January 2009

1. Strengthen your case for giving

By Mal Warwick

This article is excerpted from Mal’s forthcoming book, Fundraising When Money is Tight, which will be released by Jossey-Bass early in 2009. Copyright © 2009 by Mal Warwick.

You’ve been advised that it’s essential you make clear to your donors how deeply the current recession has affected your organization. Your board of directors, your chief executive, your consultants–possibly even all three–are pressing you to talk about the recession in every fundraising letter, at every event, and to every major donor. The idea, of course, is that this will show your donors how much more valuable and important their contributions are during this difficult economic period–and, willy-nilly, they’ll give more. Would that it were so.

At this writing, I can’t cite unequivocal and conclusive evidence that this is the wrong tack to take. However, there is accumulating a body of experience that donors are more likely to be dissuaded from giving rather than induced to give more. Clearly, some donors are predisposed to dig more deeply when times are tough. They’ll probably do so, regardless of what you say about the impact of economic conditions on your organization and its work. Apparently, though, others are too easily reminded that (from their perspective, at least) times are tough for them, too. And, obviously, it’s not a great idea to scare them off.

Instead of taking this simplistic course, then, reconsider why your donors support you in the first place–and reexamine your case for giving in that light. What, after all, do your donors want from you?

• They want to know that you’re doing the most effective job you possibly can with the money they give you.

• They want to know that their gifts are really reaching the people you’re helping, or affecting the issue you’re addressing. (They’re interested in impact, not in paying your salary or your electric bill.)

• They want to know that you value their contributions.

• They want you to report the results of the projects and programs they’ve supported with their gifts.

All this is true, regardless of economic circumstances. However, if you act on the advice I offer in the chapters to come, you’ll be cutting costs and taking other steps to make your operation leaner. You’d be wise to communicate those steps to your donors. Write them about how you’re tightening your belt, increasing efficiency, and monitoring the productivity of your operations more closely. Do not talk about such problems as falling income from corporate and foundation grants and major gifts. Donors don’t really care about how you’re hurting. They care about how well you’re helping your clients or beneficiaries.

However, donor motivation normally runs much deeper than that. It starts with donors’ affinity for your vision, mission, and values.

Vision, mission, and values

You’ve heard it before, no doubt. Individual donors are far more likely to support your organization because of its vision, mission, and values than for any specific reason related to your work itself. If this is the case (and I certainly believe it is), and if your vision, mission, and values are unlikely to change with the seasons (and I certainly believe they shouldn’t), then how can you possibly strengthen your case for giving under difficult economic conditions?

Truth to tell, you can’t–so long as you’ve done the best possible job of crafting a case for giving that relates directly to the core principles and values that animate your organization. Unfortunately, though, for a great many nonprofit organizations, especially smaller ones, little if any thought has gone into what truly motivates people to give and what makes for a powerful case for giving.

So, for starters, what is a case for giving? (I just knew you were going to ask!)

In my view, there are two possible ways to interpret this familiar phrase:

• A case for giving is a copy platform or creative concept that is integrated into all fundraising and marketing materials produced by a nonprofit organization. It’s a statement that positions the organization, describes how its vision takes shape in the real world, and lays out the benefits that a donor may receive for giving to the organization. A case for giving of this sort is generally no longer than a few sentences or a couple of paragraphs–one side of one sheet of paper at the most. It’s not intended for external distribution.

• Alternatively, a case for giving may be a finished document that’s either distributed together with or integrated into a grant proposal to an institutional funder or a major individual donor. A document of this sort may run to many pages and be colorfully, even lavishly illustrated, printed, and packaged. Its sole purpose is to be handed (or, less frequently, mailed) to donors.

• I’ve worked on both types of case for giving. They’re very different, as you can see.

• The elaborate case for giving that a mature nonprofit might develop for a capital campaign or some other major fundraising program will need to include a number of items in detail:

• A statement of purpose that incorporates the vision, mission, and values of the organization

• Either a capsule history of the organization or a statement about the background of and need for the project or campaign

• The budget for the campaign, the project, or the organization as a whole

• A description of the sources of funds you anticipate, providing a context for the Ask and assuring donors that you don’t expect them to be the sole source of money for the project

• A timeline for completion of the work involved

• A specific Ask (or a range of Asks)

• Information about donor benefits and recognition

• Illustrations, including charts, graphs, architectural drawings, and photographs, as necessary

Each of these items might require a page or more. It’s not unusual for the case for giving for a major campaign to run to 20 pages or more. Major individual and institutional donors are used to receiving pitches in this form. Apparently, the stiff competition requires it.

But don’t get the idea that writing the other, shorter case for giving is any easier. In fact, doing a top-notch job on any case for giving requires exploring donor motivation in some depth.

Why donors give (or don’t give)

The motivation to give may be triggered by one or a combination of three components:

The emotional–recognizing that not just impulse gifts but thoughtful, continuing support for a cause or institution may rest in large part on an emotional connection

The rational–because few donors operate entirely in an emotional mode but must be convinced that a cause is credible and worthy of support on the basis of its vision, leadership, track record, or other factors

The spiritual–reflecting the fact that much of philanthropy is rooted in spiritual values and beliefs, sometimes stemming from affiliations with organized religious bodies, sometimes more closely associated with deep-seated psychological impulses of the sort that psychologist Abraham Maslow categorized as “self-actualization”

Other than fundraisers for churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, and other religious organizations, most people in the field tend to overlook the spiritual dimension of donor motivation. Don’t make that mistake. Many of your donors are likely to be supporting your work at least in part because you’re helping to make the world a better place–by saving the world or preserving the planet, by restoring human dignity, by suppressing violence or redressing injustice–and it’s wise to keep reminding them of that broader contribution you’re making. Others of your donors are no doubt motivated by overt religious beliefs, since research consistently shows that people who attend religious services regularly tend to be far more philanthropic than the average.

• In a general sense, your case for giving must address three needs:

• To describe how you will fulfill your mission and advance your vision if you receive the necessary funds

• To make clear how the gifts you receive will help you achieve the specific objectives of your campaign

• To emphasize in what ways, both intangible and tangible, the donor will benefit from contributing to your cause or campaign

Viewed from a different perspective, your challenge in crafting a case for giving is to establish a link between your donors and your clients or beneficiaries or the issue you address. It’s that connection you need to emphasize, not the connection between the donor and your organization itself.

Let’s try a few examples to make all this clearer.

Case for giving for a food pantry

Your support for The Pantry will help bring closer the day when no one in our community need go to bed hungry at night. Your contributions of food and cash will demonstrate your commitment to sharing with those less fortunate than you and to building the caring community you want to live in.

Case for giving for an environmental advocacy organization

Save the Earth can win the case against global warming at all levels of government and throughout the business sector only with your active participation and generous support. In both ways, you help advance the media campaign and lobbying efforts that are central to our mission. Ultimately, your unwavering commitment to leave our children and grandchildren a healthy, verdant planet and a sustainable economy will be the key to the survival of our way of life.

Case for giving for a community orchestra

As a classical music lover, you know that the arts represent the finest expression of our civilization. Through your generous support for The Symphony, you help keep alive a centuries-old tradition of artistic excellence while making it possible for the young people of our community to express their innermost feelings and gain access to their talents through the Symphony’s Music in the Schools program.

In practice, each of these cases might well be a little longer and more specific than I’ve indicated. Longer or shorter, though, the case for giving needs to connect with donors in every dimension of motivation: emotional, logical, and spiritual. And that language needs to be worked into every appeal and every communication with donors.

I recognize that many nonprofit organizations simply reprint their mission statements in newsletters and sometimes on appeals as well. I strongly believe that a case for giving along the lines I’ve described above will do a much more effective job of motivating donors.

To ask or not to ask

Just as some folks in the nonprofit sector believe (wrongly, in my opinion) that it’s a good idea to emphasize how tough things are when approaching donors, others believe it’s important either to postpone asking for money or, for an indeterminate period, to stop altogether.

This is quite possibly the biggest fundraising mistake you could possibly make.

A decision to put off asking for money comes from the same impulse that makes many nonprofit folks apologize for asking. Never forget that a request for funds for your cause is an opportunity for your donors to validate their cherished values and beliefs. Ask! Your donors are grown-ups (presumably). If they can’t give at this time, you’ll find it out soon enough. Chances are, though, many of them will be more offended if you don’t ask than if you do.

Your donors want to support you. Don’t get in the way.

2. Where's Mal

January 29-30, 2009 — Washington DC
DMA Nonprofit Federation
2009 Washington Nonprofit Conference
Site: Renaissance Hotel

April 22-23, 2009 — Washington DC
Global Philanthropy Forum
Site: Mayflower Hotel

April 23-26, 2009 — Itasca IL
Social Venture Network Spring Gathering
Site: Eaglewood Resort

May 12-14, 2009 — Online
IFC Online eConference

June 15-17, 2009 — Naples FL
2009 DMA Nonprofit Leadership Summit
Site: Naples Grande Hotel

June 24-27, 2009 — Bangalore, India
International Workshop on Resource Mobilisation
Site: InfoSys Campus

July 21-23, 2009 — Washington DC
2009 Bridge to Integrated Fundraising Conference
Site: Gaylord Hotel, Resort and Conference Center, National Harbor MD

Please join Mal and hundreds of other fundraisers specializing in direct response at the 2009 Annual Washington Nonprofit Conference organized by the Direct Marketing Association Nonprofit Federation. It's one of the year's best opportunities to gain insight into current trends and network with your peers.

3. Ask friends to “get the word out”

By Tom Gaffny

In my year-long study of the online practices of 144 nonprofit organizations, I learned about 12 ways that charities are using the online medium to bring donors closer to the cause . . . again and again. They’re thus making their organizations more relevant, more provocative, more stimulating, and more engaging.

Here, once again, are those 12 techniques:

1. Be relevant–be local

2. Highlight the video

3. Engage constituents

4. Leverage techniques that work in the mail

5. Send information in bite-size chunks

6. Work at channel integration

7. Personalize your organization

8. Be visual–be provocative

9. Say “thank you” in different ways

10. Ask friends to “get the word out”

11. Be timely–be there

12. Highlight your partners

In my previous columns, I addressed the first nine of these 12 approaches. This month I’ll cover the tenth.

Ask friends to “get the word out”

In direct mail fundraising programs, we make use of “friend-get-a-friend” appeals from time to time. When executed well, these appeals can bring in significant numbers of new prospects or even donors. It’s almost like receiving free money (although the mailings aren’t without cost!).

On the Internet, this occasional practice can–and should–become a habit.

There are three principal ways you can offer your supporters the opportunity to pass along information, or even sometimes appeals, to their family, friends, neighbors, or co-workers:

• In every issue of your online newsletter, include a standard item that invites readers to forward the information to others.

• Include a “forward to a friend” feature in every e-mail appeal.

• Offer your supporters a banner, “widget,” or “charity badge” they can post on their Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, or other social networking site or on their blogs.

Here, for example, I’ve highlighted the relevant copy in an e-mail from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals ( New York NY):

Of course, if you want to promote your organization yourself, you can include a link to your Web site in your signature block below every e-mail communication you send, whether in quantity to supporters or individually.

Don’t miss the opportunity to make use of these low-cost ways to get your message out to a wider audience!

Tom Gaffny can be contacted at Tom Gaffny Consulting, 71 Cliff Road, Wellesley MA 02481, phone (781) 685-6825, fax (781) 685-0817, e-mail tomgaffny@hotmail.com.

4. Ask Mal

Since 1994, when the Mal Warwick Associates Web site went online, Editor Mal Warwick has answered fundraising questions posed by visitors to the site. Hundreds of those Q&As are available here. In this issue, we’re spotlighting several short Q&As from the most recent month.

Question: Our museum is sending out our annual Holiday appeal letter to membership. Some suggest that a return envelope is a waste. What is your recommendation? The mailing includes a letter, a reply device, and return envelope or no return envelope.

Mal answers: If you don’t include a return envelope, you’ll be making a huge mistake. It’s an essential part of a direct mail appeal package. That’s not to say it needs to be a Business Reply Envelope, which involves complex postal regulations and fees. In fact, a simple, pre-addressed envelope — one that’s big enough to accommodate the reply device without folding — will do the trick.

Question: I heard that someone mailed a can (like a soup can) in the mail, with an address label affixed to the can. And a letter with small premium inside. Does a "can" mailing work? And if so, for what purpose?

Mal answers: You’re asking about a technique that’s known generically as “dimensional marketing.” Does it work? Like gangbusters–if you’re prepared either to (a) limit a mailing to a tiny number of top prospects or (b) pay a fortune to a lettershop to process the whole thing by hand.

Dimensional marketing is typically used in high-end lead generation efforts. A letter to a CEO might be sidetracked by an assistant into the circular file, but a box or some other object that appears to be of substance might get forwarded. Mailings of this sort, when prepared carefully and (most important of all) targeted correctly, can bring enormously high rates of response. I’ve heard of numbers upwards of 50%.

For fundraising, though? I’m not so sure. It’s certainly worth a test, though!

Question: How do you emphasize benefits to the donor when you don’t really have anything tangible to give? In a university setting like ours, we don’t have the budget to offer free gifts, and the powers that be don’t like to offer anything that detracts from the tax-deductibility of a donor’s gift.

Mal answers: To most donors, the biggest benefits are the intangible ones, not the tangible ones. I’m not sure I emphasize the point enough in my writing, as I do in my workshops. Consider the real reasons why alumni (and others) support the university: to give back something to society, to help young people get the same opportunities they had, to be part of something bigger than themselves — and so on. And it may actually be an advantage for you not to have the budget for tschotchkes. In fact, you might try turning that perceived weakness into a strength, making it a central copy point. (“No address labels, no free stuff at all. Just an opportunity to . . .”) Try it!

5. The value of plain and good

By Peter Schoewe

There’s a great exercise you should do at least once a year to improve your direct response fundraising program. Dive into your sample file and gather up a year’s worth of your marketing efforts. Then pin them up–all in a row–on a wall in a conference room or any other large room where you have the space to spread out and walk around.

Invite your co-workers to come in and leave PostIt notes on the wall with their thoughts. (Before you take this step, make sure you have a sufficiently thick skin and remember that many people don’t understand direct marketing best practices.) But most important, set aside time for yourself to walk around the room, reading each of the messages. Finally, step back, stand quietly for a minute, and cast your eyes around the room to measure your overall impression.

When you review a year’s worth of efforts in this way, taking the time to read each e-mail, appeal mailing, newsletter, and magazine in conjunction, you can often spot discontinuities and inconsistencies in your messages that you would otherwise miss in the daily grind of getting projects out the door.

And by taking no pity on yourself, you can identify where you could have done better. You might see how you could have integrated an e-mail message with a challenge mail appeal . . . or how you could have placed a brief notice in your newsletter following up on the success of a recent campaign . . . or how, sometimes (I hope not too often), you’ve sent out a piece of mail that would require a private detective to determine it was from your organization.

But there’s a danger to this type of comprehensive creative review you should be sure to avoid. Someone may write it on a PostIt note–or maybe you’ll even think it yourself–that everything looks too plain and boring.

I see many fundraising efforts–especially from smaller organizations–that have fallen victim to this “It can’t look boring” mentality. Instead, the pieces are overdesigned–with busy graphics, multitudes of images, and teasers on the outer envelope that do anything but tease.

In most every case where I’ve tested a colorful, heavily designed package against a simple letter in a plain envelope, the simple package wins. I believe this is because flashy design violates a number of direct response fundraising principles. A well-designed direct response fundraising effort should contain a combination of these elements:

• A response vehicle that draws attention to itself and clearly indicates to the donor how to send a gift

• Compelling, emotional copy that asks multiple times for specific contribution amounts

• Other elements designed strictly to involve the donor in the offer and the story you have to tell

The more complicated and crowded the design, the more difficult it can be for the donor to figure out how to respond. Copy that’s hidden among pictures or reversed out against a busy background will not get read. And informational brochures–no matter how compelling the images or how glossy the paper–distract the donor from the emotional and fulfilling decision to send a gift.

So when you measure your efforts in an overall creative review, don’t judge them based on whether they’re plain and boring. Judge them from the value they can create if they’re plain and good.

Peter Schoewe is Senior Consultant, Mal Warwick Associates, 2550 Ninth Street, Suite 103, Berkeley CA 94710-2516, phone (510) 843-8888, fax (510) 843-0142, Web www.malwarwick.com, e-mail peter@malwarwick.com.

6. Year-end the end-all?

How important is year-end giving to a charity’s bottom line? That’s a question recently posed to the over 5,300 nonprofits that read the Web site of Charity Navigator. Of the 741 respondents, the median percentage of total annual gifts donated at year-end was 29%. At the same time, a whopping 84% of those responding said they were prepared for a decrease in year-end giving in 2008–with a median expected decline of 15% from 2007.

7. It’s all about them

By Managing Editor Deborah Block and Paul Karps

One of the most important rules in writing a compelling direct mail letter is this: It’s not about the organization. Rather, it’s about the person who’s reading about the organization.

So successful letters acknowledge the recipient–donor or prospect–early and often. The very best way to do this is to repeat, over and over, one magic word . . . you.

The National Partnership for Women & Families (Washington DC) clearly understands this basic principle. A four-page acquisition letter sent by the group starts off with a Johnson Box highlighting three ways “YOU KNOW” about the difficulties women continue to face.

The lead carries on the message about how astute the prospect is on women’s issues–thereby establishing an instant affinity with the reader. The letter begins, “I chose to write you because I think you get it.

“Unlike a lot of people in our country who think we’ve come ‘far enough’ for women’s equality, you know better.

“When others say that sexism and discrimination are things of the past . . . or scoff at us for calling attention to the ways the deck is stacked against women in our society . . . you beg to differ.”

Talk about stroking the prospect and making her feel she’s someone who really understands the issues!

We also like this next line, which stresses an inherent relationship between the organization and the reader: “That’s why you need to get to know the National Partnership for Women & Families today.”

There are other ways in which the copy makes a connection with the prospect. On page two, for instance, the signer declares that “I’m sure you’ve witnessed it with your own eyes.” On page three, she tells the reader (presumably a woman), “Your reproductive rights are taking hits from every direction possible.” And later, “You’re probably as ashamed as I am that in the U.S., the richest nation on the planet, an astounding 17 million women are uninsured.”

Then–to emphasize the personal bond between the organization, signer, and recipient–the group’s President signs the letter in the familiar “Debra.” A bit unusual for an acquisition. But, in this case, it’s highly effective . . . and appropriate!

To see this entire package, click here.

Copywriters Deborah Block and Paul Karps are partners in BK Kreative, 1010 Varsity Court, Mountain View CA 94040, phone (650) 962-1499, e-mail bkkreative@aol.com.