This Independence Day we’re reminded of the line, “toward a more perfect union.”
Not perfect, but trying to get better every year.
Just like fundraising.
Happy Fourth!
This Independence Day we’re reminded of the line, “toward a more perfect union.”
Not perfect, but trying to get better every year.
Just like fundraising.
Happy Fourth!
You know how when you start making pancakes, the first couple of ‘em aren’t quite right?
Either the batter’s too thick, or the pan isn’t hot enough, or that little brown ring around the edge of the pancake that you like doesn’t happen.
The point is, you need to make a couple before you get everything dialed in, and then pancakes come out the way you want.
Your fundraising is the same way.
If you’re only sending a couple pieces of fundraising a year, there’s almost no chance they come out the way you want them to. It’s been so long since you made the last one that you just don’t have everything dialed in. It’d be like making one pancake every week.
Contrast that to the rhythm of consistently making & sending fundraising. Plus looking at the results to see what’s working best. And then getting that “sense” of what’s going to work and what isn’t.
Just like with making pancakes, it’s when you get in a rhythm that the magic happens.
When you’re in a band, it’s much more enjoyable to walk onstage when you know how to put on a good show.
But when your band performs its first shows, you don’t know yet how to put on a good show. You need to perform a lot of shows before you get good, before you have that “earned confidence” when you walk out in front of a crowd.
It’s the same thing with your fundraising materials; it’s much more enjoyable to send out a letter when you know it’s a good appeal.
But when you send your first appeals, you don’t know yet how to write or design a good appeal. You need to send a lot of appeals before you get good, before you have that earned confidence that “this appeal is going to raise a lot of money for us.”
Just like with the band, you have to practice before you get good.
The incredible thing is that in fundraising, you don’t need confidence when you start! Your audience is friendly to your fundraising. Your donors care about the cause you’re working on, and they want to help!
It is on you to get started, though.
This Independence Day we’re reminded of the line, “toward a more perfect union.”
Not perfect, but trying to get better every year.
Just like fundraising.
Happy Fourth!
I have a message for all the young Fundraisers and smaller organizations out there.
Nobody gets their fundraising right the first time.
I say that because it’s easy to get discouraged.
As you start – as an organization starts – there is SO MUCH that you’re having to figure out. Not to mention, nobody got into this business because they desperately wanted to send letters and emails to people. 🙂
So, please know three powerful things…
That’s a lot of good. You could be spending your time marketing bags of chips. Instead you’re helping make change.
It’s not easy. (If it were easy, we’d all be raising tens of millions of dollars and have six-pack abs.)
So keep going. Keep iterating. Keep practicing.
And thanks for being a Fundraiser!
There’s a habit your organization can develop that will result in raising more money and keeping more of your donors each year.
It’s the habit of regularly using the mail and email to stay in relationship with your donors.
Here’s why the habit of regularly sending mail and email to your donors is so powerful…
The habit of regularly Asking your donors to do meaningful, powerful things with a gift through your organization results in more gifts. Donors in motion tend to stay in motion. Donors at rest tend to stay at rest.
The habit of regularly Reporting to your donors shows and tells them that their gifts make a difference. Donors who know their previous gift made a meaningful difference are more likely to give to you again than donors who don’t.
The habit of regularly contacting your donors always works better than “going dark” for weeks or months at a time.
The habit of regularly contacting your donors via letters and emails is more effective than Social.
The habit of regularly contacting your donors always works better than sending nothing.
Getting in the habit of regularly sending out mail and email, paying attention to the results, always works better than any other approach.
First, you must get past the idea that mailing your donors more than a couple times a year will somehow result in the mythical “donor fatigue.” If you need help with that, look here. Or here.
Then you have to realize that each piece you send out is not precious. Each piece you send out is an overwhelmingly positive incident that raises money, keeps you in touch with your donors, and is a learning opportunity.
Then you just have to practice. You need repetition. Sending out mail and email is like any other skill; you get better with practice.
Show me an organization that has developed a habit of regularly mailing and emailing its donors and I’ll show you an organization that has deeper relationships with its donors and keeps more of its donors every year.
Want to become a more effective Fundraiser but your organization won’t allow you to send out enough fundraising to really improve your craft?
Practice on your non-donors.
Get permission to send more fundraising to the non-donors on your email list.
After all, you have nothing to lose with those folks, right? And the purpose of your email list is for members of the list to be turned into donors, right?
If people in your organization question you, focus their attention on how the organization has said that you need more new donors, and that’s exactly what you are trying to do.
The side benefit is that you and your organization will be more effective fundraisers because of it.
If your CRM setup means you don’t know which of the email addresses on your list are donors or non-donors, you have an extra step to take. Create an email list for your test sends, and from that list remove any addresses that look like they might be for your major donors, board members, staff and foundations.
Then start to try stuff. Send an e-appeal that tries a new approach. Try sending a “breathless dispatch from the front line” instead of the “standard sanitized perfectly-proofed update.” Send two e-appeals in a week. Send out a survey designed to get legacy giving leads.
It might be a bit messy. But it’s all practice that will make you more effective.
Organizations that want to get more effective at Fundraising allow little “messes” like these in order to learn and grow. As I said last week, “Ship your work. Get feedback. Improve it. Repeat.”
If you’re not regularly practicing, chances are you’re not getting more effective.
This post is for people who are worried about their fundraising work this fall because they aren’t confident that they really know what they’re doing.
To quote the writer Chuck Wendig,
“The work doesn’t need your confidence.
The work just needs the work.”
The same is true for fundraising: the fundraising you create doesn’t need your confidence. It just needs your work.
Yes, there’s lots to learn about fundraising. But always remember that your donors want to help. You are communicating to donors who are friendly to your fundraising.
So if you aren’t confident in the fundraising you create, I want you to internalize these three truths:
You can raise lots of money without doing “great” fundraising. Your donors want to help!
Make your fundraising, put it in front of your donors, and pay attention to the results.
Do “the work” this year, and by December 31st you’ll have raised money and helped your beneficiaries. Your confidence is not needed, but your work is.
Here’s my recipe for how to succeed in direct response fundraising.
FYI: anybody worth their salt is endlessly repeating steps 3 through 5. And they’ve used their learning to get better at all types of fundraising – not just direct response.
Develop a point of view that’s based on the best data you have available, or based on data from someone with market experience, at scale, that you trust.
This is hard for Fundraisers starting at smaller shops. But there’s more good info available today than at any point in fundraising history. There are quite a few people working to share the data and “point of view” that used to be available to only a privileged few. Erica Wassdorp, Jeff Brooks, Lisa Sargent, Tom Ahern, Mike Duerkson and Jen Love and John Lepp immediately spring to mind.
To give you an example of how much this has changed, I asked my mentor many times why he didn’t write a book to share all that he knew. His response was always, “Why in the world would I give to my competitors all of the knowledge we worked so hard to learn?”
My attitude is that it’s the right thing to do to make this information more available to smaller nonprofits, and that it’s not a zero-sum game.
Apply your point of view in your fundraising practice. If your results consistently outperform previous results for your organization, your point of view is more accurate than the point of view that was previously used.
This means you have to practice for a while. And you have to track results. You build and test your point of view over time.
And some points of view absolutely work better than others.
If you get new data that seems to contradict your point of view, investigate that data to see if a) it applies to your situation, and b) stands up to scrutiny.
Things go sideways on this step all the time.
First, you must actively be looking for or testing for new data. No “leaning back” here; you have to lean in.
Second, when new data arrives, you must always ask whether the new data applies to your situation/context and is a good next step. In my experience, this often goes awry when smaller orgs apply learnings from bigger orgs that don’t apply to them. For instance, Bill Jacobs at Analytical Ones helps medium and large nonprofits create “statistical models” that help the nonprofit know who to mail each appeal letter to. It’s an incredible tool, but the “appropriate next step” for most small organizations is probably to start using standard RFM segmentation instead of “mailing every name in our database.”
Third, does the “data” stand up to scrutiny? A lot of studies get published in our industry that report what donors say they are going to do. I pay almost no attention to what donors say they are going to do because there’s often a huge difference between what they say they will do and what they actually do. Humans’ predictions of what they think they will do in the future are not nearly as helpful as data about what they’ve actually done in the past.
If needed, update your point of view.
If the contradicting data applies to your situation/context, and the data stands up to scrutiny, then you need to update your point of view.
Stay on the lookout for new data.
This is hard for people who don’t work at a fundraising agency, or don’t work at a nonprofit that runs tests. Thankfully, there’s more information publicly available than ever before. Here’s what I recommend to get some of it:
As I said earlier, the professionals I respect are always on the lookout for new data. I’d describe myself as a person who “lives in fear of finding out that there’s a better way to do something than what I currently recommend.”
Data that proves you wrong just shows you that there’s a stronger, more complete point of view out there for you to develop.
As you build and refine your point of view, do it consciously. Take notice when you’re wrong. Take notice when you’re right.
And then magically, after years of practicing, you’ll be able to help nonprofits of all kinds do even more of their world-changing work.