Tag: appeals

Hollow Highlights and Pronoun Problems: Never Emphasize a Word That Can’t Stand Alone

Steven Screen  |  Ask

As a sort of “companion piece” to my recent post on highlighting too many things, here’s more hard-won advice about underlining and bolding in your fundraising:

The words you highlight should be understandable without reading the whole piece.

Here’s what I mean.  The following is a screenshot of a story I recently reviewed for a print newsletter.  Focus on the bolded copy:

If you only reading the headline, subhead and emphasized copy (which is all than an estimated 80% of people read), you will receive the following message:

  • You have given her a better future
  • Because of you, Sovanna is learning, growing and becoming more confident
  • But that all changed with your gift

What does the last sentence mean?  What all changed?  I thought Sovanna was doing great, but I guess she’s not doing great any longer?  And I caused that? 

The reader doesn’t know what the sentence means, and it possibly changes the meaning of the whole story.  That is a big problem if the emphasized copy is the only thing a donor reads – which is true for most donors!

Now, contrast that to my edited version:

Now look at the three things a “scanner” would take away:

  • You have given her a better future
  • Sovanna’s Mom is going to tell you how much you improved her daughter’s life
  • You provided a backpack, notebooks and other school supplies that Sovanna needed.

I made a handful of changes, but the change I want to focus your attention on is the bolded sentence in the middle of the story.  We went from a sentence the donor doesn’t understand (she doesn’t know what the word “that” refers to), and the donor doesn’t know if the change was good or bad – to a sentence that clearly tells the donor the concrete things that happened because she gave.

When you’re choosing what to bold or underline, always check for two things:

  1. The words or sentence must be understandable even if the donor hasn’t read the rest of the piece.  Watch out for pronouns that reference sentences that the donor likely hasn’t seen!  The word “that” in the original is a perfect example of this.
  2. The bolded or underlined copy, taken together, should tell a coherent story.

Always always always remember that most donors will scan before they read.  And many donors will only scan and never read. 

Learn to write and emphasize your fundraising to make sense to scanners.  When you do, you dramatically increase the number of people who will receive the message you’re trying to send.

Assume They’re Smart

Steven Screen  |  Repeat

As someone who cares about your beneficiaries and your donors, you want your fundraising materials to be special.  You want your fundraising to stand out, to look great, to show everyone that your nonprofit is different and better.    

I’m writing today to say one thing: as you do this, be careful.

I say “Be careful” because the things that professional nonprofits do – things that might look generic or wasteful or even dumb – are almost never accidents.  The “rules” they seem to follow are the results of millions of dollars and years of testing, and the rules are followed on purpose because they work great.

Let me show you what I mean with two quick examples.

A person at a small nonprofit receives yet another letter from a large charity.  They think, “Why does the large nonprofit keep wasting so much money mailing me?  I never want to be like that.  I’m going to send fewer letters.”

But that large nonprofit is raising hundreds of thousands of dollars with every letter they send.  Each letter has a return on investment of around 4:1, meaning for every $1 they spend on the letter, they raise $4.  That letter might seem like a “waste” to you, but to assume the nonprofit is wasting its money is to assume that a team of deeply experienced fundraisers doesn’t know what they are doing.  They know.  The letters keep going out because they keep raising money.

Second example: the Board member who says, “I don’t like all this bolding and underlining, it makes our fundraising look like everyone else’s.  Our fundraising should look different!”

But the fundraising from the big nonprofits is formatted that way – the bolding, the underlining, all of it – because testing keeps showing that one particular formatting approach (large type, large margins, underlining, etc.) tends to raise the most money.

It is absolutely OK to make your fundraising your own.  I want you to!  But as the line attributed to Picasso goes, “Learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist.”

Goal Reached? Keep Going!

Steven Screen  |  Ask

Say you’re running a campaign to raise a specific amount of money, and you reach your goal before the end of the campaign.

Should you stop the campaign, or slightly change your messaging and keep going?

My vote: update your messaging and KEEP GOING!

Here’s why:

  • Your campaign is working.  Every donor that has given you a gift has loved doing it.  Why would you stop a campaign that’s causing more donors than you expected to give gifts, especially when donors are enjoying it?
  • If the money raised beyond your original goal can be used to do more of your mission work, why would you stop?
  • For your donors that really care about your cause, which message would you like to send at the end of your campaign: “We blew past our goal and can help even more people” or “We met our goal and stopped the campaign immediately”?

If you need to change your messaging, change your messaging as needed.  For example, say you’re an organization that helps young people who are aging out of the foster care system.  Say your goal is to raise $100,000 before the end of the month to erase a shortfall.  You reach your goal – but you have a week to go in the campaign.

Change your messaging from “please give a gift before the end of the month to erase the shortfall” to “please give a gift before the end of the month to help a child who is aging out of the foster care system.”

Then, after your campaign, report back on the tremendous success of your campaign.

Personally, I suspect the people and organizations that want to stop their campaigns once the goal is met are people who wonder if fundraising is bothersome.  Deep down inside, they fear their fundraising bothers donors, or somehow manipulates them into giving.  And if that’s how you feel, it’s a relief to reach a campaign goal and an obvious choice to end the campaign early.

But if you believe that fundraising is a net positive – that it raises awareness for your cause, that it allows donors to make changes to the world that they can’t make on their own, that donors enjoy giving, that all of us are made better when we give gifts – you keep going.

You increase your goal.  You expand your vision of what’s possible.

If your donors show you that they have more capacity than your current vision, the solution is to expand your vision, not limit your donors’ giving.

Make It Easy

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Make it easy.

If you look at the detailed results of a lot of fundraising campaigns, a simple pattern emerges:

If you make it easier, more people will donate.

Look at these data-driven examples:

  • If you remove links to your social media feeds from your website’s donation page, more people will give.  Why?  It’s easier to fill out the form and make the gift if you don’t distract people with other activities.
  • If you ask a major donor for a gift and you give them a deadline for when you need their response by, you’ll get more responses and more gifts.  Why?  It’s easier for donors to answer the question “can I give by the deadline” than it is when the ask is timeless.
  • In a direct mail appeal letter, if you include a reply card and reply envelope, you will generally raise more money than if you don’t include a reply card and reply envelope. Why? For a donor who wants to give by check, it is easier if they don’t have to find and address an envelope.
  • When asking for money, when you use a specific offer (e.g., “$57 provides an hour of therapy” or “$41 helps on child learn to read”) you generally raise more money than a more generic “will you support our work” or “will you join us.”  Why?  Using an offer makes it easier for a donor to understand what their gift will make possible.  Offers also make it easier for donors to know how much they need to give in order to make a difference.
  • When you write fundraising materials, you raise more money when you use everyday language instead of jargon.  Why?  Everyday language makes it easier for donors to understand, as opposed to making them learn your vocabulary.

Look through your fundraising messages and tactics.  Are there any places you can remove distractions, or make it easier to understand, or easier to take action right now?

The Letter Looked Great, But…

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Handwritten.

About 20 years ago, I hired a freelance designer to design an appeal letter for a nonprofit I was serving.  The nonprofit wanted the letter to feel personal, and we decided that the entire letter would appear handwritten, instead of typed or printed.

The Designer went to work.  And a few days later I opened a PDF with the coolest looking letter I’d ever seen… that was almost unreadable. 

The “handwriting” the Designer used was cool, full of angles and interesting shapes.  I’m sure it took them a long time to create.

But I knew that for an appeal letter to raise a bunch of money, it needed to be highly legible – both to old people and to people moving quickly.

So I told the Designer that even though I loved how the letter looked, I needed it redone because it was too hard to read. 

The Designer refused.

“I can’t do it any better,” they said, “it looks great.” 

“I know it looks great,” I said, “but it’s too hard to read, so we need to redo it and make it easier to read.”

“I don’t think I can do that,” they said, “it won’t look as good.”  I don’t recall how the conversation ended, because after that moment I realized that I needed to hire a new Designer and that I was probably behind schedule.

I share this story today because it’s a great reminder that when we’re making fundraising, we’re not getting paid to make art.  We’re not getting paid to express ourselves.  We’re not getting paid to create designs or messages that we like.

When we make fundraising we are getting paid to fulfill a “business function” of building relationships with donors.

Fundraising that starts with the makers in mind – the aesthetic taste of the Designer, the language taste of the Executive Director, etc. – is more like art than Fundraising.  It may resonate with donors, it may not.

Contrast that to fundraising that starts with donors in mind.  It uses design that resonates with donors.  Vocab that donors already know.  Concepts donors already understand.

Fundraising created with donors in mind does a better job of retaining donors because it does the work to meet donors where they are at, instead of requiring donors to do the work to understand the organization.

So, if your organization is having a hard time retaining donors, look at your fundraising and say, “If we kept our donors more in mind as we made our fundraising, what would we do differently?”

Feelings, Not Fact

Steven Screen  |  Ask

Here’s a bit of fundraising copywriting advice for you:

When you find yourself sharing a fact, instead, share a feeling. 

As we create fundraising and make the case for a donor to give a gift, it makes logical sense that we tend to reach for facts:

  • 15% of local Moms face homelessness at some point
  • There are over 5,400 unspayed and un-neutered pets in our county!
  • We helped 377 people last month

But facts don’t move the needle in direct response fundraising – feelings do. 

So the next time you’re about to share a fact, share a feeling or emotion instead:

  • It’s not fair that so many moms face homelessness.
  • Seeing so many local pets have babies makes my heart hurt, and I know it bothers you, too.
  • You’ll love knowing that you came to the aid a person who needed a helping hand.

Feelings, not facts, are the way into your individual donors’ hearts.

‘Reducer’

Steven Screen  |  Repeat

Have you ever heard of a “Reducer”?

That’s what legendary music producer Rick Rubin calls himself:

From Johhny Cash to Jay Z, Rick calls himself a “reducer” because he “strips away all non-essential sounds to find a song’s core.”

This is similar to how the most successful direct response fundraising tends to get created: you strip away all non-essential ideas, trimming a letter or email down to being entirely about one main message/offer.

Note that I’m writing specifically about direct response fundraising here.  Direct response is different than an event when you have the room’s attention for 45 minutes.  Direct response is different than a lunch with a major donor. 

In the mail, email and online, you only have people’s attention for a few seconds.  You reduce the information you share with your readers in order to communicate one important thing clearly.   

That’s what helps you cut through the clutter. 

This is also why effective letters and emails are so rarely created when more than two or three people can speak into a project: each person adds what they think is important, which increases the number of ideas instead of reducing the number of ideas.

Stay focused.  Be a “reducer.”  Create small, easy steps for your donors to take.  You’ll be amazed at how many respond with gifts, and how many more donors you end up with over time.

Lots of Small Steps

Steven Screen  |  Ask

The more distinct ideas a letter or email includes, the less likely it is to succeed.

Let me tell you what I mean, first with a concept and then with an example. 

100% Important, or 33% Important?

If I send you an email that has one main idea, you know that that idea is important. 

To use numbers, if I send you a message with one main idea, that idea is 100% important.  And if I send you a message with three distinct ideas, each idea is only 33% important. 

We all intuitively understand this idea.  When we have an important message to send, we communicate only about that one message because any additional ideas are distractions from the main message.

Case in point: nonprofit e-newsletters.  E-newsletters have abysmal open rates because they are updates on everything to everyone.  They talk about this, and there’s a story about that, and they update on the other thing.  You know how low the open rates on your e-newsletter are, and you know they cause almost zero action and have almost zero effect on fundraising results.

What Does Focus Look Like?

First, a letter or e-appeal focuses on part of what the organization does, not all of what the organization does.  This focus makes it easier for donors to understand what is needed and what their gift will do.  It’s usually expressed in an offer, like “$55 provides an hour of equine therapy for a child” or “$37 provides supplies for one classroom.” 

(By the way, even if you feel like your organization doesn’t “just do one thing like that,” you can still focus your fundraising on just one thing.  This is a messaging choice, not something that’s driven by your programs.  Additionally, you can do this and still raise undesignated funds.)

Second, every idea in the letter or email provides reasons for the donor to give a gift to “do the offer.”

Here’s what this looks like in practice.  For this example, say you’re a maritime history museum, you run fun classes for children in August, and you’re doing an appeal in July.   Every piece of content in the letter should be about why it’s such a good idea for the donor to send in a gift to send a kid to one of your August classes. 

Here are a handful of messages you could include in the letter:

  • You know how important the maritime industry has been (and still is!) to our part of the world, and you know what a tragedy it would be if that history fades away.  The student you help send will learn about their history!
  • You and I both know there’s no substitute for time on the water for a person to learn about the sea.  So the students spend time on a boat each day.
  • A week on the water in the summer is often the only time a child from an underprivileged background has the chance to be on the water.
  • During their class, a young person will learn (IMPORTANT THING 1), and (IMPORTANT THING 2), and (IMPORTANT THING 3).
  • You’ll love knowing that while on our ship, the children are connecting with nature, not the internet.  Sails, not screens!
  • The local maritime industry is struggling right now to find tomorrow’s workers, and you know that an introduction to the industry through a fun summer class is a great way to introduce a person into a rewarding line of work.

Can you feel the focus?  Can you see how all the messages are about how important it is for a child to take a class this August?

This approach works so much better than letters and emails that are about many distinct things.

The big idea here is to think of the letter as “convincing the reader to do this one thing” instead of “convincing the reader to support our organization.”

You might say, “wait, but we want donors to support our whole organization!”

Here’s what I’ve learned from looking at the results of campaigns on donor files for over 30 years: give donors lots of small, easy to take, affordable steps.  When you do that, more people will arrive at “supporting your organization” than if you ask them to make the whole journey in one large step.

How Many Times a Year Can You Use Matching Funds?

Steven Screen  |  Repeat
Buy 2 Get 1.

It’s one of the questions we get asked most often:

How many times a year can we use matching funds?

There’s a real fear that donors will “catch on and stop giving” or that the matches will somehow tarnish the organization’s brand.

But in our experience, you can use matches almost as often as you’d like.  I think my personal “record” is 8 matching grant appeals in one year.  (And they all worked GREAT.)

There’s another fear that organizations have: that if they use matches too often, the matches will stop working.  This fear does not come true – and if you look at the data you see something interesting: You notice that the 8th match does not work as well as the 1st or 2nd match, but the 8th match still works better than an average appeal.   

In other words, matching grant appeals are so effective that, even when they don’t work at full strength, they work better than average appeals. 

We aren’t the only fundraising agency to come to the conclusion that nonprofits can use more matches than they think they can.  You can read the same thing in this post from TrueSense.  Also, Jeff Brooks has had the same experience.

Both of those posts make a recommendation about how to maximize the boost that using many matches give you: vary the approach.  For example, your organization could have a spring match, a fall match, and a year-end match.  You could use a unique design for each of your matching campaigns.  You can vary the multiplier.  You can release the match over time.  You get it.

The big lesson here for growing nonprofits is twofold: don’t be afraid of using a match too often, and redouble your efforts to source matching funds.   

Matches are a reliable, proven way to make your current fundraising raise more money. 

It doesn’t happen very often, but every once in a while something in fundraising is easy.  “Adding a match and raising a little more” is one of those things.