queer ideas

Fundraising advice from Snoopy

Anyone who grew up reading Peanuts, will probably remember the strips where Snoopy is sitting on top of his kennel, about to start writing his first novel.

He rarely got beyond the first paragraph, which always seemed to start with the sentence, "It was a dark and stormy night."

His literary frustrations sum up a very important truth – good writing (particularly good fundraising writing) is very hard work.

As a result of his ongoing struggle with his typewriter, Snoopy became adopted by writers throughout the world as a kindred spirit in their endeavours to fill a pile of blank pages with a great story.

Following Charles Schulz's death in 2000, a group of them (including Ray Bradbury, Danielle Steel, Elmore Leonard and William F. Buckley, Jr.) put together a tribute to the cartoonist in the form of a guide for the struggling writer – Snoopy's Guide to the Writing Life.

Though it's aimed at the aspiring novelist, it's great reading for fundraisers too. It demonstrates that to be successful, a writer has to understand his audience and provide them with a story that they will want to read.

Another of the contributing authors, Clive Cussler, summed it up very well when he said....

"Don't use desperately boring descriptions to elaborate on something technical or dole out heavy explanation for nothing detail. The reader will ignore it and be bored."

It's an incredibly important piece of advice for fundraisers.

Using technical language and industry jargon or focusing on the charity's policies and how it works will turn off all but the most dedicated supporters. As a result, income will be lost.

Tom Ahern put it rather well when he described a fundraising appeal as "nothing but a love letter to the prospect".

And as Snoopy demonstrates, even in a love story, those unneccessary details make for uncomfortable reading (no matter that they are factually correct).

 

Are you a writer or communicator?

Bill Bernbach was one of the original Mad Men. The founder of DDB, he created some of the most famous lines in advertising.

Bill appreciated that great ads came from an understanding of human motivations. And, in that respect, he didn't necessarily think that facts and figures were particularly important. As he explained when asked about the qualities that make a great communicator...

“The writer is concerned with what he puts into his writing.

The communicator is concerned not just with what he puts into a piece of writing, but with what the reader gets out of it.

He therefore becomes a student of how people read and how they listen. He learns that most people come away from their reading not with a clear, precise, detailed registration of its contents on their minds but rather with a vague, misty idea that is formed as much by the pace, proportions and music of the writing as by the literal words themselves.

And he learns that the reader reads with his ego, his emotions, his compulsions, his prejudices, his urges and his aspirations. And that he plots with his brain to rationalise the facts until they become the tools of his desire.”

And that's one of the problems of working with strict brand guidelines that direct what must be included in appeal letters - they tend to miss the point.

Great fundraising copy is primarily about the reader. It's an offer – not just an ask – an offer to meet a donor's needs through supporting the work of a charity.

And, as Bill explains in the video, that rarely comes from the intellect. If you want to persuade someone to act you do it through their passions.

How to judge a fundraising letter

One of the many great things on SOFII is Jerry Huntsinger's series of fundraising tutorials.

Jerry started writing fundraising letters in 1962 and over the years has probably written more of them than most people you could think of.

Every single one his tutorials can improve your fundraising, but number 30, might be particularly useful if you work for an organisation that struggles with the approval process, where deadlines slip and costs mount as growing numbers of your colleagues tweak, adjust and re-write copy in an effort to 'improve' your appeals.

Jerry has eight suggestions on how you can improve the process. You can read the complete version on SOFII, but here's a synopsis...

Give yourself some positive reinforcement

Remember, your donors actually like you and value your work. Supporting you makes them feel good. Why deny them that feeling?

Get your mind off the complaint letter that you received this morning

If you are angry when you read a letter, you are going to be on the defensive. The result is that you'll overlook what it should be doing in order to raise most money.

Don't try to edit the letter so it 'sounds like you'

If you write business letters and use jargon you'll come over as 'cold and sterile'. Donors want you to be warm, caring and positive. Let your writer use that style of language.

Trust your writer's technical expertise

If your writer uses short paragraphs, starts sentences with And or But, uses non-technical language and adds human anecdotes you should relax. They know how to raise money, so trust them.

Make sure your writer opens the letter with a strong beginning

The opening of the letter should be dramatic, emotional or personal. If you feel the opening could be stronger, don't comment any more. Send it back. A small change in an opening can have a huge impact on the entire flow of the piece.

Don't get hung up on the length of the letter

Some should be short, some should be long. Though people who really care about your work can't seem to get enough information (as long as it is interesting, accessible and relevant) sometimes a short letter can do particularly well. I've seen some very short reactivation letters that have achieved great results.

Be sure the letter asks for a specific donation amount

What you ask for will vary according to the donor's previous gifts and the work that you feature, but unless you tell the donor what you want, you leave them guessing and those guesses can often be well below what they can afford.

Don't pass the letter around the office for further approval, unless it is absolutely necessary

Keep the number of people who approve the letter to a minimum. And make sure that the people who do approve it are trained in the basics of editing a fundraising letter.

All others should only be allowed to change inaccuracies.

I'd add a few additional tips to Jerry's...

The first time you read it, hold the letter and nothing else

If you start making comments immediately, you are likely to miss the overall impact of the piece and might find yourself forcing 'important' matters into the opening parts of the letter when they are covered off later - this can really destroy the flow. So put down the pen and concentrate on the emotional impact of what you are reading.

Does the letter concentrate on telling the donor what they have done  – not what your charity is doing?

You should say you or your far more often than you say we.

Read the letter in a minimum of 16 point

I was given this advice years ago by a newspaper proof-reader. It really does help you spot typos, mistakes and poor phrasing.

More great ideas from before any of us were born

I picked up a copy of My Life in Advertising & Scientific Advertising a short while ago.

It was written in the 1920s by Claude Hopkins. Claude was an ad man who wasn't too shabby at his craft. Back in 1907 he was earning $185,000 a year.

The book, based on analysis of thousands of advertising campaigns, contains his thoughts on what makes a great ad.

I couldn't put it down.

As I turned the pages I soon came to realise that any fundraiser who decided to apply Claude's principles to appeals would have a success on their hands. Take this example on producing a mail order ad:

"Mail order advertising is a profitable study. Note it's economy of space. It is nearly always set in small type. That is because thousands of tests have proved larger type wasteful. All pictures have a selling value. None are used for decoration. 

Take a profitable mail-order ad and set it in twice the space. Use larger type, more decorations or a border. You will get an ad which looks more attractive, but you will double the cost of replies and sales. 

This fact should be accepted, for this economy principle, after thousands of tests on hundreds of lines, has become practically universal. And it proves that waste of space is folly in any line of advertising. That includes large type, or borders, or pictures that don't help to sell. All ads would be set like good mail-order ads if the same rigid tests were applied. 

That is the hardest fact for an ad writer to learn or an advertiser to comprehend. The natural instinct is to make the ad attractive. One must remember, however, ads are not written to amuse, but to sell. And to sell at the lowest cost possible."

And this example on headlines:

"An automobile ad might refer in the headline to a good universal joint. It might fall flat, because so few buyers think of universal joints. The same ad with a headline, "The Sportiest of Sport Bodies," might out pull the other by fifty to one.

This is enough to suggest the importance of headlines. Anyone who keys ads (records response data) will be amazed at the difference. The appeals we like best will rarely prove best, because we do not know enough people to average up their desires. So we learn on each line by experiment.

But back of all lie fixed principles. You are presenting an ad to millions. Among them is a percentage, small or large, whom you hope to interest. Go after that percentage and try to strike a chord that responds. If you are advertising corsets, men and children don't interest you. If you are advertising cigars, you have no use for non-smokers...

...Don't think that those millions will read your ads to find out if your product interests. They will decide by a glance–by your headline or your pictures. Address the people you seek, and them only."

Evolution is a powerful force, but from what I've read in Claude's book, people haven't changed much at all over the last hundred years.

Add it to your Christmas list.

How does your charity compare to a serial killer?

If you find yourself thinking that your charity has a tough job raising funds because you can't demonstrate the level of need that can be offered by children's and cancer charities, you need to watch this video.

It's from a 90s TV show called TV Nation created by Michael Moore and shows the results of a unique direct mail test where packs were developed and mailed out for three very unusual causes...

Friends of Charles Keating

Keating was convicted of fraud after a number of his investment companies went bust leaving thousands of investors holding worthless bonds.

Friends of Jeffrey Dahmer

Dahmer was a serial killer who murdered 17 men.

Friends of Roy Sekoff

Roy Sekoff is actually presenting the video. When this piece was filmed, he worked as a realtively well paid writer and TV producer. He's probably better known now for being the founding editor of The Huffington Post.

The piece isn't supposed to be serious.  But what's most interesting is that the direct mail company they employed really did their best to generate a response. They obviously had to avoid the negative aspects of each particular cause so they focused on the donors and built the appeals around their interests instead.

The packs were written by Marty Gallenter who describes his creative approach as...

"a sort of an intellectual exercise... what approach could be used to raise money for genuine villains? I approached Dahmer with focusing on the traditional (knee-jerk?) liberal reaction of a threat to civil liberties. Of course, I actually find this posture to be credible. With Keating I decided to appeal to the type of personality who was worshiped in the eighties... free enterprise, money making, greed-is-good types."

And people responded. Keating's appeal got a response rate of just under 2% with an average gift of $68, Dahmer generated almost 1.5% with an average gift of $60 and Sekoff didn't do very well at all.

It just shows what can be achieved when you are forced to focus on the needs of the donor rather than rattle on about why your charity is so great.

After you've watched the video take a look at the actual letters here. They are great examples of what really works in direct mail.

The third great rule of copywriting

In On The Art of Writing Copy, Herschell Gordon Lewis shares his four great laws of copywriting.

You can read them all here. But if you employ creatives to develop your fundraising materials, you really need to pay attention to number three. That's the one that can get severely hammered in the briefing and comments stage of creative development.

It's an equation, where E = emphasis...

It states quite neatly that when you emphasise everything, you emphasise nothing.

If you adhere to the school of thought that believes you have to get as much information into your copy as possible in the hope that every donor will find something that interests them, you're missing the point.

Your copy should be isolating the key reason for support. Anything less tells the donor you don't really know who they are, why they support you or what they think is important.

It's a little like saying, "What interests you is in here somewhere. I'm not sure what it is, so fish for it."

Not too many donors respond well to that sort of treatment.

You really should write to your grandmother more often

One of the first tasks that I give to trainee copywriters is to write an appeal letter to their grandmother.

Not people like their grandmother. They write the letter to their grandmother – by name.

It doesn't matter if the appeal is for overseas aid, medical research, animal protection or anything else. What the writer needs to do is build an emotional connection with the reader.

And to really understand what that means, you have to write real letters to real people.

To my my mind, too many appeals allow brand guidelines, broad demographic target audiences and lists of statistics get in the way of the emotional link necessary for great fundraising.  As a result, we end up with communications that are little more than fact based justifications of a charity's existence.

When people talk from the heart, these elements are jettisoned. That's why I prefer, when writing an appeal, to speak to people with real experience of the issue in question. What can be gleaned from these interviews is far more important than anything I find in reams of project reports.

An example of this type of apeal comes from one of my favourite books on fundraising. Asking Properly, written by George Smith, is required reading for anyone who works or wants to work in our industry - you can get a copy from Amazon or, even better, straight from the publishers, The White Lion Press.

On page 92, George includes a brief excerpt from an appeal written in 1987 for Oxfam. To me, this short piece gets over values such as honesty, care, the need for justice and importance of child rights far better than any brand guidelines.

Dear <supporter>

Doesn't it upset you to walk among people who have lost everything? Doesn't it distress you to see small children dying in their mothers' arms?

I am often asked these questions when I return from a disaster zone. Quite frankly, it does and it doesn't...

It doesn't because I'm busy when I'm visiting the scene of a disaster. I don't feel the helplessness you feel in front of your TV. Just the opposite, I have the privilege of being able to do something to ease the suffering.

But of course it hurts when someone you've got to know dies.

In the civil war in Uganda I was visiting camps for people fleeing the fighting. We picked up a very sick mother and her starving children to take them to hospital in Kampala. In the crowded jeep a little boy of five or six sat on my lap. We smiled at each other as the jeep bounced along the rough dirt roads. He died before we reached hospital.

That evening I just dissolved into tears. I have a child about the same age.

That's the sort of organisation and, perhaps more importantly, person I'd trust with a donation.

Don't be boring

Back in the 80's when Errol Morris was interviewed about his recently released film, The Thin Blue Line, it seems he waffled a little and didn't get some key points over to the audience.

Studio head, Harvey Weinstein heard the interview and wasn't that pleased. He decided to give the director a few tips. As you'll read he didn't beat about the bush.

The key instructions don't just relate to being interviewed about a film, but could also make your next appeal more effective.

• Focus on a simple proposition.
  
• Avoid legalese.
  
• Concentrate on giving the reader an emotional impact.
  

Update: You might like to make your own mind up whether Errol Morris was boring or not. You can hear the original interview here. (thanks to @AmandaSanter)

Thanks to Letters of Note and hat tip to @Will_wiggle

Simplify

Hey Whipple, Squeeze this! is one of my favourite books on advertising.

Whether you work for an agency or employ one you should read it. It will point out what you are doing wrong and show you how you can do things better.

It was written by Luke Sullivan, a copywriter with over 30 years experience working for some of the biggest agencies in the US.

It will make you laugh and cringe, particularly when he shares some painful examples of the stupid people he's had to work with (watch out for Mr. Froggy).

He doesn't talk much about charity advertising, but so much of what he says can be used to develop great fundraising materials.

Today on Adland I found a film of Luke presenting his thoughts on simplicity in advertising to a group of students. It runs for over an hour but should be considered required viewing for anyone whose job involves communicating with donors and working with agencies.

Luke Sullivan from Mediastash.tv on Vimeo.

Where do you hide the good stuff?

As I first walk through the doors of a charity, I often find myself having an Indiana Jones type moment.

It's nothing to do with dodging boulders or poison darts. What comes to mind is the closing scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark – the one where the ark is in a packing case being wheeled in to a huge warehouse packed full of thousands of equally non-descript boxes.

I hope that hidden in a draw, filing cabinet, on a computer or even in someone's head is going to be a game changing piece of information. A story, case study or some simple statistics that are the equivalent of the ark. If we can find it, we can generate a huge boost in funds.

Sometimes we find something in a few hours, sometimes it takes a few plane trips, sometimes it's just a long slog through file after file and interview after interview. But once we have that magical chunk of information, we have something that becomes a fantastic asset to an organisation.

The problem is that they aren't much good if they are allowed to exist in isolation.

Take a look at any long running recruitment pack that has been built around a great fundraising asset...

• UNICEF's oral rehydration therapy (ORT) pack 
• The Children's Society's toothbrush pack
• Action for Children's days out pack

All of these use an inspiring idea to pull the donor towards the charity. But what happens next? Where does the great idea that catches the imagination of the donor feature once the relationship has started? Where is it in the second appeal or in the conversion to committed giving?

Usually nowhere.

The idea of a simple pack of salts and sugar saving a child's life is inspiring and engaging. It's so powerful that it got someone to fill in a form and send off a cheque. But the fact is, unless you keep inspiring, you are not going to get anywhere other than on a spiral of attrition.

Which is just what Adrian Sergeant found back in 2000. His research showed that 50% of cash donors give only once to a charity. After five years the number still giving falls to 8%.

So rather than think about creative work one pack at a time, I think we should be borrowing from the world of the web and develop a content strategy for our direct marketing programmes.

It should be designed with one purpose in mind – to give the donor a great brand experience. And it should be measured by increased engagement and income.

There are four key areas that I think we need to consider.

Who is the information for?

This is the easy part of the process. Most of us have a pretty good idea who supports us. What's important is using this information to answer...

What are they interested in?

A donor may well be interested in a particular aspect of your work, but what they tell us over and over again is that they'd like to know how their gifts are being used. If your donors invest financially or emotionally in a project, it's easy to build engagement by telling them how it is getting on.

Much more important is the fact that mailing programmes that offer feedback on ongoing work tend to raise more than those which feature a disconnected series of projects presented as self-contained appeals.

Consistency pays dividends.

How are you going to gather it?

It doesn't matter if you are a small single-centre charity or a global NGO, the only effective route to find your own great fundraising assets is to get up from your desk and go and talk to the people who are at the sharp end - either doing or benefiting.

Bluefrog's Head of Creative, Aline Reed has posted her advice on conducting a great interview (which includes some of her favourite questions) on her blog, Bluefrog Creative.

But you should also think about the best way to get non-fundraisers to flag up good potential projects (so you don't have to open up too many of those crates that I mentioned earlier on). This isn't easy, but one technique that I've seen used effectively is to offer a prize to all people who notify you of inspiring examples of work. It doesn't have to be much, perhaps an extra days holiday, a voucher or a cash bonus for all those that eventually get featured in an appeal. The expense is negligible in comparison to what that idea might generate and is well worth the investment.

When is it going to be used?

This is how you deliver those ideas. Few charities are going to be content talking about the same aspect of their work. It is likely that you'll probably want to feature four or five different examples of work over the course of a year and perhaps offer a taster of many others.

At Bluefrog, we've developed something akin to the soap opera model where we concentrate on three or four tight project specific areas work at anyone time. These may be featured in appeals, feedback pieces and newsletters. As we come to the conclusion of one story, another may well be reaching a climax and another might be starting. I've tried to demonstrate this visually with a set of story lines from a well know British soap,  EastEnders.

But what is most important in implementing this type of engagement is developing a dialogue with donors. When you put a content strategy together, start off by getting out and speaking to your donors face to face and via questionnaires. By asking them what they want, how they want it and when they want it you'll remove all the guess work from your communications.

And that is perhaps the most important step any of us can make to raise more funds.

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