Tag: communication

Successful Major Donor Fundraising Takes Time

Jim Shapiro  |  Major Donor Fundraising
Major donor.

To help you with your major donor fundraising this year-end, we’re running a series of Jim Shapiro’s most helpful posts from the past.

We hope it provides you with some tips and tactics that skyrocket your major donor revenue during this important fundraising season.

Just about every single month, I receive an emergency phone call from an executive director who is short of their budgeted goal for a project or program.

The organizations that call us often have something in common: a leadership team that hasn’t had a disciplined approach to cultivating relationships with their major donors. So when it was time for those organizations to ask their major donors for financial help, their donors weren’t inclined to respond.

What does that mean for you?

It means that TODAY is the day you need to reach out to your top active donors and donor prospects. Right now, pick up the phone and give them a call. This very minute, pick up a pen and write them a thank you note. Or sometime this week, ask a donor to lunch.

Then make sure you have a disciplined system that keeps you in touch with them as often as they would like (which is usually more often than you think) – especially if you’re good about Thanking and Reporting back to them on the effects of their previous gifts.

But for now, take the time to connect with your top donors. By doing this, you’ll not only build great mission-driven friendships but you’ll also prepare your donors to respond when you come to them with a need.

Want to know more? Get Jim’s recorded year-end webinar about major donors, and start learning how you can raise more money and steward important donor relationships during this crucial time of the fundraising year.

Three Ways to Make Your Blog a Powerful Fundraising Tool

Jonathan Steck  |  Report
powerful blog

Let’s go back in time for a minute…

Back in the late 90’s, blogs became a cool trend as many of us clamored to find new and exciting ways to share our thoughts with the world.

In the decades since, the blog has evolved into a tool that many nonprofits are now using to better engage their audiences.

Is this true at your organization?

Having seen the fundraising benefits that a good blog can have, here are a few ways and reasons why your nonprofit blog can be a powerful fundraising tool:

1. Be Intimate

Blogs, like most donor-focused communications, are deeply personal.

When you pull it apart, a blog is basically a collection of thoughts passed from one person to another – just like your fundraising appeals and reports. And because people relate to people, your blog can be a great place for you to share your messages with passion and personality.

Charity Water’s blog has done a great job with this. They use their blog to introduce people within their organization and give them a platform to share why they care so much. Donors naturally feel a connection to this kind of communication. Plus, it makes a fundraising ask or invitation to get involved much easier to weave in.

You may already know this, but your blog is also the perfect place to tell top-notch stories of beneficiaries, the work your organization does, processes, and showcase your donors’ gift in action. All of this helps to educate donors to your cause, increasing their understanding of the need and how their gifts are solving the problem.

2. Be Immediate

Aside from social platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, your blog may be the most immediate method of communication you have.

Use it to your advantage!

For example, if you have an emergency to tell your donors about, then use your blog to support your other fundraising efforts. I remember doing this for a nonprofit I worked with during the devastating 2004 tsunami in Indonesia. With so many people sending in donations and eager to help, a single thank you letter just wasn’t enough. Donors wanted up-to-the-minute updates on what their gifts were doing, and the blog enabled this.

Even more than being a wonderful engagement tool, our blog also proved to be a powerful fundraising platform. Because we had reported back with such detail and frequency, we found that donors were already engaged, making it much easier for us to ask for financial support.

3. Be Informative

Every piece of communication you send in the mail, post online, or hand to a donor – every one of them serves a purpose.

For example, your appeal letter presents a problem or need that you’re asking the donor to fill, while the newsletter closes the loop on that problem and positions the donor as the hero.

But there’s a lot that happens in-between, that donors know nothing about, right? So, your blog is a great place to include that kind of detail.

For example, if your fundraising appeal is asking the donor to provide a night of shelter, use your blog to explain more about how that process works and what it looks like for the person being served.

Because your blog is an intimate, immediate, and informative way to communicate with your donors, take some time to explore it. The humble blog can provide your organization with a great fundraising opportunity.

Your All-Important First Thank You/Receipt

Steven  |  Thank
New donor reading thank you letter.

My theory is that the Thank You/Receipt you send to a brand new donor is one of the most-opened, most-read messages you will ever send.

With your first touch point after a donor’s first gift, she begins to form her opinion of how important she is to your organization… or not.

Is she important and meaningful… or a small cog in a big machine?

Are you going to talk to her about her gift… or tell her more about yourself (your organization)?

Are you going to use boilerplate language that’s about your whole organization… or customized language that speaks to the specific event or offer she gave to?

Ask yourself: what kind of letter would YOU like to receive? Which kind of organization would YOU rather give to?

Your New Donor Gives to LOTS of Organizations

She’s constantly scanning for organizations that help her make the change she wants to make in the world.

And she gave your organization a gift. She picked you!

How will you respond?

You’ve already made a favorable impression on her – she gave a gift, after all.

But this is your chance to confirm her first impression.

This makes the first sentence of your Thank You/Receipt copy the most important sentence.

It’s your first sentence that tells your donor:

  1. Are you really grateful for her gift, or are you just writing to acknowledge it?
  2. Are you writing to thank her for her generosity and what she’s going to accomplish, or are you writing to tell her more about your organization?

Because your donor is trying to get a feel for your organization. She’s trying to decide whether her gift to you was a good idea… or not.

So go look at the language – and especially the first sentence – of the Thank You/Receipt package you send to first-time donors. Make sure it acknowledges that it’s her first-ever gift. Make sure you mention your donor twice as much as you mention your organization. Make sure your first sentence is short, easy to read, and makes a great first impression!

How to Raise 15%-20% More This Year

Steven  |  Repeat
Report

We’re doing a series of short posts called Mastermind Lessons.

The Fundraising Mastermind is transformational consulting for nonprofits that we do with Chris Davenport of Movie Mondays and The Nonprofit Storytelling Conference.

Today’s post is the fourth top-level lesson we’ve found that every organization in the Mastermind needs to learn…

It’s simple… but it’s not easy.

The Three Things You Should Focus On

I realized that every organization we worked with needs to get better at these three things. And all of them saw immediate gains from doing so.

Over my career, I’ve noticed that the organizations who focus on doing these well see a lift of 15% to 20% in net revenue over the first year they focus here.

So read on if you’d like to see that kind of growth…

#1 – Communicate to Your Donors More – About What Donors Care About

It’s a fact: most nonprofits under-communicate to their donors. (To be more nuanced, most nonprofits under-communicate to their donors about what their donors care about.)

Just one example: most small nonprofits who send four appeals per year are scared to death that they will drive their donors away if they send another appeal or two. What those small nonprofits don’t know is that their donors also give to other organizations who are mailing twelve, sixteen or even twenty-four times a year.

If you literally don’t have the human resource capacity to be communicating more, that’s a good reason. But if the fear of bothering/offending your donors is causing you to contact them less, you need to stop fearing and trust in a) best-practices and b) your donors’ willingness to help.

And of course, you have to communicate with donors about what they care about. Most smaller nonprofits have a hard time with this, which is why they should…

#2 – Use Specific Offers

To smaller organizations, it’s counter-intuitive that highlighting a specific part of one program will work better than Asking donors to fund your mission or all of your programs.

But it works almost every time.

Most of your donors, most of the time, don’t want to know the whole picture. They want an easy way to do something meaningful that they understand.

A great offer gives donors what they want: it highlights a specific part or step of one of your programs (so it’s easy to understand), and it shows your donors how meaningful and important that step is.

#3 – Manage Your Major Donor Relationships

About nine out of ten organizations we work with openly acknowledge that they could do a better job with their major donors.

And for the organizations where we can spend a year or two helping them improve their major donor systems – their revenue growth is remarkable.

Investing in your major donor systems is an easy win. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it will sure feel like it.

15% Growth is Simple, But It’s Not Easy

To the smaller nonprofits out there: if you do the three things above, and do them well, you’ll see significant revenue growth.

Because there is no magic bullet. Here’s how John Lepp of Agents Of Good said it on Twitter:

“Charities are looking for a magic (technologic and demographic) bullet to solve all of their problems, and I’m sorry… it doesn’t exist. It’s the 1000+ small boring things you need to do that make the big difference.”

The three things above are the three most important “1000+ small boring things you need to do.”

We’re helping several organizations do them right now. And we’ll continue to post about what they do as they grow and grow. If you want personalized, experienced help, visit this page to learn more and fill out an application.

How to Start Each Newsletter Story

Steven  |  Report
How to Start Each Newsletter Story.

There’s something you need to know about the stories in your newsletter.

Most people won’t read them.

Now, that can be depressing. You want people to read all the amazing things that your organization is doing. And you want people to read the writing you put so much time and effort into.

But it’s the truth that most donors won’t read everything you send them.

One of the reasons the newsletters we help our clients create are successful is because we fully acknowledge that truth – and we use it.

We turn it into a super-power, in fact.

3 Tips to Start Each Story

#1: Use your first paragraph to summarize the whole story

Your first (and sometimes 2nd) paragraph should include the following three things:

  • A statement describing a Need, or a person who was in need.
  • A statement that joyfully explains that the need was met
  • A statement that gives credit to the donor for helping meet that need

Here’s why that’s so powerful: even if your donor does not read another word, they will know their gift made a real difference – and that your organization values them.

You will have gotten your main message across, even if the donor doesn’t read the whole thing!

#2: Make it as dramatic as possible

If the first goal is to get your main message across, your secondary goal is to get them to keep reading. The way you do that is to add drama.

Make your summary (basically a short story) a dramatic one that people would like to know more about!

If they want to know more, they will keep reading.

#3: Use the word “you”

Make sure the donor knows that they played a role in the story you’re telling. So be sure to use the word “you” to speak directly to the donor. Some examples:

  • “Thanks to you, she was able to receive the treatment she needed.”
  • “But thanks to your support, all was not lost!”
  • “You are going to love how you helped him!”

Here’s how I think about it. Every newsletter story has two protagonists: whoever the story is about, and the reader/donor.

We know from experience that if people think the story they are reading is about them, they are more likely to keep reading. And your newsletter stories ARE about your donors! (Or at least they should be.) The role of your newsletter is to help donors see the effects of their giving.

In the Ask, Thank, Report, Repeat framework, it’s where you Report back to donors and tell them how their gift made a difference.

You Learned This in 7th Grade

At least that’s when I learned it. It’s when Mr. Layton taught us, “Tell them what you are going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you told them.”

The first paragraph of your newsletter should “Tell them what you are going to tell them.”

Do that, and more people will keep reading.

And if more people will keep reading, more people will donate!

What To Do When Your Organization Feels Like “The Best Kept Secret in Town”

Steven  |  Ask
Secret.

A lot of small nonprofits feel like they’re “the best-kept secret in town.”

They’re established. They do good work. But they’ve never experienced real growth.

This post is about a big idea for those small nonprofits.

I’m going to start out with some strong – maybe even bitter – medicine. And I’m not going to sugar-coat it. Because in my experience, all the tactics and best practices in the world won’t help much until a small nonprofit learns this lesson.

So here it is…

If you feel like the best-kept secret in town, it’s usually your organization’s own fault.

Specifically, it’s your communications that are causing your organization to remain secret.

Something about your communications is not resonating with anyone outside your core group of donors. Or outside of the people you can personally reach.

So you need to change what your organization communicates to donors and to potential donors.

In my experience, there are four main ideas that small organizations have that ensure they remain “the best kept secret in town”:

  1. The reason that the Founder/Board/ED/Staff love the organization is the same reason that donors support the organization. This results in donor communications that are organizationally-focused. Effective donor communications – the kind that helps your organization grow so that it’s not a secret anymore – are focused on what donors care about. And donors are not experts like you are. They tend to care about and be motivated by different things than core stakeholders.
  2. Your communications need to be professional and you need to sound like experts. This results in complex communications that only a subject-matter expert would read. These are the organizations that send letters and emails written in perfect grammar, by PhDs, that a donor needs extensive experience in your field to really understand. To have a broad appeal, you want to get good at talking to donors, about things donors care about, in language that donors use.
  3. You can’t “bother” your donors very often. This results in not enough direct communication with donors about what their gifts can do and have done. I’m talking to you, Mr. Organization-That-Sends-Two-Appeals-A-Year. For people outside your core, you need to communicate with them more often than you think, in order to keep their attention.
  4. Your organization should not stand out too much, or say things that get attention. This results in not being willing to fight for attention. It is a crowded fundraising marketplace! All those donors you’d like to have? They are busy doing other things and you have to work get their attention! Use drama. Use bold colors. Use emotion. Use matching grants. Use multipliers.

These four ideas, taken together, result in a lot of deserving organizations staying a secret. All of these ideas are held by organizations for rational reasons. But these four, in particular, do not stand up to rigorous examination or testing.

In fact, they have been proven NOT to work.

My encouragement to you is that you jettison these ideas and replace them with proven ideas. Like donor-centeredness. And repetition. And vulnerability.

Those ideas free you up to fundraise with confidence. They free you up to communicate more with your donors – and love it. Because you remember that when you fundraise, you’re adding value to your donors’ lives, not taking it away, right?

Then you’ll no longer be a secret. And then you’ll raise more money and do more good!

If you’d like help gently showing the ineffective ideas the door, and help building a real culture of philanthropy (and starting to raise more money right away), get in touch!