Communicate!

Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

Navigation Bar

  • About
  • Services
  • What Clients Say
  • Contact

Fundraising Tuesday: What Can We Do in Just One Month?

October 29, 2019 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

Giving TuesdayA worthy nonprofit recently asked me:

We’ve participated in Giving Tuesday for several years, and recently, the amount of giving we’ve seen that day has dropped. What can we do over the next month to get it back up again?

My answer?

If you want good results on December 3, then use the entire month of November to thank your donors. Click To Tweet

In case you haven’t heard, Giving Tuesday was created when two organizations, the 92nd Street Y and the United Nations Foundation, came together in 2012, about a month before that year’s Thanksgiving. They reasoned that if there was a “Black Friday” for buying retail, and a “Cyber Monday” for buying online, why not a day set aside for the joy of giving?

Since then, many nonprofits have created Giving Tuesday campaigns. Results varied. Some made a lot of money without reducing the donations they received in their end-of-year campaigns: the best of both worlds! Others found the returns on Giving Tuesday didn’t justify their efforts.

Today’s question comes from a nonprofit that used to find Giving Tuesday worthwhile but is worried about what to expect in 2019. Is there anything they can do to boost donations when they have only one month to work on it?

Say the words: THANK YOU

You can say them in a letter, by phone, in a thank-a-thon.

You can say them in an email, poem, or  video.

You can say them in your newsletter, or you can say them when you send out your welcome packet.

In a box, with a fox

You can say “Thank you” in a box, or you can say “thank you” to a fox–if you’re Dr. Seuss! But remember to say those magic words.

Don’t imply. Don’t leave the donor wondering. Thank them.

How many ways can you say “thank you”?

A smaller organization might need to pick one or two of these methods and spend the month just sending email, or calling donors.

A larger organization–one that actually has a development department, or heavens, separate development and communications departments!–might be able to do several of these.

Choose as many ways to say thank you as you’re sure your nonprofit can do well.

 

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Email
  • Pocket
  • WhatsApp
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Print

Fundraising Tuesday: Lies, Damn Lies, and Great Stories

March 19, 2019 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

statistics vs. stories

Even true stats can’t match true stories

You’ve probably seen them. Maybe you’ve even written them. Did you write one at the end of last year?

We’re talking about the fundraising appeal letters that are based on statistics.

 

“Last year we served 10,000 meals to 500 people at 5 different locations.”

“We delivered a petition to the White House with 49,000 signatures demanding action.”

“We raised $120,000 to give college scholarships to students in our community.”

These numbers matter to us…but not to our donors. They may not even read them. They will not remember them.

Why Statistics Don’t Matter

The problem with statistics is not that they don’t reveal enough. (Even though they don’t. For example: Is 10,000 meals a lot or a little? How many people stayed hungry?)

The problem isn’t that the numbers can be fudged, either.

The real problem is that statistics don’t touch the heart.

Donors decide to give because you engage their emotions. They feel the pain of a child going hungry, the pride of a community sending its brightest high school students to college. Without an appeal to the heart, they will not even pay attention. Once you move their hearts, you will get a chance to make them nod their heads, too. But not until then.

Why Stories Work

As a species, we crave stories. Like water, like food, like the air we breathe, stories are vital to us. We listen to stories to make sense of the world around us. We shape the events of our own lives into narratives to give our lives meaning.

Stories stick in the memory. Have you ever tried to memorize a grocery list? After a certain length, it becomes impossible. You can try singing the list to a well-known tune, or counting it on your fingers, or alphabetizing it, and still you’re likely to come home and realize you’ve left several items sitting on the supermarket shelves. But if you give it even a little bit of narrative structure–“We’re having pasta tonight, so I need tomato sauce and salad fixings”–it becomes so much easier.

Telling stories to your donors makes the work you’re asking them to support tangible, meaningful, and memorable. If you touch the donor’s heart, you can even make it compelling. The donor will want to give!

3 Steps to Turn Your Statistics into Stories

What if you’re used to writing fundraising letters that are full of statistics? You can learn how to take what you have written in the past and turn it into storytelling your donors will love.

Let’s take one of the sentences full of numbers I mentioned above and transform it.

“Last year we served 10,000 meals to 500 people at 5 different locations.”

Step One: Talk about One Person

Telling the story of one person moves the heart more than citing large numbers. Research has proved this again and again. So, forget those 500 people. Talk about one person, and perhaps her family. Who is this person who ate your meals? What can you tell your donors that will help them get to know her?

Example: “Maria and Joe moved to this community ten years ago to take care of Maria’s elderly mom, who needed help paying her bills and even remembering to take her medication. Joe is the friendly face behind the wheel of the Route 89 bus every morning. Maria is trained as a nurse’s aide, and she puts those skills to work taking care of her mom and her two daughters who have been born in our town.”

Step Two: Show the Challenge That Person is Facing

What changed so that your one person and her family need help? What would life be like for them without that food your donor is providing?

“In the ten years they have lived here, the cost of renting a small two-bedroom apartment has gone up and up. Joe’s wages have not increased at all. Any time they have an unexpected expense–a child who needs to see the doctor, or a new walker to help Maria’s mom get from her bedroom to her front door–then that month, they run out of food. Without the help that you provide, Maria and Joe would go hungry to feed their daughters. And there still might not be enough to go around.”

Step Three: Explain How the Donor is Helping That Person Succeed

How has getting the food for free changed Maria’s life, and her husband and children’s lives? What difference does a donation make, in tangible terms?

“Because you cared about Maria and Joe and donated to this agency, their two girls go to school every day well-fed and ready to learn. Joe doesn’t have to be an absentee parent, working extra shifts. He can drive his bus and come home to his family. Maria doesn’t have to worry about being too faint from hunger, and she can give her loving attention to her mother’s needs.”

 

You can turn any statistic into a story if you are prepared. Make sure you give yourself enough time to collect stories and bank them so you can use whenever you need them. And remember to make the donor the hero of the story. When you tell donors a tale of what happens “because of you,” you will touch the heart and move donors to give.

 

 

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Email
  • Pocket
  • WhatsApp
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Print

TY Thursday: Steal from the Best

April 20, 2017 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

steal from the bestAre you trying to come up with an original way of thanking your donors? Don’t worry too much about that. Instead, follow comedian Milton Berle’s advice: “If you’re going to steal, steal from the best.”

(That must be good advice. Kurt Vonnegut stole the quote from him!)

Steal These Top Ten Thank-You Ideas

There are lots of models for saying thank-you out there. Here are my top ten.

  1. Michael Rosen shows you how to thank your most loyal donors. (You should certainly make your supporters feel as appreciated as a big corporation like Marriott does with its guests!)

2. Ann Green tells you to create a thank-you experience that begins with the thank-you landing page on your website and goes on through email, mail, and phone calls.

3. If you’ve ever considered using video for your thank-yous to donors, take a look at these examples presented to you by Bloomerang.

4. Joe Garecht says you can take the classic thank-you letter to a whole new level. Take a look at his sample letter. And Pamela Grow’s thank-you letter template, too!

5. While you’re at it, take a look at my blog The Ideal Thank-You Letter Went Out Today–one of the most popular I’ve ever written–because you want to know the single most important thing about thanking your donors.

6. Gail Perry gives you a checklist of do’s and don’ts if you want to write a killer thank-you letter.

7. It’s a lot easier to say thanks if you develop an “attitude of gratitude” in everyday life. Mary Cahalane shows you how thanking donors can make you happy.

8. A thank-you can win the trust of your donor. Kivi Leroux Miller says your TY can be specific about how the gift is being used and show results: two things donors say they want above all else!

9. Rachel Muir tells us about The Best Thank-You Letter I Never Got, in her guest post on John Haydon’s blog. Do you donate? Can you put yourself in the shoes of the donor? Follow the golden rule of nonprofit writing.

10. Does someone at your nonprofit say, “Let’s just send out the same letter we sent before”? Lisa Sargent suggests you do a thank-you letter audit–and she provides a 17-point checklist to help you show the skeptics where you could be doing better.

Because Your Donor is Worth It

Are you as good at building loyalty as an airline?

pilot thanks you

Thank you for flying our nonprofit!

Every time I’ve flown in recent years, I’ve heard the flight crew say something like this upon landing. “We know you have many choices for your air travel. Thank you for choosing North-South-East-West Airlines.”

Your donors have many choices about what to do with their money. They could give it to another nonprofit in your field. They could give it to a completely different cause. They could blow it on pizza and beer. They could leave it to their grandchildren.

But they chose to make a gift to you. You are better off because of it. And you want them to make that same choice next time.

So, it’s worth sending that donor the best expression of thanks you can. Especially when you have so many good ideas to steal!

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Email
  • Pocket
  • WhatsApp
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Print
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • Next Page »

Yes, I’d like weekly email from Communicate!

Get more advice

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Copyright © 2021 · The 411 Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.