Electrifying Your Fundraising Copy

I've got a crazy couple of weeks ahead of me, so I thought I'd revisit some old posts. This first appeared last June as part of my Week of Tips for Writing Successful Fundraising Letters. I hope you find it helpful.

IDoes your copy jump out, begging -- screaming -- to be read? Especially at year-end, it's challenging to make your letter stand out from the hundreds of other appeals for giving that your donors are receiving. If you want to compete with the deluge of mail people are receiving, you need to electrify your copy. One of the easiest ways to create electric fundraising copy: 

Make your strongest copy stand out.

When you're writing a fundraising letter or other fundraising or marketing copy, there are some ideas you want to really it people over the head with. So you shine a spotlight on them.

You can see I used bold up above. I wanted you to know what I was talking about, even if you're just skimming the copy. Caught your eye, didn't I?

If you're writing on the Web, try highlighting words in color. But be careful! If you go too light, you'll make your copy harder to read and risk having people skip over the thing you thought was so important.

Pick up any fundraising letter, and you're bound to see a lot of underlined copy. This, too, draws your eye and forces it to pay attention. I always like to underline the Ask, and any particularly outrageous statistics or compelling arguments get that treatment, as well.

Some copywriters use italics for additional emphasis. I like to use them to highlight any quotes. Since quotes lend authority to my arguments, I want to make sure readers see them.

Really want people to sit up and take notice? Try handwritten notes and underlines. Not too many, or your copy will become cluttered and look like a scrap of paper you pulled off the Executive Director's desk. But judicious use of handwriting (or a handwriting font) can draw the eye.

Once you've finished your copy, go back and look over your emphasis. Sometimes, those ideas that you want to highlight change as you refine your copy. So double-check them. Are you using enough underlines? Too much bold? And most important: are the phrases that jump out at you really the ones you want people to see?

Do you have a favorite way to electrify your fundraising letters? Post it in the comments section below.

Case Study #1: The Importance of Urgency

It’s easy to get so caught up in doing the work of getting your direct mail out the door, that you forget to sit down – with your entire team, creative people, numbers people, even program people – and examine the results of your efforts.

 

As a creative consultant, I’ll take writing over numbers-crunching any day of the week. But I don’t let myself off the hook because I know that taking a close look at those numbers can give me critical feedback about the direct mail I write.

Welcome to Case Study #1: The Importance of Urgency

One of my smaller clients is a regional educational institution. They mail 5 appeals a year to an average audience of 17,000. Response is fair, with appeals netting an average of $7,000.

Some of the mailings, of course, are blockbusters, netting twice that amount, while others fall far short of the average. And generally, the whole team can anticipate how any given appeal will do by looking at how a theme historically performs, how the time of year affects giving, and a host of other smaller factors.

(This is where having a good numbers person on your team can be such an advantage. I can only ballpark, but a numbers guru can spin magical calculations that can provide you with invaluable information!)

A few weeks ago, we sat down and looked at the previous year’s appeal results. We were surprised to discover that while overall, the appeals had performed better than in previous years, one mailing in particular had performed 84% less than average.

I was shocked. The theme was a touching one, the letter was packed with vivid imagery, and the package included the donor directly (i.e./it had plenty of “you” and “your” statements). But upon re-reading the copy, and comparing it to the other packages we’d mailed last year, I realized there was one critical element missing: the urgency.

We were asking for an ongoing program, one that was scheduled six months out. Yes, it was a fantastic and moving initiative. And yes, it desperately needed funding. But there wasn’t an urgency to the need.

I took that lesson and applied it to the next appeal – which ended up being the best appeal of the year.

Actually, I guess there are two lessons here: the one about urgency, of course. And another about failure. Look closely at those mailings that fail. They could tell you something crucial about your audience and lead you, ultimately, to greater success.

How often do you look at numbers? What have you discovered? I'd love to hear below!

Five Ways to Use Your Celebrity Supporters

Yesterday, the always interesting Michael Chatman raised this question on Twitter: Does celebrity participation in a non-profit charity influence you to donate money? Or, is their participation overrated?



I answered Michael's question briefly on Twitter, saying that I think their participation is mostly overrated, but can be very useful in targeted efforts, like in a high-dollar giving club.


But I wanted to take some time to expand my thoughts. Because a lot of organizations I've worked with have celebrity supporters and allies, and how best to leverage their support has come up in nearly every strategy meeting I've ever attended. 


First, a "celebrity" isn't just a famous actor or musician. It can be anyone related to your specific community who has name recognition and credibility. For a health-related nonprofit, that might be a super-star physician, for a science advocacy group, a former astronaut or Nobel Prize-winner. For fundraising purposes, a "celebrity" is anyone your supporters will recognize and relate to.


Five Ways to Use Your Celebrity Supporters

1. Ask them to be the Chair (or Honorary Chair) of a specific Membership group, probably a high-dollar giving group. This can involve anything from simply signing fundraising materials directed at the group, to taking a more active role, depending on their interests, time and level of commitment.
2. Ask them to sign a Prospecting Letter or a Lift Letter in your Acquisition package. NRDC and Friends of the Earth both use celebrity signers -- actors known for their environmental passions -- in their acquisition packages to great success. 
3. Ask them to make a video expressing why they support your organization and asking others to do the same. You can post this on the Web or send it in your e-mail newsletter as an extra endorsement for what you do.
4. Ask them to host (even in an honorary capacity) a major special event. A good name will draw more people to your event, and their participation can lend a "stamp of approval" that inspires others to give.
5. Present them with an award at a major special event. An alternative to asking them to host, this technique can also up attendance at your event. And it could be a first step to a more fruitful relationship with that celebrity, ensuring they help you more in the future.

There are, of course, some sticky issues with using celebrity supporters to assist in your fundraising. If your celebrity becomes embroiled in a scandal, for example, your association with them could hurt your organization more than help. And obviously, you should always treat these supporters with respect and gratitude. Don't push them to do more than they're comfortable doing, and don't take them for granted.

But if you have a loyal celebrity supporter or two who is willing to use their acclaim to call attention to your cause, and you target that attention in one of the ways listed above, you can give your fundraising a boost.

How does your organization harness the wattage of its celebrity supporters? Tell me below!

Writing for Activist Causes: A Call to Action

So for in this series Tips for Writing for Activist Organizations, I’ve talked about choosing a compelling issue and crafting a comprehensive strategy for addressing that issue. Today, I want to talk about the third component of successful activist copy: the Call to Action.

Unless you’ve been (understandably) shying away from the news lately, you’ve probably noticed there’s an election coming up. Last week, President Obama went on a base-rallying tour, hoping to galvanize Democrats into voting in the mid-term elections.

Amidst all of his talking points about the economy, health care and criticism of the Republicans, the President delivered a strong, to-the-point call to action: If you want to continue building the movement we started in 2008, vote for Democrats in November.

Obviously, I don’t know how well this call to action worked yet. But it does seem to be energizing at least a core group of Democrats and Obama supporters.

And that’s what activist organizations want to do when they're communicating with their donors. If you’re presenting your issue in a compelling manner, with a comprehensive strategy, your donors are going to be so excited about what you’re doing that they will be compelled to act immediately. And if you’re smart, you’ll drive that action.

• I love a good Petition or Postcard to the President, Congress, head of a corporation or other recognizable official-type person. They're easy for the donor -- simply sign and return -- and a great way for you to show those leaders how much support there is for your issue.
• A boycott, while harder to organize and follow through on, can also be extremely effective. Donors love knowing they're a part of a larger movement fighting for positive change. 
• Put your call to action in pledge form, so the donor has something to sign and return – hopefully, along with a check.
• Add a deadline -- nothing gets people moving faster than a time-limited offer.
• Offer a little something extra for their support. An issue-specific decal saying that the donor took action could provide that extra motivation to act -- and act now.

Even better, these are all actions you can hearken back to when you write your acknowledgements, telling the donors how many petitions you collected, the initial impact of their boycott, or a story about seeing your decal out in the world making a difference.

More questions about writing for an activist organization? Post them below, and I’ll answer next week!

Writing for Activist Causes: Strategy

Earlier this week, I started my Writing for Activist Organizations Series with instructions to choose a compelling issue and craft a strong message. Today, it’s time for Tip #2:

Present a Comprehensive Strategy 

Donors to activist organizations are passionate about making a difference. And they want to hear exactly how you’re going to use their contribution to make that difference.

One very effective technique I use is to pick 4-5 action items and highlight them in the letter, using bold headlines or bullet points to call attention to the fact that these paragraphs are important. They are telling the reader something he or she needs to know.

Do these have to be different for each and every issue? The short answer is “Nope.”

The truth is, you’re going to have a few tools you reach for again and again. For some activists it’s the OpEd – hard-hitting, informational pieces that get read widely. Other groups are great at throwing splashy demonstrations to call attention to their issues. Still others are, at heart, policy wonks, making changes from the inside that impact each and every one of us.

Whatever your tools are, tell your donors about them. Remind them over and over again…because chances are, your unique set of tools are a big part of what inspired those donors to give to you in the first place.

And be as specific as you can. Don’t just say you’ll have meetings with high-level officials. Tell them you’re meeting with the head of the EPA, or the Defense Minister of France. Publishing an OpEd in The New York Times? Tell them what it was about and, if possible, the impact it had.

One great bonus: thinking strategically for your donors can lead you to think more strategically for your own in-house efforts, too.

What strategies to you use in your activism? And how can you communicate those to your donors? Tell me about ‘em below.

Three Keys to Writing for Activist Causes

You’re a rabble-rouser. A go-getter, you don’t sit around and wait for the world to change…you’re out there making it happen. You’ve got a problem, a plan to solve it, and the skills to pull it off. You’re an activist organization.

I’ve spent the majority of my career writing for activist organizations, and there are distinct differences from a typical nonprofit. With activist organizations, it’s not enough to tell your story, acknowledge the donor’s importance, and make your ask. You’ve got to engage your donor in the cause you represent.

Choose a Compelling Issue and Craft a Strong Message.

First and foremost, activist organizations must have a compelling issue to mail on. Time and again, I’ve worked with activist organizations who try to bring in other, non-activist asks to their program, or who embrace an issue that is slightly out of their normal wheelhouse…only to have those mailings fall flat.

Stick to your core issues, the issues you know fire up your donors. If you’re an environmental organization dedicated to preserving wildlands in the Pacific Northwest, for example, stick to that topic.

Does that mean you can’t ever mail on Global Warming or dam removal? Absolutely not! Simply use your core issues as a framework for discussing broader topics and how they effect the things your donors care about.

Remember, they give to you because they believe in what you’re doing. When you send them a communication about something outside of your core mission, they a) probably won’t give and b) could even lose interest in your organization altogether.

So choose your theme well. And then craft that theme in the strongest language you can muster. State the problem you’re going to solve up front, use decisive, action-oriented verbs, avoid passive sentences…

…and check back later in the week for Tip #2!

Obstacles and Opportunities: Time and Effort

This week, I’m talking about knocking down those barriers we often put up that keep us from doing our best fundraising. Cost is usually the first reason I hear cited for not moving forward with a bold idea. But time and effort are right up there.

I just attended Wordstock, the Northwest's largest book and literary festival. Which is mounted by a paid staff of three.

Obviously, they didn't pull the whole thing off all on their own. But those three people coordinated board members, consultants, volunteers and committees, engaged teachers, drew writers, assembled literary panels and attended to the tremendous amount of detail required to create a weekend celebrating literary arts.

I’ve often watched people sit across from me in a meeting, rolling their eyes and crying, “That’s too much work!”

And quite often, they’re not wrong. I know the folks at Wordstock would certainly vouch for how much effort they had to expend over the last few months. When you’re working on a shoestring, with limited staff and old equipment, it can take a tremendous amount of work to accomplish almost anything.

One of my favorite quotes – something that sits on my desk as a reminder – is Nelson Mandela’s “It always seems impossible until it is done.”

So instead of moaning about the impossibility of the task, think instead about how you can break your project down into smaller, more doable tasks. Is there a way to ferret out new resources or forge new relationships to help make the project happen?

A big project is not an insurmountable task. It’s an opportunity to find new efficiencies, engage volunteers, uncover hidden talents, and build teamwork.

Got examples of people coming together to create something great, despite the hard work? I’d love to hear about it below!

Obstacles or Opportunities: Cost

Earlier this week, I talked about Hildy Gottlieb’s assertion that we can – and must – turn our obstacles into opportunities. And the number one obstacle for most nonprofits is cost.

 Yep, direct mail is expensive – and it gets more so every year. But according to the Blackbaud Index of Online Giving, most organizations “found that, on average, online revenue accounted for 5.7% of their overall fundraising revenue.” 

While that’s actually pretty good news – online giving continues to rise – your web efforts still have a ways to go before they become your go-to revenue source. You still need your direct mail programs, which in part drive donors to your online presence.  So instead of moaning about the cost, start looking at what you can do with that investment. You will, of course, raise money. You’ll also inform and engage your donors about your issues.

 

One of my favorite things to do is take a set of strict cost parameters and try to come up with the most effective package possible. How can we make a 2-page letter just as compelling and informative as the normal 4-pager? What envelope treatment is going to get more people to open it? Is there an action-item we can include to help motivate more people to give?

Look at cost constraints – or any constraints – as a framework from which to build your program. Like writing a haiku, the options, even when you’re limited by a lack of funds, are still almost endless.

I’d love to hear how your organization has overcome cost constraints to create a winning direct mail campaign. Comment below!

Obstacles or Opportunities?

When you sit down to make your fundraising plan, are you looking at the obstacles in front of you? The money you’ll need to spend, the limits of the medium, the staff and consultants you’ll need to corral into doing the work, the difficulty of coordinating it all?

 

Or are you looking at the task at hand and getting it done?

This post over at Wild Apricot has a video of Hildy Gottlieb, nonprofit consultant and author of The Pollyanna Principles: Reinventing "Nonprofit Organizations" to Create the Future of Our World,  talking about obstacles and challenges we bring into the room when we’re looking at the tasks before us. She urges people to take away those “negative stopping words” and look at barriers as “empty conditions” we must meet.

Your fundraising program is a complicated set of tasks full of conditions that must be met. Are you relying primarily on direct mail, personal solicitation, or online giving? Are you coordinating those efforts, or is each team working independently? How are your resources allocated – staffing and financial?  

All of these questions and your organization's specific conditions can be overwhelming to the point of paralysis, but it’s far more valuable to consider how you’re going to meet the requirements in front of you than to worry about all the reasons you can’t.

This week, I’m going to talk about three of the most common “barriers” clients throw at me when talking about their direct mail: cost, time and effort.

What are your barriers? What conditions are you working with? And how can you meet those conditions and be successful?

Integrating Diverse Missions

Education and advocacy. A special event and ongoing programs. Activism and conservation.

I work with several organizations that have two or more central missions that attract diverse audiences. Sometimes that's just how an organization is set up from the beginning. But often it's part of a group's natural growth.

• Perhaps a museum hums along for a few years, then starts developing arts education outreach programs that lead to a big arts festival.
• Or a conservation-focused group that decides to more actively combat environmental degradation.
• Or a hard-hitting advocacy group decides that part of their mission should be education and outreach about their issue.

Diversification can be great for an organization, injecting life and verve into the atmosphere and giving people a new excitement about your mission. But it can be hard on your fundraising.

How do you sell an organization that does several different things?

It's not an easy question to answer. Sometimes, if the two missions of your organization are sufficiently different -- and have sufficiently large audiences for each one -- you may want to set up two separate fundraising entities.

For example, I work with an advocacy group that set up an education wing. Their advocacy is hard-hitting, often controversial. But their education arm, while set up to further their overall mission, deals with fewer hot-button issues. Their audiences do have some overlap, but many of the advocacy supporters are uninterested in the education mission and vice versa. So they set up two separate fundraising organizations and are now raising money for each mission.

But other times, the missions are too closely intertwined, or the audiences simply too small for each one, for them to stand on their own. So you've got to integrate your asks.

Say you're an arts organization that holds a high-profile, once-a-year event, but spends the rest of the year on arts advocacy and education. Most of your supporters have come in through your event. That's how they discovered you, what they know about you, and why they support you.

Your job, as an organization is to get them excited about all of the other things they're helping you accomplish. Sure, they help put on your One Exciting Event, and you should thank them (and remind them of the magic they help create). But they also make possible X program for struggling artists in the community and Y program to bring arts education into public schools.

Tell them what these programs mean for the people they benefit. Do kids' faces light up when they've created their own piece of art? Did an artist complete an important work thanks to your support? Tell these stories to your donors and to those people you want to have as donors.

Then, use your appeal program to separate out your asks. You'll find out which of your programs are the biggest draws, and which you need to sell harder. You'll find out which of your donors are passionate about education, and which want to support starving artists.

All of which will help your bottom-line fundraising.

Does your organization have a diverse set of missions? How do you incorporate everything into your fundraising? Is it successful, or are there areas you could improve? Post away in the comments section...

Make it Personal

Direct mailer writers always talk about making our mail "personal". For us that means lots of "I, you, we", using a conversational tone, and, quite often, fudging the rules of grammar a bit.

But the other day, a couple of things happened that reminded me that there is another way to keep things personal -- something it's all too easy to forget in this day and age of social media connections and conducting business by e-mail.

First, I ran into an acquaintance who runs an arts organization. She was thrilled because her group had just been notified that they were the recipients of a big grant. I congratulated her, and she told me this story:

"You know, we thought for sure we were out of the running this year. The group giving the grant just announced they were eliminating arts funding! So when I got word, I immediately called them up to say 'thank you'. The man in charge of granting the awards told me that he had gone against the new policy specifically for us because he remembered meeting our Executive Director and having a great conversation with her at an unrelated event. Personal connections really do count!"

Do they ever.

A similar thing happened to me a couple of months ago. A client I'd been working with for a couple of years went through some restructuring. They completely reevaluated all of their old contracts with an eye on reinventing their program from the ground up. I fully expected to lose the business.

But the Development Director called me up and asked that I stay on, one of the few contractors asked to do so. Now, I'm sure my strong work ethic and quality product played a part in that decision. But the tipping point?

I took the time while on a vacation in their city to stop by and meet the gang at their office.

This wasn't actually a calculated move on my part. At the time, I had no idea that they were planning on restructuring. I just wanted to be able to put faces to the e-mail addresses and conference call voices. But those couple of hours out of my vacation paid off.

Those face-to-face connections are important -- maybe even more so now that so many of us do business with people across the country...or across the globe. It might take a little extra time and effort, but the payoff could make it all worth it.

Nonprofits and Social Media -- to Dive or Not to Dive?

I was cruising through Nancy Schwartz's Getting Attention! site, when I stumbled across this thoughtful and thought-provoking article about social media and nonprofits.

I've noticed quite a few of my nonprofit clients -- and really, the rest of us ordinary folks, too -- wondering how to use social media for marketing purposes, how much time to spend on social media, and how to measure its impacts on our marketing or fundraising efforts.

As Nancy reports, there are a lot of social media fundraising success stories floating around, seducing nonprofits into jumping whole-hog into social media. But are those organizations getting back what they're putting in? And, even more important, are they sacrificing the tried and true for what's hot right now?

Nancy's emphasis is on the "marketing cornerstones -- from planning to getting to know your audiences, crafting relevant messages, defining the best channels to engage those folks in productive conversation and action, and measuring the impact of your work."

I agree.

Look, social media is a fascinating frontier! I enjoy Facebook. Twitter keeps me in the loop on what's going on with my industry and in the worlds of my clients. I'd love to spend more time getting acquainted with all the features on LinkedIn. And I am certain there are other social media tools I haven't even heard of that could revolutionize the way I work.

But I owe it to my clients to devote my energies where I know they'll make a difference, with the proven techniques that got us to this place.

Don't get me wrong. When I'm working on a direct mail letter, I take a minute to think about how to incorporate the theme or campaign into social media. A few months ago, a client was working on a "Top Ten" campaign, and I suggested Tweeting one item from the top ten every day for ten days as a way to inform their followers (and their followers' followers through re-Tweets) of the campaign, drive traffic to their website, and, hopefully, boost awareness of and response to the direct mail campaign. It was one of their most successful fundraising efforts of the year so far.

But would that campaign have been so successful without the more traditional cornerstones of marketing? If their "Top Ten" hadn't been so honed specifically for their audience? If they'd ignored direct mail -- for them, a proven fundraising tool -- in favor of a web-only ask?

The Twitter portion of this client's campaign almost certainly enhanced what they were doing, if nothing else, by raising awareness among a slightly different population using a new medium. But it couldn't have replaced the other legs of the campaign.

It's important for everyone to start thinking about how to incorporate social media into their marketing/fundraising plans. But social media shouldn't take the place of a solid, multi-faceted marketing/fundraising plan. Or in other words, go ahead and dive in, but make sure the water is deep enough.

Ask Richelle

Last week, a reader posted a couple of questions in the comment section of one of my posts on Acquisition, and I wanted to pull it out and answer it in the blog.

Amy asked: Any advice on we can transfer these (or other!) strategies translate to e-mail?

This is probably the number one question I get asked these days. Everyone wants to know how they can make more money from their e-mail and web efforts. And why not? It’s cheaper and faster than traditional mail, and it’s a better way to reach the younger donors that will become the future of your organization.

The good news is that a lot of what you do in direct mail can be translated to e-mail and online. You still want to convey your passion, highlight the emotions and urgency of the problem you’re trying to solve, and ask, ask ask.

But the way you do these things in e-mail and online is a bit different.

• You’ve got to get to the point quickly – no build-up, no big explanation. Just hit them with the problem, the urgency and the solution (give!).
• Include several links to your donation page.
• Make sure it’s absolutely clear what their donation will do.
• Include a photo or two, but make sure they are directly related to your content, or they’ll only serve to distract.

Check out this e-mail appeal from EDF as posted on The Agitator for a few more ideas. (Although I agree with the many people who commented that the EDF copywriting was not emotional enough!)

Also – and here’s the bad news – don’t forget that e-mail and online appeals haven’t yet eclipsed direct mail for most organizations. It’s far too easy to delete an e-mail, or navigate off a web page. So don’t think that you can replace your mail with online efforts quite yet.

But they can supplement what you’re doing in the mail, as long as you do it right.