How you can manage second-guessers
Notably re-quotable
You've wondered, DO matching gift appeals improve results enough to justify any extra effort? Here's a bit of anecdotal evidence just in:
"Dear Tom, Last spring you donated to our matching gift pool so that we could offer a match opportunity to other donors. We have found this dramatically increases how much we are able to raise. A typical spring campaign raises about $20k-$30k. Thanks to you, this campaign raised a much needed $111,521...." From Sarah Woodard, Director of Development and Communications, Spectrum Youth & Family Services (VT)
Fundraising copywriters at a super-smart, super-prestigious university have a special problem you might well share....
Maggie gives a pep talk
The in-house writers' team at a children's hospital embedded inside a world-class university asked Case Writer Maggie Cohn for 10 minutes of her best advice. Here's what she told them:
[her title]
The hardest thing about fundraising communications … And why it’s even harder at your foundation.
[her talk]
Since my time with you today is very brief, I want to focus on just one idea: something that I think is one of the toughest challenges you face in writing effective fundraising copy.
And that is: You are INSIDERS writing for OUTSIDERS.
As staff writers, we are INSIDERS. We are intimately familiar with our organization’s details, processes, acronyms, jargon — all the language and currency of our organization’s community.
The internal mechanics here take up a huge space in our brains. We are, of course, amazed at the caliber of the science and medicine happening here — and we want to make sure people understand and appreciate it, and all the facts and figures that describe it. We think it’s fascinating ... and we assume everyone else will think so, too.
But....
The people we are writing for — our donors — are OUTSIDERS — people who may or may not be doctors or scientists. In fact, I’m sure plenty of them never understood, or even liked, 10th grade chemistry. They have their own jobs and families that take up most of their mental energy.
These same OUTSIDERS will likely have only a tiny bit of mental bandwidth they can reasonably devote to the details of how the hospital does what it does.
What they ARE deeply interested in, though, is what THEY can do for sick kids through their gifts.
They’re interested in the miraculous outcomes that result from the work they are funding — the child who nearly died from a CHD but is now playing little league ... or the amazing new football helmet that will save high school athletes from risking brain damage because it literally prevents concussions ... or the research scientist who figured out how to manufacture a living, breathing heart valve that will transform the lives of kids with heart disease.
So the challenge, as fundraising communicators, is to step out of our insider shoes and step into our donors’ outsider shoes. And to write about what inspires our donors, rather than what we think they should know.
And that’s really tough, because that means we [insiders] need to leave out so much of what we [insiders] think is important, like the lessons in genetics that we [insiders] think readers need to absorb, to fully appreciate a scientist’s work ... or the impressive resumes, honors, and awards of our physicians.
Less might be more ... for outsider audiences
Instead, we have to engage our donors with what, over time, we’ve come to take for granted — the emotional stories of parents and children who are suffering, the scientists and physicians who are struggling against the odds to make that lifesaving discovery that is just out of reach.
And then we need to show donors that their gifts WILL transform lives ... the same way that other trusting gifts in the past have transformed lives in the present.
So.
No jargon, no high school (or god forbid, college-level) science, no endless bragging about how great we are.
Sounds like it should be simple, but it’s not.
And it’s especially difficult at a high-powered, super-intellectual place.
You are working with some of the smartest people on the planet, and many of them have really strong egos. And you know that your work will need to be read and approved by them before it can go out.
But it’s so important to remember that THEY ARE NOT YOUR AUDIENCE. And what they think is important is often very different from what your audience thinks is important.
Your brilliant doctors and scientists and administrators have spent their lives feeling like the smartest people in the room — every room.
And most of the time they are!
But — NOT in your fundraising copywriting room.
Like medicine and biology, effective fundraising communications draw on a foundation of evidence-based research and testing.
Even the smartest people on the planet can’t do fundraising comms well based on instincts ... or how they like to sound ... or the fact that they were good writers in college.
Unless someone is trained in the field of fundraising communications, all they have to offer are lay opinions.
Here's comes the hard part it will take you your entire career to figure out...
YOU are the fundraising professionals.
It’s important to have confidence in your skills ... all those workshops you've attended ... all those books you've read ... all the fundraising results you've reviewed with glee or chagrin.
After all, you wouldn’t presume to tell a surgeon that you have a better way to do that valve-replacement procedure.
Maggie wraps up....
Photo: in the purple, brilliant copywriter Maggie Cohn; in the white, brilliant designer Andrea Hopkins; foreground: leading his human companions, the Doodle: Obi; in the background, the Atlantic. On the right: guess what we had for lunch?
So I want to urge you to keep building your expertise and credibility as a fundraising communicator. Follow the experts, keep up with research and best practice, read great books and blogs, do the webinars and conferences.
It’s by having this body of knowledge at your finger tips that you’ll be able to persuade the people in your approval chain — including the doctors and scientists — to let you do what you KNOW is best practice: donor-centered, simple, jargon-free, emotional, conversational copywriting ... as you SHOW donors that they ARE changing lives — not just funding processes or a place.
To raise money faster, you must write effectively for outsiders ... even though you’re insiders.
# # #
There's a new blogger in town
HERE. Like many of you, Sam Lawrence is fairly new to fundraising. Yet he jumped (was pushed?) into the deep end at a 45-year-old nonprofit, as its very first Major Gifts Officer. Watch him learn and flail. Enjoy the laughs, too. Sam's a delightful blogger!
Mary ... again?!?!?!?!?
HERE. I'm thinking of renaming my e-newsletter "...starring Mary Cahalane!" B/cuz I refer you to her blog posts SO often. >>> & here we go again! This time Mary laments some lousy thanks directed her way by brand-name charities. I think what charms me most about Mary's blog posts are their realism (she talks about her own experiences as a donor) with cutting (though diplomatic) clarity.
"How to be a true anti-racist ally..."
HERE. Today's most vital conversation (in still-white-majority countries anyway) gets a solid in-depth summary in this piece by TED Talk speaker and activist Nova Reid, appearing in The Guardian. She is the oft-sought expert and author of The Good Ally, just published.
The art, science & quandary of ask strings
HERE. HT to Brandon Barnes, atTexans Can Academies. He's a "ask string" nerd par excellence. Knows his Cialdini. Knows his Kahneman and Tversky. Brandon led me to the Five Maples blog, where you can download thisstriking PDF: "How ask strings work." I've never used Five Maples, which does direct mail for charities ... but I'm seriously impressed by what I see so far.
A fundraiser I trust recommends her printer
HERE. Julie Capaldi, ED at the Pickens County United Way (and a donor-comms, -centricity wizard), sent me some new stuff she'd shepherded. It looked great, so I asked: "Do you like your printer?" And she does! Very much. A few times a year I'm asked to recommend a capable printer who can handle the rigors of direct mail. Maybe consider Martin, who's Julie's printer of choice.