At the end of the day, personalization in the donor’s mind really means outstanding customer service. In the nonprofit world we call this stewardship or perhaps donor relations — but customer service, personalization, and stewardship are beginning to blend together into the basic concept of providing the best possible donor experience possible. Organizations realize...
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Direct Mail
Better Engage Donors, Strengthen Relationships, and Raise More Money – Part 2
Better Engage Donors, Strengthen Relationships, and Raise More Money – Part 1
Three donor-building benefits of true personalized communications Ah, personalization! The direct response fundraising tactic that warms every donor’s heart, boosts response, and makes every appeal seem to the donor as though you are their best friend. Right? Perhaps — but it’s not so simple. In this day and age,personalization must strive to be just...
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What’s Your Story?
Have you ever wondered what you could say to change someone’s mind or convince them to do something they should but don’t want to? If you said yes to those questions you probably have dealt with a teenager in your life. If you haven’t, just wait a few years. All kidding aside. What is...
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“You Think We Should Mail More?”
“Are you nuts? People hate mail.” That’s the response I often get when I suggest an organization communicate more frequently with their donors. This is at a time when many organizations are looking for ways to cut down on their mail frequency to donors and prospects. So why do I suggest that you consider...
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You Don’t Have to Lie to Raise Money
Lying in fundraising can certainly be unintentional, or maybe to put it in more generous terms unconscious. Here are a few of the lies we often hear: Sometimes organizations: Overstate the impact of their organization Tell their donors that they can’t do their work without them Create an emergency in order to raise more...
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“Can you help me acquire younger donors?”
As fundraising counsel, that’s a question we get all the time. And, I suppose, the answer depends on how you define donors. Now before you accuse me of being like a certain unnamed politician playing games with semantics let me explain. I suspect that when people talk about getting younger donors they are picturing...
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Study, Peruse, Pinch, Adapt…And Prosper
I’m a writer and I love it. For me there’s absolutely no better way to spend my working hours than to work with words, arrange them just so on a page to capture and sustain a reader’s interest…motivate that reader to take action (whatever action my client wants that reader to take) …then...
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I love direct response
I love direct response. I admit it. I’m a response junkie that needs my regular fix of direct response marketing. It doesn’t matter if it’s from the many catalogs in my mailbox each day to the hundreds of emails I receive touting everything from ministry needs to cheese (not to mention bow ties!). Every...
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There are rules in fundraising, part 3
Rule #3 Neither you nor I get to make the rules An extremely frustrating fact is neither you nor I get to make the rules. They just exist! Hard Knocks U is the most common school for learning them. Indiana University is the only place I’m aware of that offers a formal accredited...
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There are rules in fundraising, part 2
Rule #2 Not Everybody Knows All the Rules…including old guys like me. When I first began raising funds, what seems like 200 years ago, I did well to find my way to my desk or the copy machine. We didn’t have computers or e-mail yet, there was nothing like FedEx, or even fax...
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