Tag: impact

The ‘Change You Make,’ not ‘How You Make the Change’

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Make this world better.

Here’s a rule I live by when asking for donations through the mail or email.  It’s subtle but important.

Focus on the understandable change your organization makes in the world, not on how your organization makes the change.

Let me give you a quick “before & after” of an example ask, and then dig into the details…

Focused on how the organization makes the change:

Your gift will fund our research-based brain development program addressing the mental health and cognitive needs of children from 8 weeks to 5 years. 

Focused on the change the organization makes:

Your gift provides a pre-school where a child feels safe so that they learn the skills they need to succeed in Kindergarten.

In the “before” example, notice how much “how we do our work” is present:

  • Their work is researched-based
  • Their program is a brain-development program
  • Their program addresses mental health and cognitive needs

Those details are incredibly valuable to the organization, and are what make them effective.

But they are not why most individual donors, in email or the mail, donate.

What makes individual donors donate, based on the fundraising results we see, is the understandable change that the donor’s gift will make.  Let’s look again at the example that focuses on the understandable change – you’ll see how it’s focused on things the donor will immediately understand and how the world will be better than it was before.

“Your gift provides a pre-school where a child feels safe so that they learn the skills they need to succeed in Kindergarten.”

  • The gift “provides a pre-school” – everyone reading immediately knows what pre-school is and who goes there, as opposed to very few people knowing that a “research-based brain development program” is.
  • “where a child feels safe”’ – feeling safe is an obvious benefit, and indicates that the child didn’t feel safe before, which points to an obvious positive change the donor can help make.
  • “learn the skills they need to succeed in Kindergarten” – this communicates that the child doesn’t have the skills now, but that the donor’s gift will help provide the skills.  The obvious “understandable change” is that the child probably wasn’t going to succeed in Kindergarten, but now they will.

Here’s the hard-won knowledge I’m hoping you’ll work into your fundraising this year: if you focus your fundraising to individual donors on the understandable change your donors can help make with a gift today, you’ll raise more money. 

If you want to know more about why this happens, read my post from last Thursday.

And if you want two other ways of describing the same general concept, here you go:

Good luck, and I hope your year is off to a great start!

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.

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.

How to ‘Keep It Simple’ When What You Do Isn’t Simple

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Keep it simple.

My previous post was about why it’s so effective to focus a piece of fundraising on a specific and low-cost part of your nonprofit’s work.

But many organizations don’t believe they have anything specific or low-cost that they can highlight for their donors.  They’ll say, “What we do isn’t quantifiable.  How can you put a price on inner peace / justice / the environment?”

So today I’d like to give you a few examples of how to identify and price a specific part of your organization’s work – even if your work seems unquantifiable. 

(I should mention that I have tried before to write down all the “rules” for how to do this well, and it results in a multi-page document with decision trees that only a deep fundraising nerd would read.  And in my experience, what people really want are real-life examples that they can learn from and apply to their own organizations.  So here are some examples that show you the process in action.)

I’ve divided the examples into work that is “quantifiable” and “unquantifiable” – though (spoiler alert) you’ll soon see that all nonprofits have work that is quantifiable.

Quantifiable

Say your organization has a goal to protect 150 acres of wetlands this year.  And that preserving these wetlands is only part of what your organization does.  Let’ see how specific we can get…

  • Make a rough determination of the percentage of your total budget that is spent on wetlands preservation.  For example, say your total budget is $1.1m, and you spend about 1/3 of your organization’s time and budget on wetlands preservation.
  • 1/3 x $1,100,00 = $366,630.  That’s how much it costs you to preserve these 150 acres.
  • Divide your cost by the number of acres you protect.  $366,630 / 150 = $2,444.  So, it costs an average of $2,444 to preserve one acre.
    • Note: this would make a great major donor offer; “If you give a gift of $2,444 you’ll preserve 1 entire acre of wetlands!”
  • There are 4,047 square meters in an acre, so divide the cost per acre by the number of square meters in an acre.  $2,444 / 4,047 = 60¢ to protect one square meter. 
  • This organization now knows that it costs, on average, 60 cents to protect 1 square meter of wetlands.

Now the organization can say things like:

“It costs less than dollar for you to protect a square meter of wetlands.  Think of all the flora and fauna you’ll help protect!  The square meter you protect might have a bird’s nest, or be part of a stream that’s full of life.  A gift of just $49 today will protect an area of wetlands the size of a pickleball court!”

I’m sure you can see how helping a donor think about their gift in that way makes it easier for the donor to envision their impact.

And I’m sure you can see how – at the moment a donor is reading your fundraising and deciding whether to give a gift or not – seeing that their gift of just 60 cents could preserve one beautiful piece of land that they can instantly envision is more likely to give a gift than a donor being asked to support an organization’s wetland preservation programs.

And the process above works for most anything that’s easily quantifiable; the number of people going to a museum in a day, the number of “nights of safety” provided to a victim of domestic violence, the number of words translated by a Bible translator, you get it.

If you don’t know exactly how many acres of wetlands you’re going to protect (or whatever), you can use the number than you plan to do this year to calculate your cost, or you can use your average per-acre cost from last year.

But now… what should you do if what your organization does is not easily quantifiable?

“Unquantifiable”

Many organizations will say something like, “Well, what we do isn’t measurable.  You can’t quantify it.”

My response to those organizations is to share my belief that every nonprofit is ultimately made up of specific, understandable actions.  Those actions may produce an outcome that is unquantifiable (think “healing” or “inner peace”), but if a nonprofit utilizes any time or money to achieve its goals, there are actions that can be quantified.

So the technique here is to take anything that feels unquantifiable and break it down into smaller, identifiable actions that individual donors will quickly understand. 

Here are some examples from my past, along with a couple of “specific, understandable actions”:

Unquantifiable:

  • “We provide justice to those who need it”

Quantifiable

  • Cost to coordinate the “matching” of an attorney who is donating their time and the person who is receiving legal counsel for free
    • This would be the “cost per hour” of the salary of the staff member who does the coordinating, multiplied by the number of hours it costs to match one attorney with a client.
      • “Your gift of $37 to CASA provides a person who needs it with an expert attorney they can trust.”
  • Cost of a legal fee paid for on behalf of a beneficiary
    • This would be the cost of the legal fee.  (You are free to include the cost per hour of the salary of the staff member who pays the fee.)
      • “Sometimes the only thing standing between a person being free of an abusive landlord is a $115 fee, and that’s what your gift will help pay today.”

Unquantifiable:

  • “We create networks of peacemakers”

Quantifiable:

  • Cost per new person added to the network
    • This could be the total budget of the organization for a year divided by the number of new people added to the network each year.
      • “The cost to add one new peacemaker to our powerful movement is just $90.”
  • Cost for training materials for one person
    • This would be the total development and printing costs of the training materials, divided by the number of people who receive them.
      • “Just $4 prints and hands our all-important training materials to a new peacemaker so they can have an even greater impact.”

Unquantifiable:

  • “Help people heal at a sacred place”

Quantifiable:

  • Cost per visitor
    • This could be the total budget of the organization divided by the total number of visitors each year.
      • “Your gift of $49 will welcome one person into the sacred land that both you and I love.”
  • Cost to maintain one acre of the location
    • This would be the total maintenance budget, divided by the number of acres.
      • “I figured out that it costs an average of $155 to maintain one acre of this special place.  Will you give a gift to provide enough maintenance funds to care for at least one acre today?”
  • Cost to maintain one walking path for one month
    • This would be the total amount of time spent maintaining paths, times the cost/hour of the people doing the maintenance, then divided by the number of paths, then divided by 12.
      • “Because we boost your gift with volunteer labor, the cost to maintain one of our beloved walking paths is just $75 for a month.”

I think you see the methodology here.  It’s breaking down what you do into easily identifiable steps, then figuring out the cost for that step.

Then, the fundraising shows the donor the value of that step. 

To borrow from my previous post, when a nonprofit uses this technique they have “reduced cognitive load for the donor, answered a question donors have (‘how much do I need to give to make a meaningful difference?’), and helped show that anyone can make a difference by giving to the organization.”

All of this works together to make your organization more accessible to more people by making it easier for a person to understand what their gift will accomplish.

The Magic of ‘Specific and Low-Cost’

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Specific-general.

You might have noticed how lots of nonprofits ask donors to donate to provide low-cost, specific things. 

Here are a couple of examples:

  • A gift of just $37 will fund our website for a day, making all the stories from our independent news site available to everyone.
  • A complete Thanksgiving dinner and care costs just $5.15.
  • The cost of an hour of equine therapy for a child with autism is only $53.

Have you ever thought about why nonprofits use this tactic?  Once you do, it’s obvious why so many nonprofits do this, and why it works to help organizations raise more money.

By focusing on something specific, with a specific price point, the nonprofit makes three things easier for individual donors:

  1. By focusing on one action, it means the donor just needs to understand the value of that action.  In other words, the donor does not need to understand the entire organization, what it does, etc.  The donor just needs to understand one simple part. 
  2. By providing a specific dollar amount, the donor now knows how much they need to give to make a meaningful difference.  Instead of donors asking questions like “Will my $50 do anything?” or “How much do I need to give to help somebody?” they know the answer.
  3. By having the dollar amount be low (say, below $50), the organization communicates that almost anyone can make a meaningful difference.  This approach makes the organization more inclusive and accessible, which increases the number of donors who give gifts.

I hope you’ll marvel with me for a moment at how much this tactic accomplishes for nonprofits.  In just a couple of sentences, the nonprofit has reduced cognitive load for the donor, answered a question, and helped show than anyone can make a difference by giving to the organization.

No wonder this tactic works so well in individual donor fundraising.

If you feel like your organization doesn’t have something that’s low-cost and specific that your donors can fund, that’s just because no one has taught you how to find it.  My next post will feature several examples that will show you how to find one for your organization.

And if you or someone on your team are worried that this tactic will cause your larger donors to give smaller gifts, don’t worry.  I talk about this very thing on page 24 of this short, free eBook.

For right now, if this has sparked an idea for something specific that your donors would love to fund, start thinking about featuring it in your next piece of fundraising, or testing it in email sometime soon.  I’ve seen many organizations identify something specific their donors love to fund and have their fundraising immediately accelerate to new heights…

Focus Donor Attention on the Near Future

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Appeal focus.

The graphic above has been sitting in a folder on my computer for months because I’m not quite happy with it. 

But I’m following my own advice and “sending it out even if it isn’t perfect.”  I think it can help you raise more money this fall, and a lot of organizations need all the help they can get right now. 

Here’s the Big Idea; focus your appeals on the near future, not on the past.

To use the language I used in the graphic; you will raise more money if you focus your appeals on “work that needs to be done soon.”  You will raise less money if you focus your appeals on “work your organization has already done.”

Weirdly, nonprofits tend to relentlessly focus their fundraising on the past.  They share stories of people they have already helped.  They share statistics and lots of numbers from their past work.  They talk about the approach they’ve used.

I believe this comes from a good place – it’s an attempt to prove to donors that the organization knows what it’s doing and is effective.

But what I’ve seen from looking at fundraising results for 30 years is that individual donors send in more money when the focus of the appeal is on the near future, not on the past.

When you ask your individual donors to fund meaningful work that needs to be done soon, I think three things are happening:

  • Donors are thinking about something they can affect (the near future), versus something they cannot affect (the past).
  • Donors are thinking about the negative situation your beneficiaries are facing today, instead of a positive story of a person who has already been helped and no longer needs help.
  • Donors realize that their choice in this moment has consequences in the near term.

But really, even just those three bullet points overcomplicate things. 

It’s as simple as this little story … put yourselves in the shoes of a busy individual donor.  She’s at home, has a couple minutes, and is going through her mail or email.  She feels like making a gift.  Which appeal do you think she will give to:

  • “We’ve done work that’s important to you in the past, will you support us?”
  • “Work that’s important to you needs to happen two weeks from now, will you give a gift to help?”

Individual donors making quick decisions seem to be wired to support work that they care about that needs to be done soon. 

So focus your appeals on the near future – usually between the day you send it and about 8 weeks from then. Focus on meaningful work/service/help your organization plans/hopes to do in the next month or so.  Ask your donors to send in a gift to help fund that work. 

Save the focus on the past for when you are reporting back to donors.  Or when you are making a case to a Foundation for why they should give you a grant.

If our experience is any indication, you’ll be so pleased at how much money your appeals raise that you’ll never go back to focusing your appeals on the past.

‘But We Don’t Actually Do the Work’

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Middleman.

Earlier this week I wrote about focusing your fundraising to individual donors on what their gift will make possible, not on how your organization does its work. 

This advice immediately causes consternation for some organizations, particularly community foundations and what we might call “middleman organizations” that raise funds primarily to help other organizations.

For instance, I recently emailed with a woman who works for a local nonprofit that a) raises money to pay for the admin costs and staffing of a national program that runs in her state, and b) that national program engages the local community to c) utilize support provided by other nonprofits. 

Local foundations and organizations like the one above will say things like, “Well, we can’t tell donors that their gift will do anything specific because we don’t do the work.  We just make it possible for other nonprofits to provide their services.” 

However, I believe community foundations and middleman organizations can absolutely tell donors that their gift will make specific services happen.

I think what happens is that these nonprofits get too caught up in the difference between “what we do” and “what we make possible.”

As I wrote last week, individual donors are much more interested in what your organization makes happen than they are in exactly how your organization makes it happen.

There are lots of instances of this being true and completely above board.  For instance, international relief & development organizations usually have local/indigenous partners who “do the work” of feeding children, providing education, digging wells, etc. 

Medical research charities often outsource significant portions of their work, from bloodwork to testing to actually working with patients. 

My recommendation: don’t artificially limit what you say in your fundraising based on a belief that donors only fund your activities (how you do your work).  In our experience, donors tend to be more motivated by the outcomes your organization creates – what your work makes possible.

Your organization can absolutely make clear asks around providing specific services, even if those services are provided by another nonprofit/entity, as long as the donor’s gift provides funding that makes those services possible.

Deadlines and Consequences

Steven Screen  |  Ask
Deadline.

When I’m reviewing an appeal or e-appeal, one of the simple questions I ask is:

“Is there a deadline or consequences?”

Deadlines focus people’s attention – and cause more people to take action.  Consequences help people know what’s at stake – and cause more people to take action. 

So the next time you’re creating or reviewing an appeal or e-appeal, be sure to include a deadline or consequence.  You’ll help donors see how their gift to you is important and timely. 

And ultimately, it’s pretty simple: if you don’t give your donors a reason to give a gift today, you’ll get fewer gifts today.

Three Lessons from Remarkable Annual Reports

John Lepp  |  Report

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

* * *

I know we like to believe that one of our donors is sitting in their armchair, maybe beside a fire, with a hot cup of tea and their beloved cat purring on their lap waiting… listening… for that clang and tiny screech as the metal flap on their mail box shuts, thus ensuring the safe arrival of your latest annual report.

We imagine them flinging poor Ron, the cat, off their laps and jumping to their feet! “WOOHOOOOO!!!! My charity’s annual report has ARRIVED TODAY!!!!”

Don’t we imagine that?

What if I could tell you 3 ways you might be able to get your donor to do JUST that, next time you send them your annual report?

1. Do you want to read an ‘annual report’?

Probably not.

68 pages of 8 point reversed type that adheres to your soul destroying, dumpster burning, graphic standards that some art director from a commercial agency put together and that you now must religiously stick to so that – lord forbid – you do not go ‘off brand’… whatever that means.

68 pages of all of the amazing things that every board member has ever thought of in their entire life about their fantastic accomplishments, page after page of stats, people holding big checks, figures, infographics, pie charts and names of your most important donors (ie: the rich ones). Do you want to read that?

No? Shocker.

Consider, my friends, the idea of a gratitude report. In a nutshell, a gratitude report is only as long as it needs to be. A report that tells your donors a love-filled story about something they made possible by their giving, is filled with plenty of you’s, shares the nutshell successes of how you continue to meet the needs of your mission with their amazing support and is inclusive of all donors.

Not just the rich ones.

2. Can you tell a fantastic story?

I have 3 examples.

i) From a women’s shelter. We were handed Ana’s story, written by her own hand, telling of her abuse by her partner. It was a story of how she found herself in a country without any support from friends or family. This story was not watered down by the head of comms or edited by a committee of 8 people in a circulated, tracked changes word file… It was her story – from her hand to our eyes. And I wanted to honour her without sensationalizing her.

This was the cover of the report.

White handwriting on a black cover. No logo. Do you want to see what she shares next? Of course you do. You can download the whole report here.

ii) For a hospital foundation. Getting your donor’s attention isn’t enough. But it IS getting harder to do even that every day. And if we can get their attention, we must reward them for it. For this gratitude report we started with a simple illustration of a bandaid, covered in cupcakes and put that on the cover. It says:

“Because of you, I’m not just a flexible bandaid. And, I know I’m not the sort of thing you’d find on the cover of a report, but here we are. I may seem like a small and insignificant player in the context of a hospital, but with your help, I have a big impact. You give me the power of healing many humans, big and small. I think of River. She came in last week with her mom for her COVID-19 booster. River was crying and holding her mom’s hand, but the moment she saw me, all covered in cupcakes, she stopped crying. We soothed her. You and I. (Ok, maybe the cupcakes had something to do with it too.) Thank you for giving me that gift.”

Because of you.

Fully utilizing the full universe of interesting voices around you (beyond the blah, blah blah of your professional leaders) can show your donors a different perspective to their giving that they might not be aware of. Also, make sure to focus on the big and small ways that donor gifts can make a difference.

Hospital bed.

iii) For a hospice. Focus on ALL your donors. This report focused on why donors, giving big and small gifts, care so deeply about this mission and cause. It is filled with the emotional WHY they care and give.

This is a fantastic example of social proof. Your donor is sipping her tea and feeling echoes of her own feelings and thoughts about her connection to the cause.

I especially like this report because we used the visual theme of a quilt. For anyone who has had the pleasure of visiting (and even if you haven’t), you would see these quilts hung around various parts of the ‘house’. These quilts are tributes and symbols of the lasting memories of those beautiful souls that have passed on while in the care of this organization.

You can download the whole report here.

3. Who should get it?

We typically do a small print run. Yes, that’s right.

We actually mail out printed copies of the report. We put it in a 9” x 12” envelope with first class postage with a cover letter attached to it and a personal, handwritten note, ideally from a board member or ED.

We only mail it to the TOP 20% of your donors. Since you likely are getting 80% of your revenue from these folks day after day, you can make the case that they are the ones that care the most about you. Mid level to high level donors, monthly donors, legacy donors, loyal donors (of any gift size) typically fall into this category.

For the rest of your donors that you have a mail address for, send them a postcard with an image of your striking cover, letting them know you have created something JUST FOR THEM and they can call you or email you (an actual person please) and ask for their own copy.

Yes, post a version of it on your website. Yes, email a link for it to your donors that you have emails for, with a personal email suggesting why they might want to look at it and why you would be more than happy to talk to them about it if they have any questions.

Do you want to create annual reports that you hate doing and no one wants to read?

OR

Do you want to craft loving gratitude reports for your beautiful donors, these amazing humans that make your missions hopes, dreams and values come true?

Agents of Good are experts at bringing these reports to life – contact me, John Lepp, at john@agentsofgood.org if you want to talk about your next gratitude report that will leave your donors SPRINGING from their chair (and hopefully not harming the cat in the process!).

* * *

Steven says: “The following is a guest post from John Lepp, the co-founder of Agents of Good in Toronto. John has the best understanding of how fundraising actually works that I’ve ever met, and then he ‘turns it up to 11’ by being a great guy to hang out with. You should subscribe to his blog here.”