"Stuffed mailbox" is a sign of a disempowered donor

Here's a bone-chilling story from the San Luis Obispo Tribune about a guy who started to keep all the direct mail fundraising appeals he gets: A stuffed mailbox:

Marty London of Grover Beach is enthusiastic about supporting charities but annoyed by the influx of junk mail that results .... he's peeved that some organizations spend a large portion of their income on overhead and junk mail instead of services. And, he says, it's hard to tell which charities are efficient and which ones aren't .... "There's got to be a better way."

The article says Mr. London got about 300 pieces of mail from charities this year and saved them in a bag. (That's tame: A hard-core direct-mail donor could easily get twice that much.)

What's wrong with this picture?

Mr. London, like so many donors, does not feel connected with the charities that are writing to him. He wonders why they're talking to him. He struggles to find a reason, but so much of the mail he gets is simplistic, cheap, and often premium-driven, he can't find a reason. So he feels like he's drowning in a sea of irrelevant mail.

I bet, though, that there's more to this story than is reported.

I don't know this, of course, but Mr. London very likely has another charity (perhaps a few) that write to him regularly -- but are never tossed into his "junk mail" bag. Chances are, it's a local organization, his place of worship, his kids' school, maybe his alumni association. They communicate with him regularly, but in his mind their materials simply aren't in the same category as those 300 pieces of irrelevant junk mail. That's because he knows why they write to him, he has a meaningful relationship with them -- he's an empowered partner, not a meaningless, mass-audience prospect.

Those nonprofits who are being tossed into the bag have simply not made the effort to be relevant. They see Mr. London and millions of others like him as mindless ATMs. If you send out enough mail, you'll get responses. Not relationships with heart-connections and passionate belief, but enough cash to keep the program going.

Those nonprofits that wise up and start treating Mr. London like a human being may be able to escape his junk mail bag and become part of his life. The rest -- well, the bag is where they belong.

Comments

[Jeff Brooks]

Relationship comes from relevance. What's relevant varies depending on who you are and who your donors are. But I can tell you some irrelevant things nonprofits often do with donors:

• They use organization-speak, not bothering to frame things in the donors' way of seeing.
  
• They fail to ask -- which is what donors want them to do.
  
• They only ask -- never trying to build a deeper relationship.
  
• They don't report back to donors what their giving is accomplishing.
  
• They use irrelevant premiums (like address labels) to motivate "obligation" gifts, rather than make the case for the cause.
  

There's more, of course. But that's a start. Check out the Donor Power Manifesto for some more general discussion of how to approach donors.

And good luck. When you nail this relationship thing, your organization will take off!

[Seth]

Great post. How does one achieve that magical "relationship" status? It's a question I struggle with at work. Do you think that electronic publications or more or less annoying than mailbox stuffers?