Tag: appeals

Why You Shouldn’t Use the Word “Vulnerable” in Your Appeals

Steven  |  Ask
vulnerable

Though I’m a great believer in being vulnerable when you create your fundraising, I never use the word “vulnerable” when writing fundraising.

And when organizations that I work with use the word “vulnerable” or the phrase “the most vulnerable,” I delete it.

Here’s Why

When you’re Asking for support in your appeals and e-appeals, what usually works best is to present donors with a problem that is happening right now, one that the donor can solve with a gift today.

The problem with the word “vulnerable” is it accidently tells donors that there is not a problem today.

According to Webster’s, Vulnerable means:

  1. Capable of being physically or emotionally wounded.
  2. Open to attack or damage

Look at those definitions again. In both of those cases there is nothing wrong right now. A person is “capable” of being hurt. Or is “open to attack.”

Think about it this way. Say you received two simple e-appeals right next to each other in your inbox. One e-appeal asked you to give a gift to help a person who is in need today. The other e-appeal asked you to help a person who might be in need sometime soon. All things being equal, most donors will give to help the person who is in need today.

By describing your beneficiaries as “vulnerable,” you’re focusing donors’ attention on the fact that there’s nothing wrong yet. You’re telling donors that there might be a problem in the future. So there’s less of a reason for a donor to give a gift right now.

By using the word “vulnerable” you’ve caused fewer people to send in a gift today.

Here’s What I Replace “Vulnerable” With

Instead of focusing on what might happen, focus on what’s happening right now.

What this usually means is that instead of focusing your fundraising on all the people who might need help, you focus it on the people who need help right now.

Here are a couple of examples…

“Your gift to help vulnerable children in our schools learn to read will…” becomes, “Your gift to help a child who is a grade behind in reading level will…”

“Your gift to protect people who are vulnerable to this disease will…” becomes, “Your gift will help people who have this disease by… “

“Your gift will help the most vulnerable…” becomes, “Your gift will help the people who need it most right now…”

If your organization uses “vulnerable” or “the most vulnerable,” edit your future fundraising to talk about the people (or a person) who needs help now. You’ll start to raise more money.

The Big Picture

If you stop using “vulnerable,” will your next appeal raise twice as much money? No.

But if my experience is any indication, I think you’ll raise more money than you’re raising now.

Two reasons.

First, even though your use of “vulnerable” is a small thing, successful appeals and newsletters are made up of a hundred of small things. The better you get at noticing and improving the small things, the more money you raise.

Second, not using “vulnerable” is a very real step on the way towards a powerful principle to operate by. The principle is that you’ll raise more money with your direct response fundraising (appeals, e-appeals, radio, TV, etc.) if you share the most compelling problems your organization and/or beneficiaries are experiencing right now.

Sharing a current problem (not a potential future problem) with donors is one of the ways you can break through all the noise and increase the number of people who send you gifts.

And anything you can do to break through all the noise right now will help, don’t you think?

How Wildly Successful Appeals Work

Steven  |  Ask
wildly successful

This is not a “quick tip.”

But if you’re the type of person who really thinks about your fundraising – what the purpose of each piece is, what makes some approaches work better than others – keep reading…

Because I have a helpful way for you to think about your appeals and e-appeals. And by “helpful” I mean “will help you raise more money with your next one.”

Our “Conceptual Model” for Appeals

Here it is…

  • The purpose of the Appeal is to deliver the Offer.

  • The purpose of the Offer is to illustrate what the donor’s gift will do to meet the Need

  • The purpose of the Need is to help your donor want to do something today

  • The purpose of the Story in your appeal is to illustrate the Need

If you follow that formula, you’ll give yourself your best chance of success.

If you need a refresher on what makes a successful Offer and how to create them for your organization, download our free eBook on Offers here.

Here’s a bit about each step…

The Purpose of the Appeal

The purpose of your appeal letter or e-appeal is to deliver your offer.

There’s a consequence of this approach that is both helpful and hard: you need to remove everything from your appeals that doesn’t help deliver the offer.

Should you mention your upcoming event? Nope. Should you include links to your social accounts? Nope. Should you “tell donors more about what we do”? Nope.

Just deliver your offer.

The Purpose of Your Offer

The purpose of the Offer is to illustrate what the donor’s gift will do to meet the Need.

An easy way to describe “offers” is that they are the promise an appeal makes for what will happen when the donor gives a gift.

“Please support our community theater” is an offer. So is, “Give a gift today to join us in the battle against cancer.” As well as, “$56 provides a night of safety for a family experiencing homelessness.”

When reading your appeals, donors are always asking themselves, “What will my gift do?”

Your offer is the answer.

The Purpose of the Need

The purpose of the Need is to help your donor want to do something today.

We see something again and again: when organizations share Needs with their donors in their appeals and e-appeals, they raise more money.

And conversely, when organizations do not share Needs in their appeals – usually sharing only successes and offering the donors the chance to “continue this amazing work” or “support our ongoing programs” – they raise less money.

In a nutshell, most donors don’t often think about the Needs your organization works on. They don’t remember that someone is hurting right now. They often need to be reminded.

And when they’re reminded, they give more often and give higher amounts.

The Purpose of the Story

The purpose of the Story in your appeal is to illustrate the Need.

We tell stories of individual people (when possible) in appeals because they illustrate the Need to donors far more effectively than dry statistics and large numbers.

But perhaps more importantly, stories are used because they’re more likely to touch a donor’s heart. Because when you’ve touched a donor’s heart, you’re already three quarters of the way to them making a gift. All you need then is a great offer to turn your donor’s intention into action.

Now What?

I realize this is conceptual.

But what I want you to realize is that this model is powerful and effective.

It works again and again and again. It’s the “default setting” for every appeal we consult on, write, and review.

And it makes creating appeals a LOT easier. You don’t have to come up with a new approach each time. You have a model that works, and you simply “paint by numbers” for each appeal.

My advice to you: try it. And if you’ve already tried it, try it again but work to do it even better. Make sure the Story perfectly illustrates the Need, and that the Need is perfectly met by the Offer.

You (and your organization) can learn to create appeals like this. You’ll love how much money comes in and how much more engaged your donors are!

Unsubscribes are a Sign of Success

Steven  |  Ask
unsubscribed

A couple of years ago, I talked to a very large national organization on the East Coast about their email fundraising.

They had a solid program, sending out a whopping 70 emails per year.

About half of those were your traditional e-appeal, 5 were report-focused emails like an e-newsletter, 20 were advocacy-related, and around 15 I would classify as “other” – meaning they didn’t really fall into any these categories.

I suggested a number of tactics they could use to improve their results, but when I look back at that conversation, one thing stood out.

You Can Be Sending More Emails

Yes, your organization can almost certainly be sending out more emails.

More cultivation emails. More asking appeals. More engagement emails. More reporting emails. More.

Let’s use this East Coast organization as an example. Why did they send out so many emails? Because they knew that the more emails they sent, the more engaged followers they would reach. And when they had more engaged followers, they received more donations.

This organization understood that the true reason for an email file is to gather people who are interested, and then sort those people into donors and nondonors.

Specifically, every unsubscribe was considered a success, because the unsubscribe helped to sort contacts into donors and non-donors.

Unsubscribes Are Success

I repeat: unsubscribes are success. Don’t be afraid of them. And please don’t think they are a negative.

If you’re viewing your email fundraising as a way to not only raise money, but to build your file, then unsubscribes are simply part of the process towards acquiring more donors.

Quotes of Amazement about Donor Generosity

Steven  |  Ask
Giving.

Donor generosity is amazing.

To give you a little joy in the middle of the craziness, here are a bunch of quotes about donor generosity that we’ve heard in the last week from organizations we serve.

I’ll just leave these right here for you to enjoy – and for organizations to think about if they or their beneficiaries are being harmed by the current situation but aren’t yet asking donors to help.

“Donors just blow me away with their generosity. So many have responded to share their own story of what they’re going through. And yet they choose to give. What a testament to what amazing people donors are.”

“I was talking to a friend last night, and she said, ‘Oh it must be soooo hard to raise money right now.’ And I thought that’s true if ‘hard’ means breaking all kinds of open rate, click-through rate, and revenue expectations. Then yeah, it’s really hard! ”

“It’s amazing to see how many people want to help right now.”

“It’s like year-end fundraising in March!”

“Donors that gave recently are giving again! This is unbelievable to me. It’s blowing me away!”

And my personal favorite (and a reminder for why your organization should be using the mail, too), a donor replied to an e-appeal with a gift and the following note:

“I forwarded your email to my mom, and she wants to donate but doesn’t want to do so online. Her friend would also like to make a donation. Is there a person and address she could send a check to?”

And finally, a quote from a small organization that used our easy formula for a successful Coronavirus e-appeal:

“I just wanted to thank you again and share the ongoing results of our emergency appeal (following your suggestions, of course). Immediately upon sending our 1st email last week, we received seven online gifts (may not seem like a lot, but it’s huge for us). As I write this email, we have received 81 online gifts, and 43 of those are from first-time donors.

“We also posted the appeal to our social media, which immediately resulted in comments and shares and gifts. Monday, I sent the same letter in the mail (with the edits you suggested in the Free Review Friday last week). I’ve also re-posted and emailed the appeal again this week.

“Not only are the gifts coming in, a couple of other amazing things happened – one of our grantors responded to the emergency appeal by releasing all the restrictions on the grant ($40K) and are allowing us to use the funds as we see fit – HUGE!!! And our local paper (distributed in our county) saw the emergency appeal and printed it inside the front cover of the paper. AMAZING!!”

Donor generosity is amazing! They’re unsung heroes in this whole thing – and I hope you enjoy your role in giving your donors opportunities to be heroic!

12 Tips for Fundraising Right Now

Steven  |  Crisis
Coronavirus.

Last Friday, I streamed a free two-hour session reviewing Coronavirus fundraising – (mostly emails) and answering specific questions about fundraising during this crazy time.

I’d like to publicly thank Marc Pitman for gathering all the advice dispensed during those two hours and putting it in a super-helpful blog post. Read it here.

And here’s what Marc summarized:

One of the phrases Steven keeps using is encouraging us to “lean into donor generosity.” I love his constant reminder that nonprofits are needed now more than ever. Donors get that. And are currently giving to it. That giving will slow but right now is a time to be asking.

Some other nuggets he says are:

    • Your donors are amazing, and they want to help.
    • Let them decide what is relevant and important to them.
    • Crisis giving spikes, and then slows. The slowing isn’t about donor fatigue. It’s about donor inattention and about the nonprofit’s fundraising irrelevance.
    • Now is not the time to fundraise for the future. Fundraise for the crisis now.
    • Your job is to clearly state how your beneficiaries, or your organization are being impacted by this situation. And how the donor can help.
    • If your most pressing issue is a shortfall in fundraising, tell the donor.
    • Send the emergency email. Resend it to people who didn’t open it. Send it again. Send it every other day.
    • Keep asking until the data tells you to stop. NOT until your feelings tell you. When the appeals stop working, that’s the data telling you to stop.
    • There are still LOTS of older people who haven’t given because they don’t give to emails. If you can get a letter out this week, do it.
    • $25 is a low ask in an email. Average online gifts for many nonprofits is $80, $90, or even $100.
    • Don’t let your unease with asking take away from a donor the chance to make an impact.
    • Now is NOT the time to send an “update on how we’re responding to Covid-19.” That is irrelevant to donors. Share a current need that they can act on.

And one of my favorites: in crisis moments like we’re in right now, “pretty good and fast” will raise more money than “perfect and a couple days later.” Reaching donors now is far better than waiting until things have calmed down. And even better than waiting until you get the wording 100% perfect.

I stand by every one of those.

And I’ll be doing another free review this Friday – you can sign up and submit your materials here.

If you want more guidance right now, here’s a post from last week with the four main ideas that will help you the most right now.

Good luck out there! And stay tuned, we’ll be posting helpful advice every day for the foreseeable future.

COVID-19 fundraising principles

Steven  |  Crisis
Response.

If you’re going to raise money for your beneficiaries and/or cause during the pandemic, follow these principles, and you’ll raise more money.

Note: Everything I’m about to say assumes one important thing – the current pandemic situation impacts your organization, cause, and/or beneficiaries. That could be the virus. It could be the economy. It could be travel restrictions. In other words, that there are “new or more needs” that you’re dealing with.

Here are the principles Better Fundraising is living by as we work with clients:

Speed matters. Sometime soon, several hundred thousand organizations are going to realize they’re in trouble and are going to send out e-appeals. You want to beat them to your donors’ inboxes. Don’t wait until the next vacancy in your communication schedule – cancel what’s coming next and replace it with something urgent.

Volume matters. Your donors’ attention is more fragmented than usual. That means your email open rates are going to drop by 20%. Your direct mail open rates will drop too. That means fewer people will see what you send out. And if fewer people see what you send out, you raise less money. So you need to send out more things.

Simplicity matters. You have less of your donors’ attention than you normally do. If your donor usually reads two paragraphs of your email before deciding whether to read the rest, for the next weeks, she’s only going to read one paragraph. So you have to get to the point quickly, and you have to keep it very simple.

Acute needs raise money. We’ve already seen this several times in the last five days. If your beneficiaries or organization is facing a critical need, share it with your donors. Donors LOVE acute needs.

So if your beneficiaries are short of rent money because their service industry jobs have been slashed, ask your donors to provide rent money. If you’re $1 million event was just canceled, ask donors to help erase your $1 million shortfall.

Make it clear – make it simple. Resist the urge to over-explain. Send it fast.

If you haven’t seen it, here’s a video I made with an 8-point outline for a successful e-appeal.

Good luck out there!

SPECIAL POST: Follow This Formula to Raise Money Right Now [FREE VIDEO]

Steven  |  Crisis
COVID

If the COVID-19/Coronavirus is hurting your beneficiaries or your organization, your donors would love to help by sending in a special gift.

Here’s a formula we created to help organizations during this time of need. Follow this formula to create a simple email that works extraordinarily well:

  1. Quickly acknowledge that things aren’t normal right now
  2. Describe how the situation (COVID-19 or the economy) is hurting your cause / beneficiaries / organization
  3. Ask for a special gift to help (link to your donation page)
  4. Very short story to illustrate the need
  5. Show how the donor’s gift perfectly meets the need
  6. Show how the need from the story is not the only need
  7. Share that the funds needed are not in the budget
  8. Ask the donor to send an emergency gift right now (link to your donation page)

We’re sending this out as quickly as possible because this formula is WORKING. Every email that’s been sent out using it has been a big success.

If you’d like to watch a video of me explaining the formula in more detail, along with an example of an email that follows the formula, click here.

Resist the urge to over-explain. Keep it simple and get it in front of your donors as quickly as you can!

Then get in touch and let us know how well the formula worked for you and your organization!

“What should we avoid in our fundraising?”

Steven  |  Ask
Avoid.

Remember the Founder I told you about last Thursday?

The one who said that his organization exists “so that donors can help these girls”?

He also asked a question that I wish more non-profits would ask themselves:

“What should we avoid in our fundraising?”

When was the last time you heard a non-profit ask that question?

There are LOTS of things to avoid in your fundraising, like the non-obvious mistakes that cost so much money, of course.

But mostly I liked that he asked it because it’s such a good question.

Two challenges for you:

  1. Quickly jot down a list of all the things your organization currently avoids in your appeals and newsletters. It’s likely to be an interesting list because most organizations have a set of unwritten rules for what they can and cannot talk about.

a. I can almost guarantee you that there are some things on that list that you should be including, not avoiding. For instance, if “Avoid telling stories where the person still needs help” is on your list, you should take it off.

b. Follow-up question: are there some things you should avoid for some segments of your audience, but not others? For instance, there are some things you should avoid doing in grant applications. But if you avoid them in your direct response appeal letters, you’re raising a lot less money than you could be.

  1. Sign up for Free Review Fridays. At 10:00 AM Pacific each Friday, I review appeals, e-appeals, and newsletters submitted by your fellow Fundraisers (and you can submit yours, too). Watch a few examples, and you’ll quickly see what to include – and what to avoid – with your appeals and newsletters!

The Non-Obvious Mistakes that Cost You Money

Steven  |  Ask
Mistakes.

This post is a list of what I call “non-obvious mistakes.”

No one in your organization will ever notice them.

But they cost you thousands of dollars every time you send out an appeal.

Because these mistakes are the difference between an appeal that raises $40,000 instead of the $68,000 it could have raised. These are the difference between an appeal that raises $2,500 instead of $8,000.

Regardless of how big or small your organization is, these non-obvious mistakes are expensive:

  • Lack of clarity about what the donor’s gift will do. Saying things like “Please send a gift today to provide hope” are not clear descriptions of what a donor’s gift will accomplish. As Brené Brown puts it, “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.” (Want to know how to be clear? Have a great offer.)
  • Not printing your donor’s name, address, and suggested gift amounts on their reply card. The tests are clear: customized reply cards with customized gift asks will increase the number of people who respond, and increase the size of gifts they give.
  • Mailing too many people. You’re sending your mailing to all your past donors, even the ones who haven’t given in several years.
  • Making your appeal hard to read. These are things like type that’s below 13pt, too many words per page, too-small margins, too much reverse-type, etc.
  • Not including clear reasons why the donor should give a gift right now, today. Most nonprofit appeals and e-appeals share what’s happening at the organization and ask for support. But they don’t include any reasons that the donor should give a gift right now – and then are weirdly surprised when very few donors give a gift today.
    How many of those mistakes is your organization making on a regular basis?

These get missed because – somewhat rightly – we’re usually focused on the obvious mistakes that everyone knows about:

  • Messing up donor data. Like addressing mail to me as “Dear Seven” instead of “Dear Steven” and doing it for years. (True story.)
  • Print shop foul-ups. Things like half of your donors getting a reply card for a different nonprofit. (Another true story. Super fun!)
  • Lousy Links. When the links and buttons in your email don’t lead donors to the right place.

Everybody who has done direct response fundraising for any length of time has a couple of these under their belt. Things happen. But you can build systems and processes to eliminate most of these obvious mistakes, most of the time.

But it’s the other kind of mistakes that kill you.

It’s the non-obvious mistakes that stop organizations from “making the leap” to the next level.

It’s the non-obvious mistakes that keep organizations from ever reaching the scale they need to make a big difference.

The best thing you can do is learn. Read this blog. Follow people who have done this stuff at scale. For instance, follow Lisa Sargent on Twitter – she’s rocking it lately with great advice. As much as possible, do what experienced people recommend, not what know-nothing opinion-havers in your organization say they like.

And for those of you who can’t do what experienced people recommend because people in your organization won’t let you – hold tight. I’m working on something I’m calling the Convince Your Boss Kit. Stay tuned. And for now, do as much as you can!