How to Use Psychology to Pre-Suade Donors to Give

What can you do now to prime the pump so your donors are pre-disposed to give to you when they receive your year-end appeal?

In Part 1 of this two-part series I described some new research from Robert Cialdini, author of the seminal Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, and the new book, Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade, and discussed how you might apply this research to your fundraising strategies. We learned the importance of leading with a “gift” or “favor” that would incline your donor favorably in your direction.

I promised that today we’d take a look at how to cement the likelihood your favor is returned, as well as explore some types of favors that are likely to be perceived as valuable.

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Sep52016

A Revolutionary Way to Influence Year-End Philanthropy

You asked a bunch of folks to give a year ago. Some did. You thanked them. Once. Maybe twice. Now you want to ask them to give again this year.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Too often nonprofits ask once; then assume folks who’ve made the decision to give will continue to do so. This is similar to retailers thinking that once someone has bought from them they’ll automatically do so again. Not true in either case.

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Aug312016

Clairity Click-it Long Week-End: Bounty of Free Nonprofit Resources

Welcome back from summer – at least for my North of the Equator friends.  I hope you had the opportunity to read through some of the resources I offered up in my Summer Click-it Extravaganza.  If not, there’s still time over this long week-end.

Now it’s time to get serious about end-of-calendar-year fundraising.  It’s when folks are most generous, and you don’t want to miss out.  So while I’ve continued to offer links to articles and resources aligned with my top “Dive the Five” fundraising fundamentals for 2016, and beyond, I’ve also included practical, basic stuff that falls a bit outside these categories.  It’s all good stuff and, as usual, plenty of free resources too.

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Aug222016

How Leaning Into Fear Can Change the World

A very accomplished friend of mine recently wrote a beautiful and provocative article I want to share. It resonated with me on many levels, not the least of which spoke to me wearing my hat as a philanthropy facilitator and nonprofit coach.

Thank you Tara Mohr for having the courage to share On Political Fear. Tara writes:

 I don’t do othering. I don’t think one party or place on the political spectrum has a monopoly on truth. I think we all need to be speaking up right now.

Tara, in speaking up, describes herself as “proudly afraid.”

Are you “proudly afraid?”

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Aug42016

How to Humanize Your Nonprofit Work by Building Empathy

empathy word cloudI am so inspired!

I recently learned about Van Jones’ virtual reality experiment, Day of Empathy via this video (thank you, thank you, thank you to Nancy Schwartz for writing about this on her Getting Attention nonprofit marketing blog: OMG Experiment to Connect & Activate (Dream Corps Case Study). The idea is to use virtual reality to build empathy (i.e., to help people walk in the shoes of others) in order to motivate action.

The idea of using virtual reality to build empathy on a communal scale is brilliant!

And it ties back to Darwin’s theory of survival.

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Aug12016

How to Use the Multiplier Effect to Inspire Annual Giving

People love to S-T-R-E-T-C-H their dollars.

This is the basic psychology underlying “BOGO” (Buy One; Get One free) and “2 for the price of 1” sales.  For a variety of reasons, we’re crazy about getting a good deal!

If I get more for my money, that’s smart.

It’s frugal to find ways to leverage our family’s spending.

I like to use my money in the most effective way I can.

It’s easy to apply these desires – to be smart, frugal and effective — to the creation of compelling fundraising offers.

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