The Extreme Fundraising Blog

Just made a reservation for the New England Association of Healthcare Philanthropy 2008 Conference at the Mystic Marriott Hotel & Spa.

The call to the Marriott reservations person was friendly. He knew of the conference discount. He not only asked if I was a Marriott Rewards member, he even looked up my number for me!

As we were winding up the call, I asked if, being a Rewards member, if there were any perks or amenities I should be aware to ask for when I arrived. It being a spa, I certainly didn’t want to miss out.

The until-that-point friendly man paused as though looking and then said, “No I don’t think you have enough status to get anything.”

Doh!

I’d been enjoying my experience until that point. Why didn’t he say:

• that there was nothing available at my “level” or
• that if I had 48 separate night stays at Marriott hotels I might qualify for a level by March or
• that I qualified for a free paper or free breakfast (without telling me that everyone else does too)?

Instead he told me I wasn’t important enough to be considered for any pampering.

I’m sure what he said was very factual. In fact I know it is. I haven’t used Marriott hotels in years. I’m a Hilton guy. I even told him there probably wasn’t anything I qualified for. He could have simply agreed with me.

But he said “you don’t have enough status.” It felt like I was in Sense & Sensibility being snobbed for being in the wrong socio-economic class! Weird isn’t it? I know better but I still felt like it was a personal judgement.

I sure hope I don’t end my phone calls with donors that way! I’m definitely going to be more aware of my phone manners today!

For earlier posts on phone etiquette, see:
Dialing for Donor (visits)
and
Phone Etiquette II

Nancy Schwartz is hosting the next Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants.

This time the question is: What are the Top 3 “To Dos” on Your 2008 Nonprofit Marketing Agenda?

Here are my three:

1. Develop a plan to proactively promoting my new book Ask Without Fear! A Simple Guide to Connecting Donors with What Mattes to Them Most.
2. Continued experimenting with pay-per-click advertising like that on Facebook.com and widget type marketing like ChipIn.com.
3. Create a more “automatic” plan to promote my speaking and training. People really enjoy my keynotes and seminars but I want to get into a habit of marketing them so I can help even more people.

Those are my three. What are yours?

Mal Warwick first got me thinking about how often I use “you” (or I don’t use “you”!) in my fundraising letters.

Here’s a sort of test I saw in Fundraising Success magazine.

Does Your Messaging Pass the ‘You’ Test?

“The ‘you’ test is the quickest, surest way I know to judge whether materials are basically ‘donor ready.’ And it’s dirt simple. I invented this test, and I fully expect to get the Noble Prize in Usefulness some day. With [a] red pen in hand, circle each time the word ‘you’ appears in your material — any form of ‘you’: you’d, you’ll, your, you’re, yours, you’ve.

“Gaze at the results. If you see red circles all over the place, you’ve passed the ‘you’ test.

“If you see few red circles and there are large spaces without any circles, you’ve failed. Passing the ‘you’ test means you could raise lots of money. Failing the ‘you’ test means you won’t.”

— Tom Ahern, in his book How to Write Fundraising Materials That Raise More Money: The Art, the Science, the Secrets)

Early this morning I received the final design of my book Ask Without Fear! .

I’m so excited!

This now goes to the publisher for printing. I’m not sure what the final time table is but the book is closer than it’s ever been to being in print!!

To take advantage of the pre-publication deal while you still can, go to:
www.askwithoutfear.com

On that page you’ll also be able to subscribe to an Ask Without Fear! announcement list. People on that list got this news at 7 hours before it hit the blog!

Since this book was written for boards of trustees, I’m offering quantity discounts of buy 10, get one free. Contact me if you’re interested in taking advantage of that: marc@fundraisingcoach.com.

The November question for the Giving Carnival is: “What business practices should nonprofits adopt to maximize their resources?”

My first answer dealt with having our financial house in order. But there’s another wonderful business practice I think nonprofits could adopt to their benefit: investing in training.

I’d recommend nonprofit professionals and their employers to invest in:

• reading books, including those by authors like Seth Godin or me or
• attending online seminars like those offered by CharityUniversity or
• keeping up with blogs like mine or the many other wonderful nonprofit and marketing blogs out there or (GoogleReader and Bloglines are two helpful tools for this)
• going to live events like regional or national conferences.

We have to be life-long learners. Even if you pick up only one thing each time you invest in learning, the investment pays off. And reading on a wide variety of topics will help us relate to people that may become donors to our cause.

Each of these activities will certainly help your organization maximize your resources!

The November question for the Giving Carnival is: “What business practices should nonprofits adopt to maximize their resources?”

Great question! I think a very helpful business practice would be having open books.

Donors are used to living in a world of increasing transparency. And with sites like GuideStar publishing our 990’s, our financial information is more readily accessible than ever.

I think we should embrace this. The hospital I work for is publishing its quality indicators on the web. If you want to see if we follow best practices with heart attacks, you can find out right on our own website. Even if the stats aren’t what we’d like them to be.

It goes beyond working with the 990’s on GuideStar though. It means having tight financial controls so that it’s easy to see that the money people give goes directly to the right place. [Don’t ask me for advice in setting these controls up. There are generally accepted accounting procedures already out there. Ask a CPA that’s conversant in nonprofit accounting.]

Another great practice is subjecting your books to an annual audit by an outside firm.

We don’t necessarily need to shout-it-from-the-rooftops that we have tranparent finances or really tight financial controls. People already expect us to so trumpeting it would probably raise red flags rather than reassure donors.

But the wonderful thing about the world we now live in is that if we don’t have these controls, we will be found out. I really think that is a huge benefit of living in our world!

I hope you can see that using good accounting practices will definitely help maximize your nonprofit’s resources!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Looking for some good quality, inexpensive thank-you cards online, I Googled “Thank You cards.” I was pleasantly surprised to find a link to a fantastic article on how to write a thank you note.

The key points made be the author Leslie Harpold (with my own comments) are:

1. Greet the Giver - We all love our name. (And our name isn’t “Dear Friend”!)
2. Express Your Gratitude - You are saying “thanks” after all
3. Discuss Use - I think this is the one we most often forget
4. Mention the Past, Allude to the Future - let’s them know you remember and that you’re moving foward
5. Grace - You’re supposed to say “thanks” seven times so why not get it in a few times now?
6. Regards - people give to people so let them know you’re a person!

It’s amazing how easy it is to miss one of these. Or to fall into the “I’m just writing to say…” verbosity trap.

Harpold includes much better explanations under each point. Read them and your fundraising thank you notes and letters will surely improve.

The entire how to write thank you notes is here.

Greetings from Charleston, SC!

Here at Blackbaud’s Conference on Nonprofits. I got to spend 3 1/2 hours with the amazing fundraising mind of Mal Warwick.

I wish I’d had this before I sent my year-end appeal text to the printer.

I’ve been at this for more than 10 years and I learned a ton today.

Do yourself a favor and check out How to Write Successful Fundraising Letters and/or The Mercifully Brief, Real World Guide to Raising $1,000 Gifts By Mail.

In Fundraising Secret #5: Use Blue Ink, I encouraged you to enhance your direct mail with a simple bit of color. Another oft overlooked tool in fundraising letters is the P.S.

Postscripts are so important to fundraising letters, I often tell seminar attendees that mailing a letter without a PS is a waste of time and money.

Let’s assume you’re lucky enough to have a donor prospect that actually opens your letter. If your donor’s like me, the only reason I open a letter is that I have a relationship with or interest in the organization. Most everything else goes into the recycling bucket.

Studies indicate that, after pulling out the letter, the first thing your reader will look at is the address section–is this letter for them. If it’s just a “Dear Donor” letter, chances are it’s destined to the recycle bin.

The next thing they read? Not your incredibly witty “the weather is turning brisk here in Paducah” opening line but the PS. Yep, they glance at the address block and then the PS. Apparently some guy in the 1960’s discovered this by actually tracking people’s eyeball movements as they read letters.

So please, use the PS.

One of the things I love about PS’s is that it forces me to sum up the entire appeal in 2-3 sentences.

• What am I really asking them to give to?
• What makes this so special that it should beat out the other fundraising appeals on their desk?
• What date is it imperative the gift comes in by?
• How much do I want them to give?

If I can’t clearly state my message and “call to action” in a couple sentences, I certainly won’t be able to my one or two page letter!

So use a PS. (And to be really effective, find out how to do it in blue ink!)