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Fundraising Tuesday: 5 Reasons You Must Personalize Your Appeal Letters

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Too Busy for Wheels

Let’s talk about why to segment your mailing list and personalize your appeal letters…even if think you don’t have the time.

Right now, are you sending out the same appeal letters to loyal long-time donors and new prospects? To retirees and college graduates starting their careers? What about people who volunteer at your events and people who show up occasionally?

Do you know whether the person receiving the letter cares about your youth program or your elder services? And do you know enough about them to call them by name?

Nonprofits, we need to send different letters to different audiences--and personalize every one of them. Here are the top five reasons why. Click To Tweet
  1. The personal approach will make more money. People who feel they are making a difference give more than people who feel they’re part of a nameless, faceless crowd.
  2. Personalization will get more donors to renew. It costs seven times as much to acquire a new donor as it does to treat a current donor well enough that they renew their gift for another year. It’s worth it!
  3. It’s the Golden Rule. Do you like reading a letter that starts “Dear Friend” and goes on to ignore the issue that made you support your favorite cause in the first place? If you don’t, why would other donors?
  4. You must be at least as personal as a for-profit business. If my health insurance company can send me a message tailored to me–and I HAVE to buy health insurance–what can I expect from a nonprofit I donate to voluntarily? Surely, you should show you care!
  5. It’s 2018. Everywhere your donors go online, they see content tailored just for them. That might be welcome. It might be a little creepy. Either way, it’s what they expect. Fall short of that expectation in print, and they may never read the letter you worked so hard to write.

 

Fundraising Tuesday: 3 Ways to Get Personal with Your Donors

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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. Click To Tweet

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. Click To Tweet

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.

TY Thursday: I Thought You’d Be Interested in This

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being interested

One of the best ways you can thank a donor is to show them you know what they’re interested in–and talk about their interests.

How do you do that? Here’s a good example.

A Personal Email to a Donor: Me!

My wife Rona and I are longtime supporters of RESPOND, the Somerville, MA based organization working to end domestic violence. Their Chief Development Director, Danielle Kempe, knows that. So, look at the personal email she sent me just this week:

Good morning Dennis,

Hope all is well!

I just heard a client success story for our programs office that I thought you’d be interested in too.

This August, we moved a resident into her own apartment/independent living. She was excited to have her own space in her own name. As we did her exit interview, she said what she was most grateful for and would remember was RESPOND being there for her as she went through the immigration process.

In these times when immigration reform is at the center of every discussion, families are in fear, and it is one of the reason why people are afraid to report domestic violence, RESPOND was more than just a roof over her head. While at RESPOND, she was able to get a green card, take ESL classes, obtain gainful employment, and is set to start college classes. The safety planning tools will help her keep safe from her abuser, and the empowerment RESPOND provided will keep her strengthened for her future.

All the best,

Danielle Kempe

P.S. Hope to see you at our open house! Details below.

Why This Email Interested the Donor

As Development Director, Danielle has RESPOND’s database at her fingertips. She knows the recency, frequency, and monetary value of the gifts that Rona and I have made over the years: not that large, but consistent.

Danielle also knows we care about the safety and dignity of immigrants. How does she know that? I suspect it’s because she made a point of meeting with me after a a few months on the job, and we discussed it then. She probably went back to the office and made a note in the database of the donor’s interests. That’s what I would do in her place.

interested in immigrants

You can tell Rona and I are interested in immigrants!

Danielle and I have followed each other on social media for a while, too, and she’s seen some of the posts I’ve put up, and my photo with the words “#HeretoStay-I Support DACA” on my personal Facebook page. If she’s really good, and her database allows it, she has my feed at her fingertips too.

Show Your Interest to the Donor by Recognizing Theirs

Can you do as well as Danielle at RESPOND did? Ask yourself:

  • Do you know the names of your loyal donors?
  • Do you understand what they’re interested in, besides your organization?
  • Are you taking steps to find out? And,
  • Are you unselfishly giving them information they will enjoy that makes them say, “That organization really knows me”?

The more the donor believes you are paying attention to them as a person, the more they will feel you’re not just looking at them as a wallet. You have a relationship.

Now, that’s interesting!

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