offer Archives | The Better Fundraising Company

What Becker the Yellow Lab Can Teach You about Fundraising Offers

Sarah Lundberg | September 7, 2023September 5, 2023Ask

Recently, I came across the strongest, clearest “offer” I’ve ever seen.

This “offer” came from my dog-nephew, Becker. He’s a one-year-old yellow lab.

Becker LOVES when people visit his house. And he presents one clear offer to each visitor:

“Will you play tug with me?”

Becker shares this offer using his warm brown doggie eyes, with a toy in his mouth and FULL confidence that you will say YES!

When you DO say yes, here’s the game:

You hold onto a toy that gets increasingly slimy while Becker tugs and shakes the toy until your teeth rattle. If you let go, he gives you a puzzled look and then gives you a chance to try again.

Taken at face value, this isn’t a game I would choose to play.

But I say yes nearly every time, because Becker presents his offer (play tug with me!) with urgency and contagious excitement (excited eyes and wagging tail). And I know what he wants is for me to grab the toy and hang on for dear life.

If I don’t respond, he is doggedly persistent and keeps nudging me with the toy until I respond.

Becker does all this without saying a word!

YOU can have this kind of success with your fundraising.

You see, Becker’s offer has three key nuggets that also make an effective fundraising offer.

Shows a clear need
Is urgent
Tells the recipient exactly how to respond

When your fundraising offer is that clear, your donor doesn’t have to guess what’s needed right now. Nor does she have to guess what her gift will make happen. She knows exactly what to do!

This means you’re more likely to get a response and raise more money for your cause and your organization.

So next time you’re putting together a fundraising offer — whether it’s for an appeal, email, event, or in-person meeting — make sure you include all three of Becker’s heart-tugging tactics. Be clear with the need. Share the urgency. And make sure your donor knows what to do next with a clear instruction like “send in a gift today using the envelope I’ve enclosed for you.”

What Is a Fundraising “Offer”? [INFOGRAPHIC]

Steven | October 24, 2019October 23, 2019Ask

A fundraising “offer” is the least-understood, most-powerful tool in fundraising.

It’s the secret key to Asking effectively.

Here’s what an “offer” is: a super-simple description of what your donor’s gift will accomplish.

Many nonprofits don’t pay close attention to how they describe what a donor’s gift will do. I can’t say this strongly enough: you should pay very close attention to the words and ideas you use to describe what your donor’s gift will do today.

I recently spent some time with Brady Josephson talking about what makes a successful offer. The blog post he wrote after our chat, 4 Components of a Great Fundraising Offer, has a ton of helpful thoughts for you, including a podcast we recorded.

Today, I want to share my super-simple formula for creating a successful offer. Brady created the excellent infographic at the right (click to enlarge).

You can read more about each of the 4 elements in Brady’s post. For now, let me leave you with an idea that shows you how important I think offers are.

As I look back over the nonprofits I’ve worked with, the biggest jumps in revenue tend to come from two causes:

A spike or long-term increase of media attention on the people, place or cause a nonprofit is working on. For instance, raising money to help refugees used to be an uphill slog in the mud. But because of the increased media attention on refugees in recent years (Syria, Iraq, Uganda, Myanmar) it’s become much easier. Response rates are up. Average gifts are up. But for the most part, a change like this is completely outside the control of your organization.
What you can control is your offer. The best example of this is World Vision. They were a tiny organization until they developed the “child sponsorship” offer – now they raise over $1.5 billion a year. It’s not that donors care more about kids now than they did 50 years ago. It’s that World Vision got really good at describing what a donor’s gift does.

Offers are so helpful to donors because they help donors quickly identify something good they can do today. A good offer doesn’t require your donors to understand your cause, your organization, or your methods. Put another way: a good offer makes it easier for a donor to say “yes!”

And when you make it easier for donors to say “yes!” you “open the door” to your organization a little bit wider. More donors will walk through, and they will bring donations!

PS — For more on creating successful offers, download our free e-Book, Fundraising Offers: What they are, how they work, and how to make a great one. Click here to download it!

How and Why to Give Your Donors a Reason to Give Today

Steven | April 30, 2019May 16, 2019Ask

This is the sixth post in a series designed to help you create powerful fundraising offers.

And for a refresher, here’s my definition of an offer: the main thing that you say will happen when the person gives a gift.

The Four Main Ingredients

The most successful fundraising offers tend to have 4 elements:

A solvable problem that’s easy to understand
A solution to that problem that’s easy to understand
The cost of the solution seems like a good deal
There’s urgency to solve the problem NOW

Today, we’re going to break down element #4, “there’s urgency to solve the problem NOW.”

There’s Urgency to Solve the Problem NOW

There are two main ideas here…

There’s urgency

I cannot emphasize this enough: the more urgently your donor’s gift is needed, the more likely you are to receive a gift.

And let’s take care of an objection to this right off the bat. Immediately upon reading the previous paragraph, some people will say that using urgency too often will wear out donors, cause donor fatigue, and your donors will stop giving to you.

They will not test this approach. They will simply “know” that always using urgency will drive donors away.

This is not true.

Remember, your donors do not open every piece of mail. They open 3 out of 10 emails (if you’re good). So a pattern that seems to you like never-ending urgency can seem to donors like you’re asking for an appropriate amount of help – help that is needed for the important cause you’re working on.

The success of my career is due largely to knowing that mass-donor fundraising can be more urgent, more often than people think. And it will have almost zero negative consequences. (Because of course you’ll get a complaint or two – but when you compare those one or two complaints against the hundreds of gifts you receive, the complaints feel like a small hurdle.)

So let’s agree that urgency works. Here’s what you want to do…

Solve the Problem NOW

Here’s what you want to do: every email, letter, newsletter and event should give people multiple reasons to give a gift today.

You want to create urgency in any fundraising piece by highlighting reasons your donor should give a gift today. Here’s a brief list of reasons you can use in your own fundraising:

A deadline. This can be a real deadline (“Our fiscal year ends June 30th”) or an artificial deadline (“Please send your gift by the first day of school”) – they both work like crazy.
What will happen if your organization doesn’t do its work. This is making clear what will happen to your beneficiaries or cause if your organization is not able to help; “If we don’t help the middle-schooler learn to read, she’ll enter high-school at a massive disadvantage” and “If we don’t cure this person in time, they will lose their eyesight” and “If this program is not funded, children in our town will have nowhere to learn about the Arts.”
a. Many organizations don’t like to share this information. But it’s a fact! It’s the reason your organization exists! In my view, those organizations are hiding the truth from their donors. They aren’t treating their donors like adults. Trust me; your donors can handle it. And sharing what could happen if your organization doesn’t help reminds donors what’s at stake – it reminds donors why they gave a gift in the first place.
Social Proof. If you can show donors that “people like them are making donations like this” you will raise more money. Here’s a phrase that has helped our smaller clients have a lot of success: “[DonorName], compassionate people all over [LocalArea] are pitching in to help [Beneficiaries/Cause] – please do your part today by sending in a gift!”

Remember: LOTS of charities are asking your donors for gifts. Most of them are using the, “Hey, we’re helping a lot of people, would you partner with us?” approach. And that will cause some gifts to come in. But if you really want to stand out in your donors’ mailbox and inbox, you need to give her reasons to give a gift to you today.

You do that well, and you’ll get more gifts.

Next Up…

The next post will show you why some people in your organization won’t like a strong fundraising offer (something I suspect you already know is going to happen).

And I’ll show you how I convince people to try an offer for the first time. Because after they try it – and don’t see the massive number of complaints and donor exodus they fear – you’re on your way to using offers and raising more money!

Read the entire series: