The Extreme Fundraising Blog

Would you help me? I’ve been notified I’m a finalist in Seth Godin’s latest book project “Bullmarket 2004: Companies That Can Help You Make Things Happen.” Seth is the author of “Permission Marketing” and “Ideavirus” among others.

It’s an incredible honor…but not a sure thing. I need to write some powerful copy about what I do. It also helps to have others mention me in their nominations. The form is a little confusing. I think you fill out the fields with your information and then mention me, “The Fundraising Coach” in your write up.

Would you be willing to nominate me? The form is at:
http://www.sethgodin.com/bull/application.asp

The “How to Ask for Money Effectively” in L-A (Lewiston & Auburn, ME) went incredibly well! Thanks to everyone that came and made the discussion so lively! If you’re interested in having this 3 hour seminar brought to your region or organization, email me at marc@fundraisingcoach.com.

My next speaking gig is March 14 & 15 in the other LA (Los Angeles, CA) at APC’s West Coast conference. I’ll be conducting seminars on crisis and time management and on alumni directing. For more information on the conference, go to APC’s website: http://www.apcnetwork.org/.

Drop me a line if you’re in LA. I’d love to grab a cup of coffee!

This is the second to last installment in the “Creating Donor Evangelist” series. As a reminder, Huba and McConnell’s six “Creating Customer Evangelist” themes are:
1. Customer Plus-Delta: Understanding the Love
2. Napsterize Your Knowledge: Give to Receive
3. Build the Buzz: Spreading the Word
4. Create Community: Bringing Customers Together
5. Bite-Size Chunks: From Sampling to Evangelism
6. Create a Cause: When Business is Good

Today we’ll explore number 5: Bite-Size Chunks.

BITE-SIZE CHUNKS
The concept of sampling is a time-honored marketing tool. It brings up memories of walking through the food court in a mall and having a tray of teriyaki chicken pieces impaled on toothpicks shoved in my face. Evidently, these little bite-size chunks are to convince me to buy a whole meal. McConnell and Huba advocate using some sort of “starter” product—a public seminar, a low cost offering, or a trial version—to let customers have a low risk way of testing your high-end services. They say the benefits are:

• It reduces the risk for decision makers who are purchasing from you for the first time.

• It eliminates inhibitors to the purchase, such as cost or time.

• It gets your great product into the customers’ hands and minds.

• It shortens the sales cycle and provides a strategic opportunity for customers to experience your products sooner rather than later.

• It spreads buzz by introducing the product or service to more people who can then tell others about it.

• It builds goodwill with customers because it provides value without requiring a large purchase.

Those who were in my “How to Ask for Money” seminar last week will immediately recognize the nonprofit correlation to sampling: providing choices. Unlike “napsterizing your knowledge,” this step involves an actual financial commitment by the donor.

“Sampling” could be as simple as inviting them to join a lower gift club. It’s important that the gift club be small enough for it to be palatable but big enough to put the donor on your organization’s radar screen. For some organizations, $300 per year gets a donor on their assignment lists; for others it’s $1000. You decide.

Sampling could also be breaking a large annual gift into smaller monthly commitments. Did you know that $1000 per year is only $84 per month? These smaller “samples” could give a donor the experience of joining the $1000 gift club before they’ve actually given all of the money.

Once the prospect becomes a donor, be sure to give them value: monthly emails, personal notes, gifts; whatever is appropriate for your organization. Invite them to the “creating community” activities we discussed in the last issue. Give them something to believe in. As McConnell and Huba point out, “Customers believe in causes important to them, and they want to contribute to the success of those causes.” Show them how important the work of your organization is and they’ll be much more likely to give in the future. And too hopefully give more than their “sampling” gift.

We’ll talk about creating a cause more in the next issue.

FROM SAMPLING TO EVANGELISM
What kind of “sampling” would make sense for your organization? Is it child sponsorship? Or some other form of monthly giving? Or is it spreading a large gift over multiple years? “$1000 per year for the next three years” may be a more palatable way to ask for $3000.

This step isn’t flashy or new but it IS seriously underutilized when raising money. How can you begin putting it into practice this week?

In this brand new three hour seminar, I’ll give
* the 6 most common mistakes people make in asking for money
* 3 incredibly effective tools for crafting your message
* and the “Get R.E.A.L.” approach to making the ask

The seminar is on Feb 11, Wed, 8:30-11:30 a.m. and costs $55. For more information or to register, call 1-800-891-2002 x280 or go to: http://www.cmcc.edu/training/Money.htm

I’m increasingly convinced that nonprofits are way ahead of businesses when it comes to treating people as people and developing relationships with them. It’s ironic that as we in the nonprofit world strive to become more business-like in measuring our results, so many of nonprofits are putting donor relations and alumni relations in the back seat. We seem to be totally unaware of losing our competitive advantage–the relationships with the donors that brought us to where we are today!

I’m writing this series to question that assumption. For our new subscribers, this series was inspired by an almost off-hand quote in the book “First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently.” If you need to catch up, the earlier issues can be found in the archives in the ezine section of the website http://fundraisingcoach.com/.

As a reminder, Huba and McConnell’s six themes are:
1. Customer Plus-Delta: Understanding the Love
2. Napsterize Your Knowledge: Give to Receive
3. Build the Buzz: Spreading the Word
4. Create Community: Bringing Customers Together
5. Bite-Size Chunks: From Sampling to Evangelism
6. Create a Cause: When Business is Good

Today we’ll explore number 4: Create Community.

BRINGING DONORS TOGETHER
Fortunately, whether conducting homecoming, alumni regional events, cocktail parties, or silent auctions, nonprofits tend to be good at bringing donors together. Since much of this step is review for us, I’ll list the types of communities mentioned by Huba and McConnell without explanation. I’ll finish by highlighting some of their suggestions “putting people in your marketing.”

Huba and McConnell explore the following methods for bringing customers together:
• in-person events
• clubs
• user groups
• online bulletin boards
• e-mail discussion groups
• e-mail newsletters
• fan web sites

Even as I typed their list, “fan websites” jumped out at me. Wouldn’t it be cool if nonprofits started using marketing strategies like Lucasfilm and the folks behind the recent Lord of the Rings movies? They feed information to fan sites and make them a sort of “inner circle.” How cool would it be if our donors were so psyched about us that they put up web pages bragging about our work?!

PUTTING PEOPLE IN OUR MARKETING
Huba and McConnell point out that communities are made of people so creating them requires a personal touch. Below are some of the ways they suggest for ramping up that personal touch. As usual, I’ve tweaked the wording to fit nonprofits.

1. Dump the stock photography.
Your nonprofit isn’t stock, so why should your pictures be? Why not profile pictures of donors on your home page with one or two sentence blurbs about why they love you?

2. Feature your super-satisfied customers in your advertising.
If you’ve gone through the effort of #1, why not use those photos and testimonials in the rest of your advertising? Whom would you be more likely to believe: an employee or a satisfied donor?

3. Make contact information for your key people easily available on your web site.
This is so important. I’m shocked by how many nonprofits don’t make their address and telephone number easy to find! To my knowledge, hiding has never been effective in fundraising. Let people know how to find you. Better still, let them know how to contact the head or executive director and all the department heads. Not many will really use the information but putting it there shows how committed the nonprofit is to being personable.

4. Give your business cards a face.
I have a hard time with this…it seems cheesy to me. But Huba and McConnell claim it will help people put a face to the name the next time they see you.

5. Feature portraits and bios of your company people on your web site.
This makes sense to me too. Parents and prospective students want to know who’ll be teaching their kids. Donors want to feel some connection with the people on staff. Portraits and bios are an easy way to facilitate that.

6. Develop donor case studies.
Huba and McConnell say this is an effective way to prove your organization is helping solve problems. They advise not quoting project managers but satisfied customers. Which residents are pleased as punch with the results from the work of the local land trust? Who credits the school with turning them around? Which of your patients are thrilled with the care they received at your hospital? Write it up and brag about it wherever you go!

7. Humanize your company’s e-mail correspondence.
The authors are so good on this point that I’ll quote them directly: “Adopt a more casual conversational style of writing. Correspondence should come from a real person, not ‘The Management.’ If you send e-mail, avoid the dreaded ‘Please do not reply to this e-mail.’ If companies don’t want people to reply to e-mail, they shouldn’t send it in the first place.”

WHAT ABOUT YOU?
What can you do this week to make your nonprofit more human? Also, what can you do to creatively and effectively bring donors together? Let me know your creative ideas by replying to this message or emailing me at: marc@fundraisingcoach.com.