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Fundraising Tuesday: A Great Email Ask

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Greater Boston Food BankYou’ve seen a lot of tips about writing the ideal appeal letter on this blog. That’s because direct mail still works. Even when donors go online to give, often what moved them to make that donation was a letter in the mail. But what about email?

Email works too: if you craft it with the same care you’d give to a letter.

Here’s a great example from the Greater Boston Food Bank. This is the website version, but I received it, addressed to me personally, in my inbox. What makes this message work?

  • The subject line grabs you from the start. “Who is Ashley,” you want to know, “and what is her story?”
  • The graphic gives you the reason for giving and the call to action–even if you never read any further.
  • The content turns a statistic into a story. You get the gist of the tale and its emotional impact in the brief amount of time you’re likely to spend on any single email.
  • The “Give Now” button and links in the text make it easy for you to give–and the landing page uses the identical graphic so you’re sure you’re in the right place to make your donation.

What’s the best fundraising email you’ve written? Send me a copy–I may feature it on Communicate!

TY Thursday: Call to Say Thanks

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thank donors by phone

Does everyone like a thank-you call?

Sometimes the best thank-you letter a donor can get isn’t a letter. It’s a phone call.

Ideally, you’d do both. When the donation arrives, call and say, “You’ll be getting an official thank-you letter in a couple of days–but I wanted to call and thank you personally.”

Or, after you know the letter should have arrived, follow it up with a call. “I wanted to thank you again and tell you how much I appreciate your gift.”

What Calling to Say Thanks Does for Your Nonprofit

First off, you will feel great about talking to a donor.

Sure, there may be an awkward moment at the start of the call. The donor isn’t used to getting called out of the blue to be told “thank you.” (Sad,  but all too true!) She or he may be wary, thinking you’re about to ask for yet another gift.

When the donor realizes that you took the time to call just because they did a good thing and you want to acknowledge it, they are delighted. They may end up thanking you!

Second, you may learn more about the donor.

If you get a live person on the call and not a voicemail, they may be in the middle of something, or just not talkative. You respect their time, thank them, and move on. But if they seem open to conversation, then do what Tina Cincotti advises:

Say — “I don’t want to take up much of your time but would you be willing to share with me what inspired you to first give to ___________ (org name)?”

You can also ask things like:

  • Why does this cause matter to you?
  • What interests you most about our organization?
  • What expectations do you have of the organizations you support?
  • How often do you want to hear from us?
  • Would you like to be involved with us in other ways beyond being a donor?

(And don’t forget to make a note of what you hear, in your donor database!)

Third, even if you leave a voicemail, you build trust.

Your donor’s relationship with you follows a predictable path: first they get to know you, then they decide they like you, and finally they come to trust you. Leaving a personal message is a step along that path.

What all this adds up to is: your nonprofit makes more money!

According to Tom Ahern, first-time donors who get a personal thank you within 48 hours are 4x more likely to give a second gift. And you want that second gift, since donor retention rates skyrocket from 22.9% to 60.8%.

So, let’s see.

Don't call. That first-time donor never gives again. Call. They give and keep on giving. Share on X

Seems like a simple choice, doesn’t it?

That’s why Gail Perry says using the phone to thank donors is “highly profitable fundraising.” And Steven Shattuck of Bloomerang says you should call every new donor: no excuses!

How to Make a Thank-You Call

Who should call your donors? The best people to make those thank-you calls are Board members and volunteers. Like the donor, they have given time or money, or both, because they care about the organization and its mission. They reinforce the donor’s decision to give, because they are other people “just like you” who give.

Should your callers follow a script? They should have a script (and look at the Gail Perry and Tina Cincotti links above for examples). But they should feel free to adapt it so it sounds like their own voice. That’s particularly important when leaving voicemail. If the donor thinks it’s a sales call, she or he will hang up before hearing your gratitude. A conversational tone of voice can keep them listening.

How long should you stay on the phone? That depends entirely on the donor. If the reaction you hear is, “Oh, that’s so nice! Thank you, goodbye,” don’t try to extend the conversation. If the donor is willing to have a conversation with you, so much the better. If you reach voicemail, say what you mean to say, slowly, with feeling, and that is that.

Thank-You Calls to Mobile Phones

I’m a baby boomer. Most donors are my age or older, and we’re used to getting phone calls on our land lines (or what we used to call just “the phone”).

Increasingly, though, Generations X and Y are starting to give…and increasingly, the mobile phone is the only phone they have. On mobile phones, it’s a nuisance to see that you’ve missed a call, go to voicemail, and play it back. So, leaving voicemail on mobile is not effective: few people are picking it up.

The etiquette among younger donors is that if you call them and they recognize the caller, it’s up to them to call back. (If they don’t, then it’s your problem!) So how do you use the phone to thank a donor who’s mobile?

Text them. At least, that’s what a mobile phone expert told our friends at Blue Avocado. Actually, he advised matching the channel of the thank-you to the channel of the gift.

If someone makes a donation as a result of a text, text them right away with a thank you. A day or two later, send another thank you by email so they get two thanks. If they donated as a result of an email, send them a thank-you email right away, and then follow it up with a snail mail thank you.
Do you call donors on the phone to say thanks? What’s the one conversation you remember the best?

Fundraising Tuesday: How to Turn Your Statistics into Stories

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statistics vs. stories

Even true stats can’t match true stories

You’ve probably seen them. Maybe you’ve even written them. We’re talking about the fundraising appeal letters that are based on statistics.

“Last year we served 10,000 meals to 500 people at 5 different locations.”

“We delivered a petition to the White House with 49,000 signatures demanding action.”

“We raised $120,000 to give college scholarships to students in our community.”

These numbers matter to us…but not to our donors. They may not even read them. They will not remember them.

Why Statistics Don’t Matter

The problem with statistics is not that they don’t reveal enough. (Even though they don’t. For example: Is 10,000 meals a lot or a little? How many people stayed hungry?)

The problem isn’t that the numbers can be fudged, either.

The real problem is that statistics don’t touch the heart.

Donors decide to give because you engage their emotions. They feel the pain of a child going hungry, the pride of a community sending its brightest high school students to college. Without an appeal to the heart, they will not even pay attention. Once you move their hearts, you will get a chance to make them nod their heads, too. But not until then.

Why Stories Work

As a species, we crave stories. Like water, like food, like the air we breathe, stories are vital to us. We listen to stories to make sense of the world around us. We shape the events of our own lives into narratives to give our lives meaning.

Stories stick in the memory. Have you ever tried to memorize a grocery list? After a certain length, it becomes impossible. You can try singing the list to a well-known tune, or counting it on your fingers, or alphabetizing it, and still you’re likely to come home and realize you’ve left several items sitting on the supermarket shelves. But if you give it even a little bit of narrative structure–“We’re having pasta tonight, so I need tomato sauce and salad fixings”–it becomes so much easier.

Telling stories to your donors makes the work you’re asking them to support tangible, meaningful, and memorable. If you touch the donor’s heart, you can even make it compelling. The donor will want to give!

3 Steps to Turn Your Statistics into Stories

What if you’re used to writing fundraising letters that are full of statistics? You can learn how to take what you have written in the past and turn it into storytelling your donors will love.

Let’s take one of the sentences full of numbers I mentioned above and transform it.

“Last year we served 10,000 meals to 500 people at 5 different locations.”

Step One: Talk about One Person

Telling the story of one person moves the heart more than citing large numbers. Research has proved this again and again. So, forget those 500 people. Talk about one person, and perhaps her family. Who is this person who ate your meals? What can you tell your donors that will help them get to know her?

Example: “Maria and Joe moved to this community ten years ago to take care of Maria’s elderly mom, who needed help paying her bills and even remembering to take her medication. Joe is the friendly face behind the wheel of the Route 89 bus every morning. Maria is trained as a nurse’s aide, and she puts those skills to work taking care of her mom and her two daughters who have been born in our town.”

Step Two: Show the Challenge That Person is Facing

What changed so that your one person and her family need help? What would life be like for them without that food your donor is providing?

“In the ten years they have lived here, the cost of renting a small two-bedroom apartment has gone up and up. Joe’s wages have not increased at all. Any time they have an unexpected expense–a child who needs to see the doctor, or a new walker to help Maria’s mom get from her bedroom to her front door–then that month, they run out of food. Without the help that you provide, Maria and Joe would go hungry to feed their daughters. And there still might not be enough to go around.”

Step Three: Explain How the Donor is Helping That Person Succeed

How has getting the food for free changed Maria’s life, and her husband and children’s lives? What difference does a donation make, in tangible terms?

“Because you cared about Maria and Joe and donated to this agency, their two girls go to school every day well-fed and ready to learn. Joe doesn’t have to be an absentee parent, working extra shifts. He can drive his bus and come home to his family. Maria doesn’t have to worry about being too faint from hunger, and she can give her loving attention to her mother’s needs.”

 

You can turn any statistic into a story if you are prepared. Make sure you give yourself enough time to collect stories and bank them so you can use whenever you need them. And remember to make the donor the hero of the story. When you tell donors a tale of what happens “because of you,” you will touch the heart and move donors to give.

 

 

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