Communicate!

Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

Fundraising Tuesday: End of Year? Your Foolproof Timeline

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October

October already???

Did you just have an “OMG, It’s October already” moment?

Your nonprofit may raise 30%, 40%, or more of all the donations you receive all year in the month of December. A lot of organizations do.

And a lot of them started planning their end-of-year campaign in September.

Will your nonprofit reach your donors before they’ve tapped out their charitable donations budget for the year? More important, when you ask them to give, what are you going to say?

Fear not. Communicate! Consulting presents your foolproof timeline for making your end-of-year fundraising a success.

What to do this week

Step one: Thank your donors. Whether you thanked them already, in multiple ways, throughout the year, or whether they haven’t heard from you since last December, they need to hear from you NOW. Show them your gratitude. Tell them, “You’re my hero!”

What to do this month

Step two: Figure out the story you want to build your appeal letter around. If you need permission to tell the story, reach out to get it. If you need a photo, or permission to use a photo, ask for that permission now. (Anything that takes somebody else’s input takes more time. Get started as soon as you can.)

Step three: If you use a graphic designer to put together your package (envelope, letter, reply vehicle), get in touch with them. And if you use a mailing house to send out your appeal letter, get in touch with them too. You don’t want any surprises later!

What to do next month

Step four: Write your letter.

  1. Make sure you call the recipient by name (not “Dear Friend”) and by the name they want you to call them by.
  2. Write a great postscript–before you even write the body of the letter.
  3. Use photos, bold type, italics, bullet points and other tools to break up the text.
  4. Tell a real story, and leave them feeling the end of the story depends on them.
  5. Write a different letter to longtime donors than you do to prospects. (Segment your mailing list!) For renewals, thank them for their last donation and tell them what happened “because you helped.”
  6. Ask people to give, in so many words, at least three times.

Step five: Print up your letter, envelope, and other pieces of your package.

Step six: Call your volunteers to help stuff and mail your appeal (unless you pay a mailing house to do it). And get it in the mail!

What to do in December

Cat waiting for mailStep seven: Follow up your appeal letter with email.

Step eight: Follow up your appeal letter with a phone call.

Step nine: Follow up your appeal letter with social media. (It might be their love language!)

What to do next

Step ten: Starting in December, and straight through Martin Luther King Day: thank the donors. Don’t just let your auto-responder do it: thank them with email, with a personal letter, with a welcome packet, with video, with invitations to events, on your website…as many ways as you can think of.

Step eleven: Find out more about the donors. Ask them to answer a question or two about themselves, or play detective.

Step twelve: Communicate! Through all your channels, tell your supporters stories that will inform them, entertain them, enlighten them, and make them feel closer to you.

When it’s October of next year, you want them looking forward to being asked for an end-of-year gift. (And if you need help doing that, call Communicate! Consulting. Now!)

TY Thursday: Honor Your Donors

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thanks in actionI recently received a thank-you that reminded me of what I’d given, warmed my heart, and made it clear that the people saying “thanks” really knew me. When was the last time you made your donors feel that way?

My day job, of course, is consulting to nonprofit organizations to help them win the loyalty of their donors.

But my longest-running job (although just a few hours each week) is tutoring Jewish students for their bar or bat mitzvah.

It’s an intense relationship. The students, usually at a tender time in their lives, take on a complex task: reading from the Torah and prophets, and leading services, in Hebrew. They study for eight months to a year, and at the beginning, they’re not really sure they will succeed.

Bar mitzvah studyI get the joy of coaching them along and instilling confidence. On the day they actually celebrate becoming full-fledged members of the Jewish community, I’m there to prompt, but mostly to kvell (beam with pride).

Just a week ago–months after they had originally sent me a thank-you note–the family of one my students made a donation in my honor to RAICES, an organization that supports asylum seekers at the southwest border of the U.S.

They knew that I consider the way the U.S. treats these would-be legal immigrants shameful, and that my car wears the bumper sticker Never Again Means Close the Camps.

They made me smile, and they nearly made me cry. And they made me wonder: how many nonprofits are doing as well at saying “thank you” as the Newman/Nedell family?

  • Are you saying “thank you” just once, in a formal letter after receiving a gift? Or do you have a plan for thanking your donors throughout the year?
  • Is your thank-you impersonal, the same for every donor except for name and address? Or does your thank-you tell your donor you know what they care about (which is probably the reason they gave to you in the first place)?
  • Does your thank-you tell your donor, “I see you, and we are on the same side”?
You want to build a relationship of loyalty with your donors. Are you honoring them with your loyalty first? Share on X

The Heroic Work of Maintaining What We Have

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Ms. MarvelWe live in a world where innovation and disruption are considered heroic.

That’s certainly the culture of corporate enterprise. Nonprofits talk the talk, too. Even those nonprofits that warn against Bright Shiny Object Syndrome worry that if they miss the next new trend–whether it’s recurring giving or artificial intelligence–someday, they’ll regret it.

But are we worried about the right things?

Should we first be worried about making sure that we are doing, is working? (And perhaps, making it work a little better?) Share on X

Scheduled maintenance for your nonprofit

looking at websiteI recently reviewed the website of a nonprofit organization. In some ways, it was gorgeous. The photos were attractive. The design performed just as well on a mobile device as on a desktop computer.

But–all the external links were broken.

The program descriptions were two years out of date.

And the financial report (which is crucial for closing the deal with institutional funders and sophisticated donors) was a PDF dating back to 2014!

Innovation and disruption are not going to help this nonprofit.

This organization should not be launching a new crowdfunding campaign, or adding a chatbot to its Facebook page. It should be focusing on its website–which has been a basic tool for nonprofit communications and fundraising since the turn of this century.

It should also be coming up with a system for making sure its website stays useful to donors and prospects. Whose responsibility will that be? How often must they check links and update documents? When will the nonprofit plan to redesign the site?

You wouldn’t wait to take your car into the shop until the engine seized up. You take it in for regularly scheduled maintenance and checkups. Please, do the same with your nonprofit. Like Ms. Marvel or Superman, your quiet work will hide your real identity. You’re a hero.

Where to improve first

John Haydon

John Haydon

Just like your website, in 2019 a Facebook page is a basic tool of your organization. But even in 2019, I stand by what I wrote on John Haydon’s blog in 2013: there are lots of things even more basic than Facebook.

Your nonprofit should not be using Facebook. Here are ten reasons why.

1. Your website sucks

A Facebook page should make people head to your website to see more about you. But if your website is unattractive, hard to read or navigate, and impossible to view on a mobile device, then you don’t want to send people there.

2. You don’t have a blog

So they came to your website once. Why should they come back? A blog gives people a different reason to visit, each time you post. If you’re not blogging, why are you bothering with Facebook?

3. You post stuff that nobody wants to see

Who cares how many people your nonprofit served or what awards your Executive Director won? If you’re not telling people how their donations made a tangible difference in one person’s life, you’re talking to yourself.

4. You don’t capture people’s email addresses

Remember, you don’t own Facebook. Zuckerberg does. You own the email addresses that people have given you permission to use. First, make sure that you have ways to get that permission.

5. You don’t have something concrete to offer

Why would people give you their email addresses when they get so much email already? Only because you give them something even more valuable in exchange: information they’re eager to have. What can you offer?

6. Your contact management system is broken

When you get those emails, are you still storing them in Excel? Or are you recording them in a database that lets you send each person the message that matters to them, and keep track of your relationship with them?

7. Your customer service sends the wrong message

What you do speaks louder than what you post. Do you answer the phone, respond to voicemail and email, and greet walk-ins with courtesy and professionalism? Do they get the help they are seeking?

8. You don’t want to devote enough time

Heather Mansfield estimates that to participate effectively in just one social medium like Facebook, it takes seven hours a week. Are you trying to do it in an hour a week? Then you’re wasting that hour. Don’t bother.

9. You don’t want to spend any money

Facebook is making it harder and harder to reach even the people who already know you and like you without paying for the privilege. You don’t need megabucks, but have a budget for boosting your Page and your posts.

10. You don’t have a communications strategy

“Outreach,” “visibility,” and “awareness” are not good reasons to be on Facebook. Do you know who you’re trying to reach, for what purpose, and what they would do if you engaged with them successfully?

Small improvements, large results

Do these ten points sound like you? The good news is that with a little help, you can fix each and every one of them… and raise a lot of money as a result. Including on Facebook.

But see, these improvements are not bright shiny objects. They’re not innovation, and forget about disruption.

Old and improved beats new and improved nine times out of ten. Make sure you maintain and improve what your nonprofit does already. Share on X

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