Raiser Sharpe Tips » Asks

Answer the Only Question Donors Have and You’ll Raise More Money Fundraising

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 22:07:43 +0000

Your donors have only one question that bothers them.

If you want to acquire more donors, you have to answer it. If you want to raise more net revenue, you need to answer it. And if you want to increase the lifetime value of your donors, you must answer it.

Here’s their question: “How will my donation change the world?”

Donors are confused
Donors ask this question for a number of reasons. For one thing, they’re confused. If they live in Canada and want to support an organization that helps children with cancer, for example, should they donate to the Childhood Cancer Foundation, Canadian Cancer Society, Canadian Research Society, Cancer Recovery Foundation of Canada, Coast to Coast Against Cancer, Wellspring Cancer Support Foundation, Terry Fox Run, or someone else?

Many donors don’t know. Or can’t decide. So given that your non-profit organization has competitors who do similar work, you must tell prospective and current donors exactly how you will use their gift to transform lives. Otherwise your donors may donate somewhere else.

Donors have limited funds
There’s another reason you must tell your donors how their gift will make the world a better place. Some of them are on a fixed income. Others just retired. More than a few have student debt. Or other kinds of debt. Some are broke. Either way, they can’t support as many charities as they’d like, so they give their money to the few causes that promise to make the biggest difference with their gifts.

Donors fund specifics, not generalities
Given the choice between donating to “End Hunger in Your City” or giving a donation that buys “Thanksgiving dinner for $1.73″ for a man at the local homeless mission, you know what the donor will choose. And so does the donor. “How will my donation change the world?” is a question that demands a specific answer, not a general one. Supply the answer and your donor will supply the donation.

Don’t ask for a single donation until you can answer this question. That goes for every campaign, every appeal, every ask throughout the year. And make sure your answer is clear, concrete and compelling. Your donors demand it, no question about it.

Need help with your direct mail program?
Download this book now.
Mail Superiority: How to Run a Profitable Annual Direct Mail Fundraising Program.

Need help?
If you need help raising money through the mail , give me a call at Harvey McKinnon Associates, at (416) 537-2904 ext. 212

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Give Your Donors What They Want so You Get What You Want

Alan Sharpe — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 00:55:22 +0000

Thank your donors promptly and personally every time they mail you a gift.

Describe how you are using the donor’s last gift the way the donor intended. The majority of long-term, faithful donors give to make a difference, and many will not give again until they know their last gift was put to good use the way they wanted—so show ample proof.

Treat your donors as thoughtful investors who care how their money is spent.

Don’t appeal to short-term motivators, such as fear, that raise plenty of short-term funds but not enough long-term friends.

Give your donors enough information to make an informed opinion about giving. Anticipate the questions and objections that thoughtful people will raise about your organization, your mission and your ask, and answer them in your letter.

Help your donors solve a problem. Donors will not throw money at an impossible situation. They need to have hope that their donation will meet a need. So offer hope.

Don’t promote future tax benefits alone. Instead, stress the difference a donation makes in lives changed and problems solved today. You want donors who believe in your cause, who want to help others more than they help themselves.

Instead of asking for funds that your organization needs, invite donors to accomplish their goals by making the world a better place (by mailing you a gift) .

Think long term. Raising money with mail is a long-term commitment that you need to make to your organization and to your donors. You and I could put together a tear-jerking, guilt-inducing package that manipulated donors into parting with large sums of money, but those kinds of appeals are not sustainable year after year. Take the long-term view.

Remember that your donors are people. And people give to people to help people. This basic fundraising truth means that you must state your organizational needs in human terms whenever possible. “Human interest sells,” as Mal Warwick puts it. You must translate your case for support from non-profit-speak into flesh and blood. Donors want to know how their gift will help people. So give your donors what they want—heart-warming stories about people in need, and how you help them thanks to your donors’ generosity.

Boost Your Fundraising Letter Response Rates and Revenue with Five Simple Segmentations

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 14:50:56 +0000

I was 44 years old, about to adopt my second child, and was sitting in my lawyer’s office, looking over his updated draft of my will.

Everything looked fine except for one small mistake. Throughout the document, he referred to me as Neil Sharpe. “I, Neil Sharpe, being of sound mind and body, do declare this to be my last will and testament.”

Well, it certainly was my last will and testament using that lawyer, because my name is not Neil. The will he drafted was invalid. It would never have worked after my death, or Neil’s death, for that matter.

Your fundraising letter can flop just as badly with your donor if it sounds as though you don’t know her. The same letter mailed to every donor in your database can’t help but sound generic and impersonal. The same letter that thanks current donors for their support sounds silly when addressed to someone who hasn’t given a donation in three years.

So if you’re a direct mail fundraiser and you want to increase your response rates or gross revenue, invest in some simple letter personalization. Invest in simple letter changes that show your donor that you know him. The more personal you make your letter, the more likely your donor is to read it, believe it, and respond.

The easiest way to personalize your letter is to segment it into donor groups. There are five main donor groups: new donors, current donors, lapsed donors, monthly donors, giving-circle donors.

1. New donors
A new donor is someone who has just given her first gift, and has never given before. In your letter, acknowledge that the donor is new. Thank her for that first gift. Thank her for joining a group of like-minded people (your other donors). Welcome her.

2. Current donors
A current donor is someone who has given a donation during the last 12 months. So acknowledge that. You can refer to his “recent support,” or “continued support.’ Or you can even mention that you are grateful for his most recent gift, received on “such-and-such a date.”

3. Lapsed donors
A lapsed donor is someone who hasn’t given a gift during the last 12 months, but did give a gift in the 12 months before that, or the 12 months before that, or the 12 months before that. A donor who hasn’t given a gift in four or more years isn’t lapsed, but dormant.

Let a lapsed donor know that you miss her support. Don’t speak to her as a current donor. Don’t say “your recent gift is changing the world,” because it isn’t. It was spent long ago. The secret with lapsed donors is to say you miss them rather than their money. “I haven’t heard from you for a while” sounds more personal and friendly than, “Neil, you haven’t made a gift in over two years.”

4. Monthly donors
No need to tell you what a monthly donor is. But donors who give a gift every month are usually excluded from your regular appeal letters, so if you are writing them, asking for a special gift, let them know that you know that they already support your charity with an automatic gift every 30 days. Show your gratitude for their regular support. Acknowledge that you are asking them to make an extra, special gift above and beyond their regular monthly one.

5. Giving-circle donors
If you have a mid-level donor program or a giving circle for donors who donate above a given level (the President’s Circle for $1,000 donors, for example), then these donors will be especially offended if you don’t acknowledge their membership. So do. Enough said.

Dividing your letter into four segments is easy. Simply write the letter, then reserve a paragraph on page one where you speak to each donor segment individually (personalizing page one of your letter but leaving the following pages generic is the cheapest way to personalize). Then give your lettershop the text for your letter, show where the variable paragraph appears, and supply four paragraphs of text to go into that place in the letter, a different paragraph for each donor segment. Then give the lettershop your mailing list, and, for each donor in the list, name the donor segment the donor belongs to.

Personalization works. I once worked at a national charity. I turned their generic fundraising letters into personalized letters that spoke to each donor individually, and showed the donor that the organization knew who they were. My executive director, who signed all the letters, began receiving all sorts of mail and phone calls from donors, thanking him for his letters. As he travelled the country and met with donors, he heard the same refrain: “Thank you so much for your letters. They sound like they’re written just to me.”

Which isn’t surprising, since they were.

Learn More
Attend my six-part tele-seminar, How to Run a Successful Direct Mail Fundraising Program. Taught over the phone six Saturdays in a row. My most popular seminar. Starts September 3, 2011. Early Bird Special expires August 27, 2011. Details.

Need help?
If you need help writing, designing, personalizing or mailing your fundraising appeals, or managing your direct mail fundraising program, give me a call at Harvey McKinnon Associates, at (416) 537-2904 ext. 212

How to Get a Second Gift from a New Direct Mail Donor

Alan Sharpe — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 14:05:47 +0000

If your charity is at all typical, you will lose 65% of the donors you acquire by direct mail in the first year alone.

In other words, only 35% of the donors you acquire through direct mail will give you a second gift. Most donors acquired through the mail are acquired at a net loss (you must spend money to acquire each donor), so you can see how important it is for you to do all that you can to encourage first-time donors to give again.

Here are the main reasons new donors do not give a second gift:

1. You acquire the wrong kind of donor
Donors acquired with premiums, trinkets and lotteries tend to fall away at a higher rate than donors acquired with a simple ask.

2. You ignore them
If you do not thank your new donors soon enough, or tell them what you are doing with their gift, or welcome them to your organization, they will not likely mail you a second gift.

3. You write them too often
If all you do with new donors is add them to your mailing list and then bombard them with an appeal letter each month, you will likely lose them.

4. You do not ask again soon enough
The key to securing a second gift is to ask early and ask often. Your enemy is the calendar. For every week that elapses after you have received the donor’s first gift, and where you do not ask for a second gift, your chances of losing your newly acquired donor increase. The worst thing you can do is delay four, five, six months or longer before going back to your new donor for a second gift. By that time, many will have forgotten that they even made the first gift.

To increase your percentage of new donors who go on to give a second gift, do four things:

1. Thank them promptly, personally and particularly for their first gift.

2. Send them a welcome kit. Tell them why they are a valuable part of your organization. Include anything in the welcome kit (brochure, newsletter, welcome letter, FAQs, testimonials) that draws donors closer to your mission and the people you help.

3. Show them how you are using their gift to change the world. You can do this most effectively with a donor-centred newsletter filled with pictures and stories that show donor dollars at work.

4. Ask for a second gift within eight weeks of receiving the first gift. The single largest factor in determining if you receive a second gift is how long you wait before asking for it. The longer you wait, the less likely you are to secure that all-important second donation.

Learn More
Read Mail Superiority: How to Run a Profitable Annual Direct Mail Fundraising Program.

Need help?
If you need help acquiring, renewing or upgrading direct mail donors, give me a call at Harvey McKinnon Associates, at (416) 537-2904 ext. 212

Twenty Postal Strike Survival Tips for Charities and Non-Profits

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 16:04:50 +0000

What should you do if your charity raises money through the mail but your country’s postal workers are about to strike, or are already on strike?

Naturally, you’re troubled.

Most charities in Canada that are not places of worship raise a substantial portion of their operating budget using fundraising letters. Many charities also rely on the mail to recruit new donors, keep their donors up to date with newsletters, invite donors to special events, conduct donor surveys, and issue charitable tax receipts and thank-you letters. So a strike by postal workers isn’t just an inconvenience. It threatens a charity’s very existence.

Here are some ways to survive a postal strike.

In the weeks before the postal workers go on strike, write to your donors. Tell them that a strike is imminent, and give the anticipated strike date if possible.
Describe how the strike will affect your donors’ ability to communicate with you, and your ability to communicate with your donors, by mail.
Warn your donors to expect delays in receiving their gift acknowledgement letters, since their mail gifts, and you thank-you letters, will likely be delayed in the mail system.
If the labour action involves rotating strikes in cities across the country rather than a nationwide general strike, warn your donors to still expect delays, since the location and duration of each strike is unpredictable.
Give your donors a way to keep current on the status of the strike by showing them where to sign up for email bulletins, text alerts and media releases issued by the postal labour union and the postal service. Direct donors to the websites of each party in the strike.
Encourage your donors to make their donations using other methods, such as email, phone, online, text and in person.
Before the strike begins, make contingency plans for sending your appeals by email, provided you have the technical ability and sufficient email addresses to do so profitably.
If you are going to solicit gifts during the strike by email, write to donors whose email addresses you do not have on file, and invite them to give you their email addresses. Give donors an incentive, such as a gift certificate, for doing so (you’ll acquire more addresses this way).
If you anticipate that the strike will be prolonged, consider phoning your high-value donors and asking for a gift. Mention the impact of the strike and encourage them to either phone your charity or give online. Do this throughout the duration of the strike.
If you anticipate that the strike will be prolonged, write to your donors before the strike and invite them to join your monthly giving program. If some are reluctant, invite them to give a gift each month, however small, for the duration of the strike only. Stress your need for daily funds to continue helping the people you serve.
Before the strike begins, invite your most frequent and generous donors to mail you a series of post-dated cheques.
Before the strike begins, invite your donors to add your charity as an Internet banking payee so that they can donate to your cause when they pay their bills online.
Ramp up your homepage so that it makes a clear, compelling request for donations (perhaps even mentioning your inability to receive donations in the mail, and stressing the need for visitors to donate online or by phone instead).
Revise your Twitter homepage so that it stresses your need for funds during the strike, and then solicit donations in some of your tweets.
Post a provocative, viral video on YouTube that shows the predicament your charity will be in if you stop receiving gifts during the postal strike. Make a strong request for funds, and direct viewers to your donation page, or even better, to a special landing page dedicated to the strike.
Post regular status updates to your Facebook page so that your fans, friends, donors, advocates, members and everyone else is reminded regularly of your need for funds.
While the strike is on, email your gift acknowledgement letters, charitable gift receipts, newsletters and special event invitations.
If your charity has to cancel a fundraising event because of the postal strike, host the event online instead as a creative, fun, tongue-in-cheek non-event. (“Our Black Tie Non-Event will NOT take place on (date). Cocktails will NOT be served at 5:30 p.m. Dinner will NOT be served at 7 p.m. NO program will be held at 8:30 p.m.)
When the strike is over, and you have a backlog of gift acknowledgement letters to mail, mention in each letter that you are sorry for the delay in thanking the donor.
When the strike is over, don’t be tempted to persuade as many donors as possible to start giving online instead of by mail. The majority of today’s donors prefer the mail. Gifts made by email and online still make up less than 10% of the revenue for most charities in North America.

Fundraising Letters: Casanova Never Mailed One Love Letter a Year, So Neither Should You

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 06 May 2011 14:45:05 +0000

The worst thing you can do in direct mail fundraising is mail only one appeal a year.

Direct mail is part of your annual campaign, yes. But that doesn’t mean you should mail only one fundraising letter every 12 months. Annual doesn’t mean annually in direct mail fundraising. Here’s why you must ask for gifts by mail more than once a year.

Donor’s Move
In North America (where I live and work), one in five (20%) businesses and individuals move each year. You can discover who plenty of these people are, and get their new address, by using the postal service’s National Change of Address service. But it only tells you who has moved during the past six months.

So if you mail your annual appeal in December, you’ll get the new addresses for everyone in your database who moved during the six months before December only. Everyone who moved during the six months since last December you’ll lose. And if you lose a donor you lose the donation.

Direct Mail Donors Give from Discretionary Spending
When your direct mail appeal arrives in the mail, your donors decide to give or not to give based on how much cash they have on hand. If they have money to donate, they give. If money is tight, they don’t.

If you mail only once a year, and if your appeal lands when money is tight, you lose. But if you mail four times a year, or six times a year, more than one of those appeals is likely to arrive when your donor has money to give away.

Other Charities are Asking Even if You’re Not
Your donor, if she is typical, supports 13 charities besides yours. These charities are writing to your donor throughout the year, asking for donations. If she hears from them often but hears from you seldom, who do you suppose will receive her donation?

Fundraising is All About Relationships
You can’t have a close, rewarding relationship with someone you hear from only once a year. Healthy relationships require healthy communication. Not too much, or you become a pest. And not too little, or you become a stranger.

Your direct mail fundraising program needs to mail at least four appeals a year to maintain strong donor relationships and get the most from your donors. Generally speaking, the more often you ask, the more money you’ll raise. Naturally, you can ask too often and drive away your donors. But you can also ask too seldom, and lose both revenue and donors.

Learn More

Read my book Mail Superiority: How to Run a Profitable Annual Direct Mail Fundraising Program. Learn the proven, step-by-step process for raising funds and friends cost effectively, year after year. Available in paperback and as an e-book.

Should a Donation Thank-You Letter Ever Ask for a Donation?

Alan Sharpe — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 12:24:58 +0000

I got a big surprise the day I closed my direct mail fundraising consultancy and started working for a national charity. I discovered that my new employer used its gift acknowledgement letters as a way to raise funds. With every donation thank-you letter it mailed to donors, it included a reply device and business reply envelope.

At first, I was incensed. Then, I was embarased. You see, for the longest time, I have advocated in my workshops, books, handbooks, newsletter and blog that a charity should never use a thank-you letter as a chance to ask for another gift. Doing so was tacky and alienated many donors, I said.

I held this position largely because of a fundraising consultant and researcher called Penelope Burke. In her book, Donor-Centered Fundraising, which I recommend, Penny Burke presented the findings of her surveys of donors and their attitudes towards giving. Forty percent of respondents to Burke’s surveys said that asking for a donation in a thank-you letter is rude. A further 20% said they would stop giving if a charity treated them that way.

But during my first day on the job in the real world of fundraising, I learned that my employer raised over $150,000 a year with its thank-you letters. Thousands of donors responded to the reply device in their thank-you letters by returning it with a cheque in the enclosed business reply envelope.

I figure you can see the predicament I was in. Should I stand on my principles or let the donors decide what was rude and what wasn’t? I did the latter. I allowed the charity to continue using their thank-you letters as a way to raise funds.

Donors are a strange bunch. Gather a number of them into a small room for a focus group and they will tell you not to solicit them, however subtly, in a gift-acknowledgement letter. Ever. But do that very thing in their mailbox and they will respond. What donors say they will do and what donors actually do are often two separate things.

So should you ask for another gift when thanking donors for their last one? I recommend you test and find out. Surveys only prove what donors think they will do, or what they think they should do. Testing proves what they actually do. Sometimes the difference between the one and the other is more that $150,000 in net annual income.

Those are my thoughts. What are yours?

Learn More
Read 51 Ways to Write Original Donation Thank-You Letters, Boost Your Revenues and Donor Loyalty
with Effective Donation Thank-You Letters and other resources on donation fundraising letters.

Top Five Ingredients of a Successful Fundraising Letter

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 15:52:01 +0000

Direct mail fundraising will be harder in 2011. Postage rates are increasing. Attention spans are decreasing. And discretionary income, which is to say, the money your donors use to support their favourite causes, is tighter. So, if you want to succeed at raising funds with direct mail letters, follow these five timeless tips.

1. Write About a Person, Not a Problem
Take your case for support and translate it into flesh and bone. Give it a name. People give to people to help people. Your donors don’t want to change the world. They want to change lives. Show them how to change lives by featuring one person in each fundraising letter. Tell your story through one person.

2. Tell a Story
The quickest way to grab (and keep) your donor’s attention is to tell a story. Follow the method novel writers employ: conflict > development > resolution. Start with conflict. Develop the conflict. Resolve the conflict.

3. Write as a Person, Not an Institution
At the bottom of your letter is a signature of a person, not an institution. That’s because fundraising letters are written by individuals, not by committees. Write your appeal letters so that they sound as though they are coming from a person. Don’t write “we, us, our.” Write in the first person. Just as I am doing right now.

4. Write to an Individual
Don’t write to donors, plural. Don’t speak in general terms about “our supporters” or “our alumni.” Treat your letter as a piece of warm correspondence between one person and another, not between an institution and a group of donors. Always address your donor as an individual. Which means using the word “you.” A lot.

5. Show what a Donation Buys
Make your case for support concrete, not abstract. Tell your donor, as specifically as possible, what you will do with her donation. Don’t write, “support our Thanksgiving Drive” when you can instead write, “buy a Thanksgiving dinner for a family of four with your donation of $23.”

Treat these tips as a checklist in the coming year. With every letter you write, run it against this list to make sure you are following the top five ingredients of a successful fundraising letter.

Four Steps to Better Donation Letter Reply Devices

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:03:58 +0000

Successful direct mail donation letters contain three things: a compelling case for support, a request for funds (the “ask”), and a response device. The case is the Incentive. The ask is the Imperative. And the response device is the Instrument.

The most popular reply device is the reply coupon, that slip of paper the size of a dollar bill that’s found in most direct mail fundraising packages. But today it could also be a landing page on a website. To make sure your mailing generates the kind of response you want—and the number of donations you want—you must have a reply device that is clear, complete, compelling and convenient.

Clear

stands out in the package and is easy to find
gives explicit instructions on what the reader must do to make a donation
has sufficient space for handwriting
keeps decisions to a minimum (the fewer checkboxes the better)

Complete

features an ask ladder, such as $50 $75 $100 Other $___________
offers the two most popular payment methods, cheque and credit card
includes the complete address and phone number of your organization
contains an unobtrusive key code so that you can track response
tells the donor what to do with the reply device (eg. “Return this completed reply device with your donation in the enclosed postage-paid envelope”)

Compelling

repeats the case for support and the ask in summary form, usually a sentence
where possible, shows what the donor’s gift “buys” (eg. $50 Feeds a family for a week $75 Gives a family a goat $100 Provides enough seed to feed 12 families)
includes other incentives to donating, such as a free premium or membership benefits

Convenient

features the donor’s name and address pre-printed on the form
has check-off boxes wherever possible
is postage-paid or features a toll-free number
comes with a postage-paid business reply envelope

Learn more . . .

Handbook Number 12
How to Write and Design Effective Direct Mail Fundraising Reply Devices.
Attract the gifts you need by making the donation process quick and painless for your donors (and your organization).

Don’t Ask for a Gift in Direct Mail Fundraising Letters

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 11:12:56 +0000

My wife can still remember the name of her math teacher from grade four. You know why? Because he, um, paused every few words, and ah, ahhhhh, you know, ahh, added an ahh to what he was saying, ah, so that Ruth, was driven to, um, distraction.

You may be repeating his error in your fundraising letters by using the same word over and over again, a habit that is likely to drive your donors to distraction, which, nowadays, seems to be American Idol.

The offending word is “give” and its noun form “gift.” Followed by its first cousin “donate” and its noun form “donation.” If your donation request letters are typical, you repeat yourself throughout your letters by asking the donor to give or to donate, to mail you a gift or a donation.

My advice, which bears repeating, is to stop, um, repeating yourself so much. Juggle things up a bit. Here’s how.

INVEST
Can you help us this year? Your investment of $25 helps one family. Your check for $50 helps twice as many.

CONTRIBUTE
Please contribute now with $25 to help one family with a beautiful, encouraging Christmas Hamper.

SUPPLY
Will you kindly supply the funds we need to buy one Christmas Hamper for a needy family?

SUPPORT
Please support our Christmas Hamper program now using the enclosed reply form and postage-paid envelope.

HELP
I’m asking for your financial help because 100 local families need a Christmas Hamper this year. Please send your gift today.

BUY
Your check for $25 buys joy for one family. Your check for $50 buys twice as much. You get the idea!

If you work hard at making your asks original, your donors will do something original in return. Give you a donation.

You might be interested in:

Handbook Number 6
101 Compelling Ways to Ask for Donations with Your Fundraising Letters.
The professional fundraiser’s guide to mastering the art of making the ask.

The Fundraisers’ Book of Quotations.
Inspire and motivate your donors with over 2,700 quips, proverbs, aphorisms, witticisms, zingers, epigrams, quotes, one-liners and words of wisdom from actors, writers, activists, philanthropists, artists, scientists, philosophers, poets, humorists, novelists, inventors, journalists, kings, queens, magnates, presidents, dissidents, preachers, paupers and others, famous and infamous, living and dead.

Christmas Fundraising Letters: Make Your Appeal Original but Contemporary

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 11:05:57 +0000

If your non-profit organization is typical, your direct mail program raises 50 percent of its revenue with one mailing-the Christmas appeal. More people give more money to the “Holiday Season” letter than they give to any other single mailing all year. Your goal this Christmas is to persuade these generous donors to give again. Here’s how.

1. Make your message original
Just because Christmas commemorates Jesus’ birth doesn’t mean your letter has to dwell on the events that took place around the manger. You don’t have to show donkeys. Instead, consider the other characters in the drama and find a way to present your case for support through them.

For example, Mary and Joseph are living in a land occupied by a foreign army (sound familiar?). Joseph’s fiancé is pregnant with a child that isn’t his, but he stays with her and raises the child as his son anyway. Uncommon. The prevailing emotion surrounding the birth of Jesus is fear. The shepherds tremble in the fields. Herod acts out of fear. Mary and Joseph flee for their lives to Egypt.

2. Tie your Christmas appeal to current events or current themes
The key to connecting with your donors through paper and postage is relevance. Your must present a need that they both understand and care about. One way to demonstrate the relevance of your cause is to tie your case for support in your Christmas letter with the events that are uppermost in your donors’ lives right now.

For example, right now, (October 2008), folks in the United States are electing their next president and folks in Canada are electing their next prime minister. The people who lived in Israel during the time of that first Christmas had no voice and no vote, living as they did under a military dictatorship.

Again, your donors are living through a time of tremendous financial volatility. Banks are going bankrupt. Millions are losing their homes to foreclosure. And the stock markets worldwide are crashing. Can you tie any of these themes to the events that Christmas celebrates, such as “peace on earth,” “goodwill to all men,” and the world’s obvious need for some divine intervention. I know you can.

So I suppose you can see that what I recommend you do at Christmas is say something about the season that your readers have never thought of before (be original) while showing how closely Christmas, and your need for funds, is more relevant and obvious today than ever before. The gifts will come.

You might like…

Breakthrough Fundraising Letters.
How to write direct mail donation request appeals that attract more donors, raise more money, and build stronger relationships. Available in paperback and as an e-book.

Handbook Number 25
Testimonials.
Find, feature and format other people’s words to overcome donor skepticism, prove your point, build trust and attract donations.

In Fundraising Letters, Use Present Tense

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 11:07:09 +0000

If you want your fundraising letters to sound more vigorous, get tense. The present tense, that is.

Listen to the sports news on the radio and you’ll hear the announcer saying, “tomorrow the Atlanta Falcons take on the Minnesota Vikings.” The announcer doesn’t say, “the Atlanta Falcons will take on the Minnesota Vikings.” He doesn’t say that they will, but that they do.

Same goes for scores. The announcer doesn’t announce game results in the past tense by saying, “Atlanta defeated Minnesota, more on sports in 10 minutes,” but instead says, “Atlanta defeats Minnesota, more on sports in 10 minutes.”

Same goes for newspaper journalism. Read the captions under news photos. They don’t say “Barack Obama waved to fans from his campaign bus yesterday,” but instead present yesterdays news in the present tense, “Barack Obama waves to fans from his campaign bus on Thursday.”

Presenting tomorrows possibilities and yesterdays news in the present tense makes news stories more forceful. Removing conditional phrases (can, may, might) from sentences also makes them stronger.

For example, a photo caption written in the present tense puts you, the reader, in the middle of the news story. Just consider the difference between “a man shot at children” and “a man shoots at children” and you see how much stronger the present tense renders your sentences.

Same goes for fundraising letters. Write in the present tense. Put your donor in the thick of the action. Don’t write “your donation will reduce poverty” when you can instead write “your donation reduces poverty.”

Don’t say “we have used your recent donation to fund a new fresh-water well in Namibia” when you can instead write “we are using your recent donation to fund a new fresh-water well in Namibia.” Or, perhaps even stronger, “your recent donation is funding a new fresh-water well in Namibia.”

Writing in the present tense and removing conditional phrases from your writing makes your fundraising letters more potent. I’m not talking about a tactic that can work or that has worked. It is working. Right now. Just listen to the radio news, read the newspaper, or read a successful direct mail appeal letter.

This book helps…

You might also like…

Handbook Number 21
Sample Donation Thank-You Letters.
Learn how to say “thanks” in ways that win the long-term friendship and loyalty of your donors.

Direct Mail Donor Acquisition: How to Ask for the Right Amount

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 12:30:12 +0000

My wife and I listed our house for sale last Monday and sold it on Wednesday. The buyer offered us a few hundred dollars more than our asking price, so we accepted. But we have lingering doubts. Maybe you would, too.

You know how it is. You name your price, and your buyer agrees immediately. So you immediately wonder if your price was too low. Maybe that’s why the buyer agreed to your price so quickly.

In direct mail fundraising you’ll find this same challenge. How much should you ask a person to donate if they have never donated before? If you ask for a large gift, they will not give. And if you ask for a small gift, they will give. But maybe if you ask for a gift that’s larger than your small ask but smaller than your large ask, you’ll also get a donation. If you ask for an amount that generates a huge response, you’ll likely agonize that maybe you could have asked for just a little bit more and got it.

Here are three ways to determine how much to ask for.

1. Ask your competitors how much they ask for
Phone a non-profit organization like yours, preferably one that does not compete directly for your donor’s dollar, and ask them how much they ask potential donors to give. If your competitor won’t tell you, or if you are too timid to pick up the phone, get on their mailing list and see how much they ask you to donate.

2. Find out what the average gift is for the people on the list you are mailing
If you are mailing a fundraising letter to people who have never donated to your organization before, you are likely renting a list of those names. Ask your list broker if the data card for that list contains giving levels. Some lists available for rent tell you the size of the average gift that people on that list give to charities.

3. Test a range of asks
If in doubt, test. Some lists have a higher average gift than others. So test lists by varying your ask amount. And test ask amounts over time so that you discover the optimum amount of money to ask for with a potential donor.

Asking for the right amount with a first-time gift is critical. It can mean the difference between earning net income with your mailing, breaking even, or losing your shirt, or your blouse, as the case may be.

Learn more about the art of the ask. Read:

Handbook Number 6
101 Compelling Ways to Ask for Donations with Your Fundraising Letters.
The professional fundraiser’s guide to mastering the art of making the ask.

You might also be interested in…

Handbook Number 8
101 Terrific Opening Lines for Your Fundraising Letters.
Dozens of quotes, statistics, anecdotes, witticisms, questions and other zingers to make your letters irresistible.

Look for Connection, Not Cash, in Prospective Direct Mail Donors

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:25:09 +0000

I received an email the other day that reads as follows:

–letter starts–

Hello Mr. Raiser,
My name is _______. I work for a non profit organization, the ____________. We are in a season of taking the ministry international and also growing and empowering the ministries within. I would like to draft up a professional letter, that will go out to major corporations and empowered people, asking for donations, and for it in return be a tax write off! My goal is to mail/email a donation letter to different large companies and multi-millionaires example Oprah Winfrey, Donald Trump. I’m not sure at all as to how to even begin the letter. Please help!

–letter ends–

I cannot give any helpful advice on how to begin a letter like that because a letter like that shouldn’t be started.

The most important quality to look for in a potential direct mail donor is a connection with your cause. You shouldn’t be looking for millionaires, or billionaires.

Direct mail fundraising works by soliciting small gifts from lots of people regularly. Even retired folks can give you a small gift.

Look for connection, not capacity. Donald Trump has capacity. But does he have any connection with an obscure charity with a narrow case for support that wants him to make a donation because of the tax write off? Not likely.

Look for people who have connection, not just cash. A widower on a pension who has been touched by your ministry is a better candidate for a direct mail donation than a millionaire who has no clue what you do, or where you do it, or why. An individual who lives around the corner and believes in you is a better bet for a direct mail gift than an employee in a multinational corporation headquartered in another state who manages corporate donations but doesn’t know you from Eve.

Look for friends, not funds.

Find more help in my new, 270-page book:

Mail Superiority.
Learn the proven, step-by-step process for raising funds and friends cost effectively, year after year.

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Handbook Number 17
How to Convert Your Once-Only Direct Mail Donors into Repeat Givers.
Proven direct mail fundraising techniques for renewing your new members and first-time donors—year after year.

Handbook Number 15
Increase Your Income and Boost Donor Loyalty with Donor-Centered Newsletter Stories.
Reap the long-term benefits of putting donors first in your donor newsletters.

41 Things You Can Mail to Donors in Direct Mail Fundraising

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 15:49:54 +0000

Want to learn a lesson in direct mail fundraising from Winston Churchill? He once observed that a fanatic is “someone who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.”

A fundraising letter fanatic, of course, is someone who thinks the only thing you can mail a donor is a fundraising letter. But that’s just one of more than 40 things you can mail to make friends and raise funds using paper and postage.

Acquisition package: Designed to attract new donors.
Welcome kit: An assortment of informational pieces and a cover letter, mailed to first-time donors, welcoming them to your organization and your cause.
Thank-you letter: The most important letter in direct mail fundraising, and it should never ask for a gift.
Renewal letter: Designed to persuade last year’s donors to renew their support again this year.
Member renewal letter: Mailed by member-based organizations to members whose membership is about to expire and must be renewed.
Reminder letter: Mailed a few weeks after your appeal letter, encouraging donors who have not responded to give. Popular at year-end.
Lapsed donor recovery letter: Mailed to donors who have not given a gift in 12 months or more, inviting them back on the train.
Monthly donor conversion letter: Mailed to annual donors (those who respond to your annual appeals), inviting them to join (convert to) your monthly giving program.
Special appeal: Mailed during the year to raise funds for a special cause, often an emergency, such as a natural disaster.
Year-end appeal: Letter that capitalizes on the year-end tax advantages and “spirit of the season” of Christmas.
Upgrade letter: Appeal inviting donors to increase the dollar amount (and sometimes frequency) of their gifts.
Donor club invitation: Letter inviting high-dollar donors to join a President’s Circle or other exclusive donor group.
Legacy gift prospecting letter: Mailed to a select group in your house file, asking if they are interested in making a planned gift (bequest, charitable remainder trust, and so on).
Special event invitation: A card or letter inviting donors and potential donors to a golf tournament, banquet, concert or other fundraising event.
Newsletter: Sent to current donors to inform them of how your organization is using their donations to change the world.
Annual report: Usually mailed to major donors, loyal donors and donors with influence.
Survey: Designed to solicit the opinions of donors and prospective donors.
Petition: Mailed by advocacy organizations (Amnesty International and Mother Against Drunk Driving, for example) to members, inviting them to complete and mail the petitions, usually to a decision-maker in federal government.
Member-get-a-member letter: Mailed by member-based organizations, inviting members to recruit new members to the organization.
Pledge appeal: Usually sent during capital campaigns, these appeals ask recipients to pledge a larger-than-normal gift (for the donor, that is) towards the campaign, a pledge that is usually honored by the donor by making a number of gifts over a period of a year or two.
Congratulatory card: Mailed to donors on the occasion of the donors’ wedding anniversary, birthday or other special event.
Testimonial: Written endorsements from clients or donors or others affected by the work of your organization, usually accompanying an appeal letter.
Plaque: Sent to faithful or particularly generous donors as a sign of your gratitude for their extraordinary support.
Gift catalog: Describes through pictures and text the items that donors can buy from your organization to support your work (a goat for a family in India, for example).
Resource catalog: Describes the books, DVDs and other educational materials that donors can order to educate themselves and others about your cause and the people you help.
Matching gift appeal: Invites donors to give gifts that, collectively, match a large gift made by another donor.
Newspaper clipping: Has your charity received favorable press recently? Mail a copy of the article to your donors (with the newspaper’s permission).
Quiz: Do you want to stir the imaginations of your donors, particularly if they are under the age of 12? Mail them a quiz that gets them thinking about a vital subject (climate change, poverty, nuclear war, homelessness, for example).
Factsheet: Sometimes you need to give your donors statistics and facts and figures, maybe even a history of your organization. Put these into a factsheet.
Special report: Dealing with a hot and timely topic that will galvanize your constituents.
Calendar: Special calendar that highlights special events of yours and days during the year that are of interest to you and your donors.
Special event teaser: Postcards or other short notices that pique the curiosity of your supporters about upcoming events.
Photographs: Mailed to donors to show the before-and-after results of their generosity.
Premium: Return address labels, notepads and other incentives designed to persuade the recipients to donate.
Freemium: Items enclosed with a direct mail appeal that have no intrinsic value, but help you communicate your appeal in a tangible, memorable way. A hospital, for example, might enclose a facsimile of a patient bracelet once worn by a young cancer survivor.
Involvement device: Scratch-off cards, checkboxes and other devices that involve the donor in meaningful ways and encourage a donation.
Brochure: Shows in pictures and words what you cannot discuss in the body of your letter.
Reprint: Has your CEO just given a speech to the United Nations? Transcribe the speech and mail it to your donors (assuming your CEO is a dynamic speaker, of course!).
Progress report: Mailed to donors, usually major donors, who have designated their gifts to a particular project, and who need to be kept informed about your progress with their money.
Follow-up note: Mailed after you’ve phoned your donor or made a personal visit, usually to thank the donor.
Income tax receipt: The more of these you have to mail each year, the better, right?

You might be interested in…

Mail Superiority.
Learn the proven, step-by-step process for raising funds and friends cost effectively, year after year.

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Handbook Number 10
Six Insider Secrets of Running a Profitable Annual Fundraising Letter Program.
Proven techniques from the professionals for building long-term relationships with your donors and members.

Handbook Number 12
How to Write Effective Direct Mail Fundraising Reply Devices.
Attract the gifts you need by making the donation process quick and painless for your donors (and you).

Boost Your Direct Mail Fundraising Response Rates with Deadlines

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 14:52:44 +0000

Why did the Canadian cross the road? To get to the middle.

Your job as a direct mail fundraiser is to give your donors both a reason for donating and an incentive for donating.

Your enemy is inertia. Your enemy is Coronation Street. Plenty of perfectly nice donors with perfectly good intentions to donate will nevertheless procrastinate or get distracted, lay your fundraising letter aside to deal with tomorrow, but then forget.

Which is why you should consider using an incentive, something that will give your appeal letter a sense of urgency. Something that’ll motivate your donor to act today. I recommend a deadline. Give your donor a deadline for responding and you will likely boost your response rate.

Some deadlines are naturals. December 31 for an end-of-year appeal. April 8, 2007 for an Easter appeal. February 5, 2008 for a political appeal for a United States presidential candidate.

Other deadlines are just as motivating, but may need some explaining. If a wealthy donor of yours, for example, has offered to donate $200,000 if you raise $200,000 (we call this a “matching gift appeal”), then you will need to give your donors a deadline for responding and explain why you need their gift by then (you don’t get the matching gift if donors don’t respond in sufficient numbers with sufficient donations by the deadline).

Another compelling deadline is a date on the calendar when you will stop processing surveys or stop accepting petitions.

Here are some keys to making your deadline an incentive that boosts response:

1. Use a date, not a time period
Don’t say, “We need to receive your gift within the next 30 days.” Say, instead, “We need to receive your gift before September 21, 2008.”

2. Give a valid reason for your deadline
The last day of your fiscal year is not a valid deadline. Donors don’t think in fiscal years. They think in calendar years, which start on January 1 and end on December 31. Telling your donors that they must respond by March 31 (assuming that’s your fiscal year end) may impress your chief financial officer as an urgent deadline, but it will not impress your donors.

3. Repeat your deadline anywhere you ask for a gift
Stress your deadline in the body of your letter, in your P.S., and on your reply device. You can even print it across the face of your reply envelope in bold capitals.

4. Don’t mistake your deadline for your case for support
Your deadline is the incentive you offer for giving now. But your case for support is the reason you offer for giving. Your deadline is not sufficient. You must communicate a strong case for support first. Then offer your donors a deadline that inspires them to pick up their checkbook instead of the TV remote.

You might be interested in:

Handbook Number 6
101 Compelling Ways to Ask for Donations with Your Fundraising Letters.The professional fundraiser’s guide to mastering the art of making the ask.

Handbook Number 8
101 Terrific Opening Lines for Your Fundraising Letters.
Dozens of quotes, statistics, anecdotes, witticisms, questions and other zingers to make your letters irresistible.

Millionaires Are Generous Donors if Asked Properly

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 13:25:54 +0000

I was pontificating with my wife, Ruth, the other day, explaining that fundraisers have no control over one of the Big Cs of fundraising. “Ideal donors,” I announced, “have the Capacity to give, have a strong Connection with the charity, and are Committed to support the charity over the long term.”

I then explained that a fundraiser can do something to strengthen Connections with donors (invite them to sit on the board) and to strengthen donor Commitment (invite them to leave a legacy), but I said that fundraisers have no control over the big C of Capacity.

“Either donors have the capacity to give or they don’t,” I announced with evident satisfaction.

But Ruth corrected me.

“I believe you are mistaken,” she said sweetly, “Fundraisers can change a donor’s capacity to give. They can reduce it.”

So I stand corrected. And gladly so.

Your job as a fundraiser is to find millionaires and then work with all your charm and might and passion to reduce their capacity to give. With the donor’s full cooperation, of course.

The good news is that millionaires give generously to causes that move them.

According to a Merrill Lynch Cap-Gemini report, North American millionaires are two to five times more likely than their European counterparts to give to causes they value.

And according to Toronto-based Taddingstone Consulting, a private group that tracks the attitudes and behaviours of Canadian millionaires, Canadian millionaires regularly donate close to three percent of their annual income.

The secret to reaching hidden millionaires in your city is to know what they look like, know where to find them, and know how to approach them. That’s why you should attend the Uncovering Local Millionaires webinar. Details below.

Seminar-on-Demand 001
Uncovering Local Millionaires.
Presenter: Alan Sharpe. Learn how to recognize, find and approach undiscovered millionaires in your city. Three sessions. Over four hours of audio recording, 139 pages of full-color handouts and an 89-page electronic transcript.

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Appealing Fundraising Letters Request More than Donations.

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 13:12:23 +0000

The last thing you should ask for in a fundraising letter is a donation. You have no business asking for money until you have first persuaded your donor that you deserve her attention, value her time, appreciate her as a person, and want to partner with her in turning the world upside-down. Your donor comes first. Your request comes last. That’s why your fundraising letters need to be appealing in more ways than one.

They should appeal to the interests of your donors.
Every donor has an itch that needs scratching. For some donors, that itch is anger. Angry donors give to organizations that assuage their moral outrage. Mothers Against Drunk Driving has a few donors like that. For other donors, their itch is compassion. In a world filled with such deep human suffering, they feel compelled to help those less fortunate than themselves.

Your job as a direct mail fundraising letter writer is to find your donor’s itch and scratch it. In other words, your job is to discover why your donors give, and then give them that reason to give to your organization. Which means every appeal letter you write needs to appeal to your donor’s interests, not yours.

They should appeal to the rational side of your donors.
Even emotional appeals are based on a rational proposition. They don’t just show you a photo of a starving child and ask you to mail a cheque. They instead show you the starving child, enumerate the causes of the starvation (most of them man-made, usually), describe what the non-profit is doing to end the starvation, show how the donor’s support will make that happen, and then ask for a donation. Appealing fundraising letters don’t just play on emotions. They appeal to the need that all donors have to know that their financial support is realistic and useful.

The most successful fundraising letters today are appealing. They look appealing. They sound appealing. And they state their case for support in terms that resonate with donors, making the cause and the request for funds too appealing to pass up.

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Mail Superiority.
Learn the proven, step-by-step process for raising funds and friends cost effectively, year after year.

Handbook Number 11
Attract New Donors and Members with a Magnetic Direct Mail Donor Acquisition Package.
Discover over 75 tips, insider secrets and proven tactics by analyzing a superb donor acquisition package from a national charity.

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Presenter: Tom Ahern.
Discover the unsuspected flaws that kill most donor newsletters before they’re even mailed. Presented by the author of The Mercifully Brief, Real World Guide to Raising More Money With Newsletters Than You Ever Thought Possible.

Increase Average Fundraising Gift By Segmenting Your Donor List.

Alan Sharpe — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 15:56:01 +0000

How many of your current donors would give you a larger gift if you only knew how to ask them? Quite a few, quite likely. The secret to upgrading your supporters to larger levels of giving is to discover what they want and then to give it to them. Here’s one way to do it.

Let’s say you launch a direct mail fundraising letter campaign to raise funds for people in India who have been displaced by an earthquake. After most of your donations are in, tally the results and flag everyone in your database who gave to this appeal.

Now the next time you mail an appeal letter, send a special letter asking these same donors to consider the following:

giving another gift at the same level to help the same people in India
giving another gift to help earthquake victims in Honduras
giving to the victims in India and to the ones in Honduras
joining your monthly giving program for India
joining your monthly giving program for earthquake relief

You could include all of these options on the donor reply card (not recommended; there are too many), or you could simply choose one of these options and make that your only ask in the letter. Once your donations are in, you would do some analysis of the results. Your data from this second campaign would help you identify:

donors who are interested in earthquake relief
donors who are interested in India
donors who support emergency appeals in general

What you are doing with this exercise is segmenting your house mailing list into groups of donors who share interests. This knowledge is valuable to your organization because it helps you to customize your appeals to donors based on what they like to support.

Another advantage of segmenting your database is that it helps you increase revenues. Donors who are asked to support only those projects or initiatives that interest them are likely to give you a larger gift than donors who are asked to support your general fund.

You can slice and dice your database as many ways as you want. Using the above example, you could flag all donors who support your work in India, further segment this group into those who support your earthquake relief work in India, and further segment this group into donors who support your medical aid to victims of earthquakes in India.

As long as you have a robust donor tracking software system, competent staff, and time to do this kind of segmenting, you will be in a good position to increase the number and dollar amount of the donations you receive from donors in your house list.

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Learn the proven, step-by-step process for raising funds and friends cost effectively, year after year.

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How to Increase the Size of Donor Gifts with Fundraising Letters.

Alan Sharpe — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 15:10:34 +0000

Do you want your donors to give more, do you want them to give more often, or do you want more of your donors to give?If your answer is “all of the above,” here are some tested ways to increase the size of donor gifts using fundraising letters.

Ask for specific amounts
Stating the sizes of gifts that donors can make helps to overcome their inertia and prevents them from having to think up a gift amount (which may be too small) on their own.

Increase the size of your smallest suggested donation
If you feature an ask string in your reply device, increase the size of the smallest suggested gift, like this.

Before:
□ $20 □ $45 □ $100 □ Other $______________

After:
□ $25 □ $45 □ $100 □ Other $______________

This simple adjustment will likely translate into larger average gifts, although your response rate may drop slightly.

Circle the desired donation
On the reply device that donors mail back with their gift, circle the second and higher amount. Beneath your circle, handwrite: “Your gift of this amount will make a big difference.”

Ask based on each donor’s giving history
In the above example, you see that if you ask donors to give a donation of $20, $45 or $100, they are likely to make a donation of $20, $45 or $100. But what about your donors who are capable of giving at higher levels? What about your donors who sent you larger gifts than the ones suggested on your reply device?

One way to increase the size of average donations is to ask each donor to give a gift of the same size as their last gift. If Samantha’s last gift was $150, ask for $150 this time. If Brad recently mailed you a gift of $75 (which is an amount higher than $45 but lower than $100 on your ask string), ask Brad for a gift of $75 in your next appeal letter.

Customized asks like this are costly in time (database manipulation) and production (customized printing for each reply device or letter), but the results can be spectacular. Again, this is worth testing.

Mail special appeals to major donors
Donors or member who send you gifts of £1,000 or more should never be told: “Your gift of £25, £50 or even £100—whatever you can manage—will be much appreciated right now.” In the same way that you should never ask a £100 donor for £1,000, you should never ask a £1,000 donor for £100. Asking major donors for major gift amounts will increase the size of average individual donations.

Upgrade donors each year to cover inflation
Another way to increase the size of donations is to invite your donors, perhaps once a year, to increase their gift amount by a given percentage to cover the cost of inflation. Example: “If you can manage to increase your gift by 4% this year, from $50 to $52, that will help us keep pace with the cost of inflation.”

Reduce your expenses
This step will not increase your gross revenue but it will increase your net revenue. Reducing your costs for design, printing, lettershop, postage and other tasks—even if only by a few cents per package—can boost your net revenue without much extra effort. Just make sure the quality of your appeal letters and packages does not decline.

You might be interested in…

Handbook Number 13
How to Increase the Size and Frequency of Donor Gifts with Fundraising Letters.
Tested, proven tactics for raising more money from your current direct mail donors (with their cheerful participation).

Handbook Number 9
31 Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Ask Anyone for a Donation with a Fundraising Letter.
Increase your chances of success by answering the vital questions that leading fundraisers ask themselves before writing a single word.

Over 130 Sample Fundraising Letters.
International, national and local charities share examples of their direct mail fundraising expertise.