Tag: appeal

Ask Before a Need (not after)

Steven  |  Ask
The early bird gets the worm

The the third idea I use to help organizations create fundraising plans that raise more money is this:

Ask before a Need.

(You can find the first two ideas here and here.)

Put another way, you’ll raise more money if you appeal for funds right before your donors understand you have a need for funds.

To illustrate the principle, think of the classic “Back To School” appeal in the Education sector. Schools and Education Foundations routinely send “Back To School” appeals in September, after the students have already gone back to school.

We’ve helped maybe fifty schools and Education Foundations raise more money (with basically the same letters and emails!) simply by moving their Back To School appeals from September to late July or August.

Just by making the ask before a need, rather than after, they raise significantly more money. Usually between 1.5x and 2x more.

Here’s why “asking before a need” works so well. When an organization asks donors to help after you’re already helping your beneficiaries, you’re just asking donors to fund work you’re already doing. That’s not particularly exciting to donors.

When an organization asks donors to help before the Need arrives, you’re asking donors to play a powerful role in meeting the need right as it happens. That’s exciting to donors.

Specific Timing

So, if your beneficiaries or your organization experience a Need, schedule your Asks (appeals, e-appeals) before the Need.

In general, send your appeal letter about 6 weeks before the Need begins. If you’re running an email campaign, start it about 2 weeks before the Need begins. If you’re only doing a couple of emails, start them 2 or 3 days before the Need begins.

If you want to have the largest impact, do all three:

  • Direct mail about 6 weeks before the Need begins
  • An email campaign starting about 2 weeks before the Need begins
  • Multiple emails in the 2 or 3 days before the Need begins

Next Year

As you plan your year, here’s what I want you to do:

  1. Identify the “Needs” faced by your beneficiaries
  2. Schedule your Asks before those needs
  3. Ask your donor to send in a gift to help meet the need

This simple shift will help you raise more money with the exact same number of communications you sent the year before.

Why your direct response fundraising should be like a Hallmark Christmas movie…

Sarah Lundberg  |  Repeat
Hallmark

Something strange happens to me at the end of October.

I’m a smart, logical, educated person who appreciates arts and culture.

But at the end of October when Hallmark Christmas movies start playing 24/7, I turn into… someone else. Someone who will watch movie after movie with essentially the same characters and the same plot. Someone who tears up at the end of the movie when the lovers FINALLY kiss and then a gentle snow begins to fall.

Sigh. It’s so sappy.

But I’m a direct response fundraiser, so I notice something else.

A Hallmark Christmas movie reminds me of effective direct response fundraising. It’s formulaic. You know what’s coming next. The plot is easy to follow. And you may tear up because, gosh dang it, it’s emotional!

And it works.

Every year, they make more of these movies because people – like me – are watching them!

Sometimes we try to make our direct mail fundraising appeals into something more like a Cannes Film Festival entry. Complex. Ironic. Edgy. Different.

But that just doesn’t work as well.

If you want to appeal to the highest number of donors, your direct mail fundraising should be more like a Hallmark Christmas movie.

Here’s the basic formula:

  • Tell them why you’re writing to them
  • Share the problem that needs to be solved
  • Tell how the problem could be solved
  • Ask the donor to give a gift to solve the problem
  • Go into more detail about the problem and solution
  • Include a story that illustrates the problem (optional)
  • Ask them to give again
  • Signature and title
  • P.S. Ask them to give again and include the deadline.

Listen. I get it. Near the end of every single Hallmark Christmas movie, I grumble and complain and wonder why I watch these silly movies.

Then the snow starts to fall and there’s a magical kiss and I’m a puddle on the floor.

There’s something about that feeling…

The direct response formula isn’t a secret. Simple. Easy to follow. Emotional. Maybe a little bit of magic… These things help donors get to the point where they will write a check to make something good happen.

Follow the formula with your next direct response fundraising appeal or email and let me know how it goes!

Comment here or find me on Twitter @sarahlundberg.
Sarah

How to Avoid the “What does that mean?” Offramp

Steven  |  Ask
Off ramp.

I have a rule I follow when creating fundraising:

Avoid any statements that could cause a reader to think, “What does that mean?”

It seems like a simple rule, no? But it gets broken all the time – and most damagingly in a specific, important part of fundraising: phrases or sentences that are emphasized with underlining or bolding.

Here are several real-life examples of emphasized copy that have come across my desk in the last couple of weeks.

All of these were the first sentence in the appeal that was emphasized. Because most readers scan before they read, that means that for a large percentage of readers, these sentences were the first thing donors read in the letter.

Ask yourself as you read these: did this immediately make sense to the donor?

“One thing led to another… but you took care of that!”

“Your investment will make a real, lasting impact in the lives of those who are struggling in silence.”

“I wish for a good night’s sleep.”

“That is why I’m reaching out to you for a donation today.”

None of those sentences are easy to understand without additional context.

Which means that each of them was an “offramp” – an opportunity for the reader to delete or put down the appeal.

Good Examples

If you visually emphasize any words in your appeals, make sure they can be easily understood on their own. Here are some examples of first emphasized sentences that were effective:

“Today kicks off [ORGANIZATION NAME]’s fundraising campaign to launch our Comedy Bootcamp classes in San Diego and Indianapolis later this year.”

“The seal pup has several stingray barbs lodged in its face.”

“You can follow in the footsteps of your faith and feed needy children and their families by making a gift today.”

“There is still a $14,000 shortfall to reach our fiscal year fundraising goal.”

Each of those sentences is easy to understand. If a donor wants to know more, they can keep reading.

But they don’t need to read more to understand.

Here’s What to Do

If this is a new idea for your organization, here’s a roadmap for what to do:

  1. Create your direct response fundraising with the assumption that donors will scan your fundraising, not read it.
  2. Think of your emphasized copy as the parts of your letter or email that people are likely to read.
  3. Make sure that everything that’s emphasized is understandable on its own.
  4. Taken together, all the emphasized words and phrases should provide a summary of the piece of fundraising.

Follow that roadmap and you’ll create what we call “two letters in one.” Your letter will be effective both for people who are moving fast, and for people who read every word.

And that, my friend, is effective direct response fundraising!

How to Write As If You’re Talking to One Person

Steven  |  Ask
Write

Experienced copywriters say things like this all the time:

“The best fundraising sounds like it’s from one person to one person.”

But how do you write fundraising and make it sound like you’re talking to one person?

Here’s how. The following are the ideas I have in my head as I create fundraising materials. One or all of them should help you!

Have One Person in Mind

Most of your donors will have several common traits. You can create a fictional person, imbue them with the traits your donors have, and write your letters/emails/newsletters to that person.

At my first fundraising job, there was a cardboard cutout of an older woman right inside the front door. We were instructed to write all our letters to her.

The fancy marketing word for this is “persona.” Large nonprofits with lots of donors have multiple personas; personas for online donors, personas for major donors, personas for event participants, etc.

The point is the same: visualize who you are writing to and then write to that one person.

Watch Your Plurals

If you’re writing to one person, you don’t use the plural to refer to him or her.

So don’t use plurals like these in your fundraising writing:

  • “Dear Friends,”
  • “All of your gifts…” (which doesn’t make sense for a donor who has only given one gift)
  • “Thank you to everyone who…”

What you want to watch out for is anything that makes the reader think, “Oh, I thought this thing I’m reading was to me, but it turns out it’s to everybody.”

Use the Donor’s Name

Merge in the donor’s name. It’s commonplace to merge the donor’s name in the salutation, and it’s a pro move to merge their name in the letter itself.

For instance, if there’s a paragraph I particularly want the donor to read, I often use the donor’s name as the first word in a paragraph.

People are trained from birth to pay attention to what’s said immediately after their name. Use that to your advantage!

Use the Word ‘You’

This is the obvious one. Second only to a person’s name, the word “you” gets people’s attention.

But there’s another reason “you” is so helpful: it transforms a truth about your organization into a personal truth for the donor.

You can FEEL the emotional difference between, “A gift to our organization will fight cancer” and, “your gift will fight cancer.”

I have a general rule of thumb for when I edit fundraising: whenever I see the organization’s name, I try to delete it and replace it with the word “you.” It’s not the right thing to do in all cases, but it’s the right thing to do in most cases.

Use the Language a Donor Would Use

Have you ever been in a conversation with someone who has a stellar vocabulary and kind of shows it off? Or talked to a person who’s an expert in their field and is constantly using jargon and you’re not quite sure what it means?

What’s the result when people like that talk to you? It makes you feel like the person isn’t really talking to you. It makes you feel like they are kind of talking to themselves and people “just like them.”

By using language that insiders value and appreciate, a lot of nonprofits accidentally make their donors feel like outsiders.

But using language that a donor would use crosses the gap to donors, instead of widening the gap.

Think of It This Way

Donors are looking for organizations that make it easy for them to understand what’s going on in the world and how their gift will help.

If you follow these rules, you’ll create fundraising that makes each of your donors think, “Hey, this organization is writing to me.” She’s more likely to feel known, and you’ll make it easy for her to understand what you’re writing about.

And you’ll notice that your fundraising results will tick up meaningfully.

Poor Name, Great Lesson

Steven  |  Ask
toxic

My mentors always warned me to avoid a particular type of story.

Here’s why…

They noticed that some appeals for children’s charities would raise a lot more money than other appeals. 

Yet all of the appeals had a story about a child in need – and the appeals all featured the same offer.  What was the difference?

They dug into the appeals and noticed one big difference:

  • In the appeals that raised the most, the stories were focused on the situation the child was in today.  They barely mentioned the parents of the child, or what caused the child to be in the situation they were in. 
  • In the appeals that raised less, the stories spent significant time and energy talking about the parents and their role in the child’s situation.  The stories spent less time talking about the situation the child was in today. 

These Fundraisers came up with a theory to explain why this happens:

  • When the focus of the story is on the child and their current situation of need, readers would therefore focus on the child and want to help the child.  This would cause the appeal to raise a lot of money.
  • When too much of the story is focused on the parent and/or the parent’s actions, some readers would focus on the parent.  This means that fewer readers would focus on the child, and fewer people would give.  So these appeals raised less money.

To describe stories where the parent or the actions of the parent overshadowed the situation the child was in, my mentors used the term “toxic mom.” 

I’ve taken the liberty to rename this the “toxic parent” problem.  This was taught to me in a more chauvinistic time.  Pinning this problem only on mothers is ridiculous.

Example Time

I’m sure you’ve seen this yourself.

The well-meaning nonprofit tells a story like this…

  • “Patrick has been in and out of rehab several times.  Because when he drinks, he occasionally gets violent.  His two young daughters need a safe place to stay, and your gift today will help them.”

Opening that story by talking about Patrick is a great way to raise less money.  Why?  Because some readers will think the story is about Patrick.  And other readers will think Patrick caused these problems for himself, that he’s an addict, and addicts are weak-willed people who can’t keep their act together. 

I’m not saying any of those reactions are correct.  But they are all reactions that take the focus off helping the girls, which is the reason the letter exists and was sent to the reader.  And they all happened because of the way the story was told.

The story would have been more effective if it had been told like this…

  • “Katy and Emma are two young girls in a tough situation.  One of their parents is occasionally violent after drinking.  The girls are too young to be on their own.  They need a safe place to stay, and your gift today will help them.”

All of my experience indicates that the second approach to telling the story would result in more money raised.

Poor Name, But Great Lesson

I was warned to edit the stories so that the “toxic parent” never overshadowed the child in need.  That was a good lesson. 

But the Big Lesson is to keep your reader’s attention in the place that is most likely to cause them to give a gift.

And that place is the problem that your beneficiary is facing today.

The “toxic parent” is not necessarily “toxic” because he or she is evil.  The parent is “toxic” because any time spent in a letter/email/story on the person who caused the problem means time your reader is not focused on the person in need, the problem they are facing, and how the donor can help today.   

Watch out for anything in your fundraising that takes the reader’s focus off of what’s happening today and what the donor can do about it!

“You’ve got some PR in your fundraising”

Steven  |  Ask
public relations

Most people do not expect Public Relations strategies to raise money today.

That’s why I’m always surprised when organizations put PR in their appeals and then are surprised that their appeal raises less money than it could.

Short & Sweet

Keep PR out of your direct response fundraising.  That’s your appeals, e-appeals, and newsletters (if you’d like your newsletter to raise money).

Why?  Because PR is meant to increase goodwill between the reader and the organization.  Merriam-Webster defines it this way: “the business of inducing the public to have understanding for and goodwill toward a person, firm, or institution.”

But the appeals that raise the most money are relentlessly focused on motivating the reader to take action now.  That’s a completely different goal and – when pursued – results in a completely different appeal.

Two Places PR Sneaks In

In my experience, here are the two ways PR shows up most often in appeals:

  1. A story of a person who has already been helped
  2. A description of the organization, or its programs, meant to make the reader believe that the organization is good at what it does

In my experience, including either of those things in an appeal causes the appeal to raise less money, not more. 

  • A note on the #2 item above.  I often hear nonprofits say things like, “But we have to tell them how effective we are!”  Here’s the truth as I’ve experienced it: how effective your organization is (and similar sentiments) is something like the seventh-most important thing at motivating a person to make a gift to an appeal. 

    If you’ve done a great job communicating and repeating the six things that are more likely to motivate a person to give a gift – things like a great offer, strong urgency, clear negative consequences to inaction, etc. – then by all means mention how effective your organization is. But make sure you cover the more important stuff first.

The Place For PR

There is absolutely a place for PR in your nonprofit communications toolkit. 

I’ve seen PR succeed at getting nonprofits in front of new, large groups of potential donors.  I’ve seen PR lay the groundwork for successful fundraising campaigns.  I’ve seen PR get nonprofits out of communication jams.

But good PR is always focused on helping an organization raise more money in the future. 

And an appeal or e-appeal is focused on helping an organization raise more money today.

Mind Blown In 3, 2, 1…

Here’s a mind-bender for you:

A successful, hard-hitting appeal is excellent PR.

How?  If successful PR “increases goodwill between the person and the organization,” then a successful appeal is excellent PR because it motivates a lot of people to give a gift – and every one of those donors feels great about giving. 

If that’s not goodwill, I don’t know what is.

It’s just that the “goodwill” was developed through the act of giving.

This is the secret I wish more small- to medium-sized organizations knew: the best way to increase goodwill among their donors is to get their donors to give more often, not by telling donors how great the organization is. 

So the next time you look at one of your appeals or e-appeals and think, “We’ve got some PR in our fundraising,” take it out.  Focus your appeal instead on your offer and a strong ask.  You’ll increase goodwill and raise more money at the same time!

How to Focus Your Ask on One Thing AND Raise Undesignated Funds

Steven  |  Videos
one thing

During these crazy last few months, nonprofits we serve have had a lot of success raising money using strong fundraising offers.  By that I mean highlighting a specific part of what the nonprofit does and then asking the donor to send in a gift today to fund that part. 

Not asking the donor to “partner with us” or to “support our mission” or to “provide hope.”  But asking the donor just to fund the part that the appeal focuses on.

There’s a good question that must be answered when using this approach:

“How can you raise undesignated funds in your appeal if it focuses only on one program – even just one part of one program?”

This free video answers that question.

video

The video makes it easy for you by showing you the things you need to say in your appeals, and the places you need to say them, to raise undesignated funds.

I also share how to think about this approach – which is new for most people.

It’s just 5 minutes long and is completely free.  But watch it so that you too can enjoy the benefits of raising more money that come from talking about specific programs or parts of your organization – while raising undesignated funding!

Three EASY Copy Changes

Steven  |  Ask
three things

I edit a lot of fundraising copy.

And then because I’m a glutton for punishment (OK actually I love it), I do it for free, live, most Friday mornings right here.

I noticed the other day that there are three changes that I make to almost every piece I see.

These edits are EASY to make. And all of them will help you raise more money in your appeals, e-appeals and newsletters.

Take Your Organization Out

Any time you see “we” or “our,” immediately look for a way to take it out and replace it with a mention of the donor.

When you’re Asking in appeal letters and e-appeals, change things like, “We can help a local child get online so they can catch up in school” to “Your generosity will get a local child online so they can…”

Notice how this makes the donor the hero, rather than your organization.

When you’re Reporting in your newsletter, change things like, “Our Internet Hotspot program allowed Gregory to get online and get caught up to his class” to “You helped provide Gregory with a hotspot, and now he’s online and caught up with his class!”

Notice how this makes the donor the hero, not your organization or your program.

And notice how making your donor the hero is a theme around here. 🙂

Lead with What the Donor Values Most

Always try to put the most important thing first.

This is usually the outcome of your work, and not the program or process by which your organization made the outcome possible.

When Asking, change things like,

“Your generosity will support our Internet Hotspot program, which will help get a local child online so they can get caught up in school”

to

“Your generosity will help get a child caught up in school by getting them online….”

When Reporting, change copy that says,

“You supported our Internet Hotspot program that gets children online. Thank you for providing a local child with a hotspot so they could get caught up in class”

to

“You helped Gregory catch up in class by providing him with a hotspot.”

Make It Singular

When I’m Asking a donor to make a gift, I’m always looking to make it as easy as possible for her to say “yes.”

So I always ask donors to do a small thing instead of asking them to do a big thing.

So when you’re Asking, change, “Will you please help all the students in Bloom County to have internet access” to “Will you please help one student in Bloom County get internet access?”

I think of these as an “easy yes” versus a “harder yes.” I (and you!) always want to ask for an easier “yes.”

It works in Reporting back to donors, too. Change “Thank you for helping 1,437 students in Bloom County…” to “Thank you for helping Gregory and other students in Bloom County…”

And there’s another reason to make this edit: your donor knows she can’t help all the students. That’s a huge problem. So ask her to do something she knows she can do; help one person, solve one problem, do one thing, etc.

It’s Not Magic

When an experienced copywriter edits or writes fundraising, it can seem like magic.

But it’s not. It’s just a handful of principles like these, played out sentence by sentence.

And you can learn it.

Start with these three principles. Keep working on them until they happen by reflex – where you don’t even have to think about it.

Pretty soon everything you write will begin to seem like magic to the people you work with. And you’ll love how much money comes in!

The Easy Way to Raise More Money and Keep Your Donors

Steven  |  Repeat
repeat

Really simple – but powerful – idea for your nonprofit…

If you communicate to your donors more through the pandemic, you’ll be more likely to retain your donors.

Your communications have to be relevant, of course. They can’t be all about your feelings about the pandemic and downturn. They can’t be about what the pandemic is doing to your staff or your partners.

Your communications need to be about your cause or beneficiaries. And they need to be about your donors.

Here’s The Big Idea

You know those “big” nonprofits who send out 14 pieces of direct mail and 75 emails a year?

They don’t send so many pieces of fundraising because they’re big organizations.

They became big nonprofits because they send out 14 pieces of direct mail and 75 emails a year.

Wait, What?!?

Here’s what happens:

  • Your organization sends out a couple more fundraising appeals and emails than normal
  • You pay attention to results, and your organization learns more about what works and doesn’t work for your fundraising
  • Your organization gets more efficient at creating each piece of fundraising
  • Soon each piece raises more money and costs less to make
  • Now your organization is raising more, doing more good, and getting bigger

You get bigger because you start mailing more and learning more.

It’s All About Reps

The way to get better at direct response fundraising (your appeals, e-appeals, newsletters, etc.) is to practice.

You need more reps.

More practice + pay attention to results = learn more about what works

Learn more about what works + more practice = more money

So, during the incredible fundraising opportunity we’re all living through, figure out how to get more practice.

With time not spent on other things, could you send out two more e-appeals this month? (And don’t worry about “donor fatigue,” instead worry about being relevant.)

With time not spent on other things, could you get a couple powerful e-reports out? (You know, so your donors know that their gift to your organization makes a difference, so that they are more likely to give you a gift the next time you ask?)

Get more reps in. Pay attention to results. If the myth of donor fatigue is stopping you, throw that idea out the window, it’s useless.

Practice.

Get better.

Do more good.