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

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:

1. 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.
2. 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:

1. “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?”
2. 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.