There’s a lot of unease in fundraising right now. It kind of feels like anything could happen this year.
So yesterday, while helping an organization review their plan for the rest of the year, I reminded them of the following principle:
If something happens in the world that causes your organization or beneficiaries to be in the news, create and send fundraising fast.
You want to have the first e-appeal in your donors’ inboxes, not the seventh.
This is when it’s good to remember that your individual donors operate at the “speed of news,” while most organizations operate at the “speed of nonprofit.”
“News speed” is fast. Things change every 24 hours. The news points your donors’ attention in different directions almost every day.
“Nonprofit speed” can often be sloooow. Need to get an appeal out? It could take 4 weeks…
The reason it’s important to move fast when your nonprofit or beneficiaries are in the news is that the news provides awareness for your situation, and your fundraising will always raise more money when there is more awareness.
So when something happens in the world that you should be fundraising about, move fast. Stop, “do not pass go,” write & send that email today.
And if my Monopoly reference hasn’t done it already, let me further date myself: back in the ‘90’s and early 2000’s I served multiple national organizations that had “emergency appeals” pre-printed and sitting in storage. When an emergency happened, all we had to do was quickly write a few lines of copy about the disaster. The copy was lasered on the front page of the letter. The letters would be in the mail 24 hours later.
The nonprofits went to the expense of pre-printing letters because we knew that losing even a day would mean raising less and helping less. This is hard for smaller organizations with less time and money to spend on fundraising.
But everyone can write and send an e-appeal.
The news moves fast. If the news focuses attention on your organization or beneficiaries, you should move fast, too.
