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Follow these three words and you’re on your way to raising a LOT of money.

We’ve talked before about keeping your fundraising simple so that it’s easy for donors to understand. You will raise more money, and you will be more valuable in the donor’s life, if you can translate your work into words and concepts they understand.

Next, be very specific about what a donor’s gift will do. Stay away from generic bromides like “hope” and “transformation” – show the donor how their gift will provide one meal, or push one piece of legislation forward, or help one person get an education. Be specific.

Note: you can and should talk briefly about all the other things the donor’s gift does. But that should be 10% of your appeal. The other 90% should be about the specific Need and the specific way the donor’s gift will meet that need.

Then, show the donor how their impact is multiplied. Donors are humans just like you and me, and donors love deals. So use a matching grant to double their impact. Factor in volunteer hours or donated supplies. Then get specific: ‘because of donated supplies and volunteer hours your gift of $1 helps provide $4 worth of dental care.’

Simplify your problem and your solution. Be specific about what the donor’s gift will do. Then show the donor how their impact is multiplied by your methods. But keep the focus on their impact being multiplied, not on how your methods do it.

 

Most organizations make their fundraising too complex, and too much about their organization itself. That’s because they know so much and they know the value of their organization.

But remember that your fundraising is not meant to convince you to give a gift!

The vast majority of your donors don’t know as much as you do. So your fundraising needs to meet the donor where she is at – and talk about what she understands – using words she understands. This isn’t selling her short, by the way. She doesn’t think about your cause 40+ hours a week like you do.

It’s a really hard thing, but if your fundraising materials are great you most likely won’t like them. Great fundraising for your organization will seem overly simple to you. It might even feel “misleading” because you know your organization does so much more.

But it will meet the donor right where she is. And it will compel her to action.

Think about it this way: if you write to engage your executive director, your program staff, and your board members then your fundraising potential is pretty small. But if you write to engage anyone who cares about your cause or the people you serve, your fundraising potential is much, much, much larger.

Fundraising is Beautiful podcast is up and ready for you!

Steven and Jeff talk about the easiest, cheapest way to quickly find out what works and doesn’t work in fundraising.  They also talk about how board members and executive directors often don’t want their fundraising to look and feel like other fundraising — and how that’s a big mistake.

Click here to listen to the podcast.

We created the graphic in our previous post to illustrate a point: the simpler you can make your fundraising the more money you’ll raise.

Now, it’s going to be hard to keep it simple because you are a smartypants. You know all about your cause and your organization. Each level of detail means something important to you.

But you are not the audience for your fundraising. It’s not for you! It’s for people who know far, far less about your cause and your methods than you do. To engage the majority of your donors you need to talk to them at their level of understanding.

Note: If you think you’re going to educate donors into understanding and giving, think again. If you do, your donors are going to go find another organization that makes it simple for them to understand and help.

So keep it simple. And the results back this up; we’ve analyzed hundreds of appeals from hundreds of organizations. The most successful Asks simplify the Problem to something the donor can understand at a glance, and then ask the donor to help in a simple, tangible way.

Your Tax Receipts and Thank You letters are the “Thank” in Ask, Thank, Report, Repeat.  These letters are a FREE way to interact with your donors and to give them credit for making the world a better place through their giving.  Here’s why these letters are so important;

• Receipts and Thank You notes are the first sign to a donor that you have received their gift and that you appreciate them for giving it.
• Remember, after they gave you the gift they got nothing in return but a warm feeling. They don’t know that you received the gift, they don’t know that you value it. So tell them!
• If your receipts and thank you notes aren’t GREAT you’re missing a HUGE, free opportunity to make your donors far more likely to give you additional gifts.

Click here to see a 2 minute video that outlines how to make your thank you notes and receipt letters raise more money.

The previous post made the case for why appeal letters are such an important part of your Ask, Thank, Report, Repeat system. Now it’s time to uncover what ingredients are needed to write appeal letters that raise a ton of money.  Here is a short but powerful list!

• Tell a real-life story to illustrate the need.  Use stories, not statistics, to show donors the need your organization serves.
• Have an “offer” that summarizes and simplifies what the donor’s gift does.  It takes real work to develop good offers, but they will raise much more money than generic requests to send your organization a gift.
• Make your letter scanable because most people will scan it before they read it.  Underline or highlight the most important sentences in the letter.
• Get to the point very quickly.
• Ask three times.  Most donors won’t read the whole letter so you need to make a direct ask in multiple places to increase the chance they understand: Ask once in the first three paragraphs, once in the last three paragraphs, and once in the P.S.
• Remember that the letter isn’t about your organization.  Talk about the people who need help and talk about what the donor can do about it.  “Don’t ask the donor to send your organization a gift, ask them to send a gift to help the beneficiaries.
• Make it readable.  Most donors are older; so don’t use tiny type that they struggle to read.

Now that you know what it takes to write a great appeal letter, go out and do it!  Your donors are waiting to send you a gift to make the world a better place.  All you have to do is ask 🙂

To help you develop great appeal letters we created this short video to illustrate the above mentioned points.  Watch it here.

Do you know why your appeal letters are such an important part of your Ask, Thank, Report, Repeat fundraising system?  Consider this…

• First, very few donations come in unsolicited.  You have to ask for help to get it!
• Even your current donors don’t fully understand the real need facing the people you help.  They don’t spend 40 hours a week, or more, thinking about it like you do.
• So each appeal letter needs to powerfully describe that need and then Ask your donors to help in a specific way.
• And if you don’t Ask your donors to help your beneficiaries, no one else will.

I strongly urge you to consider the role appeal letters play in your fundraising efforts.  When done well, these letters are the bridge to people who desire to make the world a better place, who can do that by making a donation to your cause.

There is so much more to share, so we created this short video for you to watch and learn from.

How to Make Your Appeal Letters Raise More Money – (Vimeo video)

Giving days — community-wide campaigns to increase giving to local nonprofits — are growing in popularity. This spring, Spokane Washington launches Spokane Gives on April 25 and Seattle will celebrate the Seattle Foundation’s GiveBIG on May 5. Other communities have United Way or other campaigns. What should nonprofits do to get ready for these fundraising opportunities?

The first thing you should do is register for a free 1-hour webinar I’m hosting via Washington Nonprofits.  During this webinar I will walk you through what you should be thinking about one month out, one week out, and right when the campaign is going on.  I’ll talk strategy and practical application of that strategy.  I’ll help you think about communications, from print to social media.

To register for this free webinar go to the Washington Nonprofits website.  The webinar is March 25th from 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. PST.  Register today!