Communicate!

Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

Fundraising Tuesday: 4 Ways to Pay for Your Communications Consultant

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Your nonprofit organization does great work. You’d like more people to know about it. So you squeeze time for writing newsletters, sending email, and posting to social media into your schedule.

And still, people don’t know what you do.

You realize you need outside help…but there’s a problem.  How are you going to pay for the help you need?

Nonprofits often operate with restricted funds. The grant you received to offer concerts to schoolchildren, or feed elders, won’t pay for your consultant. You know you need to spend the money to make more money, but where do you get the money to invest in the first place?

piggy bank

Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Four ways, in fact.

Here are four approaches you can take to find money without strings attached, money you can invest in the future of your organization. Each of them is something you can do, even if you’re a small nonprofit. And none of them will break the bank.

  1. Ask a donor. Most people give to your organization to produce immediate results. A few of your supporters understand that better communications now means a stronger organization later. Find a major donor like that, and ask him or her to give you the seed money you need.
  2. Write a proposal.  Communications is “capacity building.” Foundations will give grants if you show them what difference your improved communications will make. Businesses will also invest if you make a strong case.
  3. Do some crowdfunding. Zach Brown raised $55,000 online by making potato salad. How about you? Be very human and a little bit funny, and you just might get enough small gifts to pay your consultant.
  4. Build it into the budget. Communications are just as important as staff training and other items you budget for every year. It will be a lot easier to pay for help if you’re planning for it.

When you have the money in hand, here are seven tips on what to look for when you’re hiring a communications consultant.  And I’d love to talk with you about your project.  Drop me a line at [email protected]: maybe we can work together!

Fundraising Tuesday: Make Your Donors Love You

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You’ve heard the saying, “It’s not what you eat between Christmas and New Year’s–it’s what you eat between New Year’s and Christmas”?  Similarly, it’s not what you write to your donors in your end-of-year appeal letter that determines how they feel about your organization. It’s what you write all year long.

Communication in marriageCommunications are the key to a good marriage. Your nonprofit’s communications are the key to a good relationship between your donors and you.

By next Valentine’s Day, make your donors love you. Here are the four steps to win their hearts.

This winter, work on your email.

When donors or prospects give you their email address, it’s like they met you on a blind date and decided to give you their phone number. What they’re saying is, “I want to hear from you.” It’s a huge gesture of trust.

Be worthy of their trust.

  • Find out the kind of content they want to see, and send it to them as often (and no more often) than they want to see it.
  • Write subject lines that signal, “I wrote this especially for you and I know you’ll want to read it.”
  • Personalize every email. “Dear friend” is not acceptable in 2017. It tells your donors they’re not worth your time.
  • Keep your list up to date. There are good email tools out there: MailChimp and Constant Contact are two that many nonprofits use. Buy one and learn how to use it. You–and your donors–will be glad you did.

This spring, take a good look at your website.

Your website is your online living room. If you’re going to invite donors there, you want them to stay a while.

  • Make the lighting comfortable. Is the font size large enough for middle-aged eyes? Does it read as well on Chrome or Firefox as on Internet Explorer or Safari? Can donors read it on their mobile devices? Can they read it with their screen readers (if they have limited eyesight)?
  • Make the room easy to get around. Place navigation bars on the homepage and on every page. Clearly label your pages and tabs, and don’t get too cute: “About Us” or “Who We Are” are better than “The 411.”
  • Put out the treats.  Your donors need to find what they’re looking for quickly or they’ll leave your site. Be sure everything is within three clicks from the home page: for instance, 1) home page, 2) contact us, 3) email. If you’re inviting people to sign up for an event, consider using a landing page with its own URL.

This summer, spice up your blogging life.

Did you ever meet someone and think to yourself, “I love talking with him. I could spend all night just listening to him?”

Writing a blog gives your donors a chance to say that about you.

Blogging is better for those long explorations than email. It’s more of a conversation than the rest of your website. Blogging is for lovers.

This fall, finally get social.

What would the love of your life think if when you were together, you only talked and never listened? Or if you only listened when he or she was talking about you?

Not very romantic, right?

But too many nonprofits think the reason to use social media is to have one more place to rattle on about themselves.

Social media are really more like social gatherings: parties, conferences, Chamber of Commerce meetings, public forums. You go those events to meet people and become an important part of the community. You go on social media to do the same.

Over time, if you pay attention to them, people come to know, like, and trust your organization. They actually seek you out for information and advice and opportunities to volunteer. They start thinking of you as “their” organization. They fall in love.

How do you use social media to make donors love you? I’ve been studying this subject for years, and I’m happy to share it with you.

social mediaThe No-Nonsense Nonprofit Guide to Social Media: How You Can Start Small, Win Loyal Friends, and Raise Funds Online and Off is your step-by-step guide to courting your donors.

Download it now, and by next fall, you can be happily engaged.

By next winter, you can be busy writing thank-you notes.

By next Valentine’s Day, your donors can be yours for life.

The No-Nonsense Nonprofit Guide to Social Media: How You Can Start Small, Win Loyal Friends, and Raise Funds Online and Off

Fundraising Tuesday: Up Close and Personal

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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. Share on X

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. Share on X

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.

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