Communicate!

Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

Listening Beneath the Surface

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So many readers enjoyed my post “Are You Listening, Nonprofits?“, I thought you might like a little more advice about social listening.

Submarine using sonar

Most social media is below the surface

Craig Jamieson is a submarine fan, and he tells us that social listening is like sonar.  Use it to find:

  • Conversations that reveal something about the people who support you or the people you serve.
  • Mentions of your organization. Ever wonder whether people out there really know about your organization?  The one who mentioned you does! Write them back.
  • Praises and problems. Visibly thank people for saying good things about you.  Visibly respond to requests for help or criticism of your organization.
  • What your audience wants to hear.  If people “like” something on social media and it relates to your mission or your community, why not post something about that too?
  • Opportunities. Your elected officials are probably online.  So are your funders, your donors, your collaborators, and your competitors.  Listen to what they’re saying to get a better sense of what your organization could be doing.

You can do all this with tools that you have at your fingertips, like Google Alerts, Facebook and Twitter lists, and keyword searches.  If you want to make your sonar run by itself, you can invest in tools specifically designed for social media monitoring.

Either way, a human being still has to listen.  So, turn on your sonar and run silent, run deep until you find the right conversation to enter!

 

 

The One Way to Get Donors to Give Again and Again

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59% of donors don't repeatDoes your nonprofit live and die by donations? Chances are you’re dying.

You work so hard to get a donation, especially at the end of the year. By next year, however, more than half those donors–59%–will disappear. You will never hear from them again.

It’s even worse with new donors. Three-quarters of them never repeat.

This is a race nonprofits can’t win.  That’s why your nonprofit will die, maybe even in 2015…unless you find a way to make donors want to give to you again and again.

Fortunately, there is a way.

Giving donors the stories they want to hear can mean life or death for your organization. Share on X

How can you increase the chance that a person who gave once will give again?

People give their first gift to your organization for a variety of quirky reasons. When they  continue to give, it’s for one reason: because they have come to know, like, and trust you.

People give when you build a relationship with them, and the key to that relationship is great communication.

Great communication begins with the thank-you letter, but it doesn’t end there. A newsletter is a good thing, too, but a newsletter full of what’s happening inside your organization will do nothing to keep your donors.

So what kind of communication does work? A June 2014 survey by nonprofit technology research firm Software Advice found that sixty percent of donors want impact stories to see how their first donation is making a difference.”You must find, recognize, collect, and share those stories in all your communications.

Become a storytelling nonprofit

It takes a team of people to collect and tell your stories.

  1. People with day-to-day experience. They could be your direct service staff or volunteers, your Board members, your customers or clients. Develop them as sources, so they look out for stories you can tell.
  2. Writers. Someone who can take other people’s words and make them sing in print is essential to your team.
  3. Photographers/videographers. A picture may not be worth a thousand words. It may, however, make all the words you write more meaningful and memorable.
  4. Artists. Sometimes a good graphic is more powerful than a photo (and often, easier to produce when you need it).
  5. Tech people. Because your newsletter, blog, email, Facebook post, or video is no good if nobody sees it! Someone has to keep the system up and running and figure out the glitches as they occur.
  6. Editor. You need a consistent tone to your communications, and they must appear regularly so your audience expects them. Put one person in charge.

Get expert help

Most of all, what you need is someone who will look at your organization with the eyes of a donor. It’s all too easy to fall back into “We held this event” or “We hired this new person”–but that’s not what your donors want!

A communications consultant can help you recognize and shape the stories your donors want to hear. There are ways your organization can afford a consultant, even if you don’t have one in the budget yet. And the investment is worth it.

Your donors are waiting to hear what difference their donations are making. They won’t wait forever. Get the help you need to make sure they give again and again.

 

 

 

Do Your Donors Want Poetry or Prose?

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How should you raise money for your cause? Write grant proposals, send out appeal letters, hold events, use crowdfunding?

It depends whether your donors want poetry or prose.

My Book of Days cover

Raising funds with words that sing

My late brother Ron Fischman needed money. He had commissioned artist Debora Alanna to produce the beautiful cover illustration for his new volume of poems, My Book of Days–and he had to pay her for her work.

Ron set up a crowdfunding campaign on Pubslush. He went on to do all the things that would draw people in and make them feel they were doing something good.

  • He showed people the art they’d be supporting
  • He gave them several tastes of what the book was all about.
  • He made it personal. Debora “prepared [this cover art] out of faith that my friends, colleagues, Jewish and poetic worlds would make this campaign successful.”

Ron also offered premiums that would appeal to exactly the kind of person who would support his book.

And it worked! The crowdfunding campaign raised enough money to pay the artist, send out the premiums, and do a tiny bit of additional promotion besides.  (By the way, you can order a copy of Ron’s book if you wish. Just click this link.

Raising funds with ideas that matter

Ron needed less than a thousand dollars to make his dream come true, and he had something tangible to show as a result. His cause was made for crowdfunding.

Others, not so much.

My friend and colleague Robin Carton of Kayak Consulting Group was trying to raise money for a group that makes small, progressive organizations all over the Boston area smarter and stronger.

Her client wanted to send a direct mail fundraising appeal to the people who support those organizations.  The catch? They had no money for direct mail in their budget.

Can you imagine going public with the plea “Give us money so we can send out letters to raise more money?”  No, I can’t either!

Robin and I agreed that her client’s best bet was to submit grant proposals to foundations and businesses. Foundations have concepts for what her client does: “capacity building,” and “combined impact.”  Businesses understand “marketing’ and “return on investment.”

The language may not sing, but it may convince. And if they’re successful, Robin and her client will attract a lot more than a thousand dollars.

When you think about how to raise money for your cause, consider it a communications question.  Do the people you want to support you think in poetry or prose?

 

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