queer ideas

If you don't build what donors want, they aren't going to come

Blackbaud have just released their 2011 Internet and Multi-channel Giving Benchmarking Report.

Based on data from 28 US nonprofit organisations, It takes a long-term look (5 years) on how donors move between online and traditional direct marketing programmes.

It's a US study, but many of the findings can be broadly applied to the situation in the UK.

The report is packed full of interesting stats and graphs that make it worthy of detailed study. It can be downloaded here. But just in case time is tight at the moment, here are my particular highlights...

• Direct mail is still king.
• More donors are being recruited via online routes.
• Online donors tend to be younger, richer and more generous than those acquired through the mail.
• But they also demonstrate lower levels of loyalty.
• Robust DM programmes drive up the retention and long-term value of new donors acquired online.
• Online donors also tend to give less once they move offline.

The report also shows that though online donors are happy to give through the mail, there is not much traffic moving the other way. DM donors like to stick with their mailing packs. I rather like this chart showing movement of online donors since 2007 (you'll find the corresponding one for mail recruits in the report) ...

I have no doubt this is true, but I'd question whether this is a rigid characteristic of offline donors or a simple reflection of the current situation?

Most charities have pretty advanced direct mail programmes and it's relatively cheap and easy to put online donors in a direct mail communications stream and be pleased with the results. Whereas many of those same charities are still finding their feet when it comes to online fundraising - particularly with warm donors. The report sums up the situation rather neatly...

"The Internet is a successful acquisition channel but it has not proven to be an effective one for retention."

In the UK, the major utilities are persuading ever increasing numbers of customers to engage with them online. In 2010, almost 2 million payments to British Gas and 40% of their customer contacts happened via the web.

So why can't charities achieve the same results?

I think they can. But we need to look at the medium in a different way. If you analyse what happens online when a mailing goes out, you'll find an increase in hits and donations. Call me crazy, but I think there's some sort of correlation here (you can read more about this on this previous post).

The trouble is, most websites aren't built to be fundraising vehicles. Instead the homepage can end up being a battleground where departments fight to get 'their' message out – ideally above the fold.

So when a donor gets a mailing pack and thinks it might be easier to give online, a visit to the charity's website can leave them rather confused. In the worst case they may even end up questioning what the charity actually wants - particularly if they are confronted with a campaigning action or policy statement instead of something that supports the appeal. 

And there's little point giving a donor the address of a specific landing page in your mailing pack. Track your statistics and you'll find few actually type in www.insertcharitynamehere.org/christmasappeal. Instead they do what they normally do and find your home page via Google. 

We shouldn't really be surprised about this. If we look at the other multi-purpose communication device used by charities – the newsletter – we find that these aren't very responsive either. But when we repurpose them with a specific goal such as raising funds, they do very well.

It's the same when we build a site with the goal of retaining and upgrading donors rather than just hoping our current website will do the job for us. We find – as if by magic – we retain and upgrade our donors. 

The techniques required to do this aren't rocket science. They are the same rules that we use to create effective direct mail programmes, the most important of which are...

• Show the donor what they have done.
• Make the experience personal.
• Demonstrate need.
• Offer incentives for actions.

For me, this report offers a challenge. It shows that where we fail to engage donors, we also fail to raise funds. If we are to tackle this situation (and improve the retention rates of all supporters) we need to look again at our websites and ask ourselves if they give donors what they want?

Because when it comes to fundraising, this report firmly suggests that they aren't. 

How to supercharge your charity newsletter

When it comes to charity communications, I've long thought magazines and newsletters are a waste of time. In comparison to appeals, they don't bring in much money and research into evaluating their impact points to the same inevitable conclusion – donors say that they quite like receiving them but they rarely get around to anything more than having a quick flick through.

As a result, I’ve often recommended consigning the newsletter to the bin and using the money to provide real feedback to donors – photographs of people being helped accompanied by copies of the reports, drawings, plans or press cuttings that a great project can throw up.

When coupled with a highly personalised letter, you have a communication that doesn’t just offer insight, it can also raise a substantial amount of money too (you can see a rather good award winning example of this approach here).

It’s micro-marketing versus macro-marketing. Real feedback is a one-to-one communication, whereas a magazine is always something that the recipients know is going to everyone on a mailing list.

Real feedback makes a donor feel special. It puts them on the inside track. In tests I’ve seen it generate more money than appeals and when it comes to research, donors rave about it.

To me, it was always an obvious choice. But it was hard to dislodge the magazine or newsletter. Its defenders offered a surprisingly long list of reasons for its retention: it offers a different type of interaction, it educates the donor, it allows the charity to accurately demonstrate its breadth and purpose, it’s a cost-effective means to thank volunteers, corporate partners and activists, it shows why we are ‘different’ and – my personal favourite – it’s an important part of the brand.

All reasons were valid. But so what? If donors aren’t moved to give, what’s the point? If an educated donor with a full and detailed understanding of your organisation and your brand doesn’t put their hand in their pocket and support you, maybe, just maybe, something’s going wrong?

And that became our starting point for looking at charity magazines and newsletters from a different perspective. The commercial variety is obviously extremely popular. Millions are sold every day to people who value the content so much that they are willing to pay for it.

Which left us asking what might charity donors value so much in a magazine or newsletter that they would respond with a donation?

The answer was simple – we’d tell the donors what the charity had done with their gifts.

This is a central component of great direct mail appeals. By talking about the donor as partners and sharing the impact of their financial support, we raise significantly more than if we just rattle on about needing more money.

In addition to this, we’d show that there was continuing need in the areas the donor has already supported.

We’d also personalise the whole package as much as possible.

And rather than assuming that donors would brew up a pot of tea and settle down to spend an evening reading a publication from cover to cover, we’d use good direct marketing techniques to ensure even someone just flicking through the publication would understand the important role they had in the charity.

And perhaps most importantly, we looked to see what we could learn from best practice in the fundraising industry and started looking for case studies on the web. Within a few clicks we had stumbled on Tom Ahern and suddenly started to understand that we might not just be able to raise a little more through reconstructing a charity newsletter. We could actually make much, much more!

If you know Tom, you’ll understand where I’m coming from. If you haven’t, let me explain a little more about him. He’s a great advocate of fundraising newsletter and magazines because he’s seen just how much money they can raise. He’s written a large number of articles and books where he shares his success. And he doesn’t just make claims. He backs up what he says with evidence. And some of the evidence he offers is jaw dropping. He cites the example of the charity newsletter that raises ten times as much income because they changed half a dozen things about their approach. That’s just one example. There are many others.

Reinforced by Tom’s experience – and now with a few of his great ideas to add to our own – we started work on testing to see if a newsletter could be made more profitable. One of our innovative clients, SPANA - a charity that works in some of the poorest countries, improving the lives of working animals and the people who depend on them - decided to give it a go. They had a pretty good publication in SPANA News. As it already generated a healthy return, we nervously put together projections that we would double income.

Once that was accepted, we set about work.

In terms of content, we wanted to feature news rather than a series of general articles about the work and approach of the charity. As a result, we made a decision to feed back on every project the donor had been asked to support in the previous year. We would show them what their gifts had achieved and give tangible examples of how they could support working animals and their owners at each featured project.

This would allow us to show the donor that we saw them as our most important partner. We would demonstrate that without them, the work they valued couldn’t go ahead.

But more importantly, we wanted them to feel fantastic about what they had made possible and understand that the more they gave, the more SPANA could do.

As a result, everything was aimed at giving the donor an emotional buzz. Every story, anecdote and statistic was included to appeal to the reader’s emotions. We know that when it comes to giving, the rational mind doesn’t really have much say in the decision. That’s why from the front cover to the back, the publication was about appealing to the donor’s heart.

It was called Stablemate. A name chosen to define the donor’s relationship with the charity. The front cover thanked them and directed them to the projects they had helped fund.

It was shorter than SPANA News. Rather than replicate the original 28 page publication, we looked at how many pages we needed to get over our key messages and found 16 would be ample. We found ourselves scratching our heads about what we would include if we increased pagination even to 20 and, as a result, decided to stick with the space we needed rather than what was available.

The content was heavily ‘You’ focused. That meant that each article regularly and directly referred to the donor as being responsible for the work that was featured.

Through the use of headlines, sub-heads, pull quotes and feature boxes, the key facts of each story could be absorbed in a few seconds. Pictures were also used to summarise the article.

Take the cover story for instance. This story featured a dramatic series of shots, taken of a donkey collapsing under the weight of an overloaded rubbish cart in Bamako, Mali.

As well as covering insights taken directly from people working at the project, we also took into account what a donor might feel when looking at each page and gave them the opportunity to do something to help. The Bamako story, for example, showed exactly what was required and what it cost to inoculate a donkey against tetanus.

We also made giving easy. The donation form directly related to the examples included in the magazine and we offered donors choice in how their gifts were spent. They could earmark the gift if they chose or allow SPANA to decide how it should be allocated. Offering donors an opportunity to say exactly how their gift is used really engenders trust and a surprisingly small number of people choose to restrict their donations.

Supporting it all was a highly personalised letter, highlighting the stories that we knew donors would be interested in, based on looking at their giving history. And everything was sent out in an envelope rather than a self-mailer or polythene bag.

Once written and designed, we had a nervous few weeks when everything went to print and the finished packs were mailed. Then the results came in.

You’ll remember that our promise was that we would double the income from the previous year’s newsletter. I’m incredibly pleased to say that we beat that target.

The first copy of Stablemate generated income that exceeded that raised by most normal direct mail appeals!

As a result, I’ve started to change my mind about charity magazines and newsletters. I still think that many are waste of time and money. But that’s not because I don’t like them as communication vehicles. It’s because I now appreciate that just in every other walk of life, you have bad examples and good ones. Bad ones don’t engage and don’t raise much money, good ones might just be the best fundraising tool we have available to us today.

Times are tough and things look like they might get tougher. If you have got stiff targets to reach and are wondering what the next great fundraising idea might be, can I suggest that the answer to your problems might be right under your nose, in the pages of your charity newsletter.

This was originally written for Civil Society magazine. You can find the article along with loads of other great fundraising information here.

Why charities should be excited about the iPad

Newsletters and magazines can raise huge amounts of money and be fantastic engagement tools.

They can also be boring justifications of a charity's existence that do little more than turn people off.

The boring kinds are often summed up in research in a similar fashion:

"I don't really look at it, but it's nice to have just in case I do."

It's why I'm so excited about the iPad. I think it could soon be the most exciting way that charities will communicate with supporters.

Take a look at this demo piece from Sports Illustrated. Rather than football players throwing footballs (in a USA style), imagine seeing a new well being dug and – in one click – watching people talk about it's impact.

Rather than seeing shots of baseball, you might see a group of disadvantaged children having their first trip to the seaside or a cancer researcher showing you a cell being disrupted in microscopic scale.

With a few sweeps of the finger, donors will see how their money is being used and be able to share details on a favourite project with friends via Facebook.

With another sweep, they could be sending a campaigning message to the prime minister.

As you'll see, even the ads will be interactive. Upgrades could be a joy for donors.

And, most excitingly, readers can construct the magazine that works for them. Policy statements and items of high internal importance can be included and the donor can promote or relegate them according to their interests.

Take a look and just think what your charity could do.

Fundraising and the Batman effect

When I was a child, I wanted to be Batman.

And by that I mean the Adam West variety, not the johnny-come-lately versions played by Val Kilmer, Michael Keaton and others. I begged my mum and dad for the T-shirt, cape and mask and even a toy Batmobile.

But I was fickle. As time went on, I wanted to be Neil Armstrong, Charlie George, Jacques Cousteau and Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss' character in Jaws).

I didn't actually want to swap places with any of these people. I still wanted to be me. I just wanted to be doing what they did – fighting The Joker, jumping about on the moon, lying down on the pitch at Wembley after scoring the goal that won Arsenal the double and dodging sharks. As a result I built a plastic model of the Saturn 5 rocket, bought my first ever arsenal shirt and got hold of every book about sharks I could afford (years later after the fickleness disappeared, I even paid to attend a great white shark research programme just to get footage like this).

I wasn't alone. Most of my friends also projected their hopes and dreams on to other people - fictional or real. And I can see that it is still part of many people's lives. Take a walk near any football ground on a Saturday afternoon and you'll see great big hulking forty-year-old men with the names of their teenage heroes on the back of their football shirts.

And talk to any number of donors and ask them why they give and you'll often find them talking about the charities they support in terms of work they would like to do themselves.

In a recent piece of research that Bluefrog undertook, one donor summed it up pretty nicely...

“it’s no use if you’re – at my age – digging wells and such. For people on their gap years and the like, it sounds wonderful, but… I suppose this is the next best thing.”

ActionAid UK has actually taken this wish that people have to get closer involved with hands on work and used it to raise money through their first hand experiences programme. And VSO has been built on the back of this desire to help in ways other than through simply giving cash.

It's why I am frustrated by organisations that take a charity-centric approach to reporting back, telling donors what the charity has done (normally through a rather poorly crafted magazine or newsletter) rather than showing the donor what they – as a supporter – have achieved.

It's a very subtle difference. But it's one that can dramatically increase income and reduce attrition. And it's one that donors welcome.

I've posted before about the low open and click through rates that charities experience to their emails.

Recently we've been involved in a project offering up to date, authentic feedback to supporters via the web and I've been astounded by the uptake. We have seen open rates up by over 300% and click through rates up by almost 700% over what charities normally achieve.

There was nothing clever in these emails. Just a simple offer to show how money is actually being used (how we actually showed work to donors is rather interesting - but that's for another blog post).

So rather than simply rattle on to donors about why they should give, take a leaf out of the book of someone like Dinky Toys or Nike and give them a chance to get closer to the work that they value. That way you could get the Batman (or Arsenal or shark) effect working for you.

The donor wears slippers

For many years I was rather critical of charity newsletters and magazines, mainly because of the very low income to cost ratio they always seemed to offer.

If an appeal to 50,000 donors could bring in £500,000, a newsletter to the same bunch would struggle to generate £50,000. 

My response was to shelve newsletters and provide feedback in a format that was far more personal – letters from people whose lives had been changed by donors. These were accompanied by photographs, drawings, local newspaper cuttings and even copies of school certificates. For charities involved in medical research, we prepared reports from the scientists showing what had been achieved.  

We had four goals...

• To show the donor that they were important in creating change.  

• To personally recognise and thank them for what they had done.  

• To show them that their decision to give was a good and sensible one.  

• To demonstrate ongoing need.  

Where we gave people the opportunity to give again, the results were great. Where people were not asked for additional gifts, feedback was brilliant. 

It's an approach that we continue to recommend at Bluefrog. 

But few charities are willing to completely turn their back on newsletters and magazines. And they shouldn't have to. Newsletters can raise huge sums of money – if they have the right focus.

The trouble is, they are often produced by a "communications department" whose goal is to communicate on behalf of a charity – not fundraise. As a result, the magazine or newsletter becomes an information vehicle.

If you are happy with that, carry on as you are. If you want to raise more money, the magazine or newsletter should be given a significant financial target and a serious "once over" by the fundraising department.

By doing this, the focus will change. You'll move from a communication that pushes out information according to an organisational strategy, to one that pulls the donor closer according to their needs. 

A very good example of this approach is is provided by The Camphill Family, who only send out their newsletters to donors who have said they want them. They generate very high levels of income. Just one issue of their newsletter raised over £1,000,000 from approximately 80,000 supporters.

With a response rate of 33%, that's not a bad benchmark with which to measure your own newsletter / magazine mailings. If a small organisation with a very low profile can do this, what could one of the charity mega-brands achieve?

So how do you go about turning your newsletter or magazine into a major income generator?

To start you off, I'd recommend that you could do a great deal worse than have a look at Tom Ahern's tips (PDF) to audit your current publication. He uses 9 criteria...

    1. Is the content donor-centric?

    2. Is it entertaining?

    3. Is urgency part of the message?

    4. Does the message somehow talk about, or suggest, the chance of loss?

    5. Does it pass the YOU test?

    6. Is the publication built for browsing?

    7. Is it convenient and easy to respond to your calls to action?

    8. Does it report back on what the donor has helped you to accomplish?

    9. Does it contain credibility builders that help it donors establish trust in you?

Using these pointers, you'll start to identify the areas you need to address in turning your newsletter or magazine into something that will bring in a serious amount of money. You'll see in the PDF (or on his website), that Tom gives loads of direction on what you need to do. The following ideas are simply examples from my own experience.

I suggest that you ignore the design for the time being and concentrate on the content. This means that you'll have one less hurdle to overcome when trying to introduce your changes. That's particularly important if the publication is not directly under your control.

• Start with the subject-matter. Feature projects and work that your donors know and care about. Ideally those that they have already funded in previous appeals. If something is in the news, consider that too (but please avoid the impulse to feature the general piece that ran to 150 words on page 19 of The Guardian, ten weeks ago).  

• Change the language. This is not the supporters' newsletter. It's the newsletter for Mrs. Claire Johnson, of 14 Sycamore Drive, who has been supporting you for the last 5 years with a direct debit and recently gave you her largest ever gift of £100. Show her you know this and use the word YOU (instead of WE) whenever you can.  

• Entertain. If your publication is nothing but a self-congratulatory tool for your charity, chances are it takes little account of what donors want. You need to surprise and inspire. Take a look at some of the most important magazine covers of the last 40 years and see what ideas you could borrow (tip: have a good look at the issue of Fast Company in position 37).

• Make headlines work. Big gets attention. Rather than having simple descriptive headlines and sub-heads, make your headlines emotive and involving.

• Make it easy to give. Include a donation form, have project specific advertisements asking for gifts, use inserts, feature web addresses and telephone numbers as a means to show the donor you need their help.  

And remember, when your magazine or newsletter is finally published, it is no longer yours. It becomes the property of your supporters and whether they wear Pradas or a nice pair of M&S slippers, each one will be – through their donations –  the harshest editor you'll ever meet.

Update: you can listen to Tom talk about creating great newsletters on this podcast from Fundraising is Beatutiful.