Donor Power Blog

How not to talk like a clueless advertiser

2008-11-20T09:47:18-08:00

What's wrong with advertising these days? Roy Williams has an idea, in his MondayMorningMemo, at The New Language of Effective Ads:

Although we're rarely drawn to people who begin all their sentences with "I," "Me," and "My," this first-person perspective remains central to mainstream advertising. And it's why most Americans detest mainstream advertising.

Sadly, a lot of fundraising shares this character flaw with advertising. The message is: Look at me! See how effective I am! Notice how long I've been at work! Me! I! My!

That's not how you motivate people to join you. As Williams says, you have to use the language of courtship to win donors. (And don't miss Williams' R-rated description of courtship marketing!)

(I have an additional theory for Why advertising is so bad.)

Technorati Tags: advertising, marketing

Fundraising: better than selling a bunch of unwanted stuff

2008-11-19T06:12:09-08:00

Here's a trend that bodes well for fundraisers, uncovered by Harvard Business School Working Knowledge: The Next Marketing Challenge: Selling to 'Simplifiers.'

Simplifiers are people, mainly in middle age, who've come to see that they have more "stuff" than they need. They've even grown burdened and embarrassed by all their stuff. Which leads them to seek something other than more stuff:

They want to collect experiences, not possessions. And they give experiences rather than goods as gifts to friends and relatives.

This is good news, because charitable giving is, more than anything else, an experience. A good one.

Giving is a positive, enjoyable experience for your donors even if you do nothing but receive their gifts. But there's a lot you can do a lot to increase the power of that experience:

Create more connection and specificity between the giver and the cause they're supporting.
Be prompt, sincere, detailed, and interesting in your receipting.
Report back to donors regularly on the impact of their giving. Really make your reporting back worth reading -- and sharing.
Have unique and exciting fundraising offers -- things nobody else is doing. (The really hard part, unless this is already built into your organization.)

Technorati Tags: fundraising, trends

Paint pictures with words to get emails opened

2008-11-18T05:34:15-08:00

There's a good article at MarketingSherpa on doing email right: 12 Top Email Copywriting Tips to Raise Funds.

Among the 12 excellent tips, one especially caught my eye: Create a Word Picture. Rather than label your email with facts about its contents, say something that people can imagine. It gives these examples for word-picture subject lines.

Use "Turtle Toxins" instead of "We need your help to protect turtles from pollution."
Say "Manatee Mayday" instead of "Manatees in Trouble: Help Needed Now."
Write "Click to Save Cows" instead of "Please help save cows from the abuses of factory farming."

Good advice for online marketing. In fact, good advice for any medium. Spend some extra time moving your discussion from the theoretical and abstract to concrete and visual.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, copywriting, subject lines

How to deal with irrational donors: Don't

2008-11-17T05:33:11-08:00

Law-watchers say "hard cases make bad law." We could probably ad a nonprofit corollary to that: Crazy donors make bad fundraising.

The For Impact Daily Nuggets Blog looks at this issue at The Irrational Investor, making the observation that around 1 out of 40 prospects are "completely irrational." They ask weird questions. They have eccentric agendas. They just throw you for a loop. But ...

... you cannot and should not be focusing on 1 out of 40. You need to focus on the other 39 -- RATIONAL investors -- the prospects ... that want to save lives, change lives and impact lives ... the prospects that want to have real conversations ... with YOU.

(A 1-in-40 irrational rate seems high to me; that's 2.5% crazy. Yow.)

It's always best to focus on the normal part of any audience you engage. Nearly all of your donors are reasonable, like-minded, clear-headed, and rational. Aim your efforts at these people.

The effort you put into dealing with your irrational donors is time you aren't spending with the normal ones who give you all the money. And no amount of prep is going to help you turn a crazy person sane.

Technorati Tag: marketing

Six Freakish Facts About Fundraising

2008-11-14T08:21:25-08:00

Here's my column in this month's FundRaising Success magazine, 6 Freakish Facts About Fundraising.

Teaser: Many organizations do themselves terrible harm by going silent on donors for a set amount of time after a gift. The theory is that donors need to "rest" between gifts. (Resting, for some reason, is defined as "not hearing squat from an organization they've shown they care about.")

Two more stupid nonprofit ads

2008-11-13T08:40:25-08:00

When it comes to speaking in public, so many nonprofits seem drawn helplessly to acting stupid. Two examples today:
If this one, from Goodwill, had only included the "Palin" side of the ad, I would rated it merely "odd," but not "stupid."

After all, the topic of Ms. Palin's upcoming clothing donation is well known. So the unstated message is, I guess, Goodwill is a great place to donate stuff you don't want. Okay, not exactly a clear and direct call to action. But at least it makes some sense.

It's the lame attempt to be "balanced" by bringing up Obama's $1,500-suits that lands this ad squarely in the "stupid" category: Whenever did Mr. Obama's suits ever become part of the conversation? It didn't, because there's nothing noteworthy about a public figure having decent suits -- and you can spend a lot more than $1,500 on a suit. And it's pretty safe to assume he's going to need his suits in the next four to eight years.

So rather than seem partisan by picking on Sarah Palin, they chose to be incoherent and a little bit mean-spirited.

Some nonprofits just shouldn't be allowed to have ad budgets.

Speaking of mean-spirited, this ad, appearing on city buses in London thanks to the British Humanist Association (and reported by the BBC: 'No God' slogans for city's buses)

Saying "There's probably no God" is to some people like saying "Your family is an illusion." What's the point? The goofball assertion that it'll "make people think" is baldly false. This is more like an adolescent attempt to be shocking and cynical and offending old ladies.

Predictably, these ads provoke an equally stupid reaction from a Christian "pressure group," whose spokesperson blustered, "Bendy-buses, like atheism, are a danger to the public at large."

I'm pretty sure God can take care of Himself on this issue. But the British Humanist Association should find better ways to spend its money.

Discover many more Stupid Nonprofit Ads.

Thanks to Adrants and Church Marketing Sucks for the tips.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, advertising, stupid ads

How to serve your donors

2008-11-12T08:58:38-08:00

How do nonprofits serve donors? There's a good picture of it at Carol Weisman's Blog On Fundraising, Philanthropy and Governance: What Great Donor Customer Service Looks Like.

A donor gave a memorial gift in honor of an acquaintance's mother. An alert employee at the nonprofit had looked up the obituary and seen that it was in fact the acquaintance's father who had died -- and corrected the gift attribution.

Big deal? Not really. But you can imagine how the donor feels: Special, served, helped, appreciated. How likely is she to give again?

There isn't a lot to the service basics: Thank people promptly. Get their data right. Quickly and accurately comply with their wishes. All important, but not exactly the kind of stuff that will delight donors.

You don't have your customers over a barrel like the cell phone companies or airlines do. There's not a lot you can do in the course of normal life to either antagonize or delight them.

So these unexpected extra-mile actions may be your best avenue of service. Do your front-line donor service people have the attitude and empowerment to do that?

Technorati Tags: fundraising, customer service

The power and importance of your logo

2008-11-10T08:57:12-08:00

Great advice from Seth, at Your brand is not your logo:

Smart marketers understand that a new logo can't possibly increase your market share, and they know that an expensive logo doesn't defeat a cheap logo. ... take the time and money and effort you'd put into an expensive logo and put them into creating a product and experience and story that people remember instead.

Amen! You can spend a lot on creating a logo, or you can get your nephew to do it on the cheap. Either way, what you end up with isn't all that important.

What you do is what matters. Does it excite donors? Does it make them tell their friends? Do they talk about it on their blogs or MySpace pages? Figure that out, and you won't have to worry about your logo.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, logos, Seth Godin

Podcast: Branding and Fundraising, Part 1

2008-11-07T09:04:59-08:00

How does the discipline of branding help your efforts to raise revenue for your cause? How does it hurt? How do you decide how to spend your marketing dollars? Get ready for a feather-ruffling, controversial look at this difficult topic.

To listen, click here to download the audio file or visit the Fundraising Is Beautiful page here, where you'll find several listening and subscription options.

Or subscribe with iTunes:

Leave the funny out of fundraising

2008-11-06T09:51:25-08:00

Here's an example of the pitfalls of humor in fundraising. A Blah Fund-Raising Appeal Backfires.

Trying, I guess, to be edgy and cool, Framingham State College sent an unusual fundraising letter to around 6,000 younger alumni who had never previously given. It went something like this:

With the recent economic downturn and loan crisis, it has become even more important for Framingham State College to receive your support. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah....

There were (surprise) quite a few complaints. Now, fear of complaints should not drive your decisions (more on that here, here, and here). But bad results should get your attention: According news reports, the blah-blah letter raised around $2,000 from "nearly" 40 donors. That's about a 0.67% response rate with something like a $50 average gift. I don't know what the mailing cost, but I bet it cost well over $2,000 to mail to those 6,000 donors. I'm guessing that substantial negative net revenue is not what they wanted.

That's the problem with humor in fundraising. It just too often doesn't work. Because you can't count on people getting it.

And there's hardly anything more awful than a joke that falls flat. It morphs into anything from a purely incomprehensible babble to a slap in the face. (The blah-blah letter seems to have managed to be both.) Neither of which is conducive to acts of charity and generosity.

Humor isn't easy, even in situations created for it, like nightclubs, where everyone wants to laugh, expects to laugh, and is well lubricated with alcohol. Try humor in a direct mail piece, or across generational lines, and your chance of getting a laugh shrinks to very nearly zero.

If you want people to give, you have to appeal to their highest natures. That's hard to do. But a lot easier than a successful joke.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, humor