Tag: acquisition

The Myth of ‘Engage 7 Times Before Making the Ask’

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Seven times.

There’s some advice going around out there that I’d like to debunk: you do not have to talk to a person seven times before asking them for a gift. 

I say this because I have helped nonprofits acquire hundreds of thousands of new donors over my career, gifts from people the nonprofit had never contacted before the moment they made the gift. 

Just last year we helped a nonprofit launch a brand new monthly giving program.  They have acquired 3,300 new donors in the last year, and approximately 95% of those new donors had never heard of the organization prior to giving their first gift. 

I have experience acquiring new donors for small to mid-size nonprofits who most donors have never heard of before, through email, direct mail, television, radio, telemarketing and face-to-face.

Just last Saturday I went to a small fundraiser for a person running for local office.  (I had nothing to do with the event; I was in the audience.)  There were about 40 people there.  None of the potential donors had ever met the candidate before.  Yet the campaign left with a meaningful number of donations and new donors.

This is not sorcery; it’s mostly being confident enough to ask.  And some of it is knowing how to ask well.

I suspect that the myth of “you have to engage with a donor 7 times before asking them for a gift” hangs around because asking feels risky.  And the idea that “we need to warm them up first” feels like good relationship-building.  But the data doesn’t support it, and in the meantime, gifts are being left on the table. 

Instead, please know that it happens every day.  It’s happening right now.  It’s probably happening to your donors right now.

Be confident.  Assume abundance.  Make the ask.

You’ll be glad you did.    

***

P.S.  Are there a couple vanishingly small contexts where the “7 times” advice holds?  Sure.  If you run into a potential major donor at the grocery store, it’s not the right time to ask them for a gift.  If you’re talking to the grants officer from a foundation for the very first time, it’s not the right time to ask them for a gift.  But don’t take those contexts and apply them to your event, or your email list, or the mail, etc.

A Skill Needed to Scale

Steven Screen  |  Repeat
Growth.

I was talking the other day with a smaller nonprofit who really wants to grow.

They have a few hundred donors, and are doing good work, but they want to increase their impact.

They currently do one main event a year, do a couple of mailings, and a handful of emails.  They’re thinking about doing “vision meetings” to meet new people, and community events to increase awareness of their organization. 

I told them that both of those things are good, but neither are likely to help them grow at the rate they want to grow.

That’s because all of the ways this organization currently fundraises and wants to grow require personal interaction with a potential donor. 

But a leader or nonprofit can only have so many personal interactions.  Say you meet 10 new people a day for every day of a month, including weekends.  That’s 300 people, which is a lot.

But that’s dwarfed by purchasing a mailing list of 20,000 people in your community.  Or doing a targeted online campaign to 10,000 people who care about what your organization is working on.

The organization I was speaking to needs to go through a transition that all larger organizations have gone through at some point: moving from most donor acquisition being through personal interaction to a system that acquires a meaningful number of donors solely through communications. 

You can only meet so many people.

Yet there are thousands, or tens of thousands of people out there who would love to support what you’re doing who you’ll never be able to meet.  That’s a larger market.  And it requires a different set of skills to tap into and fundraise from.

This is why every large nonprofit has a thriving direct mail and email fundraising department.  They know that there are millions to be raised from people that they will never meet in person.  (And as an added benefit, the mail and email will keep the organization in better touch with the donors that they know in person, too.  You know that an event donor’s average lifetime value goes up when they give to the mail or email too, right?)

So just remember: there are more donors out there than you can meet in person.  If you want to grow to your potential, you need to learn the skills to be able to “meet” thousands of potential donors.

You’ve learned scads of other skills along your journey.  I’m sure you can learn this one, too.

An Idea to Help Your Donor Acquisition

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Bright idea.

When you’re talking or writing to people who are not donors, and you’re thinking about what to say, here’s a truth to remember: 

None of them care about your organization, but some of them care about your cause or beneficiaries.

So, don’t start off your speech or letter by talking about your organization.  Attempting to start a relationship by talking about something you know the other person doesn’t care about is not a successful tactic. 

On the other hand, if you start off talking about your cause or beneficiaries, then the people who care are immediately interested in what you have to say. 

Now you’re ahead of the game.

Now, the people who are most likely to donate are the people who are paying attention.  And they already know that you care about what they care about.

In the very first moment, you’ve established common ground with the people who are most likely to donate.

And I have to add, the “holy grail” is talking about your cause or beneficiaries and tying it to a value to everyone believes in.  Think opening lines like:

“No one should have to suffer from a disease when the cure costs $100.  And now that you know you can massively improve a person’s life for less than the cost a nice dinner out, let me tell you how you can do it and why it’s important.”

Now everyone is paying attention. 

Or you could start by telling everyone what year your organization was founded.

About Younger Donors…

Steven Screen  |  Repeat
Younger.

The next time a person at your nonprofit says, “We need to get younger donors!” have them read this:

Top 5 Mistakes: Chasing Younger Donors.

The post is from Bill Jacobs at Analytical Ones.  Bill’s been analyzing nonprofit databases and fundraising effectiveness for 25 years, and he knows what he’s talking about.

He lays out the two main arguments for why nonprofits should not chase younger donors, and I’ll add three more:

  • The research I’ve seen indicates that older donors tend to give more than younger donors.  So all things being equal, a 70-year-old donor is more valuable to an organization than a 35-year-old donor in the near-term.
  • Older donors give you a greater chance of receiving a legacy gift.  Last I heard, the average legacy gift in the United States was North of $40,000.  So a 70-year-old donor is more valuable to an organization than a 35-year-old donor in the long term, too.
  • On average, most donors don’t stay on a nonprofit’s donor file for more than 5 years.  So even if you do manage to acquire a bunch of 35-year-old donors, the vast majority of them will have stopped giving 20 years before they’ve entered their prime giving years.

Read Bill’s post and have a couple of these numbers handy the next time someone brings up younger donors.

In fact, Bill’s whole “Top 5 Mistakes” series is great.  Easy-to-read, short and data-driven, what’s not to like?

And I think we all know this, but I’ll say it to be safe: there’s absolutely nothing wrong with younger donors.  Welcome them!  But unless your cause is massively attractive to young people, trying to acquire younger instead of trying to acquire older donors is not a good financial decision.

Donor Acquisition: Think Medium-Term

Steven Screen  |  Repeat
acquisition

If you’re thinking about doing paid donor acquisition, you need to learn to think in the medium-term.

Here’s the story…

Two organizations we’re honored to serve spent significant sums on donor acquisition right before the pandemic.  One spent about $500,000, the other spent a little less than $1,000,000.

Both efforts lost money that year.  The campaign that cost $500,000 raised about $390,000.  The campaign also acquired new donors, to be sure.  But loud voices in the organizations disparaged the campaign.

And it’s easy to see why the campaign was disliked IF you’re thinking in the short term. 

However, we recently looked back at all the donors that were acquired in that campaign.  The organization discovered that those donors had given over $4,100,000 since being acquired.

Getting a return of $4,100,000 on an investment of $500,000 is a pretty good deal.  What looked like a “loss” of $110,000 in the short term was a gain of $3,600,000 (and counting!) in the medium-term.

(Of course there have been costs to cultivate those donors in the intervening years, but they are super minimal.)

What’s more, the organization would have been in real trouble during the pandemic if they hadn’t had those donors helping out.

If your organization is thinking about moving into paid donor acquisition, I hope this story serves as encouragement.  Moving to paid donor acquisition is a big step forward in an organization’s growth.  And you can read this post too, which will help you think critically about how to “make the leap” for your organization in particular.    

In short-term thinking, investing in donor acquisition a losing proposition.  In medium-term thinking (and beyond), investing in donor acquisition is investing in the growth and stability of your organization.