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Fundraising Tuesday: Great Photos Make Great Appeal Letters

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stand out

Photos make your appeal stand out

Recently, I went through all the end-of-year appeal letters that 72 nonprofits sent me in 2017. (Yes, your letter too!)

I wanted to find out something very specific. How are nonprofits using photos in their fundraising letters?

Here’s what I can tell you: most of us are not using them well enough. That gives your group an opportunity to stand out from the pack–which is what you need to do to raise more  money.

How Nonprofits Use (and Don’t Use) Photos

No photo

wall of textAlmost half the organizations that asked me for money in November and December 2017 used no photo at all. Their letters were text-only.

They might have broken up the wall of text with frequent paragraph breaks, or bullet points, or bold, italic, or underlined phrases (all of which are a favor to the reader, because they make a letter easier to read). But no photos.

I would like to think that these organizations had A/B tested their lists, sending out letters to some people with a photo and some without, and determined that their list liked text only. Or, I’d like to think they took Alan Sharpe’s advice and made their letters so personal and so compelling that a photo would diminish the message.

But mostly, I don’t believe that. Instead, I think most of these organizations didn’t take the time to find or create effective photos all year round. So, when it was time to send out the appeal letters, they took the easy way out.

You can do better.

Some use of photos…

About a quarter of the nonprofits did send me appeal letters that included photos. Automatically, they had a better chance of grabbing my attention. And I am a “words person” by trade!

Words matter–but only if people read them.

When a donor receives your letter, she takes about three seconds to decide whether to read it or throw it in the recycling. In three seconds, what can she see? Possibly:

invite meBut more than any of these, a photo with a caption invites the donor in.

<–See what I mean?

 

 

 Photos Included, but Used in an Unfocused Way

The problem with many of these photos is lack of focus. And no, I don’t mean the image is blurry!  I mean that the nonprofit hasn’t thought about the main purpose for including photos: moving the donor to give.

In my mail, I saw many photos that failed to speak to the donor. They showed:

  • Staff members of the organization. (No offense, but you are not the ones the donors care about helping!)
  • Audiences listening to a speaker.
  • Crowds marching or rallying.
  • Multiple clients in different settings.

These photos may document what you do. They don’t tell the story of who, how, or why it matters. Therefore, they don’t move the donor.

You can do better.

Photos Used for High-Quality Storytelling

SCC appeal photo

Here’s what nonprofits did to use photos really well in their appeal letters.

  1. Featured one, at most two, people in each picture.
  2. Showed them doing something–not just head shots.
  3. Focused on the same person whose story the nonprofit told in the text of the letter.
  4. Reinforced the message about the problem.
  5. Reinforced the message about the urgency.
  6. Made an emotional connection between the person in the photo and the donor viewing the photo and reading the letter.

I’m happy to show you an example from a local organization my wife and I support, Somerville Community Corporation. The photo above is actually from a special end-of-year mailing to ask for donations of $1,000 or more to the Social Equity Campaign, which multiplies the value of each donation through a special tax credit in Massachusetts.

Notice how Somerville Community Corporation poses a question (“Why invest in our community?”) and uses BOTH the text and the photo to answer it.

Notice how SCC picked one of the problems it is asking you to solve–worker training–and with the photo, gave you hope you could do something about it right away.

Notice how SCC managed to express the idea of diversity with only two people in the photo. (They could have added more people, or more photos…but they knew you would care more about these people than about a crowd.)

Before you write your next fundraising appeal, think about how you  use photos. Chances are, you can learn from this example…and do better!

 

 

 

The Envelope, Please! Fundraising Tuesday for Nonprofits

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Nonprofit envelopeWhat can you learn by reading other nonprofits’ mail? During the last two months of 2017, I received 136 appeal letters from 72 different nonprofit organizations. I read them all (so you don’t have to!) And I learned quite a bit about what you can do to get more supporters to open your mail, read it, and donate. Today: the envelope.

Why Pay Attention to the Envelope?

To quote expert copywriter Alan Sharpe, “Your envelope serves two functions and two alone:

  1. Deliver your appeal to your donor
  2. Persuade your donor to open and read your letter.”

It doesn’t matter how well you write the letter, or what a compelling story you include, or how the photo tugs at the heartstrings, or even how personal you make your appeal if the donor never sees it.

What if your beautiful letter goes straight to the recycling bin, unopened? That would be such a shame! And if your donor is getting 136 appeal letters in a two-month period like I did, that is what is going to happen–unless you do something to make your envelope leap out of the pile.

What Makes for a Good Envelope?

17 of the 72 organizations that asked me for money in the last two months did not use the envelope to win my interest at all. They printed their return address on the upper left-hand corner, so I could tell who was sending me the letter. Apparently, they thought that was enough. Other nonprofits–their competition–did better.

28 of the 72 organizations actively bid for my attention.

  • Some included a logo or a tag line in their return address, to remind me who they were and why I should care.
  • Some used an envelope of an unusual size or color. Yes, that can work! When the Special Olympics increased its format from a 6-inch by 4-inch package to a 7.25-inch by 5.25-inch package, its response rate jumped nearly 10 percent, Bryan Terpstra of direct response fundraising agency RobbinsKersten Direct said.
  • Some printed a generic message like “You can make the difference!” on the envelope. (And I give them more credit than the ones who printed “Year-end appeal enclosed.” Why would I, the donor, care about that?)

27 of the 72 nonprofits went the extra mile to make sure the donor had to open the mail. Besides logos, tag lines, envelope color and size, they also used:

  • Attention-grabbing photos
  • Messages that conveyed urgency
  • Personal appeals

On the envelope you see in the photo, CISPES used a mix of these techniques. “We’ve missed you!” makes me feel they’ve noticed me personally. I am much more likely to open that envelope than the one that says “Give today” (or the one that says nothing at all).

What to Do First

Once you get started, you can think of many creative ways to signal to your donor, “You’ve got to read this!” Alan Sharpe lists a baker’s dozen of them, from using both sides of the envelope to promising a benefit to the donor.

Let’s be real, however. Most nonprofit organizations are small, with limited budgets to spend (even though we know you have to spend money to make money). You are not going to do everything that would entice your donor all at once, in your next mailing. What changes should you make first?

I would agree with Gail Perry that these three steps will help you raise more money, all by themselves:

  • Make it stand out (use a size of envelope you haven’t used before, or try a different colour of envelope).
  • Use a first class stamp (instead of bulk postage).
  • Hand address the envelope.

Yes, all these things take time, or money, or both. “In the nonprofit sector there’s an obsession about fundraising’s cost—as opposed to its cost-effectiveness,” says fundraising guru Mal Warwick. If you want to succeed, plan on spending the time and money to get a better result.

Because your appeal letter is too important to end up in the recycling bin.

 

This is the first of a series about improving your nonprofit’s fundraising appeal letters that will appear on Communicate! throughout the next two months. Next up: the greeting, or salutation.

 

Fundraising Tuesday: The Right & Wrong Ways to Use a Donor’s Name

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Do you know me?Your first chance to persuade the donor to give is the very first line of your letter: the salutation.

Mess up the salutation and it may be your last chance, too.

If I open your appeal letter and find it addressed to “Dear Friend” or “Supporter,” I throw it in the recycling bin. And I’m not alone.

I’ve given you money. Don’t you know me?

All your donors are receiving more and more solicitations. They have to winnow the pile–and tossing the letters that don’t call them by name is an easy way to do it.

Think about it. Who calls you “Dear Friend” when they’re not asking you for money? As Alan Sharpe says:

My wife never sends me a letter that begins, “Dear Friend.” Neither do my friends. And neither should you when writing to your donors.

Calling your donor “Dear Friend” is signaling that you don’t know or care who she is as long as she writes a check. And that’s insulting. As fundraising expert Gail Perry points out, “Your donor expects that you know her name and who she is, since she’s been sending you money for a while!”

A little more work–but I’m worth it.

It takes a little more work to call your donors by name.

1. You have to set up your fundraising letter with a “merge field.” That’s a short code that lets you pull names off a list and plug them in where they belong. Fortunately, the simplest word processing program can handle that. (Here’s a quick tutorial that will show you how.)

2. You really ought to take the chance to put your donor information into a database. If you’re still using a spreadsheet, you’re making life difficult on yourself–and increasing the chance that you’ll call your donors by the wrong name. Oops! There’s a donor who won’t renew!

3. And once you’ve printed the fundraising appeal letter with the correct name, you have to make sure the letter goes in the envelope that matches. You can’t just grab a letter off the pile and stuff it any more.

Truly, though, this is just a little more work. Once you’ve done it, you won’t have any problem doing it again.  And as your donor, I’m worth it.

(If you tell me I’m not, I may never give to you again–and “Dear Friend” tells me exactly that!)

The wrong way to use my name in fundraising

Call your donor by name in the salutation of the letter, but be careful about using it in the body. It is possible to use your donor’s name so often it sounds artificial. That puts them off, instead of bringing them closer.

Here’s a reader comment from my blog post last week, Fundraising Letters HAVE to Improve in 2016!:

Using my name too much, or trying to fake something handwritten (e.g., the fake post-it) are disingenuous and/or creepy. I would rather you call me friend once than use my name 5 times like a used car salesman.

But using the donor’s name in the salutation is still vital.

How to win me over for a lifetime

You may still be saying to yourself, “We’re getting donations sending Dear Friend letters. Why should we switch?”

I want to quote Alan Sharpe again, because he has had an experience that you probably have had too.

At the Business Depot where I buy my office supplies, there is a store clerk who always remembers my name. She serves hundreds of customers. Yet when I approach the cash, she makes me feel like I’m a special customer. I feel a little flattered every time. Her name, by the way, is Allyson.

Specialists in customer service have long known that remembering a customer’s name—and using it—is one of the most effective ways (and free ways) to encourage repeat business, customer loyalty and free word-of-mouth advertising. The same is just as true in fundraising.

It costs you seven times as much to find a new donor as it does to keep an old one. And the easiest way to keep me for a lifetime is always to call me by name.

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