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Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

Fundraising Tuesday: What Does Your Nonprofit Do in the Off Season?

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patriots photoCongratulations to the New England Patriots, who will play in the Super Bowl this Sunday, February 3, for the fourth time in the last five years. What can nonprofits learn by studying the Patriots?

Different Plans for Different Platforms

The Patriots have many ways to win, as Jackie McMullan pointed out. Her colleague Ben Volin said in the Boston Globe:

No team mixes up its game plan from week to week, or even quarter to quarter, better than the Patriots. The only thing opposing defenses know is to expect the unexpected.

Are you posting the same language on Facebook as you are on Twitter? The same links on LinkedIn as on your website?

If you want to “win” your audience, don’t be predictable. Design your content for the field you’re playing on.

Game Plan Your Posts in Advance

By planning, you can make sure you won’t drop the ball and leave your fans wondering what you were thinking (because you didn’t post anything for a while!)  Instead, you can save time on the clock and use it for communication with others on the field: reply to email, respond to comments and tweets.

When you’re not posting your messages at the last minute, you can huddle up with people you want on your team: customers, donors, colleagues.  Becoming known as a team player will help you win.

You can schedule Facebook posts by going to the pull-down arrow in the bottom right corner of your post, and from the menu, choosing “Schedule.”  For Twitter, a tool like Hootsuite is a great way to call a series of plays–er, schedule a series of tweets–so they will just run by themselves.

The Patriots are great at come-from-behind victories (28-3!), but that’s not the easiest way to win. When the team has fallen short, it’s usually because they had to play from behind.

Learn from the Patriots. Get ahead of your game.

Win the Off Season

For many nonprofits, the winter is the time after the End of Year fundraising appeal and before the Spring appeal and the fundraising events. It’s a quiet time. Should it be?

Learn from the Patriots. Win the off season.

The Patriots have created a great reputation, and the reputation itself helps them win. They have been able to attract great players for less because the players expected that if they joined the team, they would have the chance to compete for a championship every year.

Through great donor communications, your nonprofit can thank donors, tell them the impact of their gifts, make them glad they gave this time, and put them in the mood to give again.

hearts

Put your key supporters on the team. Communicate!

new England Patriots

Fundraising Tuesday: Say Hello to More Donations

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you had me at helloAt the end of the movie Jerry Maguire, Jerry tries to tell Dorothy that he loves her. He’s ready for a long-winded speech, but Dorothy shuts him up. “You had me at hello,” she confesses.

It’s a pretty sure bet Dorothy wouldn’t have said that if Jerry called her “Dear friend”!

There’s a lesson here for your nonprofit.

The Salutation in Your Appeal Letter

This past November and December, the Fischman household received 102 appeal letters from 72 different organizations. I’m happy to say that almost half of them personalized their letters. They said “Dear Dennis,” or “Dear Dennis and Rona.”

Another 11 were slightly more formal, with a salutation of “Dear Mr. Fischman. A handful went for accuracy and gender neutrality, greeting me as “Dear Dennis Fischman” and us as “Dear  Dennis and Rona Fischman.”

I prefer the informal version, and I’ll bet most people under the age of 70 do. But the important thing is that, formal, or informal, these organizations called donors by their names.

When you don’t use a personal name in your appeal letter, it starts your donor thinking. “I gave them money, and they don’t even know who I am? How important can my donation be?” And that’s a deadly train of thought for your nonprofit–especially when you are trying to renew donors.

Which is Worse, “Dear Friend” or Nothing?

Of the appeals that came to our mailbox, eleven of them didn’t use any salutation at all. That sounds surprising until you consider that some of them were not letters. They were impact statements or faux telegrams, with a reply vehicle enclosed.

I can understand that a greeting wouldn’t fit with those formats. I still don’t like it. Even if that particular mailing raised money, what does it do to create the loyal donors your nonprofit can rely on from year to year? Nothing–and that’s a missed opportunity.

But I still liked it better than the letters that began “Dear friend” (or “supporter,” or “member”). A letter is supposed to be personal, and these letters were not.

The One Thing Your Small Nonprofit Can Do that Will Raise More Money

Maybe the Southern Law Policy Center can get away with “Dear Friend.” They have a huge mailing list and an established brand.

Maybe the Arthritis Foundation can do it. They have a built-in constituency of people with arthritis pain.

But if your small nonprofit goes with “Dear Friend,” you are giving away your biggest advantage in fundraising: your ability to add a personal touch. Make the size of your list work for you.

Call your donors by name and you can have them at hello.

Fundraising Tuesday: Will the Donor Open Your Envelope?

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Did your nonprofit raise the money you hoped to raise at the end of the year? If so, congratulations. But if not, maybe it’s because the donor never read your letter.

They might never have gotten past your envelope.

What Other Nonprofits Do with Envelopes

appeal lettersIn November and December, I received over 100 appeal letters from 72 different organizations. That’s a lot of mail! And nobody has the time to read all the appeals they receive.

Donors figure out whether or not to toss your appeal in the recycling bin in seconds. They do it by looking at the envelope.

Most of the appeal letters I received did something on the front of the envelope to persuade me to look inside.

  • 77 of 102 showed me the name of the organization that was mailing to me, with its return address. That established some credibility.  (At the minimum, it made me less likely to worry that I’d open the envelope and find anthrax inside.)
  • 61 of 102 also showed me the organization’s logo. That makes sense, too. A logo is designed to be instantly recognizable, and if I stop and say, “Oh, I know that,” I may get curious about what’s inside.
  • 58 of 102 printed a teaser on the front of the envelope. It could have been a message from the organization, or a quote from a person whose life had improved because of the nonprofit.

For instance:

When Brittany went looking for like-minded veterans, she found About Face.

We need you. This is a time for action–not for standing on the sidelines. (from J Street)

Even the envelopes that say only “Immediate Attention Requested” make me think a moment longer…and that means I’m more likely to rip them open and see what’s inside. As you want me to do!

6 Ways Your Envelope Could Stand Out

You could mimic the other nonprofits to give yourself an equal shot at  your donor’s attention. But here are six ideas to make your envelope pop out from that tall stack of envelopes I showed you.

  1. GBFB envelope with graphicPrint a graphic on the envelope. If you can go full-color like the Greater Boston Food Bank did, so much the better. But even a line drawing will catch my eye.
  2. Put a stamp on it. Yes, an honest-to-goodness, first-class stamp, like you’ d see on a holiday card from your favorite aunt.
  3. Use an unusual size envelope. Did somebody say “card”?
  4. Use an unusual color envelope. In that pile of appeal letters I showed you up above, see the green one sticking out? Don’t you want to know what this?
  5. Have a real person’s name on the return address. It could be your Executive Director, or it could be Toni Morrison. Either way, it makes your donor hesitate to throw the envelope away.
  6. Handwrite the donor’s name and address. Here’s where being a small nonprofit could help. You’re not going to hand-address 10,000 envelopes, but if you have 150 donors–or you can pick out 150 from your list that you especially want to reach–handwriting in real ink will make it personal, not personalized.

Beyond the Envelope

Every Tuesday in January and February, we’re  going to look back at those 102 appeal letters I received–and look forward to what you can do better this year. Stay tuned to Fundraising Tuesdays on Communicate!

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