Tag: communication

Your Donors ARE Different… When You’re Small

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Small connections.

Your donors are different when you are a small organization.

Why?  Many of them know you, or someone on staff, personally.  Or they’re one degree removed from you.  Or they’re some of your first volunteers.  Maybe they are intimately connected to the cause, saw what you were doing, and sought you out.

But this isn’t true when you get bigger. 

Case in point: as you get more donors, you have a personal relationship with a smaller percentage of them.

This means that if you want to get bigger, you must learn to fundraise to donors who:

  • Don’t know you or anyone on your staff
  • Don’t know anything about your organization
  • Don’t know much about your cause or beneficiaries, other than that it touches their heart

So when a nonprofits says to me – “Steven, that tactic you want us to use, that won’t work for our donors.  Our donors are different” – there are two things I want the nonprofit to know right away.

First, we want them to use the tactic because it’s proven to help them grow beyond their current group of donors. 

Second, their donors are giving to several other organizations too, and many of those organizations are happily raking in the money with whatever tactic we’re suggesting.

So your donors are different – but only when you’re small, and only in relation to yourorganization.  Your donors are completely, happily normal in relation to several other organizations.  So when you use the data-driven tactics that are working great for those other organizations, they are bound to work well for you, too.

Specialized

Steven Screen  |  Repeat
Specialized.

Another helpful idea to start your year with:

As a nonprofit moves forward on its fundraising journey, each piece of communication tends to become more specialized.

Specialization happens because, as you grow and start to measure the performance of everything, you find that the more specialized pieces of fundraising tend to perform better.

But this is hard for smaller nonprofits at the beginning of their fundraising journey.  When you don’t communicate to donors very often, each piece of communication tends to “say all the things.”  An appeal letter will thank donors for their previous gift, and ask for a gift, and share a story to report back, and update people on the recent programmatic change. 

All of those different messages tend to make it hard for individual donors moving fast to know what you want them to do.  (This is why Better Fundraising help nonprofits specialize their comms into three main buckets: Asks, Thanks, and Reports.)

And here’s the thing for today: don’t wait to specialize until you’re one of those big, sophisticated organizations – specialize now so that you become one of those big, sophisticated organizations.

Audience and Channel

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Audience.

If you’re going to be a very effective Fundraiser, you have to constantly be aware of context.

The two main contexts to be aware of in your email and mail fundraising are Audience and Channel.

Audience

“Audience” is who you’re talking to.  For instance…

  • Individual donors care about different things than institutional donors
  • Institutional donors care about different things than Program Staff and Organization Insiders
  • Longtime major donors care about different things than First Time Email Donors

If you’re not constantly thinking, “Who am I talking to right now and what do they value,” you’re constantly missing opportunities to connect.  Because if your voice or message is perfect for one of your audiences, it’s not close to perfect for your other audiences.

Channel

“Channel” is the method you’re using to communicate to your audience.  For instance…

  • In the mail and email, you have a different amount of time than you have over lunch with a donor, so you communicate differently
  • At an event, what you tell a donor is different than what you’d say over lunch
  • In a grant application, what you tell an institutional funder is different than what you tell an individual donor.

If you’re not constantly thinking, “What channel am I communicating with the audience right now and what works best in this method,” you’re probably making one method work well and causing the other methods to be ineffective.  (By the way, the most common phase of this for smaller nonprofits is to be effective in person 1-on-1, but not effective in the mail and email – which is why we at Better Fundraising have jobs 🙂 )

The clearest example I’ve come across to illustrate this is the following:

 AudienceChannelKnowledge LevelTime Spent Reading
Grant ApplicationInstitutional fundersMulti-page Grant applicationLikely knowledgeable about your sector and workSeveral minutes
Email appealIndividual donors300-word emailUnlikely to be knowledgeable about your sector and workSeveral seconds

At the foundation, a subject-matter expert is paid to read your application.  On the individual donor’s phone, a non-expert is more likely to flick through your email than to read it. 

Just given that context, of course the two pieces of fundraising should be written differently.

So as you think about your fundraising for this year, may this year be one of increased awareness at your nonprofit for which audience you’re talking to and which channel it’s taking place in.

Don’t Get Too Hung Up on Authenticity

Steven Screen  |  Repeat
Guaranteed authentic.

In general, “be authentic” is good advice to nonprofits.

However, to be successful in fundraising long term you will absolutely need to do some things don’t feel authentic to you at first…

For instance, it doesn’t feel authentic for anyone to send 12 pieces of direct mail a year.  Yet tens of thousands of nonprofits are joyfully do it each year because it raises so much money, is so good at identifying new major donors, and keeps the relationship going with people you can’t meet in person.

It’s doesn’t feel authentic for anyone to send out 50 fundraising emails a year.  Yet that’s happening thousands of times a year from successful fundraising organizations.

For a relationship-driven MGO it doesn’t always feel authentic to keep a spreadsheet with an annual communication plan and giving goal for each major donor.  Yet that’s happening hundreds of thousands of times a year by MGOs who know that “having a plan and working the plan” is the key to maximizing revenue from major donors.

My point is just to say that the idea of “authenticity” is often taken too far.  It becomes a binary when it should be a guiding principle.

Stay authentic to who you are and what you believe in.  But don’t miss out on successful strategies and tactics because you wouldn’t naturally do them.

The Gift of Not Having to Know the Details

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Less is more.

When writing appeals, it’s a natural instinct to tell individual donors more about the organization itself.

This results in copy like:

  • Founded in 1971, we’ve been…
  • Our three pillars are…
  • Our program, Uplifting Kids, addresses the needs…

All of this is educating the donor under the belief that “if our donors knew more about us, and knew how competent we are, they would give more.”

However, in 30+ years of looking at fundraising results, what I’ve seen is that appeals raise more money when they educate less.  (The two most successful appeal letters of my career don’t even mention the organization.)

Here’s my interpretation of the data: by eliminating the education, you remove content that is unimportant to a donor’s decision.  This results in appeals where more of the content is relevant, which causes increased giving. 

Put differently: when you remove the noise, the signal is stronger.

Reminder – I’m talking about communicating with individual donors and non-donors in the mail and email.  Not at an event, not at lunch with a major donor, not a tour, etc.

Here’s how I advise nonprofits to think: “It’s a generous act to simplify our mail and email fundraising for individual donors.  They don’t need to need to know the details – that’s what they have us for!  If we get a chance to interact in person or at an event, they are showing interest so it’s appropriate to go into the details.  And if they keep giving faithfully through the mail or email without ever interacting with us another way, that’s OK too.”

Remember, you’re already removing lots of details about your organization from your mail and email fundraising.  You don’t talk to donors about your accounting practices, or whether you own or rent your office space, or your approach to HR. 

So, just remove a few more details about your organization.

When you make the generous act of not requiring donors to know your organization’s details, you unlock more generosity from more donors.

‘Papa, we HAVE to get you an eyebrow pencil!’

Steven Screen  |  Repeat
Eyebrow pencil man.

Last year, a few days before I was travelling to speak at a conference, my kids asked me what it was it was going to be like when I gave my speech. 

I told them there would be several hundred people in the room, I’d be on a stage, that my face would be on a couple big video screens to that people in the back could see me, and that I was thankful that I don’t really get nervous for these things any more.

My (amazing) 15-year-old daughter’s immediate reply was as follows:

“Ohmygosh, Papa, we have to get you an eyebrow pencil!”

She said this because, as my hair has gone grey, my eyebrows have more or less disappeared.  They’re there, just super faint.

So I’m sitting at our dinner table getting fervent advice – from a person who genuinely cares about me and wants me to succeed – that boils down to “for your speech to be successful, people need to be able to see your eyebrows.”

And you probably already know this, but similar situations happen in fundraising all the time…

Fundraisers who have taken the time to write an effective piece of fundraising get feedback from a caring stakeholder who wants the fundraising to succeed.  But the person giving the feedback doesn’t know the discipline of direct response fundraising, or the behavioral science at play, or the difference between institutional and individual donors.

So the feedback is usually based on personal preference, rooted in a general nervousness about fundraising, and presented with logic.

And through no fault of their own, the feedback is about as helpful as me hearing that I “have to” get an eyebrow pencil:

“You know, we have to mention the name of the program.”

“This doesn’t have any stats in it, we have to include some stats so people know how effective we are.”

“We have to phrase it like this because that’s the term experts use.”

“Well, we have to make it shorter because nobody reads long letters.”

Yet each of these “have-tos” make the letter or email raise less money, not more. 

Of course, you and I pay attention to feedback because we want to be team players.  The feedback is coming from bosses and key stakeholders, and it’s vital to remember that they are all trying to make the fundraising work better.

So what’s a Fundraiser to do?  Socialize the idea that there’s a science and profession of direct response fundraising.  Share drops of knowledge from this blog and other data-driven experts (Jeff Brooks, Julie and Brett Cooper, Lisa Sargent, John Lepp, Kristin Steele & Samantha Swaim, Tom Ahern, Clay Buck, Erica Waasdorp).  Slowly, but surely, we’ll spread the knowledge and science around.

In the meantime, be kind.  Educate your team on the actual, proven “have-tos” for success in the mail and email.

And by the way, I gave my keynote at the conference without using an eyebrow pencil.  The presentation was still a success.  🙂

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.

How I Learned to Give Directions

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Give directions.

Back in the 90’s I received a lesson in giving directions, and I use that lesson in fundraising every day…

I was writing and producing radio commercials for a national chain of bookstores.  At the end of each ad, there were 8 seconds to describe the location of one of their stores.  And I was responsible for writing the description of each store’s location.

When I started writing these, my instinct was to start the description in the context of the store.  This resulted in descriptions like, “you’ll find us at the NW corner of Harlow and Prescott, across from the museum, in Byron Center.”

This approach puts significant cognitive load on the listener because they must remember a lot of details (which corner? what streets? across from which landmark?) before they even know what town the store is in.  And if the town turns out to be close by, the listener then has to “go backwards” and remember the details from before. 

Thankfully my boss corrected me and said something like, “don’t start the description from the store, start the description from a place the listener knows.  Always write from the known to the unknown.”

This advice changed how I give directions, and how I write.

My revised store directions were much more helpful to people: “You’ll find us South of Grand Rapids, in Byron Center, across from the museum, on the corner of Harlow and Prescott.”

My fundraising writing was better.  Before, I tended to write from the context of the nonprofit: “We have 4 programs to help people in our community.  And all our programs take a holistic approach to addressing the needs of junior high students who are behind in math.”  Today, I start with something the listener knows or understands; “There are local junior high students who are behind in math.  Our approach is holistic, and we serve them with 4 different programs.”

Going “from the known to the unknown” makes your fundraising easier to understand quickly because it reduces the cognitive load on your readers. 

This ability to meet donors on common ground – to write fundraising that they understand that then helps them see what their gift will make possible through you, is gold.

If you do this, more people will read your fundraising.  And when more people read your fundraising, more people tend to give to your nonprofit.

True Believers, Casuals, and Onramps

Steven Screen  |  Repeat
Insiders.

Most small nonprofits have beliefs about what they would like their donors to be like. 

These beliefs tend to sound something like:

“We want someone to fall in love with our vision for the future” or “We want donors to know that they are investing in creating something” or “We want to connect with our donors in a more partner/visionary way.”

These are great, but limiting, desires. 

They are great because donors who do those things tend to give a lot for a long time.  Donor who are “true believers” like that are fantastic!

But it’s limiting because organizations that feel this way often create fundraising messaging and programs that are only attractive to true believers.

You know this has happened any time you hear someone say, “To really know what we do, you need to come on a tour.”  Or “Come to our event and you’ll really understand.”

That may be true, but wow – that puts a barrier between a person who is interested in your organization and them giving you a gift.   

In my experience, organizations that do this rarely grow larger than 50o to 1,000 donors because there are only so many true believers.  (There are exceptions to this; if you’re working on a cause that’s incredibly popular or well known, or if people are highly aware of and compassionate about your beneficiaries.)

The trick is to build a fundraising system for your organization that identifies true believers and has put in the work to make your organization accessible to what we might call “casual” donors. 

Large organizations have learned over time that most of their true believers are people who have come up through their donor pipeline; they started as $50 donors, upgraded to mid-level, then became major donors, often (but not always) going deeper in relationship with the organization.

So, while we may want all our donors to be true believers and in love with our vision, we make it more likely that we’ll actually achieve our vision if we create fundraising messaging and annual plans that give “casuals” a good onramp into our organization.