Tag: appeals

How to Win Back Lapsed Donors

Steven Screen  |  Ask

We recently recommended that organizations with fewer than ~10,000 donors should not create a “lapsed donor version” of appeal letters.

If lapsed donor versions of your appeals was one of your tactics for reactivating lapsed donors – and you’re wondering what to do now – you’ll love “The right way to win back lapsed donors” from Jeff Brooks.

His post is the perfect follow-up. We shared a tactic not to use, and Jeff shares multiple tactics to use.

Jeff goes deeper on two powerful things you can do:

Here are two additional things you can do to improve your lapsed donor reactivation:

  1. Lower the ask amounts for these donors. You have a valuable piece of information on each of then – the amount they gave last. With current donors, we normally ask for amounts around their most recent donation and up. For lapsed donors, ask for their most recent donation and down. That improves response. Better to get them back at a lower level than to lose them!
  2. Be choosy about which donors you try to reactivate. Very low-amount donors who are lapsed may not be worth the cost to regain them. On the other hand, it can be worth it to keep trying longer for those high-dollar donors. You might mail donors who are several years lapsed if their last gift was $100+.

Having a lapsed donor strategy is an important part of most nonprofits’ overall strategy. For many organizations we work with, 25% of their “new” donors each year are actually lapsed donors who have reactivated

Plus, reactivated donors have higher lifetime values (on average).

It’s worth spending time to build a coherent lapsed donor strategy for your organization. If you think yours can be improved at all, read Jeff’s post!

Updated Recommendation re: ‘Lapsed Donor Versions’ of Appeal Letters

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Please come back!

After looking at some fundraising results, Better Fundraising recently changed one of our longstanding recommendations:

For smaller organizations, we no longer recommend creating a “lapsed donor version” of appeal letters.

If this is something your organization does, keep reading and I’ll get into the details.

To set context, a “lapsed donor version” of an appeal is a standard tactic used by many (usually larger) organizations. Here’s what it looks like…

  • When an appeal is sent out, a “version” of the appeal is created.
  • Without changing anything else in the appeal, a sentence or two is added at the beginning of the letter that says something like, “You’ve shown through your generosity that you care about the unicorns, but I haven’t heard from you in a while. I’m sending you this letter because I think what’s happening right now will touch your heart.” Then the letter continues with the same copy as the regular letter.
  • That “version” of the appeal is sent to donors who have recently lapsed. Usually that’s donors who are 13-18 months since their last gift; occasionally it’s 13-24 months since their last gift.

That tactic is used by many organizations because, done well, it slightly increases the response rate for lapsed donors. The cost (in time and money) to create the additional version of the letter is a good investment because of the increased number of lapsed donors who are reactivated.

But Wait…

What gave me pause was looking at the performance of these “lapsed donor versions” of appeals for a couple of clients.

The response rate for lapsed donors was exactly the same, regardless of whether we sent them a special “lapsed donor version” or sent them the unmodified appeal to lapsed donors.

That meant we were spending time and money to create the lapsed donor versions and getting the same performance we’d gotten before.

We were wasting time and money. Ugh.

Now, if I saw this once, I’d wonder if the data were correct. Or perhaps the added copy wasn’t particularly good.

But I saw the same thing for three organizations over the course of a year. So we’ve changed our recommendation.

New Recommendation

Our updated recommendation goes something like this:

  • If you have less than about 10,000 active donors, it probably does not make sense to do “lapsed donor versions” of your appeals. Just send the regular version of your appeals to lapsed donors.
  • If it’s easy for you to create a lapsed donor version, it’s a good thing to test. But be sure to benchmark the results of your “regular” appeals to lapsed donors and compare those results to the new results when you send lapsed donor versions.
  • Do continue sending most appeals to donors who are 13-24 months since their previous gift. Just don’t spend the time and money to make a special version of the appeal unless you have information that indicates otherwise.

I want to acknowledge right away that this is a complex issue. For instance, the gift ask amounts for lapsed donors is another variable that can be tested – perhaps that could have played a role. The total number of communications also plays a role, as does an organization’s strategy towards lapsed, deeply lapsed and lapsed major donors.

For the purpose of this post, I’m setting all of that aside.

If we just focus on whether a smaller organization should create “lapsed donor versions” of their appeals, our default setting is that you don’t need to. Save yourself the time and money!

Reminding vs. Informing

Steven Screen  |  Ask

The most effective fundraising spends more time reminding donors of what they already know than it does sharing new information. 

Let’s say you’re fundraising in the education space, and you’re creating a fundraising message.

You’ll be tempted to say things like:

  • “Over half of our students received some form of financial assistance last semester”
  • “Our nursing program is one of the most effective in the country at producing graduates who are ready to work the day after graduation”
  • “The need for well-trained construction workers is higher right now than any time in the last 70 years”

Notice that all of those are new information to the reader.

There’s nothing wrong with any of them.  Any one of them could be part of a successful fundraising message.

But don’t give your reader too much new information – that increases the amount of work she has to do to understand your fundraising message.  And the more work she has to do, the less likely she is to finish reading your message. 

So savvy fundraisers decrease the reader’s cognitive load by filling their fundraising with statements that the donor already knows and believes, like:

  • “You know how important a child’s education is for their future success.”
  • “Some members of our community need help to attend, and you can give a student who needs financial help the same wonderful experience that you had.”
  • “You’ve seen all the construction around here – you know the Trades are having trouble finding trained workers.”

Notice how the donor already knows and believes all of those things?

Reminding a donor what she already knows is a surer path to success than giving your donor new information to convince her to make a gift.  It lowers the cognitive load for her to process your fundraising message.  It emphasizes that your organization “gets” her.

The Exceptions that Prove the Rule

There are some exceptions.  I’d absolutely give donors new information that:

  • The organization has a shortfall
  • There’s been a disaster of some kind
  • There’s a particularly tough or interesting story

Notice how these three examples are things the donor cares about.

She cares that there’s been a disaster, or that the organization has a shortfall because those things affect what she already knows and cares about.

Contrast that type of new information to something like, “our program has experienced 140% growth over the last four years.”

Any time you find yourself writing a sentence has new information for a donor, ask yourself two questions:

  1. Are most donors going to care about this piece of information?
  2. Instead of including this sentence, would it be more powerful to remind the donor of something I know she cares about?

The result of asking yourself those two questions will be fundraising that resonates more with your donors and brings in more gifts.

What Numbers Should Be In Your Appeal?

Steven Screen  |  Ask

I often help organizations raise more money by helping them see that they have too many numbers in their appeals and e-appeals.

Take a look at this example where I’ve emphasized the numbers in red…

  • The Membership For Everyone program provides low-income families with a health club membership at a substantially reduced rate of $25. This program supports income-qualified families in vulnerable situations to come exercise, play and learn just as anybody else would with the same benefits as any other membership we offer, like the one you had.
  • Our goal is to serve 3,000 families through the Membership For Everyone program. We are currently over 1,500 with a 140% growth over the last four years.
  • This Program is supported by individuals and organizations in our community to help offset the costs of the membership(s). Donations toward this program range from $1,000 to $5,000.

That’s eight numbers in three paragraphs. 

Making it even more complex is that they are different types of numbers all mixed together.  We’ve got dollar amounts, we’ve got percentages.  We’ve got numerals, we’ve got words.  We’ve got a goal, we’ve got actuals.  We’ve got membership rates, we’ve got gift ranges. 

And let’s not miss something: the organization wrote this believing that by including those numbers, the donor would understand the situation more fully and be more likely to give a gift.  The organization’s heart was in the right place.

But here’s the thing: it’s a lot of work for a donor to read each number, put it in the correct context, and remember it in case they need to know it later in the letter.

The more work you require a reader to do, the less likely they are to finish reading the letter.  The less likely they are to finish reading the letter, they less likely you are to get a gift.

Which is why successful direct response appeals and e-appeals generally have very few numbers. 

My general rule of thumb is to have no more than one number. 

But There Are Helpful Numbers

There are absolutely GOOD numbers to have in appeals.  For instance:

  • The cost to help one person
  • The number of people a donor can help
  • Gift ask amounts
  • Multipliers (like a matching grant)

Notice something?  All of those numbers are about the donor.  Take a look at that list again with a bit of editorial added:

  • The cost to help one person (“How much will it cost me to help?”)
  • The number of people a donor can help (“How many people will I help with my gift?”)
  • Gift ask amounts (“How much should I give today?”)
  • Multipliers (“How big an impact will I have?”)

That’s why bulleted lists like this one – even though it has so many numbers – are seen all the time in successful appeals:

  • Your gift of $25 will be doubled to $50 to help 10 people
  • Your gift of $50 will be doubled to $100 to help 20 people
  • Your gift of $100 will be doubled to $200 to help 40 people

What (or Who) Are Your Numbers About?

Hopefully it’s obvious that I do not want you to leave this post thinking, “numbers in appeals are bad.” 

But do pay attention to what or who the numbers are about.  If they directly apply to your reader/donor, they are probably helpful numbers.

If they are statistics, percentages or large numbers… think twice.   They’re probably about the situation you are describing, and should be drastically reduced or replaced with a story about one example.

The One Exception

I can only think of one exception to this truth: Disaster Emergency Appeals. 

In emergency appeals about disasters, the numbers seem to function as “validation” that it’s a big disaster and that the donor’s help is needed.

So when I see something like this in an emergency appeal about the earthquake in Haiti last week…

  • Three days ago a 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit Haiti.  More than 1,400 dead and, at this point, at least 7,100 people have been injured.   
  • We are also hearing that more than 700 buildings have collapsed.  Homes, hospitals, schools and churches have been damaged.   

…I think it’s probably going to work great.  But I wouldn’t use that approach in any other type of appeal.

Next For You

If you have a moment, go scan your recent appeals and e-appeals for numbers. 

If you’ve been using too many numbers, or the wrong types of numbers, remember that when you write your next appeal.  If you’re successful, I predict you’ll start raising more money with the next appeal or e-appeal you send out!

Context is Everything

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Context

Context is everything in fundraising. 

A conversation with a long-time major donor whose child was impacted by your organization’s work is different than a conversation with a potential major donor you’re meeting for the first time.

We all intuitively get this.  And we modify our writing / behavior / messaging accordingly.

But when creating mass donor fundraising, nonprofits raise a lot less money because they forget this lesson in all sorts of little ways.

Take a look at these two examples.

  • Some organizations call the people they help “our clients.”  That’s defining the helped people based on the organization’s relationship with them. 
  • Saying “Will you support our work?” make sense (and feels powerful) from an organization’s point of view.  But it’s defining the work based on the organization’s relationship to it.

The first rule of persuasion is, “You cannot take a person where you want them to go until you first meet them where they are.”

So you want to start with the donor’s context – you want to meet the donor where the donor is.

So instead of saying, “our clients,” you might say, “people suffering from PTSD who need counselling.”  By naming what it is you’re helping with – rather than using the internal shorthand of “our clients” – you’ve “met the donor where they are.”

Instead of asking donors to support your work, ask them to “help a person suffering from PTSD.”  Asking donors to “right wrongs” or “fight injustices” will always be more effective than asking them to support your organization.

Here’s another example from a piece of fundraising I saw the other day.  The organization said this:

  • Please help stop human trafficking, your gift will support our organization’s work.

But don’t you think they would raise more money (and stop more trafficking) if they said this?

  • Please help stop human trafficking, your gift will help keep a young girl safe.

To a donor, it’s more important to “keep a girl safe” than it is to “support an organization.”

The Key Realization

It’s powerful to realize that most donors care more about the issue you’re working on than they care about your organization.

Why?  It helps you remember that even though your donors serve your organization through their giving, you’re also serving donors by giving them an opportunity to do something about a cause they care about.

And when you remember that you’re serving donors, you’re more likely to go to their context – to “meet them where they’re at.”

When you use a context that makes more sense to donors, you serve donors more effectively and, as a result, you raise more money.

Seven Tips for Writing Your Next Appeal

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Tips

What follows is a short list of quick tips for writing your next appeal letter or e-appeal.

It’s a short list because exhaustive lists can be … exhausting.

But what happens if you’re just trying to get a little better each time you Ask? What if you don’t want to reinvent your fundraising, but just to do this e-appeal better than the last e-appeal?

Then this list is for you.

Think of these as the 20% of tips that get 80% of results. The next time you write, do as many of these as you can. More of your donors will get your main message – and you’ll raise more money!

  1. Be able to summarize the problem that you’re writing about, and what the donor’s gift will do to fight that problem, in no more than two jargon-free sentences.
    • Your letter could be about the problem your organization is facing right now (e.g., ‘School is out, low-income kids won’t get enough to eat this summer…’) or the bigger/long-term problem your organization was created to help solve (e.g., ‘Our Jewish culture is dying out in the Chicago area…’)
  2. Say why you’re writing to the donor in the first two or three paragraphs.
    • The phrase “I’m writing to you today because…” is magic. Use it!
  3. Directly ask your donor to send in a gift somewhere in the first three paragraphs, and somewhere in the last three paragraphs.
  4. This often works perfectly with the “I’m writing to you today because…” phrase. High-performing letters often have couplets like this at the beginning of the letter:
    • “I’m writing to you today because many low-income kids are about to spend summer at home without enough to eat. Will you please send in a gift today to provide supplemental food for at least one child this summer?”
  5. Remember that most donors aren’t reading your Ask; they are scanning it. Two of the places they are most likely to actually read are the beginning and the end. So put your main message in both places to increase the chance your main message will be seen.
  6. Avoid the dreaded Wall of Text – the long paragraphs and long sentences that make up long sections that all run together. Instead, write in short sentences and short paragraphs.
  7. Use the word “you” a lot. I mean a LOT. Your donor should feel like the letter is to her, about something she cares about, and about what she can do about it. There should be at least twice as many uses of “you” as there are mentions of the letter writer and the organization.

Now, go get ‘em! Make your next Ask a little better than the one before. If you do that a few times in a row, you’ll be amazed by how much money you raise and how many more donors you retain!


This post is excerpted from the Better Fundraising e-book “Asks that Make Your Donor Take Action.” Download it for free, here.

Don’t Accidentally Create a Barrier to Giving

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Barrier

I keep a list of the ideas that are most helpful to the small nonprofits we coach and consult. Here’s one of the most important:

Be comfortable focusing a fundraising impact (letter, newsletter, event, etc.) on only a small slice of what your organization does.

Here’s why…

Don’t Accidentally Create a Barrier

Smaller organizations (and even some big ones) often accidentally put a barrier between donors and their gift. The barrier: they try to make the donor understand all of the things that the organization does (and even how the organization does them) before asking the donor for a gift.

Focus on Easy-to-Understand and Powerful

Instead of trying to communicate about your whole organization, what you want to do is focus on some small slice of what you do that is a) easy to understand, and b) powerful.

Let me give you some examples of being specific:

  • Parent-Teacher-Student Associations that focus on how they pay the salary of the ‘math and reading specialist’ – and what a big impact that specialist makes – when they could be talking about the 20+ other ways the PTSA supports the school’s students.
  • The overseas adoption agency that does an appeal letter focused on the travel and legal fees needed to adopt a child from a place like China. Donors in this sector know that fees and travel costs are an incredible barrier for some families. “Fees and travel costs” are a small slice of a complex program – but an easy to understand problem.
  • Rescue missions that focus on meals. They may have multiple other programs, but they focus on the meal (cost: $1.92) which is often the beginning of their impact on a person’s life.

Side note: this is one of the reasons having a fundraising offer is so important and works so well.

  • Remember: learning about your organization is not what the donor is in it for. Donors are more interested in helping someone than they are interested in how your organization does the helping.

As always, there are exceptions. If you’re talking to a major donor who loves your organization and knows quite a bit about it, then by all means talk about the whole. If you’re talking to a foundation for a grant, then by all means share the whole.

But most of the time, to most of your donors, you only want to be sharing the most attractive, understandable part.

Try It!

If you have an email list, you have the cheapest way in the history of fundraising to test this approach. Here’s what to do: go identify some small powerful slice or part of how you help people. Then write an email to your list, share about how there is a real need right now for that slice of your organization, and ask them to fund that one thing. If the cost of that ‘slice’ is less than $100 I predict you will be surprised by how many people write in with gifts!

My guess: you’ll raise more money than a normal e-appeal. And if it works, then try it in the mail. And try it again in email.

For small- to medium-sized nonprofits, the concept of focusing your fundraising on an easy-to-understand and powerful slice of what the organization does is the surest path to raising more money immediately.


This post is excerpted from the Better Fundraising e-book “Asks that Make Your Donor Take Action.” Download it for free, here.

Everything You Send Makes You More Effective

Steven Screen  |  Repeat
Practice

All your bad appeals and e-appeals are useful and essential steps on the journey to great appeals and great donor communications.

No small nonprofit arrives on the scene sending out fantastic fundraising.

Nobody starts a nonprofit or ministry because they want to send out mail and email.

So you have to believe that a) “each piece of mail or email your organization sends out is an experiment and an opportunity to get better” and b) you’ll engage your donors and raise some money, too.

That’s a pretty good 2-for-1, no?

What simple email could you send out this afternoon that would be another “step on your journey” to great appeals and great donor communications?

Before & After

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Once Upon a Time

Here’s another fundraising “before & after” for your reading pleasure.

It’s the first sentence of an appeal, and it feels like a great example of all the thinking that goes into successful first sentences – and into successful direct response fundraising in general.

Here’s how it arrived on my desk:

  • I send this urgent letter to you because our organization-supported orphanages are overwhelmed, and in desperate need of help.

This is very strong fundraising.  It’s clearly urgent.  The word “you” is used.  It’s clear that there’s a specific problem that the donor can help with. 

But I thought it could be stronger.  Here’s how it looked when I was done with it:

  • You’re receiving this urgent letter because there’s an orphanage that’s overwhelmed and in desperate need of help.

Let me break down the changes and tell you why I made them…

You > I

Notice how the first word of the letter changed from “I” to “You.”

“I send this urgent letter to you…” changed to “You’re receiving this urgent letter…”

“I sent…” puts the focus and the action on the letter writer.  “You’re receiving…” immediately puts the focus and action on the recipient. 

Plus, we humans are trained to be more likely to read and respond to the word “you” … so I moved “you” to be the very first word of the appeal.

Our organization-supported

I deleted the phrase “our organization-supported” from before “orphanages.”

Mentioning that the orphanages are supported by the organization doesn’t help make the case that the donor should send in a gift today.

In fact, it weakens the case because it spends valuable time focusing on who has funded things in the past instead of focusing on what the need is today.

And finally, always remember how fast donors are moving.  Go back and read the first sentence again.  But quickly, like a donor.  Doesn’t it say that the orphanages are supported by the organization?  Wouldn’t it be reasonable for the quickly-scanning reader to think, “If the orphanages are supported by the organization, why do they need my help?”

“Orphanage” Is Better Than “Orphanages”

Note that “orphanages” became “orphanage” (singular). 

Why?  At the beginning of any direct response fundraising, I want to present the donor with a problem that is solvable.  If I tell her that a bunch of orphanages are overwhelmed, I’ve likely presented the donor with a problem that is too big for her to solve.

In our experience, when you focus fundraising on problems that are too big for the donor to meaningfully help with a gift, you get fewer gifts.

So rather than saying “orphanages are overwhelmed” (potentially a very big problem), I changed the sentence to read, “an orphanage is overwhelmed” (a smaller problem where a donor is more likely to feel like she can make a meaningful difference).

Many nonprofits believe that sharing the large size of a problem makes donors more likely to give a gift.  In direct response fundraising, it’s generally the opposite; if you present your donors with a smaller problem where they feel they can make a meaningful difference with a gift today, they’re more likely to make a gift today.

Remove the Comma!

My general rule is to make first sentences as simple and easy-to-understand as possible.

So “…overwhelmed, and in desperate need of help” became “…overwhelmed and in desperate need of help.”

It’s a tiny little change.  But you want to think of the first sentence as the onramp to your whole appeal.  If your onramp is easy to understand and keeps your reader moving forward, your reader is more likely to continue reading your letter or email.

If your onramp is a perfect, well-formed, multi-clause sentence that your high school English teacher would reward you for, and the comma-induced pauses add richness and complexity… well, it’s statistically less likely that people will continue to read your letter or email.

All That From One Sentence?

Yup.  It’s a curse of the trade.  When every word matters, and lives or livelihoods or real life consequences are on the line, you tend to obsess about each word.

Even as I’m writing this blog post I’ve thought of a way to make it better.  And I’m annoyed at myself for not noticing it on my initial pass.

But here’s the thing for you: just practice.  You’ll get better and better.  With email fundraising, the positive feedback loop is almost instantaneous.  You can get very good at this stuff, very quickly, if you’re willing to practice. 

Don’t treat each piece of fundraising as precious.  Write e-appeals, do the best you can, and send them out.

After all, for most smaller organizations it’s easy to make the argument that the volume of fundraising you send out is more important that the quality.  Just practice.

Most likely, you’re not communicating to your donors enough.

Go practice!  What can you write and email out this week to learn from?