare to when they sent Reports to those groups? You want to ask this question because, in the experience of Better Fundraising and other professional agencies, sending a strong appeal to lapsed and non-donors has a much higher ROI than sending a Report.

Don’t Mail Your Newsletter to Non-Donors

Steven Screen | June 9, 2026June 8, 2026Report

Let me save you some time and money: don’t mail your printed newsletter to non-donors.

The return on that investment is not worth it.

I have tested this five or six times over the course of my career. Each time, the nonprofit has lost money sending their newsletter to non-donors (even though the very same newsletter makes money from their current donors).

Does a non-donor or two give a gift? Sure. But it’s along the lines of ‘we mailed the newsletter to 850 non-donors and 3 of them gave a gift. Put another way, it’s spending $1,200 to mail them and raising $170. Even if you were to make an argument about lifetime value of those 3 new donors, it doesn’t pencil out.

If you’re interested, test it yourself. Break your mailing list into two segments, one for current donors and one for non-donors. Determine the Cost Per Piece, measure the response for each segment, and then look at the results for each segment. You’ll quickly see how few (if any) non-donors reply to newsletters – even if your donors are responding in droves.

Here’s the lesson I’ve learned over the years: in the context of direct response fundraising, when you are trying to turn a non-donor into a donor, sharing successes from the past (which is what a newsletter focuses on) does not work well. What works better at acquiring new donors is sharing something compelling that needs to happen soon and appealing to the donor to help by making a gift.

So if you’re currently mailing your newsletter to non-donors, I’d stop it. Save the money. Instead, send them an appeal letter. It will cost less and acquire you more news donors than the newsletter currently is.

The Bad Part of the Story

Steven Screen | April 28, 2026April 27, 2026Report

The bad part of the story helps us know how good the good part of the story is.

If your donors don’t know the “bad parts” – what things were like for a person before your organization helped, the emotions of the person when they were in need – your donors will never know how powerful your work is.

Because they don’t know how powerful your work is, your fundraising won’t raise as much money.

The “after” isn’t particularly interesting or powerful if you don’t know the “before.”

Story, not Summary

Steven Screen | March 26, 2026March 25, 2026Report

Next Tuesday (March 31^st) I’m giving a free webinar on how to “report back” to donors.

Here’s a sneak peak at one of my main points: when you are reporting, share stories, not summaries.

Here’s what I mean. Any time a nonprofit says something like, “We served 347 people last month,” they’ve shared a summary of all the work they’ve done.

Compare that to when a nonprofit says, “Let me tell you about Gerald, a gentleman we served last month.” That’s a story.

When a nonprofit says “we helped 347…” to individual donors, they are hiding 347 individual stories of impact behind a summary. And every one of those 347 could have been a story that caused a moment with a donor.

Individual donors are engaged by and motivated by stories, not summaries:

Summaries are impactful for people who have the context and time to unpack them. Share summaries with grantmaking organizations and foundations who are experts in your sector and have all the context and time they need to understand the summary. (And in your Annual Report, if you want to feature a bunch of summaries on a page or two, no problem.)
Stories are impactful for any human with just a few seconds, no knowledge required. Share stories to your individual donors in your email, direct mail and events.

Because if you can make your Fundraising interesting and powerful to any human with a few seconds to spare, and they don’t need to have any knowledge about your organization or sector, you just unlocked your ability to raise a lot more money from a lot more people.

Report with a story, not a summary.

Four Quick Learnings from Giving Tuesday

Steven Screen | December 18, 2025December 17, 2025Report

I just read M+R’s report on Giving Tueday and there are a couple things that I think are helpful for all of us Fundraisers to know.

According to their data…

Giving Tuesday Continues to Grow

15% more was donated this year compared to last year.

Giving Tuesday continues to grow. For organizations that are still holdouts, or still holding their nose at Giving Tuesday, I suggest allocating more resources to it next year.

More Donors This Year

6% more people gave gifts this year compared to last year.

I think this is a reflection of demographics; as more people who are comfortable giving online age into their prime giving years, more people are going to participate in Giving Tuesday. I expect this trend to continue.

Matches & Celebrities

I’ll quote directly from M+R here:

“It’s increasingly hard to stand out in email inboxes with the influx of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Travel Tuesday (?) promotions, but tried-and-true tactics like matches and celebrity signers who can really speak to your mission are still helping organizations speak to donors.”

While small nonprofits have a hard time affording celebrity signers, but most of us can get a match. If you didn’t utilize matching or challenge funds this year, make it a priority to find a match for next year.

Giving Driven by a Fundraising Text is Increasing

M+R says,

“Nonprofits that have invested in growing their mobile lists over the last few years are starting to see major returns.”

If you’ve built your mobile list at all this year, there’s still time to set up text messaging to your donors for this year-end. The company we recommend to nonprofits is Tatango – they’ve been great for our clients.

I hope this is helpful, and good luck with your year-end fundraising!

Bad News is an Opportunity

Steven Screen | September 23, 2025September 17, 2025Report

File this under “counter-intuitive but we’ve seen it so many times it must be true.”

Any time you receive some bad news, it’s a great opportunity to raise money.

Problem in the field and you need more money to finish a project?

Shortfall at the end of your fiscal year?

“Special case” where more resources are needed to help a person?

Cash flow shortage?

Piece of equipment breaks?

Grant didn’t come through?

I can speak from experience and say that all these situations, when shared with donors, reliably raise more money than the nonprofit expects. And they raise that money quickly. (Email is incredible for this.)

So when a bad situation happens, there’s a choice you can make:

You can share the situation with your community of donors, be amazed by their generosity, and have more money to solve the problem. Or…
You can work on the situation yourself and have less money to solve the problem.

What I’m NOT Saying

I am absolutely not advocating sharing bad news all the time. You will burn out your donors and erode trust over time. Your fundraising must contain stories of success and triumph over the course of each year.

But most organizations think themselves into a position where they are scared to share any bad news at all.

What I’m advocating for is never being scared of sharing bad news when it happens. Because what you’ll see is the generosity of donors, over and over again.

Remember the game show “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” Each contestant had a “lifeline” they could call when they couldn’t solve the problem by themselves. The next time your organization is in a tough situation, think about your donors as a lifeline.

Two Conclusions

When you see donors generously respond to “bad news” again and again – two things become obvious over time.

Donors are more likely to respond when they feel needed.
You develop the strong belief that your donors can & will be a lot more generous, a lot more often, than you originally think.

If you “live in” to those two ideas – by creating fundraising that helps donors feel needed, and believing that they can give more and more often – over time you will unleash donor generosity and build a group of resilient donors.

And it starts when your organization has the strength to share the occasional piece of bad news with your donors.

“You” is the magic word for newsletters

Steven Screen | August 14, 2025July 17, 2025Report

Here’s an easy-to-follow tip to increase the amount of people who read your next newsletter:

Use the word “you” as the first word of the main headline on your cover.

That tells your donor right away that the newsletter is to her, and for her. And don’t you think she’ll be more likely to read if you signal to her that the newsletter is about her in some way? Versus what most organizations do, which is talk about themselves?

Want another tip? Use the word “you” again – in either the subhead or the first sentence of the main story.

Now you’re signaling to the donor that this really is about her. That the “you” in the headline was not just “donor-centered window dressing,” but was a signal that your organization really does care about her.

And now your donor is thinking, “Hey, this organization might be different from the other organizations I give to. They might appreciate me.”

And one final tip: use the word “you” in every single picture caption.

My rule is that picture captions should not be about what’s happening in the photo. Picture captions should be about the donor’s role in what’s happening in the photo. So instead of “Lisa and Laure enjoyed a week of summer camp at our facility” it should be, “Thanks to you, Lisa and Laura enjoyed an incredible week of summer camp!”

Now you’ve really done it. Your donor knows that you sent her a newsletter that’s about her and about what her gift accomplished.

That’s a Big Deal! Because very few (if any) of the other nonprofits she’s giving to have taken the time and money to show her what her gift did.

Some of them have sent her chest-thumping newsletters about what the organization did. But none of them have gotten in touch with her to tell her what she did.

Big difference.

And when you use the word “you,” she’s more likely to read more. And to know more about your organization. And to give more the next time you send her an appeal.

All from using the word “you” more often.

Think about it this way. As a donor, which type of newsletter would you like to receive: a newsletter that’s to everybody and all about the organization, or a newsletter that’s to you and all about what your gift did?

You know which one your donors would prefer. So follow these tips and make them one!

This post was originally published on September 10, 2019.

Three Lessons from Remarkable Annual Reports

John Lepp | June 5, 2025May 14, 2025Report

The following is a hand-picked guest post from John Lepp. Enjoy, and you can read more about John below.

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I know we like to believe that one of our donors is sitting in their armchair, maybe beside a fire, with a hot cup of tea and their beloved cat purring on their lap waiting… listening… for that clang and tiny screech as the metal flap on their mail box shuts, thus ensuring the safe arrival of your latest annual report.

We imagine them flinging poor Ron, the cat, off their laps and jumping to their feet! “WOOHOOOOO!!!! My charity’s annual report has ARRIVED TODAY!!!!”

Don’t we imagine that?

What if I could tell you 3 ways you might be able to get your donor to do JUST that, next time you send them your annual report?

1. Do you want to read an ‘annual report’?

Probably not.

68 pages of 8 point reversed type that adheres to your soul destroying, dumpster burning, graphic standards that some art director from a commercial agency put together and that you now must religiously stick to so that – lord forbid – you do not go ‘off brand’… whatever that means.

68 pages of all of the amazing things that every board member has ever thought of in their entire life about their fantastic accomplishments, page after page of stats, people holding big checks, figures, infographics, pie charts and names of your most important donors (ie: the rich ones). Do you want to read that?

No? Shocker.

Consider, my friends, the idea of a gratitude report. In a nutshell, a gratitude report is only as long as it needs to be. A report that tells your donors a love-filled story about something they made possible by their giving, is filled with plenty of you’s, shares the nutshell successes of how you continue to meet the needs of your mission with their amazing support and is inclusive of all donors.

Not just the rich ones.

2. Can you tell a fantastic story?

I have 3 examples.

i) From a women’s shelter. We were handed Ana’s story, written by her own hand, telling of her abuse by her partner. It was a story of how she found herself in a country without any support from friends or family. This story was not watered down by the head of comms or edited by a committee of 8 people in a circulated, tracked changes word file… It was her story – from her hand to our eyes. And I wanted to honour her without sensationalizing her.

This was the cover of the report.

White handwriting on a black cover. No logo. Do you want to see what she shares next? Of course you do. You can download the whole report here.

ii) For a hospital foundation. Getting your donor’s attention isn’t enough. But it IS getting harder to do even that every day. And if we can get their attention, we must reward them for it. For this gratitude report we started with a simple illustration of a bandaid, covered in cupcakes and put that on the cover. It says:

“Because of you, I’m not just a flexible bandaid. And, I know I’m not the sort of thing you’d find on the cover of a report, but here we are. I may seem like a small and insignificant player in the context of a hospital, but with your help, I have a big impact. You give me the power of healing many humans, big and small. I think of River. She came in last week with her mom for her COVID-19 booster. River was crying and holding her mom’s hand, but the moment she saw me, all covered in cupcakes, she stopped crying. We soothed her. You and I. (Ok, maybe the cupcakes had something to do with it too.) Thank you for giving me that gift.”

Fully utilizing the full universe of interesting voices around you (beyond the blah, blah blah of your professional leaders) can show your donors a different perspective to their giving that they might not be aware of. Also, make sure to focus on the big and small ways that donor gifts can make a difference.

iii) For a hospice. Focus on ALL your donors. This report focused on why donors, giving big and small gifts, care so deeply about this mission and cause. It is filled with the emotional WHY they care and give.

This is a fantastic example of social proof. Your donor is sipping her tea and feeling echoes of her own feelings and thoughts about her connection to the cause.

I especially like this report because we used the visual theme of a quilt. For anyone who has had the pleasure of visiting (and even if you haven’t), you would see these quilts hung around various parts of the ‘house’. These quilts are tributes and symbols of the lasting memories of those beautiful souls that have passed on while in the care of this organization.

You can download the whole report here.

3. Who should get it?

We typically do a small print run. Yes, that’s right.

We actually mail out printed copies of the report. We put it in a 9” x 12” envelope with first class postage with a cover letter attached to it and a personal, handwritten note, ideally from a board member or ED.

We only mail it to the TOP 20% of your donors. Since you likely are getting 80% of your revenue from these folks day after day, you can make the case that they are the ones that care the most about you. Mid level to high level donors, monthly donors, legacy donors, loyal donors (of any gift size) typically fall into this category.

For the rest of your donors that you have a mail address for, send them a postcard with an image of your striking cover, letting them know you have created something JUST FOR THEM and they can call you or email you (an actual person please) and ask for their own copy.

Yes, post a version of it on your website. Yes, email a link for it to your donors that you have emails for, with a personal email suggesting why they might want to look at it and why you would be more than happy to talk to them about it if they have any questions.

Do you want to create annual reports that you hate doing and no one wants to read?

Do you want to craft loving gratitude reports for your beautiful donors, these amazing humans that make your missions hopes, dreams and values come true?

Agents of Good are experts at bringing these reports to life – contact me, John Lepp, at john@agentsofgood.org if you want to talk about your next gratitude report that will leave your donors SPRINGING from their chair (and hopefully not harming the cat in the process!).

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Steven says: “The following is a guest post from John Lepp, the co-founder of Agents of Good in Toronto. John has the best understanding of how fundraising actually works that I’ve ever met, and then he ‘turns it up to 11’ by being a great guy to hang out with. You should subscribe to his blog here.”

“Did my gift make a difference?”

Steven Screen | January 21, 2025April 22, 2025Report

At Better Fundraising we have come to believe that a large number of your individual donors are wondering something:

Did their gift to your organization make a meaningful difference in the life of one of your beneficiaries?

We think donors are wondering that because when an organization shows & tells donors the specific differences their gift made possible, and uses stories about the individual lives of beneficiaries to illustrate the difference, the organization retains more donors and raises more money.

So as you look at your communications plan for your individual donors, do you show and tell them that their gift made a difference?

If you’re not already doing this, you’ll be surprised at how powerful it is for donors to read the phrase, “Your gift made a meaningful difference” and be told a story about one person that illustrates the difference.