Donor Power Blog

3 more things nonprofits can learn from political direct mail

Posted by guest blogger Andrew Rogers

(Continuing from yesterday's post.)

4. Governing is campaigning

President Clinton received much criticism from certain quarters for his alleged reliance on polls and focus groups -- even famously using them to choose his family vacation spot. But at least since the days of FDR's fireside chats, savvy politicians have understood that communicating with voters, and particularly with your base of dedicated supporters, can't wait for election years: it is an essential part of democratic governance.

How does that translate to nonprofits? By making sure donor communication is a fully-integrated part of how you plan and carry out your mission, not an unpleasant burden to face when it's time for the Annual Fund Drive. If our organizations are tools that donors use to build the world they want to live in, donor-powered fundraising is their seat in your boardroom.

5. Get local

Segmenting your file based on donor behavior is a key to harnessing donor power. But political campaigns and organizations do a lot of communications based on geography, keyed to a donor's state, congressional or legislative district, down to the precinct or even the block level.

If yours is a community-based organization, do your donors know what's happening at the shelter or food bank around the corner? If you're a larger organization, do you have local events you can report on, or major donors you can profile in a regional "special edition" of your newsletter? How can you make sure you're part of your donors' neighborhood?

6. Donors have their own motivations

Conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly has been quoted, perhaps apocryphally, as saying "I'm very open-minded. I'll let people oppose the E.R.A. for any reason they want to." Political parties, candidates, and organizations recognize that people support them for reasons as diverse as the people themselves. There's no "one best reason" to be a Democrat.

Are you concerned that your donors support you for "the right reason" -- which could be that they have a full and complete understanding of how you do the work you do? As Jeff has written many times, you shouldn't try to "educate" your donors into giving. Accept the compliment that they are willing to invest their resources in you because you share their values and are working to achieve their dreams.

There's no more solid basis for a partnership than that.

Andrew Rogers is an associate creative director and writer at Merkle.

Technorati Tag: political fundraising

Coming Thursday: Webinar on Fundraising with Boomers

On Thursday (May 1) I'll be speaking at a desk near you. It's a "webinar" called What Do Baby Boomer Donors Want from Your Nonprofit?

It's at 3 p.m. Eastern Time (noon Pacific), and it only costs $35. Hey, you're already miles ahead of what you might spend for -- and get from -- a conference!

I hope to see you there. Click here for more information or to register.

If you aren't interested in reaching Boomers, you aren't interested in staying in the fundraising business beyond the next couple of years.

3 things nonprofits can learn from political direct mail

Posted by guest blogger Andrew Rogers

Ever since Richard Viguerie began hand-compiling his list of high-dollar donors in the 1960s, political campaigns and organizations have been pioneers in the use of direct marketing for fundraising and mobilization. If you're not already sick of politics this year, here are my suggestions for a few things we can learn from political direct mail.

1. Donors are activists too

Not everyone wants to be a lobbyist or a candidate -- and having been both, I don't blame them. But most everyone has a set of values they believe in and goals they're working to achieve. The single most important lesson I took from my apprenticeship in political mail is that writing checks to support a cause is a valid -- and valuable -- form of activism.

In my experience, too many nonprofits see donors as second best: "Maybe you can't do the great things our volunteers or trained staff are doing, but at least you can write a check." This is not only wrong, it's insulting. They also serve who give the funds that make it all possible.

It follows from this that...

2. The campaign is a tool

Except for the handful (blessedly small) of professional campaign managers, a political campaign isn't an end in itself. It's a tool for achieving a goal: the election of a candidate, the adoption or defeat of a ballot measure. The mechanism of how that's done is essential for the pros, but almost irrelevant to the cause-minded donor or voter.

When you communicate with your donors, are you taking about your organization ... or about their dreams for a better world?

3. Time is of the essence

Political work is incredibly calendar-driven: filing deadlines, scheduled votes, legislative recesses and adjournments, election days. Political mailers can't afford to give in to the "too much fundraising" fallacy -- miss this opportunity now and we won't get another chance for one, two, four, or even six more years!

On the plus side, this means there are lots of natural peaks in the political cycle when it makes sense to update supporters on what the organization or campaign is doing in their behalf. Does your mail schedule paint a real picture of the work you're doing and the world you live in? Or is it based on your fears that your donors are sick of you?

Tomorrow, three more things we can learn from political direct mail.

Andrew Rogers is an associate creative director and writer at Merkle.

Technorati Tag: political fundraising

Sometimes high-concept gets the message across

A frequent topic on this blog is the ham-handed attempts of nonprofits to push across concepts, resulting in stupid nonprofit ads.

Clever, conceptual messages are usually a dramatic waste of whatever ink or electrons it takes to convey them. That's because they usually serve to demonstrate the intellectual prowess of their creators, not the core of their message. (And sometimes -- let's be frank -- they merely exhibit the stupidity of their creators.)

But here's one from the World Wildlife Fund that might actually work:

It's pretty conceptual and rather abstract, but there's a literalness to it that makes it work. I doubt it gets many people to become WWF donors, but I bet it cuts down on paper-towel use.

But frankly, I still have to say Don't try this at home, kids!

Thanks to Beyond Madison Avenue for the tip.

Technorati Tag: advertising

Is charitable giving a luxury in times of recession?

More recession-and-giving news: Partly good news this time.

A recent article in The New York Sun, Recession's Gift says the impact of recession on giving is likely to be small. Here's why:

According to the 2000 Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey of 30,000 American families (see here), among religious Americans (defined as those who attend a house of worship at least weekly), a 10% decrease in income leads to almost exactly a 10% decrease in giving.

But the study found that among non-religious Americans, a 10% income decrease in income leads to a 14% decrease in charitable giving.

In other words, charitable giving is not treated as a luxury by religious donors, while it is treated somewhat as one among the non-religious. But don't worry too much. As the article says:

This is good news not just for houses of worship, but for nonreligious charities as well, because religious people are America's big givers. In 2000, by 25 percentage points, the religious people were more likely to give than secularists, the 27% of Americans who attend less than a few times per year, or have no religion. Religious people gave nearly four times more dollars per year, on average, than secularists.

These findings are very good news for religious charities. And pretty decent news for everyone else.

(Disclosure: the author of the article is my brother.)

Technorati Tags: recession, religion

The importance of being thankful

Being thankful is good for you. Your Grandmother isn't the only person who believes that. Brain Based Biz, for one, also thinks so: The Power of Thanks ...

Thanks brings well-being to your day... since it brings more serotonin, a brain hormone of well-being. By saying thanks, you can not only launch a better day, but boost your brainpower, too.

I know they're talking about the salubrious effects being thankful has on individuals, but I can't help think it might work for organizations too. If you think a lot about your gratitude for donors, your thinking about who they are and what they mean to you could transform over time.

That could lead to cool new ways of thanking them. It might even make you a better fundraiser in the first place.

Give it a try.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, gratitude

The misdirected power of wordplay

I like jokes, wordplay, and irony. There's a better-than-average chance that you enjoy those things too.

What about normal people -- those who don't make a living with words and ideas?

That's pretty much the question over at Water Words That Work: Sarcasm? Does it Work? Does a clever, sarcastic bumper sticker like this one work?

AT LEAST THE WAR
ON THE ENVIRONMENT
IS GOING WELL

I think that's pretty funny.

But that hardly matters at all. Does the message get the desired response?

Social research generally finds that everyday citizens are most responsive to environmental words and pictures that are wholesome, sentimental, and generally rated G. But I have never come across any rigorous research that specifically explores how nonexperts respond to messages that are sarcastic, snarky, and snide.

A lot of nonprofit messaging is designed to please the messenger. In the effort to write copy that feel right, we so often forget an important truth:

You aren't going to motivate people to action by requiring them to solve a word-puzzle to understand your message. What's pleasing wordplay to word-oriented people is more like an unwanted equation to everyone else.

And you aren't going to change anyone's mind by being sarcastic or by pointing out that they or their leaders are stupid.

If you want to influence attitudes and behavior, be straightforward and literal.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, sarcasm

Fight back against the bad fundraising conferences

There's one main difference between the nightmarish climactic scene of a zombie movie and some of the conferences we fundraisers attend: The conferences use Powerpoint.

I think the Powerpoint makes the nonprofit conference the worse experience of the two.

"A Fundraiser" (of Don't Tell The Donor) has noticed this too: An Honest Critique Of The Fundraising Conference Circuit ...

To put it bluntly, conferences suffer when organizers allow uninspired speakers to present stale content to disengaged attendees.

A Fundraiser would like to see a more rigorous system speaker selection. I agree. And I'd like to see it go even further, with reforms like these:

De-politicize speaker selection. Make authority and quality the reasons they're chosen. Not connections, and not filling out predetermined quotas of different types of speakers.

Zero tolerance for sales pitches. Every conference I've been involved in tells its speaker they may not make their presentations sales pitches. But it happens anyway. I'd station a conference organizer in each presentation, and if the material veers away from being useful and into pitch territory, it is immediately called to a halt. Yeah, that would be real embarrassing. But I bet it wouldn't happen more than once.

Ban Powerpoint. Yeah, that would be tough. But remove the Powerpoint crutch, and speakers might have to pay attention to communicating. At least, Powerpoint use should be policed and kept from becoming the mind-killing parade of bullet points it usually is. How about Guy Kawasaki's 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint? (No more than ten slides, lasting no more than twenty minutes, and containing no font smaller than thirty point.)

I know those things seem unlikely to happen. But we can take solid steps to make the conferences we attend worth our while. These like these:

• Don't let them get away with bad conferences. If you go to a conference and it's lousy, don't go again. Tell everyone you know not to go. And let the conference organizers know.
  
• Fill out those evaluation forms. I know it's a pain, but you really can help raise the standards by calling for high standards. If you sit through an uninspired, bullet-pointed snoozefest, don't be polite. Call it what it is; pour your outrage for the time they stole from you onto the form. (And if someone does a good job, let them and the conference organizers know you appreciate it.)
  

Technorati Tags: conferences, powerpoint

How to hang out with older folks without annoying them

Want to develop an intuitive understanding of donors? Talk to older people.

Next best thing, read what they write at The Elder StoryTelling Place, a blog where people age 50 and up tell their stories. Nothing earth-shaking, just the kind of stories our parents and grandparents tell.

It's a shortcut to insight. As the Ageless Marketing blog notes:

While creative directors pore over research results and reduce their gleanings to one-page briefs that will guide creatives, the stories told by people who want to share their perspectives on life provide more certain guidance.

You aren't going to walk away with buckets of data every time you visit, but you will read genuine experiences and attitudes. You'll get a feel for how older people think, how they express themselves, and what matters to them. And it's entertaining. Highly recommended.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, stories, eldedrblogs

Science Confirms what Marketers Already Know

Posted by guest blogger Andrew Rogers

People love themselves.

Well, that's not exactly the way the scientists put it. A recent fascinating article in the New York Times, Names That Match Forge a Bond on the Internet, on the phenomenon of "Googlegängers" -- people you meet online because they share the same name you do -- puts it this way:

[H]uman beings are unconsciously drawn to people and things that remind us of ourselves.

A psychological theory called the name-letter effect maintains that people like the letters in their own names (particularly their initials) better than other letters of the alphabet. ...

"It's what we call implicit egotism," Dr. Pelham, who is now a writer and researcher for the Gallup Organization, said. "We've shown time and time again that people are attracted to people, places and things that resemble their names, without a doubt."

Savvy marketers have known for a long time that liberal use of the donor's own name is one of the magic phrases that can boost results. But when it reflects your commitment to your donor and her dreams and desires -- in other words, when you're speaking honestly and personally, not simply employing a tactic -- it can build a powerful bond.

When your donors look at you, do they see themselves?

Andrew Rogers is an associate creative director and writer at Merkle. He is not a sculptor, a lawyer, or the guitar tabs guy, although he receives their email sometimes.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, googlegangers

Nonprofit ethics sliding?

This is discouraging. A National Nonprofit Ethics Survey really makes the nonprofit sector look bad. (As reported in the Chronicle of Philanthropy: Ethical Standards Erode at Nonprofit Groups, Study Finds). Among the findings:

• 55% of nonprofit employees observed one or more acts of misconduct in the previous year.
  
• 24% of nonprofit employees observed their co-workers putting their own interests above those of the organization.
  
• 21% observed managers or executives lying to employees.
  
• 19% reported that they had seen abusive behavior or that they had seen co-workers misreporting the number of hours they had worked.
  
• 19% of nonprofit employees believe that their organizations have become less ethical in the past five years.
  

To the extent that the survey reflects reality, this trend hurts the entire nonprofit sector -- far more than the negative impact of the unethical behaviors themselves. Trust is hard to come by in a context where many donors fear their charitable dollars are being squandered.

But the organizations that will be hurt the worst will be those that fail ethically: Donors will find you out. They'll be slow to forgive and quick to advise others to feel the same way. And they'll haunt you for years, maybe decades, even after you get your act together.

The best thing you can do: Have a zero-tolerance policy toward ethics violations. Don't let anything slide.

The 2007 National Nonprofit Ethics Survey is available for download (PDF).

Technorati Tags: ethics, npethics

Poor service: the global warming of fundraising

The connection between carbon emissions and climate change aren't obvious. One day you're happily spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The next, polar bears are dying, and it takes rigorous science to show that there's a connection.

Donor service is the "global warming" of fundraising. You could be getting it wrong in a big way and have no sense at all that there's a problem. Then one day your donorfile starts to crash, and there's no good explanation.

It seems obvious that customers who have good experiences with a company are more likely to return to that company. Now there's a study from Forrester Research that shows it to be true. (Reported at the Customer Experience Matters blog, The Holy Grail: A Link Between Customer Experience And Loyalty.)

The study didn't look at the service and loyalty at nonprofits, but it's reasonable to assume that there's a similar link between the service donors experience and their retention.

Sadly, service is often the invisible factor at many nonprofits. There are many that have dynamite, world-changing programs, top-notch marketing, effective fundraising -- and sucky, screwed up service. They're virtually chasing donors away, and they don't even know it.

What's bad service from a nonprofit? It's messy data (misspelled names, duplicate records, errors in posting donations). It's not following donor instructions, or taking weeks to get it right. It's not answering the phone. Or having a website that's to hard to use.

It's not easy to focus on an invisible problem. Your organization might even have its own "Rush Limbaughs" who strenuously argue that there's nothing to worry about and no need to change.

But if you want to make a difference, pay attention to service.

You can download the Forrester study here, though it's going to cost you.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, service

How faith-based nonprofits should talk in public

I once worked with an evangelical social-service organization that found out through some research that a large minority of its donors were Jewish. They went into freak-out mode, terrified they'd offend their Jewish donors if they were "too evangelical" (i.e., if they mentioned Jesus).

Big mistake. Response dropped. No doubt because the core evangelical donors no longer felt at home. And the Jewish donors? Surely they knew up front what kind of organization they were supporting; the change in communication was meaningless at best, and possibly confusing.

If you're a faith-based organization, you've probably wrestled with this issue. How "religious" should you be? If you wear your faith on your sleeve, are you scaring away supporters? That's the discussion at NP Advisors: Faith-based online fundraisers share concerns and ideas.

The general consensus was that it's important to remain true to the faith, but not to the exclusion of those outside the faith who share in the mission. The Quaker organization Friends Committee for National Legislation, for example, lobbies for peace and says that only 35% of their supporters are Quakers. "It seems the concept of peace has a broader following," said its representative.

Here are some principles I've learned around this topic:

• Don't try to hide who you are. It's dishonest to begin with, and it's ineffective anyway. Anti-faith zealots who would be turned away by the very mention of your spiritual values aren't in your audience to begin with. (In fact, for the most part they aren't donors to anything at all. Don't worry about them.)
  
• On the other hand, don't wedge yourself into your narrowest cultural and theology niche. Unless you're actually within your faith community, use language that's understandable to everyone.
  
• Don't be afraid of your donors. They aren't going to punish you for having faith. They probably have it too.
  

Thanks to happydonors for the tip.

Technorati Tag: religion

The power small ideas

When you're anxious to come up with big ideas, sometimes you miss the power of little ideas. The Damn, I Wish I'd Thought of That! points out, "It only takes one little thing to generate massive word of mouth." See One little thing:

Don't over-think your word of mouth. Don't let your marketing committee complicate it.... Find one, great, simple idea why people should talk about you. Then tell everyone.

One little thing, like the bud vase in the new VW Beetle.

What one surprising, amazing, cool detail could inspire donors to talk about you?

Technorati Tags: fundraising, ideas

Aging boomers find faith

So Boomers are getting religion? That's what some are saying, including this article at inRich.com: Boomers Search for the Wisdom in Faith...

Boomers beyond age 50 typically have become more motivated by inner feelings and beliefs, and are not driven so much by what their friends, peers, co-workers, or even family feel or believe. Boomers at midlife are beginning to wonder about their purpose, and what legacy they will leave. And it is the culmination of these feelings that has many midlife boomers becoming more religious and spiritual.

We should probably note that this isn't just a Boomer Thing. It's a fact of life. Most people, of whatever generation, experience an enlargement of their perspective and increased interest in spiritual things as they reach middle age. (Boomers think they invented everything!)

This is good news for fundraisers, because faith-driven people make better donors. In fact, they're most of the donors to most causes.

And a lot of people, more than ever before, are at that stage of life these days.

Remember, Boomers tend to put a unique Boomer twist on everything they do, so their spiritual awakening is likely to be just a little different from previous ones. This is something we need to pay close attention to in the coming years.

Thanks to The Boomer Blog for the tip.

Technorati Tags: boomers, religion, fundraising

What are wealthy donors doing online?

A much-remarked study called "The Wired Wealthy," (from Sea Change Strategies and Convio; reported in the Chronicle of Philanthropy at Wealthy People Increasingly Give Online, Study Finds) shows a high level of internet usage by high-end donors:

• About 80% said they had made a charitable gift online
  
• 51% said they prefer to use the Internet for their donations.
  
• 46% said that they expect to make a greater percentage of their charitable gifts online within the next five years.
  
• 56% said that charities send too many e-mail messages
  
• 81% of donors dislike messages that take an urgent tone in seeking a repeat donation.
  

Before you rush out and change everything, remember: It's just a survey. When you ask people what they think, you find out what they think, not necessarily what they do. Actually, you really only find out what they say they think. If you really want to know something you can act on, watch actual donor behavior. When you see changes in behavior, that's the time to change everything.

Most organizations that pay attention to what their donors do will probably find these survey results to be a bit hysterical and slightly out of step with reality.

That said, this survey should get your attention. It signals a change in response medium that's likely to become significant quickly. Not only wealthy donors, but donors across the spectrum are turning more an more online to give and otherwise interact with charities. Donation revenue is migrating from the mail to the web, and that means we need to become effective at communicating online.

The study is available for download from Convio here (registration required).

Technorati Tags: fundraising, nptech

Six Bad Habits of Ineffective Fundraisers

Here's my column in this month's FundRaising Success magazine, Six Bad Habits of Ineffective Fundraisers.

Teaser: If you're burdened with an attitude that asking for money somehow gets in the way of a real relationship with donors, you're missing an important fact: For nearly all donors, giving is the medium through which they relate to you and your cause. Their gifts are the way they translate their values into action.

Newsletter to e-newsletter: how to get there from here

Your donors are going online. Are you?

It would be easy if all it took was to digitize everything you do in the mail and dump it online. Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. You have to make your material fit the medium.

The Nonprofit Communications blog has some help when it comes to newsletter at Moving your print newsletter to email - 7 tips. The tips:

1. Sending a PDF of your print newsletter out as an attachment to an email list is NOT an email newsletter.
   
2. Not everything you included in your print newsletter will be right for your email newsletter.
   
3. Consider a more personal tone.
   
4. Decide on full text, teasers, or a combo.
   
5. Prepare to spend lots of time on ... subject lines, headlines, and subheads
   
6. Use an email newsletter service.
   
7. Include a sign-up box to your website.
   

More at the original post.

Things that work offline usually work online. But only when they fit the online context.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, enewsletters,

Choose your words carefully -- but not too carefully

Way back toward the beginning of my career in fundraising, I worked with a certain health charity. The organization's leadership became very focused on referring to the disease they were fighting by its proper name: Hansen's Disease.

You might be wondering about the civil-sounding Hansen's Disease. What kind of mild Scandinavian affliction might it be?

It's Leprosy.

Leprosy is an ugly word, with an ancient and ugly history. Leper hardly even means someone who has contracted leprosy any more -- the secondary meaning of anyone who should be avoided or cast out has pretty much taken over the word. That's why the professionals would rather name the disease after the Norwegian doctor who discovered its cause. I can understand being reluctant to throw around such an ugly term as leprosy.

But let's be realistic. When hardly anyone knows what Hansen's Disease is -- and nearly everyone at least has an impression of what leprosy is -- which name communicates more clearly? Which one is more likely to stir donors to action?

Being sensitive about ugly old words with painful histories is certainly virtuous.

But communicating clearly so people will be motivated to action and actually join the fight against the disease? That's a lot more virtuous.

A lot of nonprofits struggle with this issue, seeking colorless, uncontroversial, low-impact ways of describing the issues they're involved with. It's a huge mistake. It's so much better to be bold and clear -- even if you have to apologize later for the words you used. Better that than apologize for ineffective fundraising that didn't align enough people with the cause to make a difference.

Technorati Tags: copywriting, leprosy

Too many nonprofits? Let 85,000 flowers bloom!

The Charity Governance blog points out that in fiscal year 2007, the IRS received 85,771 applications for 501(c)(3) status: Do we need 85,000 new charities? Somebody thinks so.

(Only 68,000 of those made it through the process to become IRS-recognized nonprofit organizations. Glad the gatekeepers are so rigorous!)

It's not hard to throw up your hands and cry Enough already! We have too many nonprofits!

The down-side of there being so many nonprofits is easy to understand. It means:

• Inefficiency.
  
• Duplication of effort.
  
• Lower level of professionalism.
  
• Marketplace confusion.
  

On the other hand some of these new nonprofits are tiny, serving extremely narrow or localized niche issues that no one else is dealing with.

Others are smart, fast innovation factories that are unfettered by bureaucracy and limited thinking. These are the organization that will quickly be competing for donor dollars with established nonprofits -- the organizations that will force us all to be smarter.

So I say to those tends of thousands of new nonprofits: Welcome to the profession. I hope you're worth it!

Technorati Tags: 501(c)(3), IRS

Fundraising scares off potential nonprofit leaders

This explains a lot: a new report called "Ready to Lead? Next Generation Leaders Speak Out" (see report on the AFP website at Biggest Pressure for Future Nonprofit Leaders: Fundraising found that 68% of those surveyed are not interested in taking the top leadership position at a nonprofit. But here's the shocking part:

When asked why they did not aspire for the position of president or executive director, the most popular reason (41%) cited by respondents was concerns about or dislike for fundraising. This finding complements data from several recent surveys which shows that fundraising is the least liked responsibility among current executive directors and boards of directors.

On one hand, this is good news: Potential leaders who don't get it about fundraising are a little less likely to take top leadership position, where they can do real damage to fundraising (see How nonprofit CEOs kill fundraising).

But it's troubling, too. Why is it so common in the nonprofit culture to be so wrong about fundraising?

How is it that fundraising is a bothersome distraction from the "real" work of so many nonprofits?

If these leaders paid attention, they'd see fundraising in a different way. They'd realize that what it does for donors, for causes and for society are astounding. They might come to understand that fundraising is so great, so important, that it matters as much as their primary mission.

And then these emerging leaders would be flocking toward leadership positions, so they could get in on the power and excitement of fundraising...

Serving donors. Raising a ton more money. And changing the world in more ways than they probably even know about.

Until then, we'll have to be satisfied that many of the clueless ones are at least staying out of the way.

The survey is available at the Meyer Foundation for download (PDF).

Technorati Tags: leadership, npleadership