HAVE YOUR DONORS DISAPPEARED AND TAKEN THEIR CHECKBOOK WITH THEM?
Post #91
December 19, 2024
Due to the Christmas holiday, I will be taking a “break” these next few weeks to enjoy some time with family and friends. I hope you are all able to do the same and have a very Merry Christmas.
However, I have found this would be a good opportunity to re-share with you an important series of blogs I released in February 2024 entitled, “Have Your Donors Disappeared and Taken Their Checkbooks with Them?”
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It’s a rare nonprofit that hasn’t seen…
…25% fewer donors
…25% fewer dollars
…25% increase in cost of postal mail
If that’s not bad enough, there are 20,000,000 fewer donors donating to nonprofits today than in the year 2000.
Why?
Where did the 20,000,000 donors go?
And why are fewer donors donating?
Why is your nonprofit’s income off 25%?
Of course, there are numerous reasons—including:
Lack of professionalism among people in postal and digital fundraising.
Lack of entrepreneurial leadership in most nonprofits.
Lack of trust in most all American institutions, including nonprofits and politicians.
An explosion of competition for our time and attention.
a. Hundreds of TV channels
b. Social Media (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube)
c. Blogs and podcasts
d. Millions of websites
e. Etc., etc.
As Bob Dylan sang, “The times they are a-changin’.”
If you and your organization continue to think, act, and operate as you did 10-20 years ago, you’ll find your professional life will be a steep uphill climb with a storm in your face.
You’re facing one of three options.
You decide to change.
Your competitors force you to change.
You don’t change and you become irrelevant and eventually disappear.
I’ve previously written about the big four in postal fundraising. These are the things you need to get right to have a DIRECT MAIL GRAND SLAM HOME RUN:
LIST
BRAND
PROJECT
INVOLVEMENT TECHNIQUES
In today’s blog post, and for the next few weeks, I’ll share some additional suggestions that will improve your results.
Hopefully you’re already incorporating some, maybe even most, in your mailings/marketing.
I suggest if you don’t have these ideas in the form of a list, you should.
One of the reasons commercial airline travel is so safe is because all commercial airline pilots have numerous checklists they are required to use before the plane takes off, while climbing, while cruising, while preparing to land, when landing, and after they’ve landed.
Here are additional things on my 20% checklist:
5. TAGLINE – few people in marketing know what a proper tagline is and even fewer have one for their organization/business. If anyone else can accurately use your TAGLINE, tear it up and keep writing until you find one that applies only to you for your audience. You want to become Seth Godin’s Purple Cow—unique, one-of-a-kind, no one like you.
6. TESTIMONIALS – because there’s so little trust of organizations/institutions these days, unless you have a major world-class BRAND (and very few nonprofits do), you need to make sure potential donors feel that what you say can be trusted.
Having strong testimonials, especially from people who themselves are truly trustworthy, is important.Also, the letter signer, as well as including a pub note from a trusted person will improve results.
Next week I’ll give you some more items on my 20% list.
As always, your feedback is not only helpful and appreciated, but needed. Please reply to rviguerie@americantarget.com.
This free post is brought to you by American Target Advertising™ (ATA) and American Mailing List Corporation™—“ConservativeListsRUs.” ATA was the world’s first conservative direct marketing agency and still is the largest with over 90 team members and mailing over 100,000,000 postal letters yearly for right-of-center causes and issues.
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