1

Sep

Don’t Do That! A Few Reminders for Fall Fundraising

fall-leaves-croppedIt’s only September 1, and still 95 degrees outside, but it’s already feeling like fall around my office.

If you’re on track with your year-end calendar, it’s probably already fall at your office too – which means that reading blogs isn’t exactly on the top of your priority list.

Here then is a quick list of some of the most important things not to do this fall. (Just think of us as your nagging professor).

  1. Don’t focus an appeal on your organization’s anniversary, or your founder’s birthday. Talk about your mission, the people you help, and the people who make your work possible.
  2. Don’t be all me, me, me (or us, us, us). Your appeals should be about what your donor has accomplished and will accomplish with her support.
  3. Don’t write a one-page letter because your boss says she doesn’t read long letters. Don’t be afraid of a four-page letter (or longer, if you need it).
  4. Don’t write for yourself … or your Board.
  5. Don’t write by committee.
  6. Don’t say “Dear Friend” if you don’t have to.
  7. Don’t have dual signers (in most cases). Do have a consistent voice.
  8. Don’t ask again before saying “Thank you” for a previous gift. Remember that a receipt is not an acknowledgment.
  9. Don’t spend a lot on full color, fancy design or special printing. Do invest in elements likely to lift response, like more personalization and first class postage for your best donors.
  10. Don’t forget who your best donors are. Your current donors are your best ones – not your prospects. The donor who just gave to you is most likely to give again. Focus your resources here.
  11. Don’t be intimidated by writing your appeals. After all, it’s the thing you love – talking about the great work you’re doing to the people who already understand and support you.
  12. Don’t send your appeals late. Late appeals affect response. Remember, 90% perfect, 100% on time.
  13. Don’t sacrifice your fundraising to your brand. Your brand is about you. Fundraising is about your donors. (Have some more time to read blogs? Check out a recent branding post that’s causing quite a stir.)
  14. Don’t worry about things that are not response-affecting. Don’t we have enough to worry about already?

Is there anything else we should be nagging about? Share your fundraising pet peeves with us below.

By Eliza Temeles, 09/01/10 • Posted in Direct Response Fundraising • Tags: , , ,



25

Aug

The Worst Reason to Ask Your Donors to Give:

Because it’s time to.

Powerful fundraising is the intersection of strategy, passion and relevance. Of course we have communication calendars. And we most certainly have fundraising goals.

But if you find yourself starting your next development/membership department meeting with “What are we gonna write about this month?” then take a step back.

Instead, ask yourself and your membership team:

What is our organization fired up about?

What gets our donors fired up?

Where is funding needed?

What do we want to have happen with this appeal? (And don’t just think about financial goals.)

Start here and your powerful message – and results – will follow naturally.

Where have your best ideas come from? Share your thoughts here or drop us a line at topics@nthfactor.com. And if you’d like to expand your own idea library, email us to request MKDM’s free Idea Book.

By Moira Kavanagh Crosby, 08/25/10 • Posted in Donor Communications • Tags: , ,



12

Aug

7 Things You Should Be Doing NOW To Meet Your Year End Fundraising Goals

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A lot of factors go into year end fundraising success: targeting, message, strategy, the economy, and current events, to name a few. These are big, important, perhaps even daunting, components of how well, or not, your year end campaigns turn out.

But another predictor of success in year end fundraising – and one of the most significant ones – is a rather practical matter, and completely within your control: when you start working on your year end campaigns.

“I’ll get to it right after Labor Day” is, frankly, not a plan; it’s a liability. That’s because not allowing sufficient time for quality analytics, creative and targeting can spell underperformance not only for your year end campaigns, but for your entire annual program too.

As a rule of thumb, allow at least three months for campaign development (although development time can be much longer for large-scale campaigns). For a year end campaign launching November 15th, here are seven things you should put on your immediate “to do” list to ensure that your carefully crafted campaign receives the attention and response your organization deserves.

1. Organize and analyze essential data. Roll up your sleeves and look at your data every which way to plan your year end strategies. For starters, what are the giving trends among your prospects, members and donors, by significant types and segments? What does this suggest in terms of year end fundraising strategies and message differentiation? Also, what does your body of testing data point to for year end strategies, and what new tests do you need to conduct? Take a closer look, too, at what factors have contributed to your year end fundraising successes in the past. How can you replicate them this year? Start mining critical data now in order to shape meaningful year end strategies.

2. Collect information and ideas from all departments. Gather key development, membership, program and communications staff to review organizational priorities and program happenings, and brew ideas for fundraising and constituency-building. Whether that means a meeting of ten people, or two, it’s important to develop campaign ideas collaboratively, across departments.

3. Determine how much you need to raise. You already have specific goals for your year end efforts in your campaign plan, but if your overall program isn’t performing according to plan, you may need to modify your year end goals. Is your program performing above or below goal? Do you need to make up a shortfall, or build on success? Get a solid handle on where you stand relative to your annual goal, and shape your strategies accordingly.

4. Define your target audiences and approaches. What audiences do you wish to reach in your year end campaigns and how should you differentiate your approaches in terms of media and messaging? You may, for instance, communicate one way with low dollar members, another way with high dollar contributors, and an entirely different way with prospective donors.

5. Book your vendors. For agencies, copywriters, designers, mail houses, telemarketing firms and other service providers specializing in fundraising, the fall is like tax season for accountants. Everyone gets incredibly busy. Some don’t even take new clients after Labor Day. Avoid coming up shorthanded in your year end campaigns and book your key vendors early.

6. Develop a contingency plan. If, like most organizations, your year end fundraising revenue makes up a significant portion of your annual goal, you should have a backup plan of action in the event your year end campaigns don’t perform according to plan. This is another reason to start early on your campaigns. For instance, if you don’t launch your year end campaign until the second week in December because you fell behind schedule, then if your campaign is anything less than you expected, you have no time to address it before the end of the year.

7. Read up and reflect. Take time to think about what’s going on in the world – from serious news to pop culture – and think about what may be on your donors’ minds. Unemployment is 9.6%. The Dow fell below 10,000 again this summer. BP spewed oil into the Gulf for 87 days. And a flight attendant stormed off the job earlier this week and Americans mentally high fived him. Think about the significant threads of culture and current events shaping your donors’ perspectives, and how you might shape your year end campaigns accordingly.

So get started today and you’ll be in great shape for your year end campaigns. One last Bonus Tip: to really drive home the three-month lead time rule of thumb for your campaigns, keep a “Donor Time” Calendar set three months ahead within daily view of your workspace. Your Donor Time Calendar will serve as a daily reminder of what campaigns you should be developing today, to reach your donors three months from now.

How are you planning for your year end fundraising success today? We want to know! Post your tips and ideas here.

By Moira Kavanagh Crosby, 08/12/10 • Posted in Development Planning • Tags:



4

Aug

Make New Friends But Keep the Old

If you’ve ever been a Girl Scout, you probably have this campfire song permanently imprinted on your brain. I think about this song a lot as we encounter and test new membership development strategies with what seems to be increasing speed and frequency. As Tony Elischer pointed out at last week’s Bridge Conference, we can easily get so caught up in seeking the next big thing in fundraising that we take for granted – or even dismiss – the tried and true techniques that our programs were built on.

Blackbaud’s newly released Index of Online Giving neatly affirms the old Girl Scout adage. In its survey of over 1,400 nonprofits of all sizes, it showed online giving to be the fastest growing segment of charitable giving. Small and mid-sized organizations in particular, are finding online giving to be an attractively cost effective channel, and a preferred method of giving among younger donors, while organizations focused on major gift fundraising are enhancing online fundraising efforts in support of their annual funds.

Blackbaud Index for Online Giving

At the same time, Blackbaud reported that online gifts to the organizations in the study accounted for just 5.7% of overall fundraising revenue. In fact, Target Analytics‘ last report on national fundraising performance released last year showed that the overwhelming majority of charitable contributions are still made via direct mail: 77% as of Fall 2008.

As we continually refine and update our programs to keep pace with our donor’s preferences, we would all be well served to keep in mind our old direct response friends that, while perhaps no longer shiny, are as golden as ever. They’re also more than willing to get to know, and work with, our new friends.

By Moira Kavanagh Crosby, 08/04/10 • Posted in Direct Response Fundraising • Tags: , , , ,



29

Jul

5 Bridge Conference Takeaways

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The Bridge Conference is over, but as usual we left energized by the sessions and the company of over a thousand colleagues dedicated to advancing the missions of great nonprofits through better communications and fundraising. There was no shortage of good ideas and observations at #2010bridge, but these five stood out:

1. The hard ask is so 2006.
How often do you hear “stop begging for money” in a fundraising conference? It was a remarkably common thread at this year’s Bridge. Of course we know we need to ask. But this year’s Bridge brought a heightened focus on the idea that inspiring donors to give isn’t merely a matter of asking; it’s a matter of being an organization that inspires. It’s also about building relationships. In our session on donor-centric communications, Evan Parker of The Nature Conservancy observed that his organization tends to achieve better constituent engagement – and giving – in their social media communications when they don’t ask, so much as they simply talk about the issues and the work.

2. Reinstatement is the new acquisition.
This gem came from Becky Odum of Barton Cotton. Excellent point.

3. The next big thing in fundraising: QR codes.
Or at least there’s a lot of excitement to this effect, and not just at Bridge. QR (”quick response”) codes are those funky looking barcodes that you can scan with your portable device. The codes, when scanned with your portable device, direct you to a mobile site. Think about the possibilities. Just yesterday, Mashable posted a story on how an activist group is using QR codes for a campaign to clean up the Gulf. To see a QR code in action, scan the code above and let me know what you think of the newly launched site ;).

 4. Internal list building is more mainstream; we’re still tweaking conversion.
Online internal list building as a means of augmenting traditional prospecting programs is becoming more mainstream. Most organizations at the conference, it seemed, now have formal programs of online name acquisition. But many are still ironing out effective conversion strategies and processes.

5. If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. As Tony Elischer pointed out, most of us come to conferences looking for the new. New strategies, new media, new ways to improve our programs. But much of what we do works extremely well. We’d be well served to resist the brute “out with the old and in with the new” mentality and think instead about finding the small 5% or 10% of our program strategies that actually could benefit from the new.

What were your favorite Bridge Conference takeaways this year?

By Moira Kavanagh Crosby, 07/29/10 • Posted in Membership Development • Tags: , , ,



15

Jul

5 Ways to Screw Up Your Next Direct Mail Campaign

 

banana-peel

The road to direct response fundraising failure is paved with good intentions. Here are five ways you can really harm your direct mail results – so be sure to steer clear of these easily avoidable pitfalls as you start work on your fall appeals:

1. Mail early. If you want to stand out from the crowd, get ahead of them, right? Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way in year end fundraising. Successful direct response fundraising is about the right message, at the right time, to the right people. Sending a message at a time when no one is ready for it all but guarantees a weak response. The fact that organizations send year end appeals in the same timeframe doesn’t mean yours won’t get noticed; it means it’s a timeframe that works.

2. Mail late. Q4 is the single most important time of the year for fundraising. Why jeopardize critical funding for your organization’s programs with poor planning? Get started on your year end appeal in the first week of August.

3. Do something “different.” There’s good different and bad different in direct mail fundraising. Good different, for instance, might be recognizing that your control format isn’t performing as well as it used to and testing a proven direct response technique to help boost results such as hand addressing, or a follow-up reminder notice. Bad different, on the other hand, would be testing a completely unproven direct response idea suggested by someone whose direct response experience consists solely of receiving, and occasionally responding to, direct mail.

4. Make your campaign all about you. “The problem is our donors just don’t understand us. If we could make them understand us, I mean really get us, they’d give more.” Sound familiar? It’s the perennial lament of Development committees – and it’s totally backwards. If you want your campaigns to succeed, stop obsessing about getting your donors to understand you and start obsessing about understanding your donors. Forget about writing the perfect explanation of what your organization does and instead focus on making the perfect connection with your donors.

5. Don’t ask for money. It seems obvious, but it’s surprisingly easy to get so caught up in making the case for support that you forget to actually ask for money in your direct mail appeal. Make sure you have a clear, direct ask within the first few paragraphs of your letter and repeat it at least three more times throughout, and definitely in the p.s.

Do you have any do’s and don’ts to share? Cautionary tales? Stunning successes? Questions about improving your direct mail results? By all means, share them here, or drop us a line at topics@nthfactor.com.

By Moira Kavanagh Crosby, 07/15/10 • Posted in Direct Response Fundraising • Tags: , ,



9

Jul

The Boss of You

Quick: who do you work for?

Most people, when asked this question, will automatically tell you the name of their employer: “I work for Acme Incorporated, where I’m the VP of Sales and Marketing” (or something like that).

But “who signs your paycheck?” wasn’t really the question. And you, of course, are not most people: your employer is a nonprofit.

This means you don’t work for the Chair of your Board. You don’t work for the person who supervises you. You don’t even work for the nonprofit that employs you.

You work for your organization’s donors.

Your donors believe in something, and they have hired YOU – and everyone else in your organization, from the Executive Director to the administrative assistant – to achieve their vision.

So the next time you sit down to write a membership renewal letter, or a cultivation newsletter, or a fundraising email, remember this:

You are writing to your boss.

For insights and ideas on communicating with your real boss, join me on July 27th in Washington, D.C. at the AFP / DMAW Bridge Conference, where Robin Kornhaber and Jeff Costantino from Legacy, Evan Parker from The Nature Conservancy, and I will be sharing helpful case studies and tips in our session Six Steps for Building Donor-Centric Direct Response and Communications Strategies. Hope to see you there!

By Moira Kavanagh Crosby, 07/09/10 • Posted in Donor Communications • Tags: , ,



21

Jun

Looking for Membership and Advocacy Ideas?

MKDM’s annual Idea Book is here!

Highlighting some of our most effective membership and advocacy campaigns for national and regional nonprofits, the book is part portfolio, part how-to guide, part idea-generator – and it’s yours for free.

notebook2010blog1

To order your free copy, email your name, organization/company and mailing address to ideabook@mkdmc.com.

By Moira Kavanagh Crosby, 06/21/10 • Posted in Direct Response Fundraising • Tags: , , , , , ,



15

Jun

10 Ideas in 20 Minutes from Fundraising Day

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Last week, I spoke at Fundraising Day in New York with Dennis Lonergan and Jeff Brooks in the session 30 Ideas in 60 Minutes. If you weren’t able to catch our session, you can read the 10 tips I shared right here in Fundraising Success.

One excellent question we received during our session was how smaller organizations could go about testing the ideas we presented. Answer: many can’t conduct statistically valid tests (see Eliza’s earlier post about testing and statistical validity). Fortunately, you don’t need a large budget or donor file to implement a smart direct response program. 

Instead, let larger organizations “pay” for your testing by mirroring best practices demonstrated in their programs. Be sure to share your gratitude – and keep the ideas coming – by giving regularly to their programs.

By Moira Kavanagh Crosby, 06/15/10 • Posted in Direct Response Fundraising • Tags: , ,



8

Jun

Want to lift your direct mail results? Unbrand.

When you really want to get noticed in the mail, sometimes – just sometimes – the best way to do this is to toss aside the things you usually do to get noticed.

Ditch your logo. Forget your official fonts. Chuck your PMS colors. Unbrand.

unbrand

Instead, think totally unembellished, pure and simple words on paper. Once a year, have a meaningful conversation with your donors undistracted by the usual marketing devices. You’ll likely find that occasionally un-marketing can be very good marketing indeed.

Join me this Friday June 11 at Fundraising Day in New York where Dennis Lonergan, Jeff Brooks and I will be sharing 29 more direct response fundraising ideas that can make a big impact in your program.

By Moira Kavanagh Crosby, 06/08/10 • Posted in Direct Response Fundraising • Tags: , ,



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