How should you court a major donor?

Most solvent nonprofits today have long since gotten over the idea that they can exist solely on income from grants. They have developed a diverse funding strategy that accesses funding from various sources, and that often includes major donors.

So what is a major donor?

There is no hard monetary definition of a major donation.  For one organization it might be $1,000, while another may define a major donor as anyone donating over $10K or even $50K.

Of far more importance is the connection, the relationship if you will, of the donor to your organization.

Developing a major donor is not about a predator-prey relationship. It is about developing long-term friendships that can result in contributions to your income stream.

All nonprofits struggle with maintaining a minimum constant income stream. Whether that's $5,000 or $500 million, the income has to at least equal the outgo. Grants are nice, but they don't last. Even fee-for-service or fee-for-performance government contracts or grants have a fairly short life cycle.

Major donors on the other hand can remain interested and involved in your organization for a lifetime.

When I review a new client's revenue sources,  I look for evidence that they have major donors, or at least someone who could become a major donor.  That's why I strongly recommend that you record every donor's contact information, even if their donation is well under the threshold that requires you to give them a receipt.

Let's say you receive a new donation from someone prominent in your community. It's only $50, but hey, it's nice to know they've noticed you.

If you stop there, you could be throwing away a chance to make a long-term friend for your nonprofit.

That person could be a candidate for your major donor database. So, what now?

Of course you want to acknowledge the gift, but you should be doing that for every donor. How do you move beyond the pro forma receipt?

One way is to add a little something extra.  Write a nice letter of thanks, and include some additional information on your program or organization. Invite them to a meeting or a tour of your facility.

Take some time to research the person. If you have any people in common, you might mention that connection. Perhaps they have a personal connection to your mission, such as a family member who once needed the type of help you offer. Or you might invite them to your next event.

Don't get too pushy.  People with money have heard every pitch there is from people and organizations that want to relieve them of some of it. Concentrate on developing a relationship.

One strategy is to develop a list of major donor prospects and send them a special newsletter or invitation to an event. It's not that they won't understand the motivation behind the invite, but if it's done tastefully and the event (or the other attendees) piques some interest for them, they may show up.

Look for areas of common interest.  Maybe someone on your board also serves on a board with the prospect. Perhaps you belong to the same gym or country club. Look for ways to connect where you can share more information on your mission and goals.

In some cases, it might be wise to wait and see if they donate again, which can show some genuine interest in your mission.

In short, you have to do the same things you would do to cultivate any other relationship.  Building rapport and mutual respect will benefit everyone. 

Managing your Mission

Recently I was listening to a nonprofit founder explain that the person's  organization was set up to serve 100 clients onsite at any given time, but was now serving 300-400 onsite. The reason given was that the town had no other resources to handle all the clients who needed help.

The person was taking questions, and two things bothered me.  One of them is the scenario above, and the other was a question from the audience asking how the person could set up a nonprofit doing the same thing, but by taking some of the overflow that was outside the original nonprofit's mission.

The question didn't bother me.  What bothered me is that the speaker completely dismissed it, saying that if the person wanted to help they should just support the existing group.

This is a very well-publicized charity, one whose name you would probably recognize immediately. The speaker had just said that they were over-loaded and that financing this operation was a constant struggle, even before the addition of the extra client load.

This is a glaring example of mission creep destroying an otherwise fine organization.

Without going into too much more background, this charity is offering a service that people are taking advantage of inappropriately and knowingly.

The mission, once closely defined, has now been expanded to serve a population that was never initially part of the plan.

Knowing a bit about the history of this group, I seriously doubt that there is enough money out there to keep the place going unless they take charge of their mission again.

I totally understand how that happens.  It happens when you care too much, and when you won't or can't say "no".

This whole thing is wrong on many levels.

 

In the first place, people who have been supporting the organization have been sending money to support the core mission, once tightly focused on one target population. If they are donating because of a connection to that target population, they may feel that it is being shortchanged to accommodate a totally different group. That can impact funding.

Second, instead of doing a stellar job with that target population, the charity is now barely servicing any of the clients. The outcomes they desire not only aren't happening, they can't happen.

Third, when someone offered to try to help by setting up a nonprofit working in the same field, the founder blew them off, and even sounded insulted that anyone would even offer to provide another resource.

I sort of understand the response.  It takes a long time to build an effective nonprofit, the organization's need for more funding is immediate and a new organization might compete for already scarce funds. But by being so openly derisive, the founder probably turned the would-be helper into a non-supporter.

A far better choice would have been to say that they would welcome the person as a volunteer, show them the ropes, and then if that resulted in a new organization in the future, turn over some of the clients to them.

The upshot of all of this is that I sort of lost interest in the organization.  If you need help, you're begging for help, but you don't want to fix what's wrong and won't accept help when it is offered, I'm probably not going to feel that supporting you is the best long-term use of my funds.

In short, you have to manage your mission for maximum effectiveness. As hard as it is, no organization can help everyone, all the time.

Do you understand donor retention?

It's funny how blogs work. You post something, people read it that day, and you think OK, that's nice, a bunch of people apparently got something useful from this.

Then out of the blue several weeks or months later you get a comment or email about a post that you had sort of forgotten about.

 So it is with my blog post of April 28, "Marketing Your Mission".

Apparently "Tom" took issue with it. "This is the most stupid thing I've ever read" would tend to indicate that Tom doesn't find the use of the word "marketing" to be congruent with "nonprofit mission".

According to Tom, mission is all about emotional engagement. All that other stuff about being a good "investment" for the donor doesn't matter. People just "know" that you will use their money well, because after all, you're a charity.

In Tom's defense, the emotional characteristic is what drives donors to investigate your charity further. It is the thing that defines the need to give that they want to fill. At some level, they have an interest in helping something or someone. Maybe they Google "animal rescues" or "battered women's shelters" or whatever.

At that point they get thousands, if not millions of returns. So then they add their state or county or town to the search terms, and they get a few to a few dozen more specific returns.

That's still a lot, and it's unlikely they are going to send a check or donate online to all of them. There has to be some way to decide which one to support.

At that point they are probably going to be looking for a website or social media page. Who are you, and what are you all about? What real impact or change are you accomplishing?

That process is exactly the same as it is for someone looking for a product. You want to buy a used car so you search "used cars". At that point you may not know if you want a Chevrolet, or Ford or Toyota or whatever. You get a list of used car dealers that are within your search zone, and then you check to see if they have a website and look at what's for sale. There are dozens of bright, shiny cars that fit your basic criteria to pick from on each site. You don't want to visit, much less drive all of them, so you start looking for a way to zero in on just a few.

What happens next?  Well, I don't know about you, but I start looking for the dealer that is going to give me the best value for my dollar. Is their price lower, do they give you a free gas card if you test drive their car, or do they offer a free oil change for a year? I also look at the general premises if they have a picture of their lot or showroom. Does it look clean, organized and at least somewhat permanent?  Have they been in town for a while? Do they have good online reviews?

In short, why should I  pick one car lot over all the rest?

Why would a donor be any different?  There are lots of charities that all focus on the same problem. Their "bright shiny cars" are the stories they tell about who or what they have helped, and 90% of them are going to have good stories, because they really try to do good work.

At that point, two things happen. Maybe one story connects emotionally with the donor more than others, and they just hit the donate button. Those are the "impulse donors". They drop a few bucks and promptly forget about it. Those are "Tom's" donors.

Other visitors do some digging to see how many people have been helped in total and investigate  how much money it takes to help them in a significant way. These can be your long-term supporters.

The latter are probably the people with more money to donate. Nobody misses a single $5 donation even if it is misspent or the charity goes out of business, but if they want to spend $1000 or $10,000 dollars or more, they are going to look under the hood of that bright shiny car. Or maybe they can't afford that much, but they want to send a small donation every payday. They are looking for a connection, not a moment of satisfaction.

And that's where the marketing mindset comes in. The sooner you step out in front and say "We helped change the lives of 100 people for a day at a cost per person of just $10.00/day" the easier it is for the donor to see that $1000 will help one person for more than three months, or all 100 for a day.

Contrast that with the group that says, "You can help more people like Jane. Please give generously". How many more people? What do they really need to help another Jane?  Exactly what is a generous donation? They don't say.

Yes, it does reduce the giving to a dollars-and-cents equation. And yes, the emotional appeal was the catalyst between the donors desire to give and solving your money problem. But the donation was assured by the concrete statement showing the value delivered for the donation. It gives the donor a reason to select your charity to support at a much higher level than just an impulse donation.

Of course, you have to continue to connect with that donor to retain their interest. Maybe through a website, a blog, a newsletter or just by keeping fresh stories on your social media page. But first you have to cultivate the desire for an ongoing relationship.

In the retail world, they call that building brand loyalty. In the nonprofit world, it's donor retention. Whatever you call it, it is all a form of marketing. With all due respect to "Tom" I think you ignore that at your peril.

Need help with your messaging?  Check out my website at http://www.cloudlancerwriting.com

Are you caught in an online fundraising box?

Are you targeting your entire fundraising budget to the internet?  Do you think that if it isn’t online, it’s just too much trouble?  Is FaceBook your outreach program? Does the idea of interacting face-to-face scare the living daylights out of you?

This isn’t a rant against technology. It is a rant against boxing yourself into just one fundraising strategy.

Ten or fifteen years ago, everyone was struggling with how to integrate the internet into their fundraising. Now it is often the only fundraising strategy that new nonprofits consider.

I am one of the biggest boosters of an effective internet presence. I probably derive 80% of my business from contacts that originate on the internet. I constantly maintain that having a professional looking, grammatically correct, cohesive and informative website isn’t optional in today’s world. A social media presence is just expected. Online donations may only generate about 7% of nonprofit revenue, but that’s 7% you might not have without online donation capability

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What seems to be missing now is that once you engage a nonprofit online, there is often no personal follow-through capability. I see more and more nonprofits that don’t provide any contact data beyond an email pop-up, even on their website.

There are real people behind those SM posts. They may want to shake your hand or visit your offices, if for no other reason than to prove that you actually exist and confirm that their money is actually being used for the public good.

With all the media coverage highlighting how unsafe your data really is in the cloud, many people are becoming street smart about how easy it is to set up a scam online. If the only place they can find you is online, they may shy away from committing to more than a minimum donation.

It is all too easy in our electronically defined world to lose that sense of real engagement. However close you might feel to your online group, when push becomes shove, how many of them could you actually reach out and physically touch? One out of 1,000?  One out of 10,000? None?

Nonprofits are all about people. They are about people that cry real tears, bleed real blood and have real lives. Don’t lose the human aspect of your mission. If you are uncomfortable with or can’t arrange face-to-face meetings, at least consider video chats and conferences that allow for personal interaction. Have a phone number and a real mailing address available. If your charity is still in the spare bedroom, think about having an informal get-together at a local restaurant or coffee shop. Put a real face and voice in front of your message.

The internet can be a wonderful meet-and-greet tool, but it’s just a tool. Don’t let it become a surrogate or stand-in for real donor engagement. You can hire a developer for your online world, but you need to be the one developing your donor connections. 

Making donors feel special as your organization grows.

Donor retention is and has always been a problem for nonprofits. Every major nonprofit advisory organization is advising that donor retention should be on every nonprofits list of top three things to do in 2014. Blackbaud's 2012 statistical giving report states that small nonprofits were far ahead of their large counterparts in that category, increasing their overall giving by 7.3% in 2012.

I believe that trend can be attributed to the fact that smaller organizations tend to have more of a personal relationship with donors. It's easier for their donors to connect with them, and vice-versa. They have missions that more directly impact their donors. It's easier for interested prospective donors to go to meetings or attend events to support a local charity than to go to a gala event clear across the country.

The trick seems to be in retaining that sense of small-town camaraderie as the organization grows. Online fundraising seems to be gaining ground, growing by 11% on 2012, but along with that, donors report that they feel more remote from the organization. The more the organization grows, the more likely it becomes that it will lose that personal interaction.

Many organizations maintain a social media presence, but is that really what donors want?  Expecting donors to "like" you or retweet you is not the same thing as interacting with them on a more personal level. Anyone can read a Facebook posting or a tweet, but they have to initiate the contact.

As far as it goes, macro-connecting at that level is useful, but it tends to fully engage only those people who are already closely connected to the organization as volunteers or staff. Donors say that expecting them to go to a Facebook page really isn't very personal.

The most common reason given for not giving repeat donations is that the donor didn't feel appreciated. The larger the organization gets, the harder it is to maintain that one-on-one relationship with donors.

One way to overcome that feeling of rejection is to keep donors in the loop with a blog or a print or e-newsletter targeted only to donors. Please don't equate that with an appeal letter. These forms of communication should convey a feeling of " You are special and we really appreciate you!". Your purpose should be about replicating that feeling of small town intimacy, not sticking your hand out in every post or newsletter.

To be useful, these communications need to offer more than just an instant replay of a social media posting. Those are nice, but should be expanded upon in blog or newsletter communications.

Perhaps the blog or newsletter could educate donors about exactly what you did with their money last month. Perhaps there was a particularly touching story that you can share only with donors, or if you deal with complex issues, you can offer educational content to further emphasize why continued support is needed.

For-profits understand that keeping customers and buyers engaged is an important part of staying profitable, and they use CRM, or Customer Relationship Management techniques to keep their customers engaged, i.e. to keep their business top-of-mind with their customers.

Donor retention is exactly the same theory. You want to stay connected, or at least be the first thing the donor thinks of when they think about your mission focus. That way, when the inevitable appeal for donations does go out, it won't have the feel of a panhandler on a street corner.

Far less expensive and certainly more personal than traditional media campaigns, targeted blogs and newsletters are a great tool to keep those donors you worked so hard to get, firmly in your corner.

©2014 Rebecca L. Baisch

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Need help designing or maintaining a donor connection campaign?  I can help you. For more information, drop me a line at granthelp@ida.net

Make your nonprofit website effective

On any given day, I can go to the web and find dozens of little more or less local nonprofits that most people probably never heard of that are struggling to survive and grow. Most of them will limp along for years but never really have much of an impact because they can't scare up enough funding. Why is that?

In some cases there just isn't much support for their mission in their area. But much more often it's because they don't understand how to appeal to and build a wider donor base. Contrary to many nonprofit expectations, grants aren't usually the only or even the best avenue to success. I look at a lot of nonprofit websites, and there are three things that I find common to many of them.

They don't understand why they have a website

Most of them are all about the nonprofit. There are pages about how they came into being, pages about the board members life, pages about their events, and that's fine, but the most important page is the home or landing page. I certainly don't want to imply that having your financial information, a list of your board members or even a short history of the organization isn't important. Institutional (foundation) donors and major gift prospects expect that, but those pages don't draw many individual donations. Telling the visitor to go  to some other website isn't a very good idea either.  Facebook is great for some things, but most people will find you through a keyword search, and that's probably going to go to your website first. Don't run them off.

The primary purpose of all of those pages is to increase financial support for the mission, impart a sense of credibility and maybe enlist volunteers as well. What people want to know when they donate is:

Who or what am I helping, why do they need help and what are you going to do with my money to make things better?

If your home page doesn't grab the visitor's attention with something relative to their interests in the first 10 to 20 seconds, they are very likely to move on before they ever get a chance to learn about your organization.

Contrast these two opening sentences.

1. The Blank County Animal League came into being in 2005 to fight for the rights of animals.

2. You can stop Blank County from killing 10,000 dogs, 15,000 cats and 8,000 other types of animals every year.

Which one gets your attention and makes you feel like you could make a difference?

They don't provide or predict results soon enough

The second paragraph needs to give at least a cursory look at positive outcomes. Tell them how the donations received to date have made a difference.

"Since 2005, our donors provided the means for the adoption of over 5,000 animals, and free spay and neuter clinics every month for the past two  years." Or, "By supporting our plans for a no-kill shelter you can save the life of a future pet." It depends on how new you are to the scene which will work for you. It's OK to add one to three photos that support your emotional appeal, just don't make the photos the only visitor connection on the home page.

They don't actually ask for money.

Go ahead. Give them a number. Tell them that you are looking for a minimum donation of $10.00 and put a second donate button link right in the paragraph. (Of course you should have one at the top of the page, and even on subsequent pages as well.) If you want monthly recurring donors, tell them that. And make sure that the donate button provides an easy way to give, such as a "text $10.00 to 12345 now" or a PayPal or credit card option for instance. It's fine to ask them to call in a donation, or to give your mailing address, but many smaller donations are spur-of-the-moment decisions. Don't lose the moment.

In summary

If this sounds like you should think of your home page as a sales page for a product, good. That's what it is. Your product is your mission. Sell it effectively.

There are other parts of your website that will, and should give in depth information about your organization. You can devote a whole page to testimonials. Your financial information should be accessible to those that care about it. But if you can't get the casual visitor engaged from the get-go, you may never have the chance to develop a more profitable relationship with those bigger donors. 

Is Your Website Wimpy?

Websites in the nonprofit world need to do more than just sit there. Many nonprofit websites I visit look like afterthoughts. They are not informative, they are seldom updated, they don't seem to make it easy to get substantive information, volunteer, or donate, and many focus only on one donor profile or subset.

Engage all your donors

One of the problems with nonprofit financial support is that the traditional sources are either drying up, or evolving. Your nonprofit needs to function in two unique worlds.

One is the world of what I call corporate-think. Serious players such as large foundations or the charitable arm of large companies are looking for hard data. They want formal outcome reports, hard financial data, and want to form what might almost be called professional partnerships. They want organizations that make them look good and that can promote the effectiveness of their mission. Many will look for donor recognition pages.

The other is the world of the so-called "millennial", that is the younger donors in their 20s and early 30s who grew up in the internet world. They use all the latest electronic media toys. They are socially conscious. They are very visual. They are often still very idealistic in their judgments about your effectiveness. They may be more interested in volunteering than giving money, and they may want to contribute small amounts on a monthly schedule.

The first group is interested in the traditional ways for evaluating success. While the emotional element has some weight in their evaluations and desire to participate in your mission, they still want data-based reports. These folks are going to look for, and place emphasis on things like your annual report, financial statements and outcome reporting that is more or less based on something akin to the scientific method. Your website's demonstrated ability to follow their train of thought is important. For them, having things like your financial data, 990 and annual report available on your website is a big plus.

Younger donors are looking for visual proof of your mission. In a 34-page research report  principally funded by the Case Foundation, young donors said they were turned off by stale content and a lack of visual images that show them how they can have an impact by participating. You can download the whole report from this link: http://www.themillennialimpact.com/research.

These potential young supporters are expecting instant electronic gratification when they reach your website. Show them your success, don't preach to them. One or two great photos or quotes will encourage them to look farther, but they won't stay long, at least not on the initial visit. They will either act, or leave.

Achieving a Balance

Many nonprofits try to bridge this gap by directing visitors to their Facebook page. I have seen a number of one-page websites that simply say "click here to follow us on Facebook." That ignores the entire world of corporate-think donors.  Most well established foundations were not born in the Facebook era, and don't see that type of connection as, well, business-like.

Other websites seem to have been designed to look like  board meeting minutes. No pictures, videos or albums that can be downloaded. Very formal language, stolid black and white copy, and only updated one or two times a year. No interactive event calendar that also provides a way to sign up as a volunteer or donate.

 

You need both donor subsets

There is more monthly volume (think cash flow) and personal interaction available from the younger set, while the big lump-sum supporters exist in the older group. Courting one group over the other results in a donor profile imbalance. Nonprofits need to understand both audiences and target them on the website.

The perfect blend, if there is one, is a website with financial and data page tabs visible on the home page, a section with lots of photos, links to videos, and human interest stories, as well as donation buttons that allow easy one-click ways to donate. Text to donate strategies work well with the millennial age group, while more traditional donors may even want your street address to be available. Including a phone number in your contact information will allow donors or prospective volunteers to talk to a real live human. If that number goes to a phone message, let them know that you will respond in no more than 24 hours, and do call back promptly.

Consider Functionality

Mechanically, you don't want things on your home page that take a long time to download for either group. You only have from about five to thirty seconds to capture their interest. Since so many people use tablets or phones to surf the internet, your website needs to work well on those platforms, i.e. be based on what is called a responsive template (it resizes to fit the tool being used). For the DIY website builder, there are a number of inexpensive templates available that incorporate this feature. (From personal experience, I do not recommend most free ones, since they may come with hidden advertising links.)

Leave the flashing words, 2-minute videos and complicated graphics on pages other than your home page, but include links or tabs so they know there is more to see. A FEW (That's less than four!) well-chosen jpg images specific to your mission are OK if they load quickly. Show your social media links prominently, but don't chase the visitor off to a social media site either. And never, ever, have a home or landing page that starts out with "Click here to enter our website".

SEO, or search engine optimization has evolved quickly.  The best language on a website will be mindful of it, but won't look like a search term dictionary. Take a moment to understand guides like Google adwords, but don't let your site become boringly obvious. Good content still plays well.

By all means test-drive  your website.  If it takes a long time to load, or doesn't work well in some browsers work with it to have it load promptly.

 

Both groups are savvy to the "enter your email here" mailing list builder ploy on the home page. And no one wants a boatload of sneaky advertising links downloaded to their computer, so watch out for the affiliate marketing links. Invite them to leave an email later, but don't make their email a ticket into your site. To get them to return, have a simple "follow us" button available but don't make following you a condition of viewing the website.

Nonprofits have to evolve. Making your website a living, breathing, informative and effective donor tool is one way to do that.