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Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

Fundraising Tuesday: Remember My Gift. I’m Not Joking!

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you forgot meOne of my favorite knock-knock jokes starts out sounding like it’s not a joke at all.

“Dear friend, will you always remember me?”

“Yes, I will always remember you, Dennis.”

“Will you remember me tomorrow?” “Yes.”

“Will you remember me next week?” “Of course!”

“Will you remember me next year?”

“Yes, I will remember you next year. I will remember you forever.”

“Okay…knock, knock.” “Who’s there?”

(Making a sad face) “Aw, you forgot me already!”

You laugh–but do your nonprofit organization’s donors say, “You forgot me already?”

They might–if you send them the same fundraising letter that you send to someone who’s never, ever made a donation before.

How to Show Donors You Remember

Let’s assume you’re calling your donors by name in the salutation of your letter. And getting the name right! Not doing that is the quickest way to lose a donor.

You still need to show your donor that you know the person behind the name.

Donors don’t want to be just names on a list. They want to know that when they gave, you noticed. How can you show them that?

  • At least, you can say to them: “Thank you for your gift of $100 on December 22.”
  • Better: “Thank you for your gift of $100 on December 22 to help low-income families pay their heating bills.”
  • Better yet: “Because you gave a generous gift of $100 on December 22, one family in our town had heat all through the winter.”
  • Best of all, tell them a story about the difference their donation made:

Jackie and John were afraid that their three children would have to sleep in their coats and under an inch of blankets this winter. They had only enough money to heat their apartment through the end of January. But your generous gift of $100 on December 22 helped them keep the heat on all the way to March. Jackie and John thank you, and so do we!

Now, here’s another way you can help.

What It Takes to Remember Your Donors

In order to send the right letters to the right people, you have to find out about those people, and what they care about.

Who they are

The simplest thing to find out is whether they are donors or prospects. In other words, have they given before or not? If you have any kind of database, it’s easy to find out which is which. Separate the two lists and send them different letters.

(This sounds like a no-brainer. You wouldn’t call your spouse on the phone and talk as if you were arranging a first date, would you? So why would you write your loyal supporters as if they were people who had never given before? But when I looked at all the fundraising letters I received at the end of 2015, 60 out of 90 letters I received used exactly the same language to me that they would use to someone who had never given them a penny! You can do better than they did.)

Most databases will also let you find your LYBUNT and SYBUNT donors (“Last Year But Unfortunately Not This Year” and “Some Year But Unfortunately Not This Year”).  People who used to give, gave for a reason. If you can figure out that reason and write your appeal accordingly, you may get them back–but not if you treat them like they never gave, or the previous gift didn’t count!

What they care about

Let’s face it: only a few people give because they care about your organization. You. Your mother. Who else?

sleep-under-covers-759x397Most donors give because they care about the people you serve (like the family who didn’t need an inch of blankets to keep from freezing last winter). And probably, each donor cares about some clients and some issues more than others.

Just like you separated out your donors from your prospects, you should be able to separate out the people who give to keep the heat on from the people who give to make sure the kids have summer jobs. The difference is, your database can tell you their donation history. For their interests, you have to do a little detective work yourself.

How many letters?

So, you could send separate letters to donors, past donors, and prospects, varying by their specific interests. And you might want to do that. It’s not a whole new letter you have to write each time: it’s tweaking the elements that let the recipient know you remember him or her as a person–not an ATM.

It’s not a huge amount of time, and it’s not a huge amount of money (especially if you send some of those messages by email). And it could bring a lot of donor renewals, making more money than you spend!

But if you choose to do just one thing differently after reading this blog, choose to write a different letter to donors than you do to the world at large.

Knock, knock.

Fundraising Tuesday: Call Me By Name

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Every Tuesday this season, I’m offering a tip on how to write better fundraising appeals. Here’s the first in the series.

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

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.

Personalized Fundraising: The Right Tools Help

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Feel like a numberYour supporters aren’t numbers. Why are you keeping track of them with a spreadsheet?

A recent study by Software Advice, a consultancy that helps nonprofits find software, found that 52% of the organizations they studied currently use general-purpose software, such as Microsoft Excel or Google Drive, to manage data. That includes all the data on their donors and prospects.

I feel your pain, nonprofits. You’re strapped for time and short on money. That makes you use the tools you already have–especially if they’re free.

But free is not always the best price.

What it Costs You to Use Free Tools

Using Excel or Google for your fundraising database may be fine if all you want to do is look up what you know about one person. Suppose, however, that you want to:

  • Send a carefully crafted email to only those people who have given more than $100 as a donation and who live in the zip codes closest to your office.
  • Keep track of registration for a gala or other event.
  • Print call sheets for a phone-a-thon.
  • Automatically send a welcome message and a series of follow-ups to new members.

You can’t do any of those directly from free tools.

If you want to send a targeted email message, for example, you might have to create a distribution list in Outlook, export it to Excel, import that to an email marketing system like MailChimp or Constant Contact, compose and schedule the email, and then enter the results back in Outlook–all by hand. What a waste of time! Don’t you have better things to do?

Better Tools for the Personal Touch

“Nonprofits have always tracked donors and contributions, but increasingly, buyers are requesting robust constituent relationship management (CRM) systems and outreach tools,” says Janna Finch of Software Advice, the author of the study.

Why invest in that kind of tool? The paradox is that the more high-tech systems let you keep in touch with your donors and supporters in a more personal way. As Finch explains:

CRMs let nonprofit staff track information beyond a supporter’s name, address and contribution amount, including specific interests, professional experience, relationships, participation in activities, and more. Leveraging this knowledge, fundraisers can create a personalized message that targets a group of supporters that is more likely to turn a fence-sitter into an active donor, advocate or volunteer.

The Power of Personalized Asks

It’s a sad truth that big corporations like pharmacy chains and health insurance companies treat me more personally than the causes I support. Part of the answer is to invest in tools that will let you, the nonprofit, track your relationship with me, the donor, and let me know you care.

Quoting Janna Finch of Software Advice again:

“Here’s a comparison to illustrate the power of personalization. The first is a sample of a generic ask letter sent to all supporters; the second is personalized and targeted to past donors who are also teachers working in a school district the organization serves.”

Generic: Once again, we’re holding our annual drive to collect contributions to supply underprivileged students with school supplies for the upcoming school year. Since our organization relies on the generosity of individuals such as yourself, would you consider a donation to our cause?

Personalized: As a teacher, you are undoubtedly aware of how having the necessary school supplies impacts a student’s educational experience. Thanks to your $100.00 donation last year, 23 underprivileged students in your school district started the year fully-stocked with supplies. Would you consider another donation this year to ensure every student has all the supplies he or she needs?

Neither of these is the ideal appeal letter–but the personalized one will win every time. And you can only write the personalized letter if the data are ready to hand. A CRM tool will help you let the donor know he or she is not just a number to you.

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