Kivi's Nonprofit Communications Blog

I’m blogging today and tomorrow from the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits Annual Conference in Winston-Salem. This morning, I attended a great session called “Building and Sustaining Your Individual Donor Base through Effective Stewardship.” The two speakers were Amanda Osborne, Director of Development for Fellowship Hall, Inc., an alcohol and drug treatment program, and Peggy Carter, Vice President of the Forsyth Medical Center Foundation.

The pair did a solid job of synthesizing and sharing some of the key points in the leading fundraising how-to books, sprinkling in examples and anecdotes from their own work. Their main point was that you have to know each and every donor individually to be an effective steward of their participation with your nonprofit. They offered different methodologies for categorizing donors based on why they give and on how they want to be thanked.

Amanda discussed the Seven Faces of Philanthropy and suggested that nonprofits try to recognize the different categories in their donor lists. Here’s a brief run-down of the categories, if you aren’t familiar with them.

Communitarians–They give because they consider nonprofits effective and they have strong ties to their community and local history. They represent 26% of donors, and tend to give to cultural and human service groups.

Devouts–About 21% of givers, they believe everyone has a responsibility to give and that it is God’s will. They are not interested in public recognition.

Investors–This 15% of donors gives in the same way that they invest–very business-like, want to solve problems and see results.

Socialites–They are interested in giving as entertainment, socializing as philanthropy, and like special events. They represent 10% of donors.

Repayers–They do good in return for what they have received and feel a personal responsibility to give back. They represent 10% of donors and typically focus on client needs, because they were likely once the clients themselves.

Altruists–They look for causes that offer a sense of personal fulfillment for them. Giving is the right thing to do for their own spiritual growth.

Dynasts–Giving is what their families have always done; it’s part of their socialization and their identities are often tied to giving.

Personalize and tailor your communications with your donors as much as you can. The same event invitations, newsletters, etc. are not going to appeal to all of your donors in the same way, or at all.

Donors also want to be thanked in different ways, and the only way you are going to know why way is right is to have that conversation with them. Do they want the plaque? Their name on a sponsor list? Ask and find out. Listen.

Amanda also reviewed some key points from Donor-Centered Fundraising. The majority of donors say they’d give again if after the first gift, they received three things: (1) prompt meaningful acknowledgement, warm and personalized (2) reassurance that their gift will be used as they intended and (3) meaningful results about the program they funded.

Forget the token thank you gifts (lapel pins, mouse pads). Gifts closer to your mission (artwork by clients, free tickets to performances, etc.) can work. But what people really want is a personal thank you. More than 80% of donors said that if a board member called and said thanks that they would give again.

Peggy talked mostly about the art and science of saying thank you to donors. She emphasized the need to say thank you with the same high-quality attention that you used to ask for the gift. She suggested that by making thank-yous a highly personal part of your work, you give your organization a personality that will bring donors back. Just as we relate differently to each of our friends and family members based on who they are as individuals, nonprofits should relate to donors in the same individual ways.

She then shared the guidelines for thank yous from Developing Major Gifts.

1. Gifts must be recognized by letter AND call
2. The gift size guides the type of thank you
3. The size of the gift guides who makes the thank you
4. Each thank you must be tailored to the donor
5. Use donor information to make thank yous as personal of possible
6. Donor wishes on how to be thanked must be honored
7. The more creative the thank you, the more appreciative the donor will be.

Some people want as much publicity about their gifts as you can muster. Others would be horrified by a press release. Ask, ask, ask! You can get really creative and come up with meaningful thank yous that may seem simple to you, but really impress the donor. For example, sending photos is an inexpensive but personal way to show donors the impact they are having. Even the smallest organizations can manage to send personalized updates with photos to their major donors a few times a year. Schedule a day where that’s all you do, and do it!

Are the copy and images in your nonprofit marketing materials drugging readers into ignoring you and your issue entirely? It’s a process called narcotization.

Here’s how it works. People were shown pictures of gum disease. One group saw photos of a mouth just a little rotten. The second saw photos of moderately rotten gums. The third saw horribly blackened mouths. The impact on dental care? Group one did what they always had. Group two did somewhat more flossing and brushing. Group three gave up entirely and stopped taking care of their gums and teeth. The idea is that if you think a problem is inevitable and overwhelming, you shut down and stop trying to fix it.

I read this example in Chuck Palahniuk’s book of essays called Stranger than Fiction while on vacation recently. In an essay called, “Dear Mr. Levin,” Palahniuk describes narcotization and then goes on to show how author Ira Levin beat the process by charming people into thinking about complex and difficult social problems through his incredible storytelling, way before the issues were a mainstream concern. Rosemary’s Baby, published in 1967, is about abortion rights. The Stepford Wives, published in 1972, is about the backlash against feminism. Sliver, published in 1991, is about electronic voyeurism.

These varying levels of information and our responses to them reminded me of the research that shows a powerful story about one person works better in fundraising than stories about multiple people. I talked about this recently in 10 Ways to Use Storytelling in Your Nonprofit.

Here’s how I see the connection between the two. Using a bunch of statistics about your issue is like showing a mouth that’s just a little rotten. It doesn’t motivate people to change at all. Showing them the suffering of large groups of people is like the blackened mouth. It’s just too much to take and people throw up their hands and don’t see how a donation to you will make a difference. But talking about a single person’s plight is like the moderately rotten gums. It’s bad enough to motivate people to want to help, but not so bad that they feel helpless.

So what can nonprofit communicators learn from Mr. Levin? Palahniuk says he uses metaphors that slowly reveal the issues and solutions without blatantly hitting us over the head with them. He uses humor to charm and worst-case scenarios to scare (Against a woman’s right to choose? Well, what would you do if you were pregnant with the Devil’s baby??) Says Palaniuk of Levin: “You created a fable to get our attention and inoculate us against the fear by creating a metaphor, a character that models the wrong behavior . . . That method gives the reader the moment of realization, the emotional moment of ‘ah-hah!’ And teaching experts say that unless we have that moment of chaos, followed by the emotional release of realization, nothing will be remembered.”

We may not be capable of writing some of the best-selling suspense novels of all time, but we can certainly apply some of these concepts in nonprofit communications. Bring your potential supporters along through your story. Build up to that “ah-hah” moment. Show that one donor what he can do to help, without making him feel helpless. Use anecdotes to let your volunteers learn from the mistakes and successes of others.

Jeff Brooks at Donor Power Blog is looking for posts on what’s good or bad about fundraising for next week’s Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants. Here’s what’s bad about fundraising from my perspective as a nonprofit marketing and communications consultant.

These are the three reasons that I nearly always turn down requests to write grant applications and direct appeal letters (although I gladly do supporting materials like case statements and donor newsletters).

1) Nonprofits blame you, the grant writer, if they don’t get the funding, even if their project is really weak or they are applying to the wrong funding source. Even a beautifully written grant application can’t turn a lousy project into a winner, nor can it convince a project officer to fund you if the project is outside her area of interest.

2) It’s boring. I find writing grant applications, especially those for government agency grants, really boring. You usually have to follow a specific format and play to certain buzzwords and criteria, which can force you to talk about the project in unnatural ways, while also draining the really interesting points and creative storytelling out of the package.

3) I don’t want to keep up with the latest and greatest in direct mail marketing. With all the various metrics out there for direct mail these days, and the mix of art and science that direct mail marketing has become, it’s now a really specialized segment of the field, and it’s not one I’m interested in keeping up with. Maybe this is just a perception perpetuated by fundraising consultants who don’t want to share clients with those of us who focus more on general communications and marketing, but it’s working on me.

I’m sure there are people who love, love, love writing direct appeal copy and grant applications, but I’m not one of them. If you are, tell me what I’m missing by leaving a comment.

Michele Martin at the Bamboo Project asked about our favorite learning resources and what gets us excited about learning new things. I get tons of great information from reading other people’s blogs, but I saw that Rosetta Thurman wrote a great post about that already, so I’ll go with another favorite learning tool of mine: playing around with new software and online services via free trials.

As I’ve explained here before, I am a do-it-yourself nut and often try multiple solutions to a single problem. Free trials help fuel this habit. (Before you recommend that I enter self-employed consultant rehab, rest assured that I am getting better about hiring others to do the really important or really hard stuff, rather than trying to learn how to do everything myself.)

Still, I’ve found using free trials is a great way to learn about the abilities and limitations of various systems and how they could impact my clients’ work and my own business. By seeing what software and services can do, you also open up new possibilities you may not have considered before. Most free trials limit quantities, but that can match up just fine with a test run of a new campaign.

Along those lines, here are some free trials you might want to try, if you are considering ramping up your nonprofit communications, while learning something new along the way.

Hobbling along with Publisher or PageMaker?

Adobe is now offering 30-day free trials of all of the products in the Creative Suite line, including InDesign, which is the far and away the best layout program out there. I hung in there with PageMaker for several years because a couple of clients used it, but I’ve told them I’m done with it and going with InDesign 100%. It’s not cheap, but it’s worth it, and there are ways to get it for less (TechSoup has it right now for $60). If you want to test-drive the full CS line, which also includes DreamWeaver, PhotoShop, Illustrator and several other programs, you can get a CD for $9.99.

Still pondering an email newsletter?

If aren’t sending out an email newsletter yet, simply because you are afraid of the tech side, relax. It’s really quite easy these days. I use iContact for clients and some of my own newsletters. They have expanded way beyond e-newsletters to offer RSS feeds, surveys, autoresponders, and the like. Their free trial is for 15 days and you can send 1,500 messages to up to 250 subscribers. That’s plenty of room to test drive a new e-newsletter. Just make sure that you have your list together before you start the trial so you don’t waste free days.

I’ve also used ConstantContact and know several people who like their service, even though I’m not using it anymore (because I like iContact better). But since we are talking free trials, why not sign up for this one too and figure out what you like best? They offer email newsletter and survey services. They’ve got a 60-day trial offer.

Looking for a way to manage online photo galleries?

Of course, if you are simply looking for ways to share photos online, I recommend Flickr. But if you want more control over how your images appear in a gallery and you want that gallery integrated into your own website, I like Shozam, which I wrote about earlier this week.

Forget photo galleries — Do you need actual photos?

I highly recommend that you use photos everywhere, but especially on your website, in your print newsletter and in your annual report. My favorite site for stock photography, and it seems I use it almost daily lately, is iStockPhoto. They don’t have a free trial per se, although you can browse and download comps (photos with their logo on them) for free. You can purchase credits for as little as $12, so it’s close to free.

Considering a postcard mail campaign?

I use VistaPrint for business cards and also for postcards. They give away lots of free samples, customized with your logo, etc, including 250 business cards, 10 note cards, 100 postcards, one pad of post-its, and a rubber stamp. You pay shipping and handling. Why not get the postcards and run a small trial mailing for a campaign you’ve been considering? You could match it up with that new email campaign your test-driving too!

OK, that should keep you busy for awhile!

One last tip on the free software downloads . . . be sure to keep track of what you install and uninstall anything you decide you don’t want. I ended up with five different photo galleries on my computer and it was a mess to clean up.

If you watch any late night TV, you’ve probably seen the American Express commercials with Sheryl Crow, Ellen DeGeneres and others promoting the new Members Project. For every card member who registers at MembersProject.com, American Express will donate $1 toward a $5 million grant to a single project, selected in part by member voting.

How can this work for your organization? Even if you don’t win the money, you could conceivably put your ideas in front of some new donors.

Simply getting your project listed won’t be enough. They’ve been taking nominations for a month and when I just registered as a member a few minutes ago, there were already 5,649 projects listed. To stand out in the list, you’ll need to create a basic marketing campaign.

For starters, pick the right title. Some of the projects listed today have such vague titles that I doubt anyone will click on them. Tell us in 5-6 words what your result would be, or at least what action you would take. Looking at the projects listed just today, I’m willing to bet that “Water Well Project for Orphanage” and “Put CAN in Canvas - Free Planet of Plastic” will get more clicks than “Single Parent Family Development Project” and “Global Security Fund.”

Then you’ll have 1,000 characters of space to describe the project, which is roughly 125 words. Use that space to inspire. Explain what you’d do, but more importantly, explain the difference you’ll make in terms that appeal to hearts and minds. The guidelines clearly state that they are looking for achievable, innovative projects with broad, positive impact. Treat it like any other grant proposal and follow the guidelines! And why not include a short call to action to card members? “If you believe in this idea, please rate our project now and leave a comment.”

Be sure to spell-check and proofread your title and description before submitting it! You can’t edit it once you submit it. I see lots of typos in listings and I don’t think that bodes well for getting $5 million.

Next, you’ll need to generate some buzz about your project. Get all of your strong supporters who are card members to login, post a comment on your project, rate it, and send it to a friend (all easy to do on the site, once they locate your project). Talk about the project in all of your other communications with members, supporters, and donors. Use other viral techniques like blogs, MySpace, YouTube, etc. to generate interest in your project.

American Express will narrow the list down to 50 projects on July 3 and member voting will begin to start narrowing down the list, with the winner announced on August 7. I’ll keep you updated on the contest and see what communications lessons we can all learn from the finalists.

This question came in last week to AskKivi.com:

“Should we include articles and photos of our fundraising events over the last year in our annual report? Based on your “Seven Easy Steps to Writing a Great Annual Report“, I would say no since it is an activity, not an accomplishment. What do you say?”

– Sally Coates, Episcopal Charities

Here’s what I told Sally:

I generally discourage it, with three exceptions: (1) You can clearly connect the fundraising event to an accomplishment, e.g., the money raised at the event paid for xyz, which resulted in xyz. You should still lead with the accomplishment, but you can talk about the fundraising for it a few paragraphs into the section. (2) Fundraising event photos are the only decent photos you have. Event photos are better than no photos at all. (3) You include the text and photos in the financial section of the report.

Do you have questions about nonprofit annual reports? Visit my site www.NonprofitAnnualReports.net and if you don’t find your answer there, send me a message at AskKivi.com.

A few months ago, I got a bit huffy when I saw that my husband and I were listed in a local nonprofit’s annual report as “Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Miller” for a donation we’d made. I’ve been living in a small town in the South for five years, so I guess I should be used to being relegated to “wife of” status by now, but my Berkeley feminist roots were pinched. I chalked it up to the cultural and generational divide between Boomer and older age groups (who make up the board of directors of the group and probably most of its donors) and my cohorts in Generation X who were raised to expect equality in all aspects of life.

I didn’t think about it again until the ever loyal husband told me he had informed the development director of the group about my little dining room outburst and disappointment in the group for not taking what I considered to be a more modern approach to their donor list. The next solicitation letter we received from the group a few weeks later was addressed to Mrs. Kivi Miller and Mr. Edgar Miller.

This issue came up again recently when I was working on a client’s annual report. Because of the way their database was set up, the donor lists included entries like “Mr. and Mrs. John Smith” and “Sally Jones and James Smith.” About half of the entries used Mr. and Mrs. and the others didn’t. In other words, if the two people who donated together were not married or the woman had kept her maiden name, she was included by name in the donor list. If she had taken her husband’s name, she was not. The staff noticed this aberration and spent a few days rejiggering their database reports to create a new list that included the first names of both partners, regardless of marital status. In this particular case, all Mr. and Mrs. courtesy titles were removed from the list. This particular group is very progressive, as are their donors, and it was definitely the right decision for that group.

So what should you do in your annual report?

I recommend that you list donors however they request to be listed. If someone fills out a donation slip with Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Miller, then print it that way. If they complete the form like we always do (Kivi and Edgar Miller) then list them that way. I quickly reviewed about ten annual reports from major nonprofits this week and found the majority used a mixed list. I don’t know how they are deciding when to use the courtesy titles and when to use the first names of both partners, but I hope it’s based on the donors’ stated preference.

What do you think? Is using the courtesy titles with the husband’s first name only as the default style for a donor list still OK in 2007? Should both first names always be used sans titles? Or is a mixed list based on donor preference OK, even if it makes your list look a bit messy and inconsistent? You know how I feel. Tell me what you think.

Last week I received an invitation to a fundraiser from a local American Red Cross chapter, and it really turned me off. Here is what part of the invitation said verbatim (except for the italics I added).

Fine Art Auction

The Auction will showcase 5 artists, and we will have a live auction with a variety of mediums: paintings, mosaics, hand made jewelry, pottery, wood turning, Photography and much, much more. Hors d’ oeuvres and cash wine bar.

Contact: a phone number, $25.00 adm.

Saturday March 17, 2007
6 pm - 10 pm limited reservations

The event location and address

I realize that as a professional writer and editor, I notice bad writing more than most people, but the sloppy style of this invitation is a real problem for me as a potential donor. If they can’t go through the trouble of producing a well-written invitation for what is supposed to be their major fundraiser, how careless would they be with my contribution?

So what’s wrong here? Lots.

–5 artists should be five artists. No matter what style guide you use, none of them recommend that you use a numeral in this case.

–Five artists are showcased, but there are more than five art forms. I suspect that more than five artists are donating to the silent auction, and I’d like to know whether that’s correct or not. If it is, what does it mean to be “showcased”?

–Inconsistent capitalization. Why is Auction capitalized and live auction not? Why is Photography capitalized, but the other art forms not? None of these words should be capitalized in my opinion, but it should be all or none.

–Hand made should be handmade. Look it up in the dictionary.

–They almost got bonus points for spelling hors d’oeuvres correctly, which is butchered all the time, but they put a space after the d’ where it doesn’t belong.

–A name or organization should be listed with the phone number. Am I calling the Red Cross or the place that is hosting?

–What is with $25.00 adm.? I assume this means that admission is $25, but why abbreviate it to adm.? $25.00 per person would be so much better.

–The date. They need a comma between Saturday and March. Saturday, March 17, 2007.

–The time and reservations. First, these should be on two separate lines, but more importantly, what does “limited reservations” mean? Can I only come if I RSVP? If so, by when do I need to RSVP? Or does this mean that a limited number of tables can be reserved while the rest are first-come, first-served that night? The invitation should be explicit about that.

A poorly photocopied insert with sponsor logos was tucked inside. You can tell that they put four or six on one page and cut them out. You can also tell that they held too many sheets at once when wielding the scissors, because one edge is all frayed, the cut is crooked, and the sponsor logos are off to one side and lopsided. Don’t get me started on the graphic design of the invitation.

And here’s another issue: March 17 is St. Patrick’s Day. It seems like that would be worth mentioning in some way. I can think of several possible taglines revolving around “luck” that would have worked for this.

Typos happen to the best of us (I missed two bad ones myself last week). Honest mistakes slip by from time to time. I hate the Grammar Gestapo too and am not trying to join them with this post. If I’d spotted only one or two problems, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But an invitation like this, with so many problems in so little space, is just pitiful.

I’m sure many people would defend the person who produced it with the refrain that all leaders of small organizations sing from time to time: “I’m one person. I can only do so much. I can’t be good at everything. Cut me some slack!” I hear ya, sister. But that only takes you so far.

If you aren’t good at writing or design, find a volunteer or board member who can do it for you. Or take an extra fifteen minutes to do it right yourself. Or hire a freelancer. When it counts, like on your major fundraising event materials, you need to get it right. Present yourself as an amateur and you are an amateur. I give money to professionals.

P.S. If all this looks too familiar, check out my two “Writing for the Real World” e-courses, “Making Your Writing Correct” and “Making Your Writing Clear and Concise.” They are designed for busy professionals who need a writing refresher. Registration is $99 and you can start the course any day you like.