If you could only do five things between now and the end of the year to make a noticeable difference in your nonprofit’s fundraising results, what would you do?
I’ve been writing recently about five subject areas – key priorities for success this year, and beyond. Today I’d like to offer one BIG “to do” in each area to help you hone in on some actionable steps that will move the needle and have a transformative impact on your results.
The end of the year will be here before you know it!
Working on your year-end appeal?
Wish you had a way to prioritize the stuff that really matters?
Around this time of year, it’s common for me to hear one or more of the following — not just from newbies to the profession, but also from seasoned pros:
It’s mid-September and we’re well on the way towards the year-end rush of “giving season!” 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’ll continue to offer links to articles and resources aligned with my top “Dive the Five” fundraising fundamentals for 2016, and beyond, I’ll also include some practical, basic stuff that falls a bit outside these categories.
It’s all good stuff and, as usual, plenty of free resources too. I count seven freebies, and 17 great articles! I dare you not to find something you can use right now.
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.
Thinking about how to get more new donors this year? Wondering if you should purchase lists?
Consider this: Response to peer-to-peer fundraising is about 25% compared with direct-to-donor campaigns where response is 1 – 2%.
Why? People respond better to people than they do to organizations. Especially when it’s people they know and trust.
Never think of your event as a stand-alone. That’s a waste of your time.
Always think in terms of “What’s next?”
You must always be cognizant of moving folks along a relationship continuum.
From awareness… to interest… to involvement… to investment.
I 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.
We’re in the midst of a generational shift: Millennials have recently surpassed Boomers as the largest generation in America, and have surpassed Generation X as the largest part of the American workforce.
As these changes happen, nonprofits should take a look at their marketing channels and make sure they are using the right methods to reach each generation.
I’ve got a cornucopia of useful practical tools to help you here – enough to last the entire rest of the summer – and then some! If you don’t have time to click through to all these great resources now, this is a “Click-it” edition you’ll seriously want to tuck away for when you’re ready. If you use these tools, you’ll be a lot more effective. Why just work hard when you can work smart?
NOTE: As I’ve done throughout the year, I’ve organized these articles into categories aligned with my top “Dive the Five” fundraising fundamentals for 2016, and beyond. Plus I’ve added a few articles with some great basics and specific tips. And plenty of free resources too. And now… let’s dig in!
What prompted me to write this article was a recent post by Matthew Sherrington on the 101 Fundraising Blog about the dangers to the public benefit sector posed by erosion of trust. We’ve known for some time that whenever there’s a charity scandal, the bad behavior of one player can become detrimental to all. But over the past year in the U.K. the problem has become even more challenging. Could it happen here? Matthew says “yes.” And I concur. Trust is a fragile thing.
In the U.K what happened was a perfect storm of perceived over-solicitation and insufficient outcomes, exacerbated by a barrage of media that sounded an alarm about nefarious practices. Trust plummeted. A wake-up call, for sure.
But what does it mean?
This is important.
It’s about a new report that may change how you do fundraising.
It should.
Let me explain.
By tending to focus more on expensive, staff-intensive acquisition strategies like direct mail and special events, charities are bringing in one-time donors who never give to them again.
Hope you enjoyed/are enjoying the week-end! Please also enjoy these links. There’s all sorts of interesting stuff for you on boards and fundraising, storytelling, newsletters that make money, how to get better results from snail mail and more. You’ll find some great training opportunities and five (count ’em!) free resources.
Click-it: Turning Board Members into Fundraisers: Q&A with Claire Axelrad. Emily Wang of Network for Good recently interviewed me on this subject. If you missed it, here’s your chance to check it out.
Imagine you’re baking a cake. You put in the flour, eggs, milk, and sugar, whip it all together, and put it in the oven for an hour. But, when the timer dings and you open the oven door, you find that instead of one perfect cake, you have two!
This situation is physically impossible (unless you’re a wizard or a magician), but it’s a good illustration for how matching gift programs can benefit your nonprofit.
When donors take advantage of their employers’ matching gift programs, they essentially double the amount of money that they give to your organization. Two cakes (I mean, donations!) for the price of one!
Ever hear of “A.Word.A.Day” with Anu Garg? I hadn’t. Until a friend recently shared with me that day’s word. She said, “this one’s all about you!” The word?
Clairaudience.
It’s a perfect word for fundraisers, because it’s precisely what you must do – a skill you absolutely must have – if you’re to succeed with sustainable fundraising.
It means the ability to hear what is in people’s hearts and minds.
It’s a lot like clairvoyance, but it brings in the audience perception. It’s the ability to “hear” what is inaudible — by getting a read on what folks are thinking and feeling on the inside. Despite what they may reveal on the outside.
Guess who is good at this?
In Part 1 of this article I encouraged you to make this the year you begin to study psychology and apply it more to your integrated development (marketing and fundraising) strategy. I shared with you an infographic developed by marketing strategist Gregory Ciotti that some of the psychology underlying human behavior. Because there’s a lot for nonprofits to learn and apply, I’m taking you through them one by one. Today let’s complete the Top 10 list.
“Human beings have always been social animals. The digital revolution has simply made electronic media (email, the internet and social media) our ‘go-to’ place to socialize and connect with our fellow humans.”
This sentiment that Claire crafted really spoke to me as I was reading her article the other day.
It’s a deep truth. We are social beings. We’re also incredibly mobile now, though.
Ironically, even though we’re constantly on the go, we are the most connected we’ve ever been.
Two good posts recently at re: charity (Brady Josephson) and Future Fundraising Now (Jeff Brooks) about what charities should do today to prepare for tomorrow. Both embrace a quote from Jeff Bezos:
I very frequently get the question: ‘What’s going to change in the next 10 years?’ I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?’ And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two — because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time.
Sounds good.
But think about this a bit more.
Two good posts recently at re: charity (Brady Josephson) and Future Fundraising Now (Jeff Brooks) about what charities should do today to prepare for tomorrow. Both embrace a quote from Jeff Bezos:
I very frequently get the question: ‘What’s going to change in the next 10 years?’ I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?’ And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two — because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time.
Sounds good.
But think about this a bit more.
Which is why I want to share with you some quick and easy tips to take your blog (or e-newsletter*) from a snoozefest to a usefest. You see, the content you serve up to folks has to be useful to them. You want to see their eyes bulging out of their sockets with excitement, not rolling back into their heads with boredom.
The people have spoken! You’d like more original articles from me, and you still want curated resources and links to free stuff and great training opportunities, and you’d like about the same number of emails.
So… I’m moving the “Click-it” to twice/month to make space for more original articles. And, as promised, this year I’ll be organizing the curated resources according to the “Dive the Five” fundamental principles we’ll be discussing in our ongoing virtual fundraising curriculum. Nail these, and you’ll succeed in 2016. As a reminder, they’re:
Do you want to increase your fundraising proceeds dramatically, without significantly increasing your resources?
In this post, you’ll learn how to effectively increase your fundraising proceeds through use of online Peer-to-Peer fundraising.
Peer-to-Peer fundraising (P2P fundraising) is the idea of leveraging your cause/organization’s supporters and empowering them to become your best fundraising advocates in order to expand your mission’s reach and grow your donor base and proceeds. It’s a multi-tiered approach, where donors are asked to raise money in addition to donating.
This year I’ll be sharing a lot of resources related to the “Dive the Five” fundamental principles we’ll be discussing in our ongoing virtual fundraising curriculum. You remember them, don’t you?
I want you to use these “buckets” as an organizing framework for your development efforts this year, so I’m organizing my “Click-its” this way as well.
From time to time I’ll add in other subjects and offer you some food for thought that I just can’t help but share with you. And, as always, if you scroll to the bottom you’ll find some free resources and upcoming learning opportunities.
Content is the heart of your successful fundraising strategy.
If you don’t sell it, you won’t connect with your audience.
And if you don’t connect with your audience, you haven’t got a snowball’s chance in you know where to persuade folks to give to you to further your mission.
This is where learning to become a master storyteller comes in.
I know you’ve heard this before. Storytelling is the meme du jour.
But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pay real attention.
Your year-long “Dive the Five” virtual course continues!
I’ve selected five major themes – fundamental nonprofit fundraising strategies — to discuss with you this year in depth. Strategies that are so important to your success in 2016 – and beyond – that I want to be certain (1) you’ve got them on your priority list, (2) will begin to dedicate some serious resources towards them, and (3) will commit to practice them regularly, until they become almost second nature.
If you learn to “Dive the Five” you’ll be able to raise money for anyone, any place, any time. And I’ll be your Guide.
Some of these skills will seem familiar, but the way you employ them may need to be tweaked in order for you to survive and thrive in our digitally-revolutionized society. Other skills may be things you’ve thought about, or dabbled in, but haven’t really committed to with serious intent and dedicated resources.
Your year-long “Dive the Five” virtual course begins!
Listen.
Hear the knocking?
I most surely do!
If you pay attention, you’ll see the year ahead is bursting with opportunities for your nonprofit to succeed — more than you’ve ever succeeded before.
What do you need to do to grab these opportunities?
It’s as simple as
This week’s Click-it is a mélange of fundraising wisdom, beginning with mission statements, target markets, email tactics, fundraising psychology and some insight from the invariably provocative Seth Godin.
And, as always, if you scroll to the bottom you’ll find some free resources I’ve found just for you.
You may recall that I promised to do new something new this year – “Dive the Five.”
I’ve selected five major themes to discuss with you this year in depth.
There are two reasons you should do a donor survey.
Donor surveys offer you a “twofer.” One is for you (useful information); the other is for your donor (a way to usefully participate other than giving money).
Let’s begin with the latter reason.
It’s boring them to tears.
Actually, let me rephrase. Not to tears. That would mean they’re feeling an emotional connection. Sadly, they’re not.
You’re not making the impact you need to make to keep your donors, let alone get them to give more the next time you ask.
Why?
Let me tell you what I learned from Penelope Burk, Donor-Centered Fundraising author, about 15 years ago. It fundamentally changed the way I communicate with donors.
This week’s Click-it is more of a holiday season “Open-it” collection of gifts. For the second year in a row, I’ve gone shopping and will offer you one or more free gifts every week from now until the end of the year.
These are all good. And the first one today is a real doozy — a gift to me that I’m “re-gifting!”
It’s here, it’s here!
That giving time of year!
My dear, don’t fear!
It’s time to get in gear!
Good cheer, get clear,
As the year-end draws near…
Bad poetry aside, it really is the time to get all your ducks in a row so you don’t miss out on this time of year when many charities will receive as much as 40% of their entire annual campaign goal.
So I’ve got 13 tips to give your year-end fundraising a shot in the arm!
In my previous Year-End Fundraising Planning Editions One and Two I promised I would have more for you as year-end – and the biggest fundraising time of the year for most nonprofits – inexorably approaches. Salsa reports that
Online giving gets particularly frenetic at this time of year.
This week’s Click-it is dedicated to your year-end success!
December is the biggest fundraising opportunity of the year. What you do between now and December 31st will impact what you’re able to accomplish through the rest of the year.
It’s now or never.
Please. Seize your opportunity!
But do it right.
It’s no longer just about direct mail or an email or two.
You’ve got to think about your website, thank you pages, social media and peer-to-peer fundraising – just to name a few. Old school is good, and there are some tips in the articles that follow to help you. But they’re no longer enough.
You must use online techniques to leverage offline techniques.
Think of social media and your website home page as advertising for your appeal. So that when folks finally receive your request for a gift, they do so with eyes and ears wide-open. Because they’ve been primed.
Ready? Let’s get started!
This is the giving season! Between now and December 31st, statistically, are the “make or break” weeks for your annual fundraising. It doesn’t matter what fiscal year you’re on. Donors operate on a calendar year.
So I’m offering up 5 tips to help you out.
Because people do most of their giving between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve — and I don’t want you to miss out
It’s a time when people feel grateful for friends, family and other blessings, and are inclined to be generous towards others. They want to share their blessings.
Your job is to tap into these feelings of generosity when they’re most at the surface. To strike while the iron is hot.
Not long ago I went to research something online and ended up viewing the first entry Google gave me – which was on Wikipedia. To my delight, I ran into an awesome fundraising campaign (this is an occupational hazard with fundraisers – we actually like and admire things like pledge breaks when they’re done well)!
Here’s what I found superimposed at the top of the screen:
I’ve been thinking a lot about crowdfunding lately.
Bzz… bzz… buzz… buzz… Do you hear it?
It’s the sound of the times. It’s the bees flying around crowdfunding campaigns like honey. Sweet, golden honey.
Are you getting yours?
With the mainstream shift into digital communication, and the advance of technology through online donation and peer-to-peer fundraising platforms, crowdfunding is something I believe you should seriously consider if you’re not already getting your “crowd” on.
Especially if you have…
So I’ve put together a few resources, and some of my own thoughts, to help you think things through.
Did you know today is Blog Action Day? I apologize for two posts in one day. I usually send my curated links on Friday (and I did, because I missed last week), but I just had to let you know about this special day when bloggers all over the world unite, raise our voices and shine a light on one single thing that’s not going right in our world. And we talk about how to make it right.
And, gosh, there are so many things. They seem to multiply like rabbits. It can seem hopeless.
But it’s not. We’ve proven that we can pull rabbits out of hats and make magic happen. Life has always been unfair, yet civilization has prevailed.
And lives have been made better. In large part, because of the compassionate work done through civil society — the social benefit sector and citizens working together to right the ship.
Allow me to share a little story learned in my many years working for Jewish social service organizations:
There’s an old Jewish parable that begins with the notion that at one time everything in the world was perfectly balanced. It was “tzedek” – which happens to not only mean “balanced” but is also the root of the word “tzedekah” ( justice) and the term for the money that is collected weekly by every Jewish community to take care of its poor. The goal of tzedek/tzedekah, throughout our lives, is to do what we can to get back to that equilibrium. That time when there was no injustice. No unfairness. No fighting. No wars.
In fact, the Torah insists, “Justice, justice shall you pursue.”
This year’s Blog Action Day theme is the mother of all issues:
The case of Malala Yousafzai, the 11-year-old blogger who was shot in the head for chronicling the fears of schoolgirls under the shadow of the Taliban, has become a well-known cause célèbre. She prevailed. But there are thousands like her who are silenced.
This is a fight that must be won battle by battle. And the war is still raging.
This week’s Click-it is dedicated to the best ways to communicate your message as well as best ways to measure your success.
All of this is super important as we approach the year-end fundraising season.
If you’re not the person who might benefit most from some of these articles, please pass them along to those who might find them useful. Be good to your team!
It’s October! We’re entering prime fundraising season, and there’s no better time to sharpen your major gift skills. So this week’s edition is dedicated to exactly that. From prospect identification to cultivation to asking to follow-up. At the bottom you’ll find some new free resources, a chance to participate in a crowd-sourced major gifts blog and a last chance to actively prepare for your major gifts solicitations with some dynamic webinars and a practice clinic. Ready?
I’m majorly S C R E A M I N G with delight to be hosting this month’s Nonprofit Blog Carnival!
So majorly, in fact, that the subject this month is TRICKS or TREATS – How Do You Get and Sustain Major Gifts?
Tell us your tricks – the ones that work! Do you HAUNT prospects through a series of managed ‘moves’? Do you fly in on a BROOMSTICK and just drop in spontaneously? How do you put them under your SPELL?
Tell us some treats – ways you wow your donors! Smile like a JACK-O-LANTERN every time you think of them; then figure out a way to let them know? Give them lots of virtual CANDY (seriously, do you use social media for any part of your major gifts strategy)?
The Click-it is early this week since year-end is fast approaching, and I couldn’t wait to share these awesome tips to help you plan your year-end campaign! I’ve got a bit of everything here – from finding email addresses to build your online mailing list… to tips on getting appeals read… to making sure you’re not missing any tricks… to social sharing strategies… to best email subject lines… to Giving Tuesday — and more! I’ll no doubt have even more for you before the end of the year, but now is really the time to get started. Don’t delay. [If you really want to assure you don’t miss a trick, scroll down to the bottom and check out the webinar I’m offering with the Foundation Center on the 17th]
On the anniversary of 9-11, I’ve put together a group of posts that show that more people than not want to do good in this world. There’s a lot of inspiring food for thought here. Plus, since the critical end-of-year fundraising window is fast approaching, I’ve got a few things to help you with your planning – not only to acquire donors, but to sustain their giving over time. Plus one thing I thought was pretty cool, and that just brought a smile to my face! Spend a few minutes today to reflect on how we can come together to heal the world.
This week I’ve a potpourri of links on a variety of fundraising, nonprofit management and nonprofit marketing topics. It’s still summer, so I figure it’s a good time for a varied reading list. Some practical stuff, and a little food for thought. Why not?
List Building
Click-It: How to Build Your Email List from LinkedIn and Twitter. This post by Amy Hall on the Maximize Social Business blog offers some great practical tips for converting your social media contacts into supporters. After all, isn’t that one of the major reasons you’re trying to generate more connections and followers?
Calls to Action
Click-It: 12 Nonprofit Call-to-Action Twitter Images to Study and Learn From. This is a great collection of examples from Nonprofit Tech for Good.
The 2015 Millennial Impact Report was released last week, and lots of folks are weighing in on what this means for nonprofits. Why is everyone all agog? These folks, born between 1980 and 2000, represent huge buying (aka donating) power and influence. As the lead researcher and president of Achieve, a lead researcher in the study, notes:
“The Millennial generation is influential. From their buying power to their handle on the limitless potential of social media, Millennials can address issues and be a voice for a cause like no other generation before them.”
I was particularly interested in how they gave:
In other words, they’re just as multi-channel as the Boomers and Gen X, with a skewing toward more online activity. There’s plenty of food for thought in the articles that follow, with some great suggestions for how you might consider reworking your fundraising and marketing strategies to engage greater numbers of this emerging generation.
BTW: I’ve thrown in a couple of articles that apply to all generations. The plain and simple fact is that marketing is changing for everyone.
As a fundraising professional, relationship building with donors is an ongoing process and communication is an important part of that process. Stories are a great communications tool that you can use to tell donors about their impact in a tangible and easy to understand manner.
Storytelling seems to be everywhere these days. Non-profits are actively trying to use stories to engage their current and new donors. Is your non-profit trying to tap into the power of stories? Perhaps it’s been a positive experience for your organization. But maybe you have faced some challenges.
One of the biggest challenges with storytelling is being able to tell a great story. A story that really stands out from the pack and resonates with your donor audience. A story that, ultimately, compels action.
This week is all about your donors: keeping them; communicating with them, taking care of them and meeting them where they are. I’ve got several really useful articles for you. Not too many. It’s summer, after all! Plus, as always, some terrific upcoming learning opportunities for you.
Donor Retention
Avoid becoming irrelevant in the digital age. It’s revolutionized fundraising and nonprofit marketing.
There are so many different ways to communicate today that it can be dizzying!
Ground yourself by remembering that though technology has changed, people have not. We have the same drives… needs… yearnings as prehistoric tribes. We long for connection and meaning. We want to find where we “fit.”
Philanthropy provides that “fit opportunity” in spades (or, more aptly, in hearts). You’ve got the goods; you just need to tinker with your delivery system.
Here’s how to embrace the change.
“Content marketing” is buzz-worthy because without it, you’ve got nothing. You’re just a box with nothing inside. Kids like to play with boxes; most folks — when they grow up — are looking for something of value inside the box.
That’s your content. What you’re all about. The gift you offer the world and your donors.
This post includes 6 expert tips and best practices for any business, including a non-profit, wanting to run an integrated marketing campaign that generates more potential donors and raises more dollars.
An integrated marketing campaign is a marketing effort that uses a consistent message across traditional and non-traditional marketing channels. Ultimately all the messages should reinforce each other. Integrated marketing campaigns enable brands (yes, your nonprofit is a brand) to reach new audiences and gain mass exposure for their marketing promotions. Plus, in the information overload world in which we live, folks need to see your message multiple times before their brain will process it (Did you know that, on average, only 16% of Facebook fans will see what you share)?
There used to be a marketing ‘Rule of 7’ stating that a prospect needs to hear the advertiser’s message at least 7 times before they’ll take action to buy that product or service. Guess what? That rule was invented by the movie industry in the 1930’s! It takes a lot more impressions today (I’ve heard as many as 21).
So a multi-channel campaign is the way to go. Whether you reach folks 7 or 21 times, or somewhere in between, your messages should range over different sorts of media. Consider emails and newsletters, social media posts, website and blog, direct mail, advertising and even in person presentations. But it can’t be a big mish-mash. You’ve got to integrate everything to ensure all your media channels are working together. That’s how you’ll ultimately get noticed.
To illustrate how this might work for you, here is an example
Want to keep more donors? This week’s Click-It will show you how in a number of different ways. Create magical experiences for supporters by taking a page from Disney. Craft a persuasive case for support by stepping into your donor’s shoes and asking yourself, and your team, some critical questions. Learn more about the importance of personalization by watching a video from Starbucks. Understand the psychology of the three different types of buyers (aka donors). And think critically about the number of appeals you send, and how this may help or hurt your donor acquisition, renewal and upgrade efforts. Plus you’ll find some “News You Can Use” (tons of really useful data and reports) at the bottom of this post. To your success!
There’s a whole bucket full of interesting, practical and inspiring stuff in this week’s Click-It (and I don’t mean an ice bucket)! I’ve got stuff about what you must do to compete in a digital marketplace… articles about integrating fundraising and marketing (which I’m passionate about)… stuff about types of skills to look for in today’s communications staff and some ideas as to which marketing channels give you the biggest bank for your buck. And speaking of bang for the buck, there’s info on how to research donor prospects. Plus I’ve got a thought-provoking cartoon for you at the end. And, as always, some great learning opportunities (scroll to the bottom) you won’t want to miss!
Did you know you’re 85 percent on your way to securing a gift if you can get your prospect to agree to a visit? So says veteran major gifts fundraiser Jerold Panas in his iconic book, Asking. He also says, “If you want to milk a cow, sit by its side.”
But … how do you get the cow to cooperate? Ay, there’s the rub.
It just is. People screen phone calls. They don’t answer emails. They’re busy. And, let’s face it, they know what this is about. Once you get in the room with them, you have your chance to win them over. But how to get there?