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Fundraising Tuesday: A Letter to Nonprofits

April 21, 2020 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

Dennis Fischman photoDear readers,

I want to speak to you from my heart.

I went into nonprofit consulting because you do great work. Each day, every day, you give your time, your creativity, and your compassion toward making out world a better place.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, your work is especially needed. And yet, I worry that after this pandemic, many nonprofits will be severely injured. Some may even have to close.

Why?

Because our sector was not prepared.

I am not talking about preparation for the disease. It’s not the lack of face masks or surgical gloves–or even the learning curve involved in trying to do all our work online–that’s going to do many nonprofits in.

No.

Many nonprofits were not prepared for the current crisis because they haven't stockpiled loyal donors. Click To Tweet

We are seeing right now, if we didn’t before, that we cannot rely on the federal government to get us through the crisis. But we could not rely on them before the pandemic, either.

The same is true for state governments. Some nonprofits are better off than others because our governors and legislators have more foresight than those in other states. All states have to balance their budgets, however, and with their economies flatlined, they don’t have money to spare.

Foundations? I agree with Vu Le of the Nonprofit AF blog: foundations could be helping out more right now by turning all the grants they’ve given for this year into unrestricted money, so you could spend it where the need is greatest.

Mostly, however, they are not doing that. And next year, they will have less investment income. Unless they dip into their endowments, we will see less money from foundations, too.

The only ones that nonprofits can rely on are our loyal donors. And we have too few of them.

You can read the statistics as well as I can. From year to year, the percentage of first-time donors who give again to our nonprofits is getting smaller and smaller.

The most consistent donors are people in the Baby Boom generation who have given over and over again for years. There were always going to be fewer of us Boomers as time went on. Covid-19 is taking some of us (and our parents, and a few of our children) before their time.

It’s vital to nonprofits to create loyal donors–and keep the ones you have. The organizations that have made good friends of their donors over a period of years are the ones that are going to survive the pandemic. Others will be casualties.

So why are we ignoring our loyal donors?

We acknowledge their gifts online immediately, but we sound like robots instead of human beings.

We send thank-you letters by mail, but we sound self-important instead of grateful.

Most important: in our communications between asks, and in our asks, we sound like we are talking to a crowd. We give no indication that we know who this donor is, and what he, she, or they care about. (Including their pronouns, and even their names!)

If we had spent the past few years:

  • Collecting the right contact information for each donor
  • Surveying them about their interests
  • Segmenting our mail and email lists
  • Sending messages to each segment based on what they want to hear about
  • Telling stories about why their support is needed
  • Making the donor the hero of the story, and
  • Helping them feel that donating to you is how they do the good things they want to do in the world, and that they couldn’t do it without you (not the other way around)

…then we would not fear the pandemic or the recession that will follow. We would have donors we could trust.

I want to suggest that it’s not too late.

There are a lot of things we can’t do while social distancing. We’ve cancelled Spring galas and fundraising events already, and a lot of those road races and golf tournaments are just not happening this year.

Please, give yourself some credit. You are doing the best you can under difficult circumstances. It’s time to sit back, take a breath, and look at what you can actually do.

What if you put the time you would have spent planning events into creating loyal donors?

Maybe you never had the time to go through your database before and separate it into people who support your nonprofit because of this reason or that reason. Now is the perfect time to get started.

Maybe you don’t know enough about the donors to segment the list as you’d like. Give donors a call and ask, first, “How are you doing? Can we help?” and second, “What made you support this nonprofit in the first place, and why do you keep on supporting it?” Write it down!

Then, hold them close. Communicate more than you ever have before.

And that way, when we come out the other side of this global disease, your nonprofit will have better, closer, more loyal friends than you ever had before.

Please feel free to steal ideas from Fundraising Tuesdays on this blog to help you move ahead. And please let me know how else I can serve your nonprofit.

Best wishes,

Dennis

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TY Thursday: Torn Between Two Donor Lovers?

July 26, 2018 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

two lovers

Which one deserves your #donorlove?

If you’re going to go out of your way to thank a donor fabulously, creatively, as many times and as many ways as you can, which donor should get your love?

Do you single out the person who gives you the most money, or the person who gives most loyally over the years?

Let me tell you two stories to help you decide.

The Sudden Passion

The receptionist at the anti-poverty agency where I worked brought me the day’s mail. I opened a handful of reply envelopes from our most recent fundraising appeal. Then I gasped. A woman who had never given us a penny before had sent in a check for $1,000!

For our little nonprofit, $1,000 was a fortune. It was ten times the amount of the average donor’s gift. And it was the first time that Jean had donated. We had great hopes for the future.

As far as I know, we did all the right things to let Jean feel the #donorlove. We

  • Sent her a thank-you letter with a personal note from the Executive Director, the same day we received her donation
  • Followed it up with a voicemail
  • Listed her in our newsletter and annual report
  • Invited her to special events

Yet we never heard from Jean again. I still don’t know why. Perhaps she meant to give to an organization in town with a similar name, and she was too embarrassed to tell us she’d made a mistake? Or perhaps we’d touched her heart just that one time, and the morning after, she realized she loved some other organization better?

I’m not sorry we had our brief moment of passion with Jean. But I’m glad we didn’t run away with her, thinking it was true love, and forget about the donors waiting at home.

The Love of a Lifetime

John was a client of our agency. He couldn’t give much at a time–certainly not $1,000! But he had volunteered or served on the Board for twenty-five years.

Whenever we sent an appeal letter, he gave what he could. And when we had our twenty-fifth anniversary gala, John went around town (walking with a cane) and solicited gifts from local businesses. Back at his subsidized elderly housing, he went door to door and asked his neighbors to donate.

Over a lifetime, John raised $1,000 many times over.

Because John was shy, we couldn’t applaud him in public the way we would have liked. We sent him thank-yous and listed his donations, but we never toasted him or sent him gifts.

At Board meetings, however, we thanked him and held him up as an example. And our agency went above and beyond to make sure he  (and later, his daughter) would keep his housing and benefits, even when he was hospitalized for months at a time. That was another way of saying thanks.

If You Have to Choose Your True Love, Here’s How

Ideally, of course, you’d thank every donor fervently and frequently. Aim to do that! If you have to choose, however, pick your most loyal donors at every level.

Don’t just thank your major donors. If your newsletters are full of pictures of people who pay for whole buildings or programs, then your average donor will think, “This organization doesn’t need people like me.”

Show the love to the donors who, over time, show the most true love to you. Click To Tweet

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Fundraising Tuesday: Where to Find New Donors

October 10, 2017 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

If you have to put your time and energy into finding new donors OR renewing the donors you have, choose donor retention.

donor retention

Don’t just take it from me. “The old growth model is acquiring more new donors than we lose,” says Josh Whichard, a partner at Washington, D.C.’s DonorVoice. The old model, said Whichard, is like a leaky bucket, but one with more water and fewer holes. The new model is to plug more of those holes and need less water. In other words, renew your donors.

Why is it better to renew than to acquire? Lynne Wester of Donor Relations Guru Consulting points out that it’s “7 times more expensive to obtain a new donor than it is to keep the one you have.” Renewing one donor is as good as finding seven new ones!

And Kivi Leroux Miller, one of the leaders in the nonprofit field, tells us that nonprofits have to focus on retention to thrive in the long term, and she adds, “I certainly hope we will see retention grow as a priority in coming years.”

When You DO Need New Donors

Sometimes, though, you just can’t do without new donors. Maybe you’re a new nonprofit, starting out with a small circle of friends. On the other hand, you could be an old organization whose loyal supporters are aging out.

And no matter how many leaks you fix, some donors will always be one-time donors (like the majority of the people who give in honor or in memory of a friend). You need to replace the dollars they give, either by getting your existing donors to give more, or by acquiring new donors.

How do you do find new donors when you need them?

Communication is Key

In the for-profit world, companies are facing an uncomfortable fact. “Experts everywhere proclaim that people are 60% or more of the way through their decision process before they contact you or your company,” says sales maven Jill Konrath.

Nonprofits are in the same boat. Donors today do their research. They look up their favorite causes online, and they check out what you have to say about your organization–and what others say about you–before you ever hear from them.

So, if you want to find new donors, mostly they have to find you first! And when they find you online, they have to like what they see, or they will choose some other organization before you ever send them an email or a newsletter, much less an “ask.”

So, you will need to:

  • Create marketing personas, or profiles of your hoped-for donors
  • Use your communications channels to answer a question or solve a problem that’s bothering them right now
  • Tell memorable stories that move them
  • Make them feel as if you read their mind and knew what they wanted to hear

Introducing You

donors introduce friendsBut the best way you can acquire new donors is by having your loyal year-after-year donors introduce you!

Yes, we’re back to the importance of donor retention. Even for getting new donors, it’s vital to renew  your support from the people who have given to you already.

Think of it this way: Before they will give to you, people have to know you, like what you do, and trust you with their money.  What helps a person get to know, like, and trust your organization more than the word of a mutual friend?

Ways Your Donors Can Introduce You

  1. In person. Ask a thoroughly committed donor to set up a lunch date with one of their friends, to introduce the organization.
  2. Forward an email. Your donor can pass along your message with one of their own, “Kathy, I thought you’d want to read this because…”
  3. Share a post on social media. Again, it helps if they personalize it.
  4. Direct people to your website for timely, topical information.
  5. Just talk about you! “John, did you know that I’m involved with [your organization’s name here]? And I’m excited about it!”

If you don’t think your most loyal supporters will be happy and proud to introduce you to their friends, then your organization is a leaky bucket–and you may need to spend more time renewing your donor support instead!

But you may be underestimating the loyalty of your existing donors. Ask them. You have nothing to lose, and you may have a whole world of new supporters to win. Who are you going to ask for an introduction, today?

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