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Fundraising Tuesday: Make the Donor the Hero

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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 for the first time in 2015 didn’t renew their gift in 2016.

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.”

TY Thursday: How to Energize Your Donors

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energizer

Energized donors keep on giving…and giving…

In Adam Grant’s book, Give and Take: How Helping Others Drive Our Success, he writes, “When people know how their work makes a difference, they feel energized to contribute more.”

The same applies to donors.

If you tell your donor how their gift changed someone’s life, they will be happy and proud, excited…and energized. They will want that feeling again. They will want to hear from you the next time you write. Chances are, they’ll give again, too.

Energize with a Sparkling Thank-You Letter

When it comes to exciting your donors, you have a golden opportunity, right after they give. Your first chance to make your one-time, impulse donor into a loyal Energizer Bunny of philanthropy is in your thank-you letter.

Joanne Fritz is a sage of the nonprofit world. In a recent article, she has given us all a great gift. She shared give examples of thank-you letters your donors will love. I call them:

  1. Painting the picture. (“Thanks to you, Michael and his sister, Janet, celebrated Michael’s 9th birthday with cake and balloons in a safe and loving place.”)
  2. Story anthology. (“Let me tell you what our services at Therapeutic Riding of Atlanta mean to some of the children who come to our classes.”)
  3. Instant impact report. (“No longer isolated in a hard-to-reach walk up in a high-rise building, Tom and Francis now have easy access to the services they need. Plus, they will receive two meals a day and participate in healthy and fun activities ranging from exercise classes to community field trips.”)
  4. Gusher of gratitude. (“The healing starts with a tiny spark … a glimmer of hope in soft, soulful eyes. And for homeless pets with serious injuries who come to Best Friends, the hope and the healing are all because of you.”)
  5. From general to personal. (Think an agency that does boring research can’t tell a great story? Think again!)
    “For the last forty years, research has shown that investing in women and girls has ripple effects through a community.Take Akina*, a young woman in Kenya who works for BURN, a clean cookstoves factory and social enterprise business supported by Acumen, a non-profit that invests in companies and ideas that aim to tackle poverty. Before BURN, Akina had never worked in a factory, but thanks to their investment in women, she has moved up to become a supervisor. Her wages pay for her younger sister’s education and the transportation costs for her brother to commute to his job.”

More TY Letters Your Donors Will Love

If you’re still looking for ways to make your thank-you letters sparkle, please take a look at this TY Thursday blog post you might have missed:
Write a Creative Thank-You Letter
In this post, you will find:

    • What You Need to Know Before You Thank
    • Great Advice on How to Start, from such luminaries of the nonprofit world as Beth Ann Locke, Gail Perry, and Pamela Grow
    • How to Write the Ideal Thank You Letter–advice from yours truly

Whether you follow the examples Joanne Fritz laid out or Write a Creative Thank-You Letter of your own, there’s no time like the present. If you want donors to keep on giving, you have to keep on thanking!

Fundraising Tuesday: The Case of the Unknown Donors

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“You’ve got to help us,” the Executive Director said. “We have all these donors, and we don’t know them.  We’re communicating in the dark.”

Do the detective work to know your audiences

Do the detective work and know your donors

“A hundred dollars an hour plus expenses,” I said.  As a private detective, I’m used to searching in the dark.  Besides, it would be a break from snooping on cheating husbands and wives.

Here’s how I tracked down the unknown donors.

Searched the case files.  I looked through the database for tips about donors and prospects.  I combed the Board bios and meeting minutes to get the skinny on the directors.  For donors who were clients, the agency balked: confidentiality, they said.  I’d heard that one before.  “Give me a sample of client folders with the names removed.  I’ll take it from there.”

Talked to informants.  Who knows each audience the best?  The nice lady at the front desk told me stories about the people who come in looking for help that would curl your hair.  The program directors dished the dirt on the organizations they collaborate with: thick as thieves, but not as well funded. The Executive Director herself knew all the politicians in town.  I made notes.

Beat the pavement.  Take a tip from an old gumshoe: don’t wait by the phone.  Get out and talk to people.  Interview people.  Find out their motives.  How else will you know how to motivate them?

Tail the suspects.  These days, people leave trails a mile wide all over the Internet.  Track them.  What footprints can you find through a web search?  Who do they visit on Facebook?  See what business they’re conducting in LinkedIn groups.  Read the notes they scrawl and toss onto Twitter.  You don’t have to snap photos: they’re doing it for you, on Instagram and Pinterest and other juke joints all around.  Make yourself known there and see who talks.

Follow the money.  Are your unknown donors making payments to other organizations?  Look at donor lists to see what relationships they have on the side.

Get the suspects in a room.  Call it a focus group.  Call it an advisory board.  Call it Ishmael, if you like–just ask them the questions.  Put them at ease and they’ll sing like a room full of canaries.

I made my report.  The Executive Director was grateful. “Now we know who they are, what they want, where to find them, and how to talk to them.  I can just see the donation renewals coming in!”

“Good,” I said.  “Don’t spend it all in one place.”  They would need to do more investigation as their audiences changed.  Good investigators don’t come cheap.

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