Fundraising Copywriter George Crankovic

Tag: donors

  • When not to thank your donors

    How to begin a fundraising appeal – that’s a tough one. You win or lose donors in those first few seconds. So the opening has to be spot on, and that’s not easy.

    Which is probably why so many appeals default to opening with a thank you to the donor for their support. It seems like a solid approach. Donors like to be thanked, right? But as this post from the Better Fundraising Company points out, it’s not a solid approach at all.

    The reason it’s not a good approach, they say, is that most donors will read the first line thanking them for their support and go no further, assuming that nothing is being asked of them. No doubt that’s true.

    And yet … the drive to open an appeal by thanking donors is incredibly strong. Many nonprofits can’t resist. Some, in fact, have it written into their list of fundamentals that every appeal shall begin with a thank you to the donor. Yes, that actually happens.

    Luckily, most nonprofits probably aren’t this extreme. Yet this opening-with-a-donor-thank-you thing persists.

    If it’s an absolute imperative to open with a thank you, then at least don’t let the thank you stand alone. Donors will assume nothing is being asked of them, as the Better Fundraising people say. Which means that the rest of appeal will probably go unread … and not acted upon.

    Instead, at least key the thank you to an offer, so that donors realize that they can do some good. It could be something like this: “Because your last gift of $15 made such a huge difference – thank you! – I writing to you about another powerful way to save someone who’s going hungry.”

    Better yet, keep the thank-you stuff for acknowledgement letters and newsletters, and use appeals to focus on the problem that donors can solve.

    It’s a shame for a nonprofit to restrict itself to one kind of opening for an appeal when there are so many clever gambits that we could use – openings that would grab donors’ attention, draw them into the appeal, and get them to donate. It’s a choice between raising more money and raising less.

  • Another reason to send thank you letters to your donors

    When it comes to thanking donors, this is a horror story: A donor writes a check for $50,000, sends it in to the charity, and waits and waits for days and then finally calls the charity to make sure it received the donation.

    Obviously, something like that should never happen. It’s wildly irresponsible. But it points up a very practical reason for sending a thank you. In addition to thanking your donor for giving, naturally, one very important purpose of the thank you letter is simply to confirm for your donor that you did actually receive her gift.

    Donors will wonder about this after they give. Think about it: In your personal or business life, how many times have you sent something to somebody and never received an acknowledgement that the other person received it? Drives you crazy, right? You just wanted a simple, “got it, thanks,” to put your concerns to rest.

    It’s an often-overlooked reason why the thank you letter is so crucial. Of course, in your thank you letters, you’ll go beyond a simple confirmation, and that’s where fundraising expert Jerry Huntsinger comes in.

    In his Eighty-six tutorials on creating fundraising letters and packages, he points out four reasons to send thank yous:

    1. Create a warm glow around your donor.
    2. Say thank you in a genuine and personal way.
    3. Educate your donors.
    4. Prompt another gift.

    Wait – what’s that third one? Educate your donors? Isn’t it true in fundraising that if you’re trying to educate donors you’re losing them? Yes, but Jerry makes a valid point here.

    When your donor gets a thank you letter, you pretty much have a captive audience. Chances are, your donor is going to read it top to bottom – which is certainly not true of most donor communications. So, “don’t hesitate,” as Jerry says, “to explain your organizational purpose and goals.”

    This is the chance to reinforce for your donor why your charity’s work is important and why it matters. It’s surely a good idea to do this in the thank you letter for new donors, and even for long-term donors, it’s not a bad idea to reinforce why your charity’s work is needed.

    What’s the takeaway here? It’s important to slather on the praise in your thank you letters. Even go overboard. No donor is going to say, “No, stop. You’re thanking me too much!” But recognize that it’s also important to underline and reinforce your charity’s core reason for being. Praise combined with relevance – that’s the kind of thing that makes a donor want to give again.

     

  • How to test smart for fundraising

    The problem with the typical A/B test for a direct mail fundraising appeal or an email appeal is that it’s just too careful and conservative. That’s the point in this post from Seth’s blog. He says that we tend to test things that are too similar because, basically, we’re afraid to fail.

    It’s true. When the question of testing comes up in a creative meeting for a fundraising appeal, lots of times the discussion will revolve around testing a closed face envelop versus a window envelope, or an appeal letter with a photo versus without the photo, or a handwritten margin note versus without the margin note, or an email appeal with a Give Now button versus a Donate Now button.

    Tests like these are all but guaranteed to produce either a tie or a very, very slight win. In either case, we don’t learn much about the creative or the donors – which was the whole point of testing in the first place.

    Does this mean you should always test some crazy new thing and swing for the fences? Not necessarily. Say you have a blockbuster control that’s blown everything else out of the water. Then it would probably make sense to test some minor things to generate incremental gains, provided you want to keep the control going instead of beating it.

    Or say you want to see if you can reduce costs without hurting revenue. Then it would probably make sense to test the appeal, for example, with and without the insert. You may find it does just as well without the extra piece, which means cost goes down a little so overall revenue goes up a little.

    But in a lot of cases, it’s more instructive to test, as Seth says, “radically different alternatives.” More panic-inducing too. But also more instructive.

     

     

  • What’s your fundraising war story?

    When things go wrong with a fundraising appeal, it can seem like the end when it’s happening to you. But really, sometimes the lessons you learn in the school of hard knocks are the best ones – the ones you need to learn.

    In this guest post at GuideStar blog, here are three lessons I learned the hard way:

    • Why cleverness is never a good substitute for genuine creativity in fundraising appeals.
    • What happens to an appeal when group-think takes over.
    • How the messaging in an appeal can get overshadowed and what that does to response.

    Take a look at the full post here for the details. Hey, we’ve all been there. But that doesn’t mean we have to stay there. With every appeal, we learn more, and that’s part of what makes fundraising so fascinating. So, what’s your fundraising war story? Let me know.

  • Why informing donors doesn’t work in fundraising

    It’s all too easy to think that if donors had enough information about a nonprofit’s work that they would donate in droves.

    But, unfortunately, that’s not the case.

    Truth is, as fundraisers we run into a roadblock called confirmation bias. This is people’s tendency to accept information that already supports their beliefs and reject everything else. Cognitive scientists have been studying this for a while. They find that more information doesn’t change people’s minds. In fact, it causes them to be more entrenched in their views. See more, including study results, in my guest post at Future Fundraising Now.

    If we’re trying to persuade people to donate to a cause, information isn’t the way to do it. We have to move their hearts, not fill up their heads.

  • Is your fundraising too dramatic? Good!

    Effective fundraising copywriting has some qualities that seem to get under the skin of the people who review it. Jeff Brooks has written about this on FutureFundraisingNow.

    It’s simple, repetitive, emotional, dramatic, and makes people uncomfortable. These are all good things, not bad things. Especially that second-to-last one — dramatic.

    To break through the clutter, copy has to have drama. But then it’s called “over the top” and “too dramatic.”

    It’s a misguided criticism by reviewers, and to prove it to yourself, just watch TV.

    In one Cadillac TV ad, seemingly normal people on a city sidewalk suddenly acquire expressions of beatific rapture as they turn (in cinematic slo-mo) to swoon at the sight of the car passing by (also in cinematic slo-mo). Sun glints off the windshield. The pedestrians then gaze in admiration at the driver, who belies the slightest, most barely perceptible yet knowing look of pride and status.

    These people have been transported into realms of enchantment because they have never before in their lives beheld a car as beautiful as this one.

    Is that ad over-the-top dramatic? You bet it is. Did Cadillac’s ad agency use every dramatic effect in the toolbox? Of course. Do they know how to persuade people to buy Cadillacs? Yes they do.

    Cadillac is merely selling cars, and yet they pull out all the stops without hesitation.

    We’re saving lives, transforming lives, changing the world. If anyone has a legitimate right to use every dramatic effect possible it’s fundraisers. Copywriting that’s too dramatic? If it’s within ethical boundaries and it stirs donors and moves them to do good, then there’s no such thing.

     

     

  • Are you a good fundraiser? Try this simple self-check.

    Your appeals get your donors involved and engaged in your nonprofit and mission, right?

    If you’re ready to find out, try this self-check.

    Call one of your donors out of the blue. You’ll be shocked. Because, odds are, your donor:

    • Doesn’t know what your nonprofit does beyond something hazy like helping people or fighting poverty. And doesn’t really care to know much more.
    • Doesn’t care what your mission statement says. Hasn’t read it, doesn’t plan to.
    • Doesn’t know what your programs are or any successes that you’ve had.
    • Doesn’t know she’s in your sustainer program and doesn’t know you have a sustainer program or even what that is. She only knows that she gives $10 a month when the reminder comes.
    • Doesn’t really want your appeals and newsletters. She usually just glances at that stuff and tosses it.
    • Doesn’t know that the appeal she just responded to featured a matching grant. Didn’t look at it that closely.

    Sure, we all realize that what donors say is usually different from how they respond. So just because one donor doesn’t know or care much about your nonprofit but still gives, that’s okay, right?

    Maybe. But what if large blocks of your donors feel this way? What if they’re giving out of habit or some philanthropic reflex and not because they love your nonprofit and value what you do? That’s scary. Because if they’re not loving you, they’re leaving you. Attrition will steamroller you.

    So what do you do? You do more. More donor engagement, more donor focus, more donor communication.

    Don’t release an appeal until it sings. Don’t send a newsletter until you can’t believe how good the stories are — with a protagonist, conflict, a plot, and a point. Don’t fear ‘bothering’ your donors. The more they hear from you, the more they’ll like it. Don’t just go through the motions with social media. Provide content that’s good enough to share. Don’t just have a website. Give donors videos, images, stories, infographics, and more.

    But mainly, don’t just communicate with donors. Hit the hot buttons of their values, motivations, and aspirations. Animate those feelings, and you’ll get right to the core of what drives your donors’ giving as well as their loyalty.

     

  • Donors Are Nutty! This Might Help Explain Why

    In a logical world, the bigger the problem is, the more donors would give to solve it.

    But people aren’t logical (it’s what makes us so much fun!).

    You’ve probably heard about the identifiable-victim effect. It tells us that donors will give more to help a single victim than to help many victims. This is the research where people were given a story about a starving girl in Africa, but when that same story was paired up with statistics about starvation, people gave less.

    The typical explanation is that statistics blunted the emotional impact of the story.

    But what’s really at work, according to other research, is donors’ sense of perceived efficacy, the feeling about how much their gifts will do. In one test, the first group of donors got a photo and story of a poor child. The second group got photos and stories of two poor children, and were told they could give only to help one child or the other, not both. The second group — those who got two stories and photos — gave less. The same result happened when the second group got photos and stories of seven children in need.

    The conclusion? When donors get information about additional people needing help — whether it’s just one other person, seven others, or statistics about millions of people — that information discourages them from giving. Donors consider the people who won’t be helped, feel less good about giving, and conclude that their gifts won’t do as much good as they want — then don’t give. Of course, rationality says that helping even one person is better than helping none. But donors don’t see it that way, and no amount of logic is going to change that.

    What to do? Here are two approaches.

    1. Focus on the human drama, not the scope. It’s a natural reaction to want to make the problem seem big by citing statistics, referring to others in need, showing images of people in crisis, and so on. But that doesn’t work. It doesn’t even work in disaster fundraising, where the need is often shockingly large. Avoid the temptation – and it’s a strong one – to hype the size or breadth of the problem. Instead, focus on presenting the individual human drama as compellingly as possible in copy and images.
    2. Present the right offer. The offer you present to donors has to be calibrated to donors’ sense of proportion. If possible, be specific. Say $XX does a specific thing, and make sure that the specific thing is reasonable to your audience. You can’t expect a donor to solve world hunger. But you can expect a donor to help one hungry child when the gift will make a clear, defined difference. That he or she will gladly do.

  • Book review: “Everyone at a Nonprofit Is a Fundraiser”

    “Your nonprofit is siloed.” That’s something you never want to hear. If you do, then your organization’s departments all have their own agendas, lack a common vision, and fail to communicate with each other. Everyone is working at cross-purposes, trying to go in different directions at once, instead of one clear direction.

    That’s why the new e-book — Everyone at a Nonprofit Is a Fundraiser  — from Nonprofit Funderland is particularly relevant. It combines the experience and insight from the three principals of the organization — all veteran fundraisers — who’ve seen when nonprofits work well and when they don’t. That is, when nonprofits are centered around the donor and when they’re not.

    One anecdote in the book sums it up. A donor visits a nonprofit for a meeting with the executive director only to be met by a rude receptionist who ignores him, continuing instead to talk on the phone with her friend. The donor, thoroughly insulted, has his meeting with the executive director. A short meeting, to announce that he’s ending his support. Generous, long-term support. Ouch. Lesson learned.

    That’s the underlying spirit of the book — that a nonprofit centered around the donor, and therefore free of silos, is a better nonprofit. Better at fundraising and better at achieving its mission. In exploring this theme, the book delves into concepts of interest to fundraisers in organizations large and small. For example:

    • Creating a nimble nonprofit where good fundraising can thrive.
    • How and where to find new audiences for fundraising.
    • Why a nonprofit can and should be entrepreneurial.
    • Applying the 80/20 rule to donor engagement versus cultivation in your online fundraising.
    • Ways your digital strategy can improve donor acknowledgement.
    • Addressing the fear nonprofits have about asking too often.
    • What to do when your board isn’t fundraising-friendly.
    • The strongest tactic for fundraising in a recession (yes, the next one is coming).
    • Using communications to engage donors.
    • How to connect with major donors and win greater support.
    • Pitfalls to avoid if you’re considering an event.
    • Why fundraising, despite its challenges, is still a noble and personally satisfying profession.

    Everyone at a Nonprofit Is a Fundraiser covers a lot of ground. The only problem is that the content is so good you’ll find yourself asking drill-down questions about details that are outside the scope of the text. But that’s a minor concern. Because the lessons in the book are large and insightful. After reading it, you’ll come away with clear, specific ideas not only about how to do fundraising but also how to think like a fundraiser.

  • Trouble cultivating younger donors? This might be why

    For many of us, caring about others just isn’t that important.

    That’s one of the shocking findings of a new study conducted by a researcher at Harvard University. http://sites.gse.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/making-caring-common/files/executive_summary.pdf

    First, let’s take a look at the subject of the study, high-school kids. And then, we’ll look at another part of the research, the kids’ parents — the younger donors that most nonprofits are trying to cultivate.

    The study surveyed 10,000 middle and high school students. When asked what was most important to them — achieving at a high level, happiness, or caring for others – a full 80% said achieving at a high level or happiness, but only about 20% said caring for others.

    Naturally it’s distressing that kids place so little importance on helping others, but what’s probably happening is that the children are taking their cues from parents.

    While parents say it’s important to raise children who are caring, the kids themselves are reading the subtext. About 80% of children said that their parents are more concerned with achievement or happiness than with caring for others. The kids felt the same way about their teachers.

    The children were also three times more likely to agree than disagree with this statement: “My parents are prouder if I get good grades than if I’m a caring community member.”

    The message that adults are sending is loud and clear — put yourself and your success first.

    These parents and teachers are the younger donors that fundraisers are trying to engage and motivate. And while they may say that caring for others is important, it seems, according to this study at least, that they’re more concerned with their own success in life than the welfare of others.

    The takeaway for fundraising? The doing-good-is-its-own-reward theme doesn’t work for younger donors the way it did for previous generations, particularly the World War II generation. And because of that, if we want to reach younger donors, it’s more important than ever in our fundraising appeals and other donor communications to emphasize positive results, superior outcomes, and success stories. Charities have to show that they represent the success and achievement that younger donors are placing so much importance on and striving for themselves. It’s one way for nonprofits to be more relevant to younger donors, connect with them on their terms, and ultimately win their support.