BOO!
Halloween is creeping up on us, so I’ve got some really scary stuff for you!
Don’t get too spooked. There are also a few treats.
In fact, you’ll get eight delicious goodies — in the form of “to-do’s.”
But first… the bad news.
No bones about it, you’re frightening folks away if you’re committing any of these 8 boo-boo’s!
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I’m a huge fan of the Greater Good Science Center at U.C. Berkeley, and often apply their research to nonprofit fundraising and marketing. A recent article really struck me: How to Find Your Purpose in Life.
Over my 30 years of practice as an in-house development professional, the fundamental thing I learned is this:
You serve your donors every bit as much as they serve your organization’s mission.
Please allow that to sink in.
You have a mission. A purpose. Donors can help you get there.
Your donors are looking for purpose. You can help them find it.
It’s a symbiotic relationship. And you have a role in fostering that relationship. What is that role?
Your job is to facilitate your donor’s philanthropic journey. Their journey to discover their purpose.
So what’s this really all about?
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Imagine what it would mean to your mission if you doubled the lifetime value of all of your current supporters.
Do you know even know what percentage of donors you’re retaining?
According to Jay Love, founder of Bloomerang, less than 45% of fundraising offices know this answer!
So, you’re not alone. But you can do better.
Because knowing your retention rate enables you to move it to something better.
And I’m going to guess, if you’re like the majority of nonprofits, you probably need to improve your donor retention.
At least if you want to grow.
Or maybe even just survive.
Just a small change in retention, up or down, can mean thousands of dollars.
It’s your choice whether they’re your gain, or your loss.
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The Unfair Exchange Bernadette Jiwa, The Story of Telling.
That will be eight dollars,’ the woman, who is carefully weighing and wrapping two serves of freshly made fettuccine for us to take home, says.
As my husband is about to hand her the cash, she takes another handful of the pasta from behind the glass and adds it to our package.
She doesn’t announce that she’s giving us twenty per cent extra for free.
She doesn’t even invite us to notice the gesture at all.
It’s enough for her that she knows she has added value.We think of value as a hard metric—the anticipated fair exchange of this for that.
But value can be a surprising, generous, unfair exchange.
Something that is given because we can, not because we must.
Ah… value.
Wow, wow, WOW!
This is what all fundraising, fundamentally, is about.
Yet one side of the exchange is a hard metric: The donor’s cold, hard cash.
While the other side of the exchange is something decidedly less tangible: Freely given gratitude from you and your organization.
Or at least that’s how it should work.
What does your donor love and loyalty plan look like?
Do you even have such a plan?
If the only reason you acknowledge donations is because you feel you ‘must,’ it’s likely your donors aren’t walking away from the encounter feeling much more than matter-of-fact. The transactional receipts many organizations send out are registered by the donors as “Ho, hum. Guess I’ll go file this with my tax receipts.”
This kind of exchange is fair, sure.
But it’s not generous.
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By now you undoubtedly know you’re losing too many first-time donors.
In fact, the most recent Fundraising Effectiveness Project report shows you’re losing an average of 68% of these folks!
Today I want to talk about a subset of new donors who don’t renew. They’re called “third party donors,” and they come to you through a variety of portals:
The good folks at Classy know most nonprofits are not doing a good job cultivating donors who come to them through third parties, so they’ve prepared The Guide to Courting Third Party Donors. You can download it for free (40 pages), but let me give you the highlights – along with some of my own thoughts.
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Giving is not always its own reward. Sometimes you have to help it along. I just read an article by Scott Monty, who has a pithy take on the digital world. His newsletter is not nonprofit specific, however it is certainly relevant to anyone working in the social benefit sector. In this particular article he…
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I recently listened in on a thoughtful webinar by Scot Lumpkin for The Stelter Company. It’s all about meaningful conversations with donors who (you hope!) may contemplate a gift to your organization.
To get folks to “YES” you just need to learn the language of gift planning!
It’s not just about HOW people give, but WHY.
Scott was speaking of what is often called ‘planned giving.’ It’s a term that’s unfortunately come to mean giving vehicles, which is a decidedly non-donor-centric way of framing things.
Anyone who contemplates a major, or stretch, outright gift plans ahead.
No one just gets up one morning and decides to give away $10,000.
Or let’s just stipulate it’s relatively rare.
Rather, would-be philanthropists consider how making a particular gift at a particular point in time may match their values and helps them accomplish their objectives, personal and philanthropic.
It’s seldom a spur of the moment action.
For purposes of this gift planning article, let’s consider your audience to be prospective major (outright) and legacy (deferred) gift donors.
You want a smokin’ major gifts program, don’t you?
Of course you do. You want to light those babies on fire!
Better put, you want to ignite your donor’s passions, light the fire in their bellies, and help facilitate the type of philanthropy that will be a win/win/win – for you, your donors and the vision your organization seeks to attain.
You can’t do this without nurturing a pipeline that lights your donors’ sparks of interest, fans the flames and patiently waits until ignition happens.
Sure, you could just light little fires. Fires that self-extinguish pretty quickly. But these aren’t the fires that will sustain you and keep you warm over the long haul.
That’s why every nonprofit, no matter your size, cause or longevity, needs to build a major gifts pipeline.
Otherwise, you’ll have nothing to smoke!
Want to learn how to stop running on fumes?
What’s in a name?
“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” said Shakespeare.
But, would it?
Seth Godin thinks words matter. As do I.
Just?
The meaning of the word is the reason we used the word.
If we don’t agree about the meaning of the word, we haven’t communicated.
Instead of, “that’s just semantics,” it seems more productive to say, “I’m confident we have a semantics problem.”
Because that’s all of it.
The way we process words changes the way we act. The story we tell ourselves has an emotional foundation, but those emotions are triggered by the words we use.
Not just.
Especially.
— Seth Godin
Maybe that’s okay. Or perhaps
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Everything I learned about saying “thank you” I learned from:
According to Burk’s research from Donor-Centered Fundraising, more than 80% of thank you letters start with “Thank you for your generous gift of…” or “On behalf of the Board of Directors, thank you for your generous gift of…”