Doubling Your Donations with Nonprofit Communication

 

Yearly’s Nonprofit Crash Course: A 15-minute nonprofit crash course on fundraising and marketing best practices. Josh Kligman from Yearly was joined by Tom Ahern from Ahern Communications. Tom offers two specific tests you can give yourself to double your donations. While Tom is talking about examples of great copy to help with donations in newsletters, this is really applicable to digital annual reports and impact reports too, because of how great communication can engage stakeholders.

 

You can read the discussion here:

Alright, Tom. How’s it going?

Hey, Josh. Thank you for giving me an audience today.

Yeah, of course. Well, it’s beautiful day here in Washington, D.C. a little overcast, but it’s not 90 degrees. So that’s fine. I want to thank everyone for for joining us today. This is Yearly’s Nonprofit Crash Course and we have with us today Tom Ahearn who’s a professional copywriter for donor communications and Tom tells us that there’s two decades of research globally that he’s done and found the tactics of donors centricity and how you could reliably have your non-profit double your giving and he’s going to talk to us about a few quick tests that can help nonprofits apply those tactics. That’s consistently what your donor communications clients come across. What digital and print tactics can we talk about Tom all in 15 minutes? So, let’s go.

Yes, I can. All right. Well everyone. What you are looking at here are front page headlines from a donor newsletter published as you can see 2007 this is about actually it was more like 30 years of research and this is about right in the middle of that research 2007 and Gillette Children’s Hospital,  which is in Saint Paul, Minnesota. They were sending out the thing at the top with the green type at Gillette medical pioneers set the standards for spine care. And that was their that was a typical, you know, front page lead story and it was going to all their donors, right?

So it’s it’s about the quality of the Care at Gillette which is fabulous. I mean, they’re world-known so they they have every right to say such things. They weren’t most in this is really what they do. What you see below that so what he says thank you. This is the subsequent issue of their donor newsletter and you can see the tone The Voice has changed. It isn’t focused on the organization’s quality of care. It is now focused on thanking the donor. So what he says thank you. You helped the Tanzanian girl Stand Tall on her own two feet. And if you could see all of Zawati if you can see it’s a full length photo. She’s carrying a couple of stacks in her hands. Now his body was born with her feet pointed backwards and called it’s a condition called club foot and the missionary sisters in Tanzania have got in touch. Which let can you do something about it. Gillette said yes under over and it through a procedure and it’s probably excruciating and takes a long time. They turned her feet around so they’re pointed in the right direction and what she’s holding in her hands are shoe boxes. She’s got a couple of bags from the shoe store because she went shopping for shoes.

And that story is also you in you know, it’s kind of a photo essay on the inside of this newsletter and it is you know, moving that’s what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to make me feel something so, what happened? Well, there was some pushback they they’d always had this thing talking about how great the care was and the people who like that a lot of the insiders, right and the doctors loved it and the administration loved it and the parents of the doctors loved it. They would get in touch and say can you send me another 10 copies so I can pass them out to the neighbors. But the the one with somebody is trying to do a very different job.

It’s trying to make me feel something make me feel good. And that’s it’s sole purpose. So donors didn’t love it. But how much how much did they love it? Well, here’s how much they loved it in the old version the we do good work version of the donor newsletter. They were making about $4,500 – $5,000 give in gifts each time. They mailed the new one goes out and surprise surprise surprise. Nobody knew this was going to happen. $50,000 comes back in the mail in the reply envelopes.

And that’s a as you can see a 1,000%  increase now, I hope all of us have that moment in our careers because that’s the time when you go wow, this is pretty cool. I should have done this last year and all they really did all they really did and that’s why I’m only showing you the headlines is they change the big type and they changed the tone of the big type and they now started addressing directly the target audience which was always donors. But in the past they thought well if we just tell you often enough that we do great work. You’ll send us money that proved not to be true and that’s actually what we’re talking about today. You know, it’s been called donor centricity, which is the basically a borrowing from customer centricity from commercial marketing. It’s been called donor love. It’s been called by somebody really smart donor relevant.

So if you’re doing donor relevant communications, you’re likely to make a ton not a little a ton more money. So, how do you do it? Well a couple of simple tests today. The you test is number one and the you test vitamin Y is about this common pronoun that we all think does just a little bit of work when in fact, it does a tremendous amount of emotional work. The “you” his glue as you can see here, we all learned about pronouns and you know, it was just a figure of speech today, of course. Now, you see people using this signature line my pronouns are and they’ll you know, she he or whatever it is they and And that’s become a thing and it’s you know, that’s social justice of his type. But you is is more than a pronoun. It’s always been much more than a profound it when that word is used and put into the copy that you’re putting in front of me. I’m going to pay a little bit more attention.

My brain can’t not do that and so you’ve got me this is “you” as glue if you have you I will continue reading and people will ask is you can it be overdone because that sounds kind of cheesy and the answer is no no, I can’t actually so don’t worry about that part. Here’s Atomic case. People are just joining us. Is it fair to say that you had this version of the newsletter where originally it did okay and the nonprofit organization we’re saying was saying, you know, all right, we did a great job. But then in the second version, you know your showcasing the impact you made and it’s more you know, it’s more humanized right so gets more personal and then when you layer on you to it, you’re connecting the fact that I as the donor and helping people like this and I can see who this is that I’m helping.

Yes, direct connection and if I you know, if we went backwards and we looked at those two headlines you’d see that the one on the top the one that didn’t do as well doesn’t have the word you in it and that’s right there. When I see this, you know people send me stuff to evaluate I immediately say, well you have to rewrite it, you know, it’s just it’s an automatic you have to rewrite it so we’re looking at a letter here now, I we study success this was written up in the New York Times because it did so well for the sharp Healthcare System in San Diego brought in about 30,000 plus new donors during the time period the years it was used for years and I’ve circled each instance were the word you is used and you can see it’s got the measles right?

So you’re you’re never too far away from the word you and that’s that’s purposeful. I wrote this letter in trust me. If you could read it. Clearly you think that’s not that great a letter. Yes, it isn’t in terms of literature. What it is in terms of functionality is exactly what you have to do. I’ll show you another example because it’s written by somebody else. This is from about eight months ago December and a year 2021 and it was sent to every mailbox in a small town in Connecticut by the Madison land conservation trust.

And again, I’ve circled each instance were the word you is used and you can see once again, you’re never very far away from the word you this was written by the way by Maggie cone and the the, you know, the champion result that we’re always looking for because money we’re trying to raise money for mission is they brought in a hundred thousand dollars in two weeks from a small town and they never they don’t actually even change the letter. They said the same letter year after year. The only thing they change one thing they they highlight a different bird every year. But otherwise the letter is pretty much a template.

So the red marking scary because that’s what your teacher would always underline or But in this case you’re saying this case, it’s a good thing. Yes a lot of red marks. We’re all under siege, you know every day. We’re getting this onslaught of communications messaging email. I mean, I know what I do every morning which is basically empty about a hundred emails out of my inbox and that’s just the beginning of the day. So we have all this coming at us trying to get into our brains and we basically triage right away, you know, we put one pile this is stuff. We cannot safely ignore and that’s where all your bills go and then the other big pile is the stuff you can safely ignore and that’s where all your stuff goes all the you know Communications from nonprofits now out of that second pile, which is a very big pile I extract for my own reasons something that’s a few things that interest me for some reason. And that’s your only hope you have to be in that third pile. So, how do you get it? Well, say something that is relevant to me.

Remember the whole idea of donor relevance. So if you sent an a direct mail appeal and this was the teaser message on the outside envelope inside this envelope one of our towns darkest Secrets or your town’s darkest secrets. You probably have a least 99% opening right? Everybody’s gonna know you know, what what we have a dark secret. Um, which brings us back to this, you know, I mentioned sometimes people think using the word you over and over is kind of cheesy. That’s a good thing in fundraising copywriting.

Ugly Works. Tacky Works. Who’s saying this Jeff Brooks. One of the world’s greatest Direct Mail fundraising copywriters. This is in his book. You can see the cover there Corning Works embarrassing works digital print doesn’t matter and why is that because because I won’t misunderstand it. I understand corny. Um, and it’s just a shortcut for me. Now. Here’s your second test the purpose test and we bring this in because this isthis is kind of the summation of those 30 years of research by people all around the world into donor love and donor relevant language. When you like your donors, they’ll like you back that’s the formula and it has plenty of science behind it years and years and years of testing.

Those are the founders of the institute for sustainable philanthropy did some of the the totally core work here and what they found in their research, is that within 12 to 18 months if you change the way you talk to your donors you could often just double donations. So it was worth trying you bet and what is it that’s making that happen when you’re delivering through your Communications purpose and there’s a Victor Frankel. He unfortunately experienced the Nazi death camps and what he noticed there was that it when people had a purpose not to be a big purpose and not to be life shattering, but you know, maybe the first person in charge of closing the door at night. They tended to live longer and so one of his core conclusions over a lifetime and he’s an internationally known researcher people humans people need purpose and that’s what you can deliver through your Communications.

Trust me. They will never Tire of being told how great they are. And how needed they are and one reason that is the case is that they are as Seth Godin the bald guy there says our target market every target market is often lazy people in a hurry, but he wasn’t being pejorative. The lazy part means they’re just you know, it’s hard to get people past their inertia to get me to do something is really tough. And I’m busy so you’ve got two problems right away that you have to solve as a communicator and and take it to heart and here’s one way to solve that one last thing to give you because we’re now down to 48 seconds mental not so there’s a secret virgila. He had a laboratory in Munich and he noticed as people read stuff because that’s what he was looking at that they would sometimes physically not along with what they were reading. He said he concluded that it didn’t have to be a physical not but at least it had to be a mental not so let’s see what that looks like. Here’s people for the ethical treatment of animals.

Right at the top big type animals are not ours to eat where experiment on used for entertainment or abuse in any other way and if you had a mental nod when you read that, yeah, I agree. Then you might look that money in the eye and go right to the Donate but now button that’s right underneath it. And and if you thought well I’d like bacon for breakfast then you probably wouldn’t so. There you go. 15 minutes now, that’s great.

Well, we said this is a crash course. That’s what you get. I mean, there’s a lot you can unpack here because this is applicable to so many different tactics within your nonprofit marketing and communication strategy, you know, we saw newsletter example, and you have lots more that and you want to see more you can see her and calm calm on the screen so you can subscribe to Tom’s e-newsletter, I think about my business that Yearly and nonprofits creating digital annual reports and impact reports and donor reports and and what that communication and copy is like when you’re writing to your boarding your volunteers and the people that donated because you still want to connect with them.

So, I think this is applicable across all those different channels within marketing Tom. Thanks for your time today. Thank you everyone for putting up with me. I appreciate your attention.

Alright. Well, thanks for listening to yearly’s nonprofit crash There’ll be more. Have a good day.

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