When you’re starting out, you don’t have anyone’s attention.
That’s true whether you’re starting a nonprofit, starting a food truck, or starting a political career.
But when you’re starting a business or a YouTube channel or an advocacy campaign, you work hard to get people’s attention. Those folks wave their arms around. They say edgy things.
One of their driving principles is ”Without anyone’s attention, this venture will not succeed.”’ So they make a ruckus.
Why don’t more nonprofits make a ruckus like that? Why don’t more nonprofits say and do edgy things?
I think it’s because so many of us are nice. We want to be warm to people. We don’t want to make people uncomfortable. We want to convince people of our competency.
One of our driving principles is ”We want the power of our work to inspire people to give.” And that’s not even a principle – it’s just a desire.
But can’t we remain “nice” while making it a priority to earn more attention for our cause?
And as nonprofits, don’t we have the ultimate motivating reason to generate more attention? We know that that the more attention we earn, the more donors we’ll acquire, and the more of our mission we’ll accomplish.
The standard nonprofit toolkit does not have “generate a ton of attention” in it.
But shouldn’t it?
And as you look at your plan for this year, are you intentionally making at least one concerted effort to get more people to pay attention to what’s going on with your cause?
Most nonprofits, without realizing it, make a big assumption when
they write their fundraising.
They assume their donors will read the whole
thing. The whole email. The whole letter.
That’s a really unhelpful assumption.
Here’s a heatmap of a 1-page direct mail letter. It shows what a donor’s eyes tend to look at, and in what order it happens:
Click image to see a larger version.
We could spend a lot of time talking about what
this means for your fundraising writing and design. But there’s one main lesson
I want you to take away…
You Have to Earn and Keep a Donor’s Attention
You cannot assume your donor will read the whole
thing.
Well, you can. But you’ll raise a lot less
money.
So first you have to earn your donor’s
attention. That’s having a great teaser on your envelope. Or a catchy subject
line for your email. You need to get good
at those things.
For your mass donor
fundraising to excel, you need to be better at earning attention than you need
to be at describing your organization or your programs.
That might feel like a “sad truth.” But it’s a
really helpful truth if you want to
raise more money and do more good.
How to Earn Donor Attention
There are three main ways to earn donor
attention. You need to make your fundraising:
Interesting to donors. This almost always
means talking about your beneficiaries and your cause more than your
organization and your programs. Remember: your donor first got involved because
of your beneficiaries or cause, not because of your programs.
Emotional. Emotions are what keep
us reading. You want to constantly be using the emotional triggers: Anger,
Exclusivity, Fear, Flattery, Greed, Guilt, Salvation.
Dramatic. You want your
fundraising to be full of drama and conflict.
“[NAME] Theatre is dedicated to producing high-quality, daring
productions that take on challenging topics.”
vs.
“I’m writing you today about something you care about – and it’s
in danger.”
I can basically guarantee you that more people are going to keep reading the second example. It’s written directly to the donor, it’s about something she cares about; it’s emotional, and it’s dramatic.
The first example – from a real letter from my files – is a classic example of telling the donor something the donor probably already knows and doesn’t really care about.
Note: Arts organizations often say that their fundraising can’t be emotional or dramatic because they don’t have babies or puppies to raise money for. I think the first example above shows that Arts organizations can absolutely be dramatic and emotional in their fundraising – they just need to think about it differently. After all, if a Theatre can’t get dramatic, it’s probably not that great a Theatre!
The Big Lesson
Your donors are moving fast. They don’t read the
whole thing, watch the whole thing, or listen to the whole thing.
You need to get great at getting and keeping their attention. Study it. Know what
your donors care about and then borrow tactics from advertising and social
media to get your donor’s attention. And remember; we have 70 years of
best-practices for earning and keeping donor attention. Smart fundraisers have
learned a LOT over the years. Tap into it!
Because if you can earn your donors’ attention, they are more likely to keep reading.
And if you can keep your donors’ attention, they are more likely to give you a
gift.
