Tag: Asking

Fundraising Strategy Session

Lisa Sargent  |  Repeat

The following is a hand-picked guest post from Lisa Sargent.  Enjoy, and you can read more about Lisa below.

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As a fundraising copywriter I get asked a lot about strategy.

“How often should we communicate with supporters?”
“Is mail really better – or email?”
“What if our nonprofit can’t do the thing you suggest?”

For all the advice around strategy, you still have foundational questions. And you’re hoping for actionable, achievable answers. Fear not! Today we’ll real-world answers to my most asked questions – sized for every organization – to help you grow your donor fundraising and retention communications.

Let’s dig in.

Question 1: What should an effective donor communications calendar look like for my nonprofit?

Answer:

First, let me say: I get what you’re facing. Everywhere you look, it feels like someone is telling you that you’re mailing too much or not enough, or the wrong stuff. But no one is sharing what a working (and workable), effective, sustainable, real-life fundraising calendar looks like. It’s time we change that.

I call this basic strategy the “dead simple donor comms calendar.”

Yes, there are variations. (After the basic plan, below, you’ll find two alternatives.) Yes, you may need to adapt these plans depending on the maturity of your donor communications program, the timing of milestone dates/events in your nonprofit, and the capacity/skillset of your fundraising team.

But this entry strategy is a great goal to work towards and, for the record, one of the plans my clients often use.

Basic 3X3 Donor Comms Calendar: [3 newsletters/3 appeals + reminder]
Approx. size of organization working this plan: $3 million+; 2-3 person team (**see Note2) 

Jan/Feb: Donor newsletter
Apr/May: Appeal
June: Donor newsletter
Sept: Appeal
Oct: Donor newsletter
Nov: Holiday Appeal
Dec: Holiday Reminder
Extra Mailings (*see Note1)

My design partner Sandie (aka Designer Sandie) and I have used variations of this to help clients achieve successes such as:

  • an organization that grew its active donors from 2,000 to over 20,000 (increasing to a nearly 70% retention rate), 
  • a nonprofit that grew its direct marketing income six-fold,
  • another that routinely saw 10+ percent response rates to newsletters,
  • another that cross-purposes its comms to attract new supporters, encourage legacy gifts, and promote new services.

*Note1: You will have other pieces happening at the same time. You may be modifying your calendar to incorporate other, special appeals. Bespoke TYs – custom-crafted to each appeal and newsletter – are built into these plans. For today, you’ll see these “extra” pieces labeled as Satellite Mailings at the end of each calendar.

**Note2: When I talk about the team, I mean on the client side. In my case, the other part of the team is me and Designer Sandie, plus the printer of choice [or print management company, etc.] our clients work with.

Here’s a second donor comms plan, one of the variations I mentioned a moment ago, a slightly expanded calendar…

4X4 Donor Communications Calendar: [4 newsletters/4 appeals + reminder]
Approx size of organization working this plan: Approx $8mil organization; 3+ person fundraising team (+ temp helpers for holiday) 

Early Feb: Thank-You Newsletter
March: Special Services Appeal
April: Spring Newsletter
June: Summer Appeal
July: Newsletter [includes special gratitude premium]
September: Autumn Appeal
October: Autumn Newsletter
November: Holiday Appeal
December: Holiday Reminder
Extra Mailings (*see Note1 at basic plan above)

And here’s another for a larger organization, that incorporates multiple special mailings and replaces one of the newsletters with a stewardship mailing:

Expanded Donor Communications Calendar: [3 newsletters/Specialized packs and multiple appeals]
Approx size of organization working this plan: Approx $20mil+ organization; 6+ person fundraising team 

Jan: Winter Newsletter
Feb: Tax Mailing
Mar:  Special Appeal
Apr/May: Spring Newsletter
June: Summer Appeal
July: Supporter Survey Pack and Survey Follow-Ups
August: Summer Newsletter
September: Autumn Appeal
October: Special Stewardship Mailing
October: Tax Reminders
November: Holiday Appeal
December: Holiday Reminder

Extra Mailings (*see Note1 at basic plan above)

Hopefully this glimpse into real-life communications plans shines a light for you on how to chart your own donor communications strategy – and feel confident doing so! 

Question 2: Which is better – email or mail? (The answer everyone wants to know!)

Fast answer: tl;dr – The answer is both, whenever you can.

Full answer [with side story and statistics]:

Not long ago in response to my LinkedIn post about print and older eyes, a nonprofit consultant who is over age 50 – they said so, fyi – wanted me to know “older givers” are tech savvy too. So why was I STILL talking about print? They wanted me to know they immediately throw away everything that comes from nonprofits in the mail!

The answer I gave became a feature article called How to Write for Older Donors, in my newsletter. And, so you know, I also use tech and am over age 50… and I advocate for print (direct mail) because results prove me right.

For today I want to share an excerpt from Chapter 4 of my book Thankology,which looks at why the answer to the email vs. mail question is always “Do both, whenever you can.” (fyi: all nonprofits described in the previous section on donor comms calendars do digital and direct mail, even the smaller nonprofits).

>> Statistic 1:  The effect of adding a communications channel***

Read as: What can happen when you add mail to an email-only program; or add email to a mail-only program:

A study of 2,000 nonprofits that ran from 2016 to 2019 and published in the Network for Good whitepaper, Our Digital Dilemma, found “a strong relationship between donor retention and consistent multi-channel engagement,” including:

“Nonprofits that increased the number of channels used to engage donors [from one channel to 2+] retained 11.89% donors year-over-year.”

>> Statistic 2: The effect of removing a communications channel***

Read as: What can happen when, for example, a decision is made that “no one wants print” and nonprofit moves from a mail/email combo program to only email:

“Conversely, nonprofits who were using a multi-channel framework but reverted to single-channel saw their median year-over-year retention drop by 31.32%. (A join Virtuous/NextAfter study of 119 nonprofits showed mult-channel donors give 3X more, too.)”

***Note for Statistics 1 and 2:
Network for Good is now Bonterra. I’ve searched for a new link to the Digital Dilemma whitepaper and can’t locate one. If I find it, I’ll update everyone in a future Loyalty Letter. You can, however, get the 2021 Virtuous/Next After study on free sign-up, here: https://www.multichannelnonprofit.com. The study also found that for “donors who give both offline and online…their first-year donor retention rate is two times higher.” 

To sum up?

Based on the research, and results we’ve seen over the years, the best answer is that if you want to keep your donors connected and giving, you’ll do both: digital and mail.

Question 3: For email vs. mail, what about thank-you letters? Do I send both? (What I told L.)

Below is the full text of the question that L. – a reader from a small nonprofit in the UK – wrote me about what to do if she can’t afford to mail everyone thank-yous, and needs to use email-only for some:

L. wrote:

As a small charity, with no real advice to hand, I am really focussing, at the moment, on creating and writing top notch Thank You letters to our donors. The one thing that perplexes me most is whether to email or write a letter and at what level of giving a letter is more appropriate or whether it is entirely acceptable to just send emails (bearing in mind the cost of postage in the UK is absurd).

Here’s my answer to L.:

If donors come to you via online donations, remember you need some kind of disclaimer that mentions you’ll communicate with them by post. (You want the option to do this.)

Gift acknowledgment may fall into the ‘administrative communications’ gray zone for charity regulations, but I’d check those rules first if you haven’t. It’s super easy to add a notice to your donation page, by including a variation of this wording below your opt-in boxes online (again run past your legal team or check charity regs first):

We’ll also keep you updated by post. You can update your communication preferences any time at [link to full email of donor care for your org here]. And for more information you can see our privacy statement here.

Then, for each appeal and newsletter, you can craft one version of a thank-you (TY) for post (mail), and one for email. All of my nonprofit clients send post and email TYs to every supporter who gives (and has given permission to contact). The reason for this is gratitude and acknowledgment firstly, and secondly because we know when donors give by more than one channel (online/post e.g.) they give longer and stronger (see data in Question 2).

With that said, knowing your charity is still small and growing, you could tier who receives both post and email TYs, and who receives email-only.

You’ll know your donors best. But for example, you might consider:

  • all new donors get both,
  • all monthly givers get both when they sign up
  • repeat givers (so, second gift especially which is huge in importance, and beyond if you can)
  • donors who give over a certain threshold/and loyal givers
  • tax-efficient givers
  • in memoriam/tribute givers, in-mems especially who we know have a connection to legacy.

Have a think on thanking these donors with an eye towards stewardship and retention, then as your organization grows, you can consider bringing more people into the double-thank-you strategy.

I went on to refer L. to my thank-you clinic on SOFII, free, no sign-up needed, gateway article here: https://sofii.org/article/how-to-write-a-better-thank-you-letter-and-why-it-matters   

Question 4: My head is spinning. Can you leave me with one suggestion to act on for today?

Answer: Yes! Spool up on – and start drip feeding across your communications – the opportunity to give through legacy donations.

By this I mean:  Help show donors how they can leave a gift to your organization in their will.

You’ll find tips on overcoming common bequest giving barriers – plus super easy ways you can start to incorporate legacy giving in your messaging, right here in my blog post, Legacy Logjams and How to Free Them.

The simplest of all? Get a legacy checkbox on your reply form (donation slip, reply device, etc.) It has not, for us, suppressed response to appeals, just so you know.

You can keep it simple:
[   ] Please send me details on how I can remember the work of [your charity’s name here] in my Will.

OR add emotion:
[   ]   I’d like to leave a legacy of love – please post free details to me on how I can leave a gift in my Will to [remember homeless pets, advance breast cancer research, etc].

One of our clients saw their first legacy donation about 18 months after we added these. We can’t prove this made the difference, but they had never mentioned legacy giving to their donors before that. 

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© Lisa Sargent and Lisa Sargent Communications, used with permission. If you adapt or repurpose this content in any format, please be a guardian of good karma and get your proper permissions. And, of course, remember that this information is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be considered as legal advice on any subject matter.

Steven says: “Lisa Sargent is a fundraising expert and the author of Thankology, the best book on thanking donors that I’ve ever read.  You can (and should!) subscribe to her newsletter here.”

Lisa says: “If this mini-strategy session helped you, you can:

Subscribe to my Loyalty Letter newsletter for fundraisers
Connect/follow/say hello on LinkedIn
Check out Thankology (on Amazon or Bookshop)
Find free fundraising resources at lisasargent.com

“Thank you for reading today, and big thanks to Steven, Jim, and The Better Fundraising Co. for sharing a place on their blog.“

How Long is Too Long?

Lisa Sargent  |  Ask
How long is too long.

The following is a hand-picked guest post from Lisa Sargent. Enjoy, and you can read more about Lisa below.

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My job is fundraising copywriting.

So if people don’t read the direct mail appeals I write, you better believe I know it. Revenue, response, retention, those things are going to go down.

Which means I also know – firsthand – that when someone tells you, “No one reads long letters anymore” – it’s rubbish.

But we’re not here to be combative.

Instead, I want you to think about your letters like a working fundraising writer.

So today we’re going to take that “No long letters ever” myth (because it IS a myth) and run with it…

Let’s assume you one day decide your fundraising appeals will not… must NEVER… exceed 1 sheet of paper. (DO NOT decree this in real-life please. It’s a huge mistake. Keep reading.)

Let’s also assume you want to format your letter for maximum readability (readability boosts response fyi). This means:

  • You need 1-1.5” for your nonprofit logo/letterhead
  • You want 1” margins left and right
  • You want ~1” for bottom page margin
  • You need type size set at 12-14 points, in a font that isn’t condensed
  • You need to tab (indent) your paragraphs
  • You need 1-2 lines for a page turn reminder (e.g., ‘continues on other side’; watch my YouTube video w/ John Lepp on this)
  • You need 1-1.5” for your signature block and side 2 sign-off
  • You may (or may not) need an add’l .5 -.75” for footer with your charity number, tax ID, disclaimer, etc.
  • You may (or may not) need a 2” address block.

I am NOT saying you can’t successfully write short. You can. I have. Lots of others, too.

What I AM saying is that after the above, you have about 750 words to get the job done.

Add a paragraph on both sides to ask for a gift, and you’re at, what, 650 words?

In the wrong hands these letters get real boilerplate, real quick. In real-life, this works so much better:

Make your fundraising appeals as long as they need to be to:

  • Tell your story with emotion, clarity, resonance, truth, and urgency, present a strong offer, and provide repeated calls to action.
  • Format for readability.
  • If you use photos (Designer Sandie and I often do), you also need space for photo captions.

From nearly two decades of measured results like conversions, click-throughs, average gifts, and response rates, I can tell you this:

Many of my best-performing appeals are 6-page letters. (Yup. Recently, too.) Many others are 4-page letters.

Several of these include multi-year control packs (a.k.a. banker’s packs, that have yet to be surpassed in terms of results and response).

Some are 2-pagers. None are postcards. And again, all of this is based on actual results.

Top emails? 450 to 750+ words. (More on that in a minute.)

So if your team is agonizing over short letter vs. long, have them focus instead on what no one really wants:

Inline
Credit: Photo (c) Lisa Sargent, Thankology [design: S. Collette]

No one wants a 4-page letter crammed onto 1-page/2-sides;

No one wants 8-point type with yawning wide line measures that skyrocket eye fatigue and create an Impenetrable Wall of Text (what do I mean? see above);

No supporter wants boilerplate EVER. They want emotion, a strong offer, life, authenticity, connection, urgency, love. 

Write the above into all your creative briefs before you mandate letter length, and watch your fundraising appeals improve.

For your emails? 

You can absolutely write longer (as in 450-750 words). But remember to keep it top-heavy: 

  • You have 1-2 lines to get to the point. 
  • Make your first call to action (i.e., Ask) within 140 words. (My best-performing emails do this in the first 90 words or so.)
  • Front-load your subject line (best parts first)
  • Below first call to action you can expand your story, and add repeated calls to action after that
  • Check out NextAfter’s research around plain-text emails (and, really, their entire Digital Research Library: great for experimenting with format) 

Now here’s one last tip, exclusively for Better Fundraising Co. blog readers (that’s you!)… just to really shake things up… one last letter that should really be just one page long.

Meet the one letter that’s really one page: Your donation thank-you letter.

In my book Thankology (on Amazon or Bookshop) there’s an entire chapter called “Clear thinking on the format fog: The core pieces your thank-you pack needs.”

The nutshell version is this:

Almost all the time, your donation thank-you letter should be a 1-page, 1-sided letter, specific to the appeal or newsletter or occasion that prompted it.

Why? Two reasons.

First, because you want the whole, wonderful thing to be visible when your reader opens the letter. Your longer appeal letter, remember, did the long-as-it-needs-to be job.

THIS letter, your thank-you letter, gets the short and sweet spotlight: All the love and gratitude magic right there on one page.

Second, because if it’s longer, you run the risk of it looking like an appeal. Want to add a photo? Why not pop in a little photo card? (Added benefit: your supporter has a mantle-worthy keepsake to remind them of their connection to your cause, and your lovely thank-you.)

Remember: Appeal letters are longer. Thank-you letters, almost always, are not.

Now the next time someone tells you, “Your letter always has to be one page or else,” you have a smarter, results-based way to look at things.

Go forth and write that appeal with great heart… as long as it needs to be!

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Steven says: Lisa Sargent is a fundraising expert and the author of Thankology, the best book on thanking donors that I’ve ever read.  You can (and should!) subscribe to her newsletter here.

Did this post on letter length help you? If yes, you can:

Thank you for reading today, and big thanks to Steven, Jim, and The Better Fundraising Co. for sharing a place on their blog. J

© Lisa Sargent and Lisa Sargent Communications, used with permission. If you adapt or repurpose this content in any format, please be a guardian of good karma and get your proper permissions. And, of course, remember that this information is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be considered as legal advice on any subject matter.

An Idea to Help Your Donor Acquisition

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Bright idea.

When you’re talking or writing to people who are not donors, and you’re thinking about what to say, here’s a truth to remember: 

None of them care about your organization, but some of them care about your cause or beneficiaries.

So, don’t start off your speech or letter by talking about your organization.  Attempting to start a relationship by talking about something you know the other person doesn’t care about is not a successful tactic. 

On the other hand, if you start off talking about your cause or beneficiaries, then the people who care are immediately interested in what you have to say. 

Now you’re ahead of the game.

Now, the people who are most likely to donate are the people who are paying attention.  And they already know that you care about what they care about.

In the very first moment, you’ve established common ground with the people who are most likely to donate.

And I have to add, the “holy grail” is talking about your cause or beneficiaries and tying it to a value to everyone believes in.  Think opening lines like:

“No one should have to suffer from a disease when the cure costs $100.  And now that you know you can massively improve a person’s life for less than the cost a nice dinner out, let me tell you how you can do it and why it’s important.”

Now everyone is paying attention. 

Or you could start by telling everyone what year your organization was founded.

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Hey, my business partner Jim Shapiro is giving a free strategy session next Tuesday on event fundraising — and how a small but powerful shift in your speaking program can help you raise a whole lot more money.

See, most nonprofit events put all the emphasis on the wrong things. And I don’t want you make the same mistake in your next event. So click the link below to register for the strategy session and learn Jim’s “Mullet Method” for event fundraising.

https://betterfundraising.com/event-fundraising-webinar

PS — There’s limited availability so that Jim can have a real conversation with you. This is NOT one of those webinars where someone talks for 55 minutes straight. There will be lots of time for questions.

For more info, click here.

Answers to 5 Key Questions About Monthly Giving

Erica Waasdorp  |  Repeat
5 key questions and answers.

The following is a hand-picked guest post from Erica Waasdorp. Enjoy, and you can read more about Erica below.

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As I’m sure you can imagine, fundraisers ask me questions about monthly giving all of the time. That’s why I wanted to answer a few of those key questions.

1. What’s the Best Time of Year to Ask for Monthly Gifts?

There is no bad time to ask for monthly gifts, but if you want to plan for prime times, they’re September/October and February/March.

I love calling September “sustainer month.” It’s an ideal time to focus on monthly giving. The kids are back in school. People have returned from vacations. You’re not yet in the heavy giving season. What is a better way to engage donors than by asking them to consider a monthly gift right now? Consider a small sustainer drive, integrating all your messaging, aimed at monthly gifts.

Then do the same in February/March. You may have recent one-time donors you can invite to consider converting to give monthly.

Having said this, if you want to grow your monthly donor program, you must ask your small donors as often as possible. It’s so easy to build in extra monthly-giving buttons, so you’re constantly planting the seeds about recurring giving. Just look at your annual communications plan and add some monthly giving campaigns and then make sure you do them. What do you have to lose?

2. What’s the Next Big Trend When It Comes to Monthly Giving?

Instead of worrying about the next big trend, I think it’s more important that each nonprofit looks at giving more opportunities for donors to consider a monthly gift. The good news is that I’m starting to see more of that.

  • Electronic bank transfer. Nonprofits are offering an electronic bank transfer, aka automated clearinghouse (ACH), which is good news as that will help prevent expiring and declining credit cards. Some organizations have also started preselecting the ACH on their forms.
  • Texting. More nonprofits can add texting to the mix and that’s a great way to support a campaign.
  • Connected TV (CTV). The larger nonprofits are successful in using CTV. It’s much more expensive than mail, email and phone though.

The more important trend, though, is what you are seeing in your own nonprofit. What have you done to generate new monthly donors? Then consider adding a few more emails and seeing where you can add monthly gifts to your direct mail pieces.

Oh, by the way, remember to repurpose your content. If you had an email that worked well for one-time gifts two years ago, can you use it again to ask for a monthly gift this time?

3. Can Donors Give Monthly from their Donor-Advised Fund (DAF)?

Yes, donors can use their DAF to make recurring grants. They typically have $50 a month minimum. Donors can choose other frequencies, and unfortunately, they can set an end date. It’s important to always follow directions on how the donor wants to be recognized, but other than that, you can steward them like you would other monthly donors.

If you can, code them in your donor database as recurring DAF donors.

Just like with online banking donors who set up recurring gifts without telling you, you may be able to find these recurring donors by looking at trends in your donor database.

4. Are Workplace Giving Donors Recurring Donors as Well?

Just like with DAF monthly donors, these recurring donors come in through a different “system,” if you will, so it’s not feeding into the same bucket. You’ll need to tally them differently. I’m going to assume that you’re able to code them as such to pull separate reports. You may need to give them a separate attribute or group so you can segment them as needed.

For example, you can most likely pull a report from your donor database for your monthly donors and see how many there are, as well as their monthly and annualized value. Then run a report for your DAF recurring donors and your workplace givers and calculate the same. That will be your total of recurring donors for overall trend purposes.

The key question though with these types of monthly donors is how do you steward them. If someone makes a gift from their paycheck, absolutely consider them a monthly donor and let them know how special they are. If someone makes a recurring gift from their DAF, absolutely, recognize them as special. This leads to the next question.

5. Is There a Difference in Stewarding One-Time versus Monthly Donors?

In the old days, we tried to leave monthly donors alone. Now, not so much. The minute someone starts making that first monthly gift, code them in your donor database and email program so that you can do something special.

Take some time and map out what you’re sending to one-time donors during the year. Look at what other departments, like major gifts, are doing?

What can you borrow or implement? What can you customize for monthly donors with just a short intro message change? What can you add that makes the donor feel special? Perhaps a phone call, a text message or a handwritten thank-you card. What would make your nonprofit stand out? What would make the donor feel most engaged?

For example, if you have a print newsletter, send it. If you have email news updates, send them. All of those are totally great.

If your donors are used to receiving mail, and they haven’t told you to stop sending mail, send them your key appeals. Add in a short message of gratitude and make it clear you’re asking for an extra gift. But remove any reference to a monthly-gift ask from those appeals because they’re already giving monthly.

Automate what you can. Then use opportunities that come up to do things that are surprising but are of interest to monthly donors who are invested and interested in what goes on. If you can send a text message, great. Do that. If you can send a video from the field, great. Do that.

Just remember that donors want to know their gifts matter. That’s the key driver for all of your stewardship messaging. Make your monthly donors feel special.

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Steven says: This is a guest post from Erica Waasdorp, the renown (and wonderful!) author of Monthly Giving Made Easy. If you want to start a monthly giving program, or make yours better, start with Erica. Sign up for her newsletter (plus free resources) here.

This post was originally published by NonProfitPRO on September 20, 2023.

Top 3 Tips for Fundraisers Looking to Level Up Their Monthly Giving

Erica Waasdorp  |  Ask

The following is a hand-picked guest post from Erica Waasdorp.  Enjoy, and you can read more about Erica below.

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Here are my top three tips for fundraisers who are looking to start growing their monthly giving program to the next level.

1. Commit to Monthly Giving

If you’re not committed to growing, you’re never going to grow. This is not a once and done campaign. Monthly giving should be included in your overall fundraising strategy.

One way to commit is by making a monthly gift yourself to your own organization. Another way is to give monthly to a few other organizations you like or admire. It’s a great way to see what they’re doing.

The main reason why a donor gives monthly is because they want to help. Making a recurring gift is more likely to fit in their budget, but if they don’t want to help because you’re not explaining the need and making the donor part of the solution, all bets are off.

2. Make It Easy for Your Donor to Find the Monthly Giving Option

I still see way too many websites where monthly giving is buried in ways to give, and it takes multiple clicks to get there. Check out tactic No. 6 from this NonProfit PRO article on numerous tests from NextAfter.

What do you have to lose by adding an extra button on the homepage and an extra button in an email? It’s a tactic successfully used by numerous organizations, and it’s not going to hurt your one-time giving revenue.

3. Create a Mini-Story or Nudge

In one sentence, how does a monthly gift help your constituents, your animals, patients, clients? Here are just a few examples:

  • “Start your monthly gift to ensure that more children can receive lasting support, access learning and have a better opportunity for the future. “
  • “You can help create lasting change by giving monthly, empowering people to lift themselves out of poverty.”
  • “Your monthly gift will make a difference every day and every month for neighbors in need.”
  • “Your monthly gift ensures seniors don’t have to choose between food and rent.”

Don’t overthink it. Just start somewhere, and you can always refine your message further.

Then look at your communication channels and messages and see where you can add the button and your mini story.

Your email newsletter? Your print newsletter? Your direct mail appeals? A buck slip in your thank-you letter? Your survey? The options are endless.

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Steven says: This is a guest post from Erica Waasdorp, the renown (and wonderful!) author of Monthly Giving Made Easy.  If you want to start a monthly giving program, or make yours better, start with Erica.  Sign up for her newsletter (plus free resources) here.

This post was originally published by NonProfit PRO on October 16, 2023.

The Lesson

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Simplicity.

Years ago I served an organization that was raising about $350,000 per year from their individual donors.

They had a belief that they needed to share all of their programs, and show how those programs worked together to “solve the whole problem,” in order for donors to give gifts.  Their belief resulted in fundraising that spent significant time describing their programs and how their programs worked together.

I advised them that they needed to keep things simpler.  I suggested that they focus an e-appeal on one specific program.

They pushed back:

“We’re not a simple organization like one of those big national organizations you work with.  What we do is complex.”

I explained to them the lesson I had learned over the years: that the big national organizations have sophisticated approaches and programs, but that they purposefully keep their fundraising simple and emotional in order to make their organization more accessible to more people.

Those big organizations want everybody to be able to donate, not just the people who are interested enough to learn about their programs.

The organization I was working with had assumed that because the fundraising to individual donors was simple, the organization and its programs must be simple. 

But the lesson is that those big organizations appear simple because of a conscious messaging choice.  In their fundraising to individual donors, they choose to focus on single programs or simple outcomes because doing so is proven to help them attract more new donors and raise more money from current donors.

Sophisticated fundraising looks simple on purpose.

This post was originally published on November 26, 2024.

Share Stories That Support Your Ask

Sarah Lundberg  |  Ask
What's your story?

Before my time at The Better Fundraising Co, I used to be a Director of Marketing and Communications for a nonprofit. But then the nonprofit I was working at needed me to create their fundraising materials from scratch, and I discovered a whole new world of expertise — it challenged the beliefs that my nonprofit and I had for how fundraising worked.

But we started raising a LOT more money. 

When we learned more about the role of stories in our fundraising, it helped us shape our fundraising pieces to perform better.

Our organization had GREAT stories, but we didn’t always share them in a way that worked effectively for fundraising.

Sometimes we would share a long story that would be full of details and symbolism and references to historical happenings. We loved these stories, but they didn’t seem to work when we were asking donors to give in direct response fundraising.

When we learned to use the right story for the right fundraising piece, our fundraising results increased.

Based on expert advice, we gave each fundraising piece ONE purpose, either asking donors to give or reporting back on what their giving had done.

We started sharing incomplete stories in our fundraising appeals, to show the donors the need that existed. These stories featured someone facing a problem that hadn’t yet been solved. This was an effective part of a piece where we were asking donors to give.

We shared completed stories in our newsletters, to show the donors what their giving had accomplished. These stories featured someone who had been facing a problem and also how the donor’s gift helped to solve the problem. This helped us report back to the donor and show that they made a difference.

This felt different to us internally.

For one thing, our stories were shorter and simpler.  But once we got the hang of it, finding and sharing stories was easier. We knew exactly what kind of stories we were looking for, depending on whether we were asking in an appeal or reporting back in a newsletter.

Something that makes me chuckle… back in the day when I was on staff at a nonprofit, the more I learned about best practices for direct response and email fundraising, the more I realized we’d been doing things the hard way.

Once we learned the fundamentals of what worked, everything became easier, including sharing stories. We knew what to do and how to do it.

When we started doing something that was easier AND raised more money – that was a win for us!

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Make Your Copy Clear and Easy to Understand to Raise More Money

Sarah Lundberg  |  Ask
Make it easy.

Before my time at The Better Fundraising Co, I used to be a Director of Marketing and Communications for a nonprofit. But then the nonprofit I was working at needed me to create their fundraising materials, and I discovered a whole new world of expertise — it challenged the beliefs that my nonprofit and I had for how fundraising worked.

But we started raising a LOT more money.  Let me share my journey…

Something that made a big difference for my organization was creating fundraising materials that people could easily understand by writing at a lower reading level, using simpler sentences, and eliminating jargon.

As we started communicating differently, a whole host of worries came up. We worried donors would think we were talking down to them. We worried we wouldn’t come across as the “experts” we were.

We decided to try it anyway.

And none of the things we worried about actually happened.

We started to treat donors like the busy, caring people they were, and they appreciated it. We did the work to make our fundraising writing clear, so THEY didn’t have to do the work to read something dense and full of jargon.

Here are the main issues we focused on to make our writing clear and easy to understand:

  • Using short sentences and short paragraphs
  • Not using internal jargon that our donors wouldn’t easily understand
  • Writing at a reading level between 6th and 8th grade so donors could understand our fundraising writing quickly

It didn’t take a lot to make our materials easier to understand. It didn’t cost any more money or take that much more time. It just took working through some discomfort internally.

But changing these three things to make our copy clear and easy to understand helped us raise more money for our mission!


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Get to the Point FAST to Raise More Money with Your Appeals and E-Appeals

Sarah Lundberg  |  Ask
Get to the point.

Before my time at The Better Fundraising Co, I used to be a Director of Marketing and Communications for a nonprofit. But then the nonprofit I was working at needed me to create their fundraising materials, and I discovered a whole new world of expertise — it challenged the beliefs that my nonprofit and I had for how fundraising worked.

But we started raising a LOT more money.  Here’s a bit about my organization’s journey…

One thing that made a huge difference in our direct mail and email fundraising efforts was getting to the point fast in our communications.

First, a funny (slightly mortifying) story.

When I started learning about direct mail fundraising, I had to face an uncomfortable reality that nearly every instinct I had as a marketing and communications professional was wrong for fundraising.

I remember telling Steven Screen (co-founder of The Better Fundraising Co. and now my boss) that I used to include the fundraising “ask” at the end of the appeal as a reward for the people who read to the end.

I wish I could include a snapshot of the look on Steven’s face.

What I didn’t know at that point was that almost nobody reads to the end to an appeal.

So almost nobody had been SEEING the fundraising ask in our appeals.

Gulp.

We adapted our appeal and e-appeal format to get right to the point in the first four paragraphs. We shared the problem and the solution right away. AND we asked the donor to give in the first four paragraphs.

It was bold. It was uncomfortable. Internal staff didn’t like it as much. Wasn’t it —impolite — to get right to the point like that?

But it worked.

More donors started to respond to our appeals. And the average gift went up.

Over time, it felt less uncomfortable internally. The team started to appreciate the new approach to appeals and e-appeals. It’s amazing how raising more money can help a team get over discomfort.

If your team is struggling with trying a new fundraising tactic, it helps to acknowledge with your team that change is uncomfortable and be willing to try it anyway. Raising more for your mission is worth it!


Read the whole series: