Glenn's blog

I get a lot of fundraising email. Probably 5 or 6 emails a day. Some of it is great but a lot of it really isn't.

I've noticed 7 easy-to-fix problems in these emails - fix them and your emails will work better and raise you more money.

In no particular order:

1. No personalization. By this I mean there is no "Dear Glenn" at the beginning. This is the basic minimum of personalization you should be doing. Unless you've got a really good reason – and it better be a really, really good reason. It's good manners, and will almost certainly increase your response rates.

   Here are links to information on exactly how to add personalization to your emails for some of the email services you may use:

   • Mailchimp
   • Vertical Response
   • Constant Contact
   • Dada mail
   • Emma

   Of course, personalization can go way beyond simply using my name in an email. You might refer to my last gift, or the last action I took, or some preference of mine. There are all sorts of possibilities.

2. You write about you more than you write about me. You might think I'm just being self-centred here, but I do have a real point. Your fundraising appeals will work better if you focus on the person who is reading the appeal. What will giving to your organization do for them? How will it make them feel? What will they have accomplished?

   As an example, I often read emails that say something like "Please donate to us so that we can take action to end the suffering of animals on fur farms." You could rewrite it like this: "Donate now and take action to end the suffering of animals on fur farms." Now the reader is included in the action and the ask is more compelling. Long-time fundraiser and copywriter Harvey McKinnon (who I happen to work for) says that the "you"s in a letter should outnumber the "we"s and "our"s. And his letters have raised millions of dollars for all kinds of charities. For some nice copywriting tips, check out this article on SOFII.

3. Hiding or neglecting the ask.

   The "ask" is a bit of jargon that means the part of the letter where you ask me for money. Something like "please donate now."

   Sometimes I get fundraising emails that I know are intended to raise money, but for some reason the writer never asked me for money. Or, if she did, it was ever so soft, as if she was embarrassed and didn't want to bother me too much. Do you ever do that? Worry so much that you are going to offend your donors by asking them for money that you avoid it?

   Instead, ask for money at the beginning of the email. Have a donation button, but still ask me to make a donation in the text of the email. Then repeat it later on. Make it nice and include urgency, but make sure it's there.

4. You give me too much information. I understand that there are about three hundred reasons why I should get out my credit card and make a donation right this second to your organization. But if you tell me all three hundred chances are I won't make that donation. And it's not just me. There's something about the human brain that can't handle choice or complexity very well. And by bombarding my poor brain with so many reasons you've simply overwhelmed it and I've clicked "delete."

   The book Switch includes a lot of information about how our brains make decisions and what you can do to change behaviour. Like my delete-clicking instead of donating.

5. There is no story and no emotion. You might not think this is important, and you wouldn't be alone. There are some people out there who feel that nothing is as convincing as a good rational argument and that facts (a nice steady stream of them) are of primary importance. Unfortunately, most people aren't like that. And by most people I mean most of the people out there who are reading your email. If you really hope to engage them and inspire them to make a gift, use a compelling story that affects them emotionally.

   There is quite a bit of information about this in Switch, but you might also want to take a look at "Nicholas Kristoff's Advice for Saving the World" – an excellent article that examines how we respond to the stories of single individuals versus groups.

6. There is no personal connection. As fundraiser Alan Sharpe says, (I'm paraphrasing) an fundraising email is a communication from one person to another person. One individual to one individual. It is not a piece of institutional mail.

   It is ok to refer to yourself. I want to know that there's a real person on the other side speaking to me.

7. The email isn't signed, or it's signed by a group. This is sort of a continuation of the last point, but if you're taking the time to write to me, at least add your name at the bottom. And if you are writing in the first person, sign with one name. I really don't believe that the whole organization wrote the email.

I'm really only talking here about particular emails. How often you send emails and how you track them and learn from your results are also factors that will affect how well they do. If you have fantastic subject lines but send almost the same email out every time, your open and response rates are likely to be terrible.

As always, I might be wrong. Have you tested any of these and found that your results contradict what I've said? Please let me know!

I've come across this sentiment many times: non-profits should avoid "wasting" money on fundraising or advertising or salaries, and should put donations directly into the work of the organization's mission.

On the surface this seems good. If I'm donating money to Mercy for Animals I want my money to go to paying for investigations or other advocacy programs. I don't want them to use 30 or 40 cents out of each of my dollars to raise more money or promote the organization or pay staff, do I?

But are our expectations in line with reality? We want these organizations we support to change the world, but we limit how and where they can utilize our donations. We want their staff to work for less pay than an entry level job at a for-profit company and we want their work to be effective. And we want them to have millions of dollars without spending money on raising money.

It doesn't make sense.

In reality, organizations need to spend money (yes, YOUR money) to raise more money. They may need to spend $.50 to raise $1. They might be able to spend $.10 to raise $1 in some cases too.

Businesses spend $.50 to earn $1 all the time.

And how do organizations raise money?

One way that gets a lot of criticism is by sending out unsolicited mail. This is called "prospecting" or "acquisition" by fundraisers and "junk mail" by you. You may be the person who tosses these mailings away all the time, or you may be the person who opens them and sends in a donation.

This way of bringing in new donors is expensive. Often it costs $3 or more to raise $1. Yes, that means that these mailings lose money almost 100% of the time.

So why do them? Isn't this a waste of money?

This is one of the basic misconceptions about how fundraising works. Donors do not usually seek out organizations and spontaneously give to them (you are of course the exception). Virtually all first gifts to an organization come as the result of some sort of acquisition campaign.

The value of these campaigns is not to make money. The value is to raise donors. Over time the people who mailed in their gift in response to this piece of "junk mail" will send in more donations and will become "profitable." Yes, fundraisers use the word "profitable."

Really, non-profits don't sell products, but they do sell hope and dreams and the service of doing work for you that you can't do yourself. You can't run a network of animal shelters so you give your money to an organization that can.

I want organizations to be efficient and effective. I don't want them wasting my money. But I think we need to rethink what it means to be efficient and pay attention to how we measure effectiveness. If it honestly takes an organization $400,000 to raise $1,000,000 (a net gain of $600,000) and they do good work with that money, than why should we demand that they reduce the money they spend on fundraising so that it fits into the ideal of 20-25% cost-of-fundraising?

And, beyond fundraising, organizations need good infrastructure and good people, which means that they need to spend money on salaries, benefits, offices, etc. Just because an organization exists to do good doesn't mean it and the people involved should be underpaid and overworked.

I've hardly had an original idea in my life, and this post is mostly an amalgamation of many ideas from books and articles. One book that's been floating around my consciousness for a while (but I haven't read it yet) is Uncharitable by Dan Pallotta. I'm pretty sure he says all of this much better than I have or really ever could.

Here is an article that sums up a lot of the problems with measuring an organization based on how much they spend in fundraising: "Cost of fundraising: the watchdog's Strawman in nonprofit assessments.".

It is clear from numerous surveys (Princeton Survey Research Associates, 2001, et al.) that donors generally prefer that their gifts be used to further the nonprofit's mission rather than be used for fundraising costs. However, that view is akin to wanting one's tax dollars to support the cause of national defense by paying for fighter jets, but not for the copy paper used by employees in the Pentagon. Just as planes do not get used effectively in battle without proper planning, so does a nonprofit's mission depend upon fundraising.

When you are thinking about whether an organization is using your money wisely, don't ask "how much did they spend on fundraising?" or "how much is their executive director getting paid?" Instead, ask "how much have they accomplished?" and "Are they investing in the future?"

Measuring organizational efficiency based on cost-of-fundraising may bring some short term gains, but chances are it will yield long-term ineffectiveness. At the worst it may mean the organization you love because of the work they do will cease to exist.

This is planned as the first in a series of (admittedly inexperienced and very opinionated) posts on fundraising for small grassroots groups. If I'm wrong please let me know. I welcome comments. Also, I apologize in advance to my boss Harvey and his company for accidentally stealing any of his or anyone else's ideas. This stuff is in the air so much at work that I forget where it originally came from sometimes.

Fundraising is vital to the existence of any organization. Except perhaps for the one-person "organization" that subsists on that one person's paycheque. Most organizations exist to get real work done – and that requires money.

Money pays for staff, printing, advertising, stamps, events, etc, etc. Money is like the food of an organization. With enough food, combined with exercise and intelligence, the organization will grow strong and get things done. Without it, the organization will whither and die.

Money comes from a few places. The big ones are grants, large single gifts, gifts in wills, and from regular people like you and me. Notice that three out of the four are really gifts from people. Really there are two main sources of money: institutions and people.

The nice thing about institutions? They are big and often have a lot of money to give away.

The nice thing about people? They are loyal.

Asking people for money is fundamental to your organization.

I know of a particular organization that relied heavily on a particular grant that it got yearly for an event that they put on. The grant gave them the money to hire an organizer to put the whole event together, year after year.

But then the economy tanked and the grant dried up. The government needed the money for other programs, so the organization that had relied on that money had to radically shrink their event.

These sorts of things happen. But, if they had been consistently asking their supporters for money, they could possibly have raised enough money to cover the amount of that grant. They were too reluctant to ask for money.

Many small organizations do this. They are afraid (or embarrassed) to ask people for donations. (I'll get into the particulars of how they ask for money another time.) They may only ask for money once a year so that they won't bother their donors. Or they may only ask for a certain small amount for membership.

I'm not sure if they feel like their work isn't important, that they are afraid people won't want to support it, or if it really is just embarrassment about asking for money.

Whatever it is, it doesn't work.

If I am supporter of your organization, I know that you need money. But I don't wake up each morning and think "does such-and-such organization need money from me today?" Nope. You do me a service by asking me for money. You give me an opportunity to help, to contribute. Your organization exists to help me contribute to the mission of your organization.

Can you think of any reasonably large or successful organization that doesn't raise money? I'm prepared to be wrong about this, but I'm certain the answer is "no."

So, instead of sending that one email that ever-so-softly asks me to think about possibly considering the idea of making a small show of support, send out 6 or more emails this year asking me to donate $20, $50, or $100 right now to help change the world.

Because I will take it personally if you don't care enough to ask for my money.