Communicate!

Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

Fundraising Tuesday: Stop Talking about You

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Enough about me, what do you think of me

When it comes to fundraising appeals, too many of us in the nonprofit world are stuck on ourselves.

How can that be, we wonder? We’re not self-centered. We care about our mission. We care about our clients. We’re not in it for personal gain–or we surely would have chosen another profession! How can it be that we’re constantly writing about ourselves?

Yet take a look at the last appeal letter your agency sent out. Did it contain:

  • Statistics on how many people “we” helped?
  • Explanations of “our” programs?
  • Stories about what “we” did that changed client’s lives?

We, the nonprofit vs. they, the donors

What we’re trying to do with those letters is make a case for the donor’s support. What we’re succeeding at doing–far too often–is making them feel insignificant.

Saying “We need your help” is not convincing when the rest of the letter is about what “we” did without the donor even knowing. Worse, it puts us on opposite sides of the fence: “we” who do, and “you” who admire.

Yes, that organization sounds great, the donor thinks. So what? What’s that got to do with me?

That’s the question your ideal appeal letter must answer.

All of us, together

Think back to the end of 2015. At home, in the mail, you got a ton of letters asking for money. Was there one that made you excited about giving?

If so, I’ll bet it got the little things right. It called you by your name. It referred to your giving history. It packed some punch in the postscript.

But that’s only what it took to get you to read the letter. What made you remember it, and feel excited about it, and want to give?

The letter that makes you feel like you were there in the midst of the action all along.

The letter that says the success stories are your successes.

The appeal letter that makes the donor the hero of the story.

That’s the one that stays in the memory. That’s the letter that donors want to keep, and quote, and show to their friends.

And that’s the letter that your nonprofit organization wants to write.

Every Tuesday this season, I’m offering a tip on how to write better fundraising appeals. Find the rest of the series under Fundraising Tuesday.

 

Fundraising Tuesday: You’re My Hero

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Every Tuesday this season, I’m offering a tip on how to write better fundraising appeals. The first post, about greetings, was Call Me By Name. The second was about postscripts: Last Things First.

 

Let’s try an experiment. You’ll need your latest fundraising letter, a blue pen, and a yellow highlighter. Put them all on your desk. Ready?

highlighter

Highlight your donor, not your organization

Pick up the pen and circle every mention of your organization. It could be the agency’s name. It could be the word “we,” used to refer to your organization. How many blue circles do you see? A lot, I’ll bet.

Now, pick up the highlighter and underline every mention of your donor. Yes, you can count the salutation if you called them by name. You can also highlight the word “you”–if that means the donor who’s reading the letter.

Is there more yellow on the page than blue? If not, you’re losing donors with every letter you send.

To Renew Their Support, Focus on Donors

A lot of us in the nonprofit world are under a misconception. We think that the reason donors give to us is because we do good work.

No, that’s the reason we’re proud of our organizations. It’s not the reason people give!

If doing good work were enough, you wouldn’t have to worry about getting donors to renew. They’d get to know, like, and trust your organization, and then they’d keep on giving into the indefinite future. But about 70% of the people who gave to you in 2014 didn’t renew their gift in 2015.

Don’t focus on what you do. Focus on how the donor feels.

Make the Donor the Hero of the Story

Seth Godin writes:

Why on earth would a rational person give money to charity–particularly a charity that supports strangers? What do they get?

A story.

It might be the story of doing the right thing, or fitting in, or pleasing a friend or honoring a memory, but the story has value. It might be the story that you, and you alone are able to make this difference, or perhaps it’s the story of using leverage to change the world. For many, it’s the story of what it means to be part of a community.

For your donor to renew, she or he has to feel like the hero of the story. You are the one who is going to make donors feel like heroes. And the fundraising appeal letter is just one of the many times during the year you have an opportunity to do that–but it’s a crucial time.

Spiderman emblemUse your fundraising powers for good.

Write fundraising appeals that tell the donor, “Because of you, this happened. You are my hero. And you are needed, now.”

 

Thank-You Thursday: Get on Their Screen with Video

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If you work at a nonprofit organization, you’re probably pretty charitable yourself. Are you getting a lot of thank-you letters in the mail? Great. But have you ever received a thank-you video on your phone or computer?

You would remember if you had.

The Personal Impact of a Thank-You Video

There’s something about the face and voice of a real person saying “thanks.” Yes, I love getting thank-you letters in the mail.Video can’t substitute for an envelope with a stamp on it that you can hold in your had. But it can add.

A video can show you where your donation made a difference. That’s the approach The Nature Conservancy takes.

It can present the faces of the people who are doing the work, as charity:water did with their staff.

Or it can show you the faces of the people whose lives are better because you helped. The Children’s Hospital Foundation took that approach. They even titled their video “Thank you for supporting kids like me.”

Making Your Thank-You Video

These examples come from larger organizations, but the thank-you video is a great tool for the small nonprofit too. If you have a smart phone, you have a video camera in your pocket.

Production values are not what matter in a thank-you video. Here’s what does (according to Raymund Flandez, writing in the Chronicle of Philanthropy):

  1. Be brief. Don’t send out a fifteen-minute description of everything you do. One minute of gratitude says it much better.
  2. Say thanks–and say why. Let the donor know the impact his or her gift has made.
  3. Speak personally. Make sure the donor can tell who it is that’s saying thank-you and why they care.

Sharing Your Thank-You Video

Once you’ve made your thank-you video, you have multiple ways to share it.

You can email it to the donor–but sending it as an attachment may make recipients worry about being spammed. Your video is more likely to be seen if you’re using an email service like MailChimp that allows you to embed the video in your message.

You can distribute the thank-you video through your Facebook page or other social media. You can post it permanently on your website or YouTube page, so you have the link to share in the future.

And you can personalize it. With a very little bit of editing skill, you can add the individual donor’s name to the basic video and thank him or her directly. Try personalizing some of your thank-you videos and see how that affects your donor renewal!

 

 

You should plan to thank your donors throughout the year. But how? Every Thursday, I’ll share a different idea. (The first one was Give Your Donor a Voice.)

 

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