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Fundraising Tuesday: 3 Ways to Get Personal with Your Donors

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personalOne of the seven reasons your nonprofit is not raising as much money as you want is that you’re not making those appeal letters personal.

Making it personal means more than sending out a mass mailing that calls donors by their names. If you’re not doing that already, please start! “Dear Friend” letters are the clearest signal that the person receiving the letter is not really your friend.

But mail merge is old hat. It doesn’t make anyone feel that you, the nonprofit, know anything about them, the donor. There are better ways to tell the donor “You’re my hero.”

Make It Personal by Sending the Right Letter

The donor wants you to know whether or not they have ever given before. If you don’t know that, you don’t know them. If you don’t know them, why should they give?

Send a different letter to previous donors than people you're asking to give for the first time. Click To Tweet

Simple, right? But in my personal experience, nine out of ten appeal letters used exactly the same language to me that they would use to someone who had never given them a penny!

Fix this by segmenting your list, writing different letters to prospects, lapsed donors, and renewing donors, and acknowledging the date and amount of the previous gift.

Make It Personal by Talking about MY Issues

Let’s say you run a community center. I came to an event where you highlighted your youth programs, and I was so impressed that I donated on the spot.

At the end of the year, you sent me an appeal letter, and it talked all about your Meals on Wheels program for seniors. It said nothing about youth.

What are the chances you’re going to get a donation from me again? Slim and none.

Appeal to people based on the things you do that actually appeal to THEM. Click To Tweet

With a good database, you should have no trouble keeping track of my giving history and my attendance at events. With the right tools, you can even tell which of your emails I opened, showing what topics I was interested in. (And you can tell a lot about me just by listening.)

Write Me a Personal Note

It used to be a no-brainer for Executive Directors, Development Directors, or Board members who knew the donor to write a personal note on appeal letters.

People, we are going in the wrong direction on this! 90 out of 106 letters arrived in my mailbox with no personal touches whatever–even when my wife and I have known the person sending the letter for many years.

Fix this by composing your appeals long enough in advance to add those personal notes…and doing so. It will pay you back in donations, this year and for many years to come.

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!

 

 

 

Fundraising Tuesday: Remember the Postscript. Donors Do!

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Surprising but true: without a good postscript, your donors may not even read your nonprofit’s appeal letter. And that would be a shame.

How a Postscript Says “Read This Letter”

Postscript to fundraising appeal

The p.s. is the second thing donors read–after their own name!

Very few of us read a letter from top to bottom, in order.

  • First, the envelope helps us decide whether to open and read it at all.
  • Second, the salutation draws us in or pushes us away.
  • Images, captions, and subheadings all catch the eye before we ever look at the main text of the letter.

Above all (or below all!), the postscript grabs the reader’s attention. Direct mail expert Gary Henricksen quotes research that tells us:

Over 90 percent of readers read the PS before the letter. It is the first paragraph, not the last. Click To Tweet

Postscripts Raise Money

It stands to reason that the p.s.helps your nonprofit get more donations. After all, how many donors are going to pitch your letter in the recycling bin and still give you money? But don’t take it from me. Ask the experts.

Decades of eye motion studies have shown that the first two things readers look at when opening a letter are their name and the postscript. –John Killoran

A donor reading a P.S. is a donor looking for information. And that’s your opportunity. –Alan Sharpe

In direct mail (and sometimes email), the PS is the most important thing you write. It’s one of the most-read parts of your message. It’s worth spending some time on to make it really sing. –Jeff Brooks

The P.S. gives you a chance to reinforce your message and include a strong call to action right above the reply device. –Emily Hunsaker

So craft a postscript with

  1. What you’re asking people to give to
  2. How much you’re asking them to give
  3. And a deadline for when that gift should be given –Marc Pitman

Remember:  A good PS offers some or all of the following:

  • A sense of urgency
  • Appreciation
  • A tangible way to help
  • A specific amount of money to give
  • An ask for monthly giving
  • A limited time opportunity –Rebecca H. Davis

Why Aren’t You Writing a Postscript?

There are all these reasons for including a p.s. with every fundraising letter, and very few reasons not to.  So I’m glad to say that out of the 72 nonprofit organizations who sent me a year-end appeal, most of them (39) included a postscript.

Some of them chose to reinforce the message “Give now.” They said just that, “Give today”–or they gave me a link so I could donate online, immediately, instead of putting their letter into the pile.

Some of them gave me a tangible reason to give. They offered to send me a premium if I made my donation before the end of the year, or they appealed to my generosity by telling me my gift would be matched two or three times.

Some told me I would make a difference. Some asked me, “Do you want to accomplish” some amazing result–and urged me to answer “Yes!”

You can find samples of great postscripts just by clicking the links in this post. If you feel creative, great: write your own! But being original is not important. Capturing the reader’s attention while you have it, is.

P.S. Don’t Miss Your Chance to Get More Gifts!

If you are like the 33 other nonprofits who asked me for money at the end of 2017–the one who didn’t include a postscript–you may have missed your chance.

“May have.” Perhaps you’ve done the research, and your particular set of donors is unlike the vast majority. Maybe they read every word. Maybe they find a p.s. annoying. And maybe they are so loyal that they will give to your organization no matter what you send.

I wouldn’t bet on it.

And that is what you’re doing if you don’t include a P.S. in your fundraising appeal. You are betting the financial success of your organization on the hope that your donors are so special, you don’t have to do what works.

And if you’re wrong, some other organization is getting the donations you were hoping the donor would send to you.

Why not try it out? Make this year the year you start using postscripts to get more donations.

 

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

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