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TY Thursday: The Great New Idea that Will Raise More Money

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Is your nonprofit looking for a new idea on how to do fundraising? I’ve got one for you.

What is it? Should you spend your time and money on a revamped website? Or get on TikTok? Should you add a chatbot to your Facebook page, or start texting all your donors and prospects?

That’s not it. That’s not the kind of new idea I’m talking about.

magpie sitting on bright shiny objectsChasing the latest piece of technology is a distraction. It’s what they call Bright Shiny Object Syndrome. Unless you are a magpie, you should avoid that!

So what is this great new idea? It’s thanking your donors.

Apparently, that is a new idea for a lot of nonprofits, because they aren’t doing it–or not very well!

Six ways to thank your donors poorly

If you want your thanks to have no meaning, and no effect on your fundraising, here is an idea of what doesn’t work:

  1. Not thanking them at all. (I’m a donor, and yes, this still happens!)
  2. Letting  an automated system send out a thank-you email that sounds like it was written by a robot.
  3. Having that email acknowledgement of the donation be the only “thanks” they get before you ask for money again.
  4. Sending a written thank-you letter that reads like a tax form.
  5. Mailing a more personal thank-you letter that asks for another gift right away (the dreaded “thask”).
  6. Mailing a good thank-you letter–even the ideal thanks–as a “one and done.”

A Thank-You Plan? Now, There’s an Idea!

If you really want to make friends, influence people, keep your donors and increase their lifetime giving to your organization, thanking donors well and often is the most important thing you can do. It cannot be haphazard. You will need a plan.

Here are some steps you can take that will make donors feel your gratitude.

First, edit that auto-response to the donor so it sounds like a person-to-person communication. (If your system won’t let you do that, get another system!)

Second, change your language from “We can’t do it without you” to “Thanks! Here’s what you did, by giving.” (Make the donor the hero.)

Third, have your written thanks go out in the mail within 48 hours of receiving the donation. That means having the ED, the Director of Development, or a Board member on call to sign and personalize the outgoing letters–during the busiest seasons, they should do it every day!

Fourth, invite them to take follow-up steps that get them more involved with the organization that do not involve giving more money. Ask them to follow you on social media, or sign up for your newsletter, to sign a petition or show up for an event.

Fifth, communicate, communicate, communicate! Make sure they never ask “Just what difference did it make when I gave to that organization?” without readily knowing the answer.

Sixth, put your thanks on your communications calendar. Not only will the donors be happy to hear from you, but it will make your day, too!

 

Happy holidays! (For which religion, though?)

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Your nonprofit organization probably has donors (and volunteers, staff, and Board members) who practice different religions, or no religion. How do you recognize and appreciate them all?

seder plate

Happy Passover–if it’s your holiday!

As I write this on April 11, 2022, we are in the middle of the month of Ramadan, for Muslims. We are four days out from Pesach (Passover), for Jews. Easter is celebrated this coming weekend by most Christians in the West, although Orthodox Easter is a week later, on April 24.

A month ago, we passed through the vernal equinox (sacred to Wiccans and followers of other pagan religions). Major Buddhist holidays are still ahead.

How can your nonprofit say, “We see you, and we value you” to supporters from all religions?

Ways to welcome people from different religions

You have several options when it comes to religious holidays. None is perfect, but some are better than others.

Ignore religious holidays

If interfaith understanding is not part of your nonprofit’s mission, you could choose to go secular. Strip out the mention of any religion or its holidays from your communications.

The advantage of this approach is that it’s apparently neutral. The disadvantage is that in a society where Christian culture is assumed, a secular approach is not neutral at all. If you have an event with food during this time, for instance, Muslims will not be able to eat any of it until after the sun goes down, and observant Jews will have to avoid bread, cake, pasta, or anything that might have leavened ingredients.

Plus, as we’ve seen in December, a certain number of Christians will view the non-mention of their holidays (Christmas or Easter) as erasing them. So, I do not recommend this approach. Ignorance is not bliss.

Acknowledge them

When you’re creating your communications calendar, make a note of the holidays that occur each month. In your newsletter or on your social media feed, make mention of them and say, “To all those who celebrate these holidays, we send good wishes.”

I used to do this in the staff newsletter at the agency where I worked, and it was mostly appreciated. When I missed a holiday, however, I had to apologize humbly and sincerely, make up for it, and learnt to do better. (And this is not just about religious holidays. When I failed to mention National Hispanic Heritage Month, one staff member was incredulous. “It’s been a holiday since 1968!”)

Mere acknowledgment can sometimes feel tokenizing, however. Having blue-and-white decorations along with red-and-green doesn’t change the fact that a party in the third week of December is a Christmas party.

And in your communications, you don’t want to make mistakes that say you’ve never met a Jew, like having matzah and a shofar in your Chanukah greetings. (They’re for Passover and Rosh Hashanah, respectively.) You may not be marketing products like the ones featured on Hanukkah Fails, but you are speaking for your nonprofit. You really don’t want to send the message, “All your piddly little holidays look the same to us!”

Make religious holidays into learning opportunities

nowruz

I think the best thing a nonprofit can do for all its constituents is to make religious holidays (and other cultural events like Nowruz) into learning opportunities. Here are some questions you can find out more about:

  1. When exactly does this holiday occur? Is it a one-day holiday (and if so, when does the “day” begin)? Or is it a week, or a month?
  2. What does this holiday mean to people who observe it? Does it mean different things to different practitioners of the religion?
  3. What are some of the customs associated with this holiday, and do people from different countries have different customs associated with it?
  4. How will this holiday affect people’s ability to work, or attend Board meetings or community events?
  5. What are some appropriate greetings for this holiday? What would be odd to say then? (“Happy Yom Kippur” doesn’t quite work. Nor does “Merry Losar.”)

If you are a member of the majority culture in the U.S., whether or not you go to church, you may not realize how often people in religious minorities feel foreign. To get a sense of what it would be like if the majority were Jewish and Christians were a misunderstood minority, follow the satirical @JewWhoHasItAll and the explanations on @JWhoKnowsItAll on Twitter.

Learning about others’ religion is a matter of diversity, equity, and inclusion. It’s also basic respect. You do not have to believe a single thing that Baha’is or Shintoists believe in order to say to  them (as well as Christians, Muslims, Jews, pagans, and Buddhists), “You belong here.”

Fundraising Tuesday: Make the Calendar Your Friend. Easy!

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What if I told you there was a way you could reach out and touch your supporters more often, with less effort, with more impact, and raise more money for your nonprofit? Would you be interested?

There is, and it’s called an integrated donor communications calendar. And it’s easy!

Why Planning Your Posts and Your Asks Makes Life Easier

Did you ever have this experience? You open your computer, see that you haven’t emailed, Facebooked, tweeted, etc., to your donors in weeks. Your heart sinks.

“I really have to get in touch with them right now,” you say to yourself. “But what in the world will I say?”

I sympathize. There’s nothing more off-putting than a blank screen (unless it’s a blank piece of paper). Many’s the time I’ve got up and made myself a cup of tea, or cleaned the cats’ litter box…anything to delay that fateful moment when I have to have an idea.

The problem isn’t with you, or me. The problem is that we are leaving too much to chance.

Yes, a blinding flash of inspiration can strike just at the moment when you sit down to write. It can happen. But that’s not the way to bet.

Instead, we can more or less guarantee that we will have something to write about. Not only that, but we can make sure that we’ll be sending out the right messages at the right time, to the right audience, making them feel seen and appreciated (and more likely to donate when asked).

Planning ahead makes life easier for us and better for our readers and donors. So, how do we start? We start with a calendar.

What to Put on Your Donor Communications Calendar

The three types of content you want to share with your supporters are:

  1. Seasonal
  2. Campaign
  3. Evergreen

Seasonal communications

Topical content is what will be top of your donor’s minds and close to their hearts at any given time.

If you know your audience, you know what they care about, specifically. For example, the Martin Luther King holiday is just another Monday off for some communities. For others, it is the most important day of their year.

Think about what will be front and center for the audience that gives to your nonprofit throughout the year. Take out a calendar, go month by month, and list the topics. Then, think about what your organization is especially well positioned to say about them. (For instance: “Did Martin Luther King play a role in promoting Fair Housing?” is a good post for a Fair Housing Commission, but it would be weird and distracting for a group focused on environmental racism to put out.)

Now, put that precise topic on your calendar, on the date when you want it to go public. Plan backwards from that date f0r

  • when you want to finalize and schedule it,
  • when you want to create different formats for your email and your various social media,
  • when you want to write it,
  • when you want to assemble photos, links, quotes, etc., for it
  • when you need to interview anyone for it (because anything that involves more than one person will take longer!)

When you put those steps on your calendar, you won’t wake up in a panic in mid-January wondering what to post. You’ll come back to work after New Year’s Day, look at your calendar, and have your plan for your MLK Day post in order. Simple!

Do the same thing for as many significant dates during the year as you can come up with. You’re off to a great start for the year.

Campaign communications

Let’s say your organization advocates for new policies when the legislature is in session–or runs a summer camp–or has an annual gala. Unlike the seasonal topics, these campaigns are not events that donors will necessarily know about by themselves. But you want them to pay attention!

Talk with your Executive Director and colleagues about what the organization will be doing over the course of the calendar year that you want the public to pay attention to, and perhaps even get involved in. Figure out the key dates, the essential themes, and the calls to action you want to share. Plan multiple messages across different platforms.

Now, block out the time on your calendar when most or all of your messaging is going to focus on that campaign.

Evergreen communications

Between seasonal content and campaign content, your communications calendar is starting to look substantial! Remember, though: consistency matters. Your donors and other supporters should look forward to hearing from you regularly. If you do a monthly newsletter, it should be every month. If you do a weekly Facebook post (I’d suggest more often), make sure you don’t skip a week. If you’re on Twitter, you can do variations of the same tweet multiple times a week, or a day. And so on.

Where are you going to get all that content? That’s where evergreen topics are so, so helpful.

Evergreen content is the kind of story that your donors will find interesting no matter what week, month, or year it is and what else may be going on. It’s what they care about, always. If you recognize what matters to them and serve it up regularly, they will keep coming back for more.

Cast your net to catch evergreen content when it shows up on the internet. (Google Alert and Feedspot are two of the many tools you can use for this.) Create a system for collecting stories from your staff, and a story bank, and you can pull from that treasure trove at will.

Betwixt and between the seasonal and campaign topics, at any time on your calendar, you can share your evergreen content with your readers. Sometimes, that will be what they remember the best!

Integrate Fundraising into Your Calendar

Most of fundraising is what happens between the asks.

Fundraising includes the thanks you send and the impact you demonstrate. It also includes the ways you provide value to your donors and the ways you make them happy to hear from you.

But of course, fundraising is also asking for money. And you should include your direct mail, email, and events fundraising in your calendar, too. That way, your asks can build off what you are already saying to your donors–and your communications can seamlessly lead into your solicitations.

The best day to start your communications calendar is today! List those seasonal, campaign, and evergreen topics and start plugging them into your schedule. Do yourself a favor and never have to wonder “What in the world will I say?” again.

 

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