Tag: Asking

How Things Work

Steven Screen  |  Repeat
Owner manual.

I’ve always liked to understand how things work.

Engines, supply & demand, how plywood is made, you name it.

Early in my fundraising career, when looking at detailed fundraising results, I noticed the following three things that go a long way to explaining how mass donor fundraising works:

  1. Appeals raise more than stewardship pieces.  OK, great.  An appeal is the best thing an organization can do increase revenue.  And if an organization wants to raise more money, its annual plan should prioritize sending appeals.  Appeals are also great at getting donors to give again, which is the definition of “retaining” a donor.
  2. Stewardship pieces increase donor retention.  Great.  We need to make sure that every annual plan has some stewardship pieces – but need to remember that they raise less than appeals.

The immediate next question is, “What’s the right mix of appeals to stewardship pieces?”  Back to the fundraising results I went.  I looked at the nonprofits who were out-raising similar organizations while also retaining a high percentage of their donors.  And that’s when I noticed:

  1. The organizations that had the healthiest mix of Revenue and Donor Retention sent roughly 2 appeals for every 1 stewardship piece.  The 2:1 ratio maximized their revenue & impact today, while also retaining donors so that next year went great.

I’ve used that rough ratio successfully for hundreds, probably over a thousand nonprofits since then.  It keeps on working.

(It is, of course, a little different in a major donor context where you are in relationship with the donor.  The 2:1 ratio does not apply.)

Here’s one of the things all this makes you realize: you can over-steward your mass donors, and there are real negative consequences to doing so.  If a nonprofit over-stewards its mass donors, it raises less money in the short term and retains fewer donors in the long-term. 

Think of stewardship as “planting seeds” and appeals as “picking the fruit.”  If you plant a lot of seeds, but don’t pick the fruit very often, you have less of a harvest than you earned.  Fruit doesn’t pick itself.

Interestingly, the biggest hurdle to smaller nonprofits sending out more appeals is emotional resistance.  People cannot believe the 2:1 ratio is correct.  They don’t enjoy sending appeals.  They can’t believe that donors enjoy giving in response to appeals.

That’s why much of Better Fundraising’s work is sitting with nonprofit leadership, talking to stakeholders, sharing examples & stories, and helping them be comfortable trying one or two steps of a different approach.

If you’d like to have that conversation, let’s chat.  It’s what we do.  You do the dreaming about the impact you could have if you raised a great deal more in 2026, and we’ll help you have the conversation and start raising more money and retaining more donors!

Three Tips for the Final Three Weeks

Steven Screen  |  Year-End
Three snowmen.

It’s December 11th.  By now you should already be seeing increased traffic to your website and increased gifts.    

Here are three quick tips to help you make the most of the final three weeks of fundraising this year.

Tip #1

Make sure the description of what the donor’s gift will make possible is the same on your giving/landing page as it is in your year-end appeal letter and your year-end emails.

If our experience is any indication, making sure donors see the same language in your fundraising and on your giving page will increase the amount of money you raise.    

Tip #2

Make sure the hero image / first slider on your website is a call to action to give a year-end gift.  The link should take a user directly to your giving page.

Most nonprofits see a surge in web traffic during the final weeks of the year, and most of that traffic is arriving with an interest or intent to give you a gift.  By making your call to action super obvious, you increase the number of people who make it to your giving page, and you’ll get more gifts.

Tip #3

If your web provider/platform allows it, set up a pop-up (also called a “popover” or a “light box”) with a call to action to give a year-end gift. 

Again, a lot of people coming to your site this month are coming with the intent to give a gift.  Pop-ups are proven to increase the number of visitors who actually give those gifts.

Good luck!

Want More People Interested in Your Organization?

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Interested.

This is oversimplified, but still true…

At the beginning of a nonprofit’s fundraising journey, when deciding what its fundraising should be about, the nonprofit wonders,

“How can we describe our work to be as inspirational as possible?” 

Farther along on their fundraising journey, when deciding what its fundraising should be about, the nonprofit wonders,

“What do humans tend to be motivated by, and how can we talk about our work in a way that taps in to what motivates people?”

The second question results in creating fundraising that’s more interesting and relevant to drastically more people, which increases the amount of money the organization can raise. 

Why?  Because there aren’t that many people interested in your work itself, no matter how inspirationally you describe it.

But there are millions of people who are engaged by emotions, who want to see justice done, who want to right wrongs, and who want their gift to make a meaningful difference.  Focus your fundraising on how those elements are part of your work, and your organization becomes a lot more interesting to a lot more people.

Word Pictures

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Story.

It happens all the time at nonprofits – you want to include a story in your next appeal or e-appeal to help donors understand the situation better… but you don’t have a story.

In case that ever happens to you, here’s a technique we use all the time.  I call it “telling a true story about a person you know exists but you have not met.”

Here’s an example for an organization that sends missionaries and is raising money to provide training for the missionaries. 

As I write you today, there’s a missionary who could use a little help.  Their faith is strong, their marriage is strong, but they could use a little break and a little encouragement.  That’s why I’m excited to tell you that your gift of $XX will provide a day of respite and training.

Because in the life of a missionary, there should be times of rest.  These are people who think about their calling 24/7!  And with as rapidly as today’s world is moving, it’s hard to build deep cross-cultural relationships and stay on top of the latest missionary knowledge.

Your gift will allow one person to do just that.

Imagine the relief when a missionary hears, “A generous donor has sent in a gift to help pay for your training.  And the cost for this break and trip will be paid for – it doesn’t come out of your personal budget!”

If you put yourself in a tired missionary’s shoes for a moment, I’m sure you can image tears, and relief, and joy, and wonderment.

See how there’s no traditional “story”?  But can you also see how we’ve painted a true word picture that helps the donor see the situation and what their gift will do?

Here’s the thing: you are an expert in the people or cause you’re working on.  You know the details, the circumstances, and the emotions.

So you can share details that you know are true, even though you don’t know the people themselves.

This technique is not a replacement for “a great story from the field.”  (There are details and emotions in real stories that even the best writers can’t create.)

But sometimes you don’t have a story.  And when you know your work, and you know your fundraising would be more powerful with true details, this technique is helpful.

Fundraising in Two Steps

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Make a difference.

At its simplest, I think you can boil “raising money from individual donors through the mail and email” down to two steps:

  1. Making an emotional connection with the humans reading your fundraising (which I wrote about on Tuesday), and 
  2. Then giving people an easy, low-cost step they can take to make a meaningful difference.

This approach is easy to understand but hard to do.  And it goes against the standard orthodoxy of “make a case and describe our work in an inspirational way.”

But in my now 30+ years of looking at fundraising results, this “two step” approach is at the heart of the fundraising that works the best.  (And if you want evidence, just call me.  Better Fundraising’s clients routinely see huge jumps in revenue as soon as we help them switch them from the standard approach to this approach.)

And it makes sense, right?!?  If you “make a case and try to inspire people with your work” you have to teach them about your work and tell them why it’s inspiring.  This means your reader has to learn something before your request for support makes sense.  This is homework, not fundraising!

Or you could tell your reader an interesting story about something they care about. (And you know they care about your cause or your beneficiaries – if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be on your list.)

Once your donor is emotionally engaged, you give them a low-cost way to make a meaningful difference.  You lower the barrier to giving a gift.  You describe something great that they can do or be a part of.  You describe the meaningful difference it will make.

 Get people emotionally engaged, then tell them how their small gift today will make a difference. I share how to do this in this post, this free eBook, and it’s what McKenzie is describing in this post.

Really, that’s it: get people emotionally engaged, then tell them how their small gift today will make a meaningful difference.

Scary Data Frankensteins

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Frankenstein.

When you are reviewing fundraising data, beware any time the data contains information from two different media channels or two different audiences. 

Here’s a simple example…

Say we recently completed a campaign that included one appeal letter to current donors and two e-appeals.  Here are the results:

  • 11,000 sent
  • 124 gifts
  • 1.4% response rate.

With those numbers, we can get a vague sense of whether the campaign was successful.  But I would say that the data above hides more than it illuminates because when we go to run the campaign next year we don’t know how to improve the campaign because we don’t know which parts of the campaign worked, and which parts didn’t.

But look at what happens when we can see the results for each piece of the campaign…

Direct mail appeal letter to current donors

  • 1,000 sent
  • 83 gifts
  • 8.3% response

E-appeal #1

  • 5,000 sent
  • 31 gifts
  • .62% response

E-Appeal #2

  • 5,000 sent
  • 10 gifts
  • .20% response

OK, now we’re talking.  Look at what we know now:

  • The appeal letter is a tremendous success.  An 8.3% response in direct mail is fantastic.
  • E-appeal #1 is also a success – a .62% response in email is also a success.
  • E-appeal #2 is not a success – a .2% response is too low.

Compare that to the combined data, which gave us an average response rate of 1.4%.  That number didn’t tell us anything.

But looking at the performance data for each piece enables us to do something powerful: learn that the messaging used in the appeal letter and e-appeal #1 worked great, and then apply those the next time we do this campaign and to all our future fundraising.

Additionally, by breaking out the results for each piece, over time you’ll learn your benchmarks for each audience and each channel.  This is very powerful because it helps you identify the pieces of fundraising that are effective, and those that aren’t.

But if you keep everything together, you just get a Frankenstein.

People are More Important than Platforms

Steven Screen  |  Repeat
Online platforms.

The online fundraising platforms we’re currently using are going to change.

Think about it.  For any Fundraiser who has been fundraising online for a decade, they’ve had two dominant platforms: Facebook and Instagram.

Now podcasts, texts and TikTok are coming.

If you work in Fundraising for the next 20 years, I bet there will be three or four more platforms.

The technology changes every couple of years.  Human psychology barely changes at all.

It’s good to know the ins and outs of whatever platform you’re using now.  But what will make you an exceptional Fundraiser is knowing the ins and outs of what makes people give and then give again.

Then you’ll succeed on any platform.

***

PS — writing this post made me realize that the two channels that have the most staying power are probably the mail and email.  I suggest that’s true because mail and email are experienced by the recipient as a direct message to them.

Texts have the same feature.

If those are the three “platforms” that are going to stick around, I would prioritize getting good at them.  Plus, they have a feature that is always a benefit: they allow you to “own your list” instead of being at the mercy of the algorithm.

Whose Story Is It?

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Guitar storytelling.

There’s a blogger I like named “Gabe The Bass Player” who writes primarily for musicians.  I find him thought provoking.

Talking mostly to musicians, he recently said, “You keep getting to do this because enough people continually add you as part of their story.”

I think the same thing is true about nonprofits and fundraising – your organization keeps getting to do its thing because enough people add you as part of their story.

Keep thinking about that last part: “…people add you as part of their story.”

There are a million different ways to think about fundraising.  But any way that ignores the fact that an individual donor is primarily adding you to her story is not going to work very well.

Is it true that she’s also part of your story?  Of course.

Is it true that she’s also part of the story of your cause or community?  Of course.

But at that mostly sub-conscious “give or don’t give” moment, her story is the most important story to her.

So for your mail and email fundraising to really succeed, it must be created in such a way that the donor sees herself and wants to add your organization to her story.

Your Email List is a Cross Country Team

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Cross country.

If you’re a small nonprofit and you don’t raise much money from your email list, keep reading.

Here’s an analogy that has proven helpful for many of the organizations we serve: think of your email list as a high school cross country team whose season has not yet started. 

People have signed up for your team.  Some people have been signed up for the team for 6 months.  But the team hasn’t gone on any runs yet – they haven’t had to do anything yet.

In this analogy, when the season starts and the cross country team begins going on long runs, what’s going to happen?

Three things, almost immediately:

  • People are going to drop off the team.  They are going to say, “Oh, I didn’t know we’d have to do that, turns out this isn’t for me, I’m going to drop off the team.”
  • A few people are going to complain.  “I don’t like this.  I liked it more when we talked about running.”
  • A few people are going to say, “Yes, this is what I’m here for, this is hard but good.”

The same three things are going to happen when you start to regularly ask your email list to make gifts: people are going to drop off your team (unsubscribe), people are going to complain (reply to your emails with whatever is bothering them), and people are going to know they are in the right place (donate).

But most nonprofit email lists are like cross country teams that go on one or two runs a year.  That kind of “training” doesn’t make for a very effective team.

Here’s the thing: on your cross country team, you want people who understand that they will need to go on long runs.  You want people who will go on long runs even when it’s cold and rainy.  You want people who are on the team despite the difficulty, who love the community and the joy of getting better.

And on your email list, you want people who understand that they will be asked to give gifts.  You want people who are on your list despite the difficulty, who love the community and the joy of making the world a little bit better. 

Your cross country team will be stronger when it is a little smaller, and made up of people who know what it takes.

Your email list will be stronger when it is a little smaller and made up of people who know what it takes.

So if your email list hasn’t been asked very often, be prepared for a few unsubscribes and complaints when you start.  But also be prepared for more donations than you’ve received before, more first-time donors, and an email list you can count on when the going gets tough.