Marc A. Pitman's Blog, page 11

Apple’s Privacy and your nonprofit’s email marketing

Have you noticed a change in your email open rates? Do they seem to have drastically increased?

That increase isn’t what you think.

Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection

Even if you’re not an iPhone user, you may remember all the news about a year ago when Apple shared its new privacy protections, particularly with email.

As a consumer, I love turning on as many privacy features as possible. As a marketer or fundraiser, I worry about how to measure our reach. And if we’ll be reduced to sending generic messages to our list instead of the customizable messages we’ve been able too.

One of the interesting (scary?) things about Apple’s move with the protections in iOS 15 is that it doesn’t just affect email sent to Apple domains like icloud.com. The protections stretch to all emails read on devices using the default Apple “Mail” app. So even the emails sent to donors’ work or Google emails can be impacted.

So what has Apple Privacy Protection done so far?

So I was fascinated to get M+R’s newest email this week: What actually happened: Apple Mail Privacy Protection.

One interesting development is that, if you’ve measured open rates to your emails, you have likely seen they’ve gone up steeply. If you compare the opens this month to this time last year, M+R says you’ll likely see a 17% or greater increase in opens.

That sounds great right? Most non-professional marketers and fundraisers put great stock in the “open rate” their email programs measure. So more opens has been seen as better.

Even knowledgable marketers looked at open rates because it was a stable metric. Sure, some corporations had systems with bots triggering all pixels and links before delivering the email to an employees inbox. (This was to trigger malicious links in a protected area before they got to an employee.)

But open rates were stable. So it was a metric measured.

The problem? Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection protocol automatically preloads all emails. For all emails opened in the app on an iPhone, iPad, or Mac. This means the tiny image “pixel” indicates an “open” is getting triggered. For all emails. For a large percent of your donors.

Don’t measure success by open rates

It’s never been a good practice to measure marketing or fundraising success by open rates. Opens are not proof of people reading a message.

It’s always been more important to measure success by metrics like “click through” rates.

Reading a message is good for your nonprofit. But having someone take action is more important. Even if that action is clicking through to read the full story on your nonprofit’s website.

Click through rates are more important now than ever. If clicks on your links are going up, that is success. Just like the first job of a fundraising appeal is to get the donor to open the envelope, it can be argued that an email’s job is to get a donor to your website.

Measure the clicks

Are you writing stories compelling enough for readers to act?

If you are, great! Keep it up. If you aren’t, don’t worry. You can learn to communicate more clearly. There are conferences like the Nonprofit Storytelling Conference and webinars like our Tactical Thursdays. And there are lots and lots of books and courses on copy writing.

Writing appropriate “copy” is what helps you talk clearly enough for a person to take action if they want to. Too often, our writing confuses people – both those we want to help and those we’d like to help us.

It’s our job to communicate clearly and equitably so that people will have a very clear understanding of what action we’re asking them to take. That serves them because they can then clearly decide to act or not.

Read M+R’s full post

Hopefully, privacy tools will be a growing complexity for us. And ultimately, having to work with tools like Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection will force us to be better marketers and fundraisers. Because we’ll be constantly learning to talk clearly to those demonstrably interested in our work.

It’s important to stay informed. That’s why I love M+R’s research on social and email marketing. Their reports are easy to understand. And they “get” nonprofits.

If you’re not signed up to their email yet, I’d suggest fixing that today. You can read their full post at: https://www.mrss.com/lab/what-actually-happened-apple-mail-privacy-protection/. They have some great tips to consider for your email list.

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Stop telling fundraisers their goal is “more”

Enough is enough.

Nonprofit leaders need to set actual fundraising goals. Unfortunately, nonprofit leaders rarely do. Rather than setting a clear goal, leaders pressure fundraising professionals to raise more.

“More” is vague and immeasurable.

“More” is unacceptable.

“More” grinds us all, even the best fundraising professionals, to a pulp.

Because “more” can never be reached.

As you look at the upcoming fiscal year, please work to be clear on goals. Some management systems call this a “definition of done.” Beyond numbers on a page, work together with your fundraising staff to agree on what a “done” looks like.

Your nonprofit’s fundraising goal isn’t just “raise what is needed to make the budget work.” It should be constructed based on, but not limited to, your nonprofit’s projected budget, prior giving to your nonprofit, and your donor retention.

Then, as a nonprofit leader, have the courage and integrity to help the fundraising team reach that goal. And to help yourself create a definition of “done” for your work – a role that will always have more to do.

Nonprofit work is hard. But of all organizations, we can be on the fore front of organizing in ways that give life to each of us. Let’s set the standard.

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What if we’ve asked them all?

When I’m being a fundraising coach, I tend to coach nonprofit CEOs and executive directors. One of my primary tasks I try to help them build into their rhythm is for them is to make 5 – 10 major donor calls each week.

But since CEOs aren’t managing a large portfolio of donors, what do you do if you’ve already called and emailed your prospect list a few times?

Give thanks

Still make the calls. Just shift them from the “asking” part of the relationship to the “loving” part. For example, a wonderful use of these calls is to call past donors and to thank them.

Here’s how you can do this:

Look for people who’ve given in the last 90 days.Find an inspiring story of impact to use as the reason for the call. Don’t over complicate this. It can be the same story for all the calls. And it can be the same story that was just used in a mailing or newsletter.Call each person:Thank them for their support.Share the impact story, making sure they know their gift helped make that impact happen.Find out how your nonprofit came to their attention (if you don’t know).Ask if they know others who might want to [impact] too.Thank them again. [Impact] like that couldn’t happen without generous people like them.Log the call into your donor management tool with any notes.Move on to the next donor.

You will grow to love these calls. Not only is sharing gratitude wonderful, but you’ll also learn the exact phrases others use in talking about your work.

When it comes to thinking of an impact story, don’t over think it. You’re typically not looking for a story that impresses you. The work you do every day is amazing to somebody. The donor can’t do the work you do. So it is amazing.

Too often, we get jaded about our own work. It seems mundane or boring. So we look for the super-amazing-once-in-a-lifetime thing to share with donors. Since finding those stories is so hard, we procrastinate making thank you calls.

Instead, think of something that happened in the past seven days. A conversation you had with a recipient. A document that was scanned and is now available to everyone online. A challenging question from a staff member that is going to improve your work.

A Possible Script for These Major Donor Calls

Be as specific and concrete as you can. The gist of what you might say could be:

“Thank you so much for your support.

“You might be surprised by the impact you are having. Just last week, I had a challenging question from our programs director, questioning the way we schedule the elder care programming.

“Her question led us to start making changes to help adult children pick up and drop off their parents during non-rush hour traffic.

“Your support, and that of others like you, helps us hire the best. People who love the seniors and love them enough to constantly improve how we serve them.

“Thank you.”

Obviously, make the words your own. You’ll likely want to make time for the donor to respond. And after your initial thanks, you might even precede this by asking, “Do you have time for a quick story?”

…and get referrals

A bonus tip could be to ask the donor, “Do you know of anyone else who needs to know about this work?” Or “Do you know anyone else who’d like to join you in supporting this work?” Or even, “Who else would you suggest I connect with about this work?”

Asking for referrals helps bring the donor closer to the nonprofit. And helps you expand your prospect list for free.

But first thank. Even if you stop on the thanks and forget the referrals, you’re still improving the results of your fundraising.

I think you’ll grow to love these calls. If you try them, leave a comment to let us know how they go!

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Integrating Your Nonprofit Website With Social Media: 4 Tips

This article is contributed by Murad Bushnaq, Founder and CEO of Morweb. 

Your nonprofit’s website and social media profiles are two important tenets of your online presence.

For instance, social media enables you to connect with your supporters through regular posting and sharing. You might share photos from your last volunteer appreciation event or post a video of your executive director explaining your mission. The interactive nature of social media allows you to see your supporters’ reactions to your posts and directly communicate with them one-on-one through commenting and direct messaging.

On the other hand, your website is an excellent place for featuring more in-depth information about your mission and organizational history. You can also publish blog posts and image galleries to share stories about your fundraising events or memories with your volunteers. And you can host critical online donation tools on your site to maximize your funds, like a donation form and matching gifts database.

Both social media and your website are excellent standalone tools for your nonprofit to garner support and spread its message far and wide. But when you integrate both of them, you can create steady two-way traffic between these two platforms, taking advantage of their unique characteristics to increase your mission’s reach and garner more support for your work.

If you’re unsure about where to start, you’re not alone. Most nonprofit professionals aren’t expert web developers or social media managers. But with a few tips, you can begin integrating your website and social media to strengthen your online presence. In this post, we’ll cover four of those tips:

Share your website content.Encourage sharing with social media buttons.Add social media live feeds to your homepage.Use social media as a fundraising tool.

By pairing your newfound knowledge with a content management system (CMS) built for nonprofits, you’ll be well on your way to successfully integrating your nonprofit website with social media. Let’s dive right in!

1. Share your website content

Your website is a treasure trove of information and resources that can be easily transformed into engaging social media posts. This is a great strategy for improving content creation on your social media profiles, as you’ll begin to create natural opportunities for social media followers to explore your website.

For example, say you want to introduce a new member of your nonprofit staff on social media. You could post a picture of your staff member with a few fun facts about their life and career. Then, you could link to your “Meet the Team” page so that followers who want to know more can click through to your website.

Of course, when deciding which website content to post to your social media profiles, you’ll want to choose high-quality, informative content that will make people want to click a link to learn more. Here are a few types of content you can post to pique people’s curiosity:

Videos. According to Getting Attention’s roundup of great nonprofit videos, the videos on your nonprofit’s website are great for posting on social media. This is because they highlight your organization’s authenticity and personability while demonstrating your impact. Plus, videos can be entertaining, are easy for your audience to process, inspire them to act, and are generally more shareable than other types of content.Podcasts. Similar to video, audio content is also excellent for sharing on social media. If your nonprofit records a regular podcast, share the episodes on social media and encourage people to subscribe. A podcast can be a great outlet for helping your community of supporters get to know your staff and volunteers through interviews, drumming up excitement for upcoming events, and discussing current events or societal issues related to your cause.Blog posts. Keeping up with your website’s blog means that you are consistently creating new content for your website. This can translate into consistent new content for your social media profiles! Share blog posts that lean into storytelling — for example, you might share a blog post that spotlights a volunteer who has been donating their time to your organization for more than 10 years. Alternatively, you can also share informative blog posts, such as posts that help your supporters understand how a hybrid silent auction works and how they can sign up for the one you have planned.

Sharing your website content on your social media profiles is an excellent first step to fully integrating the two platforms and increasing your organization’s reach. We recommend creating a content calendar that includes what will be published on your website and when it will be shared on social media. This will help you stay on track with posting in both places regularly so your followers and website visitors have new content to read and view.

2. Encourage sharing with social media buttons

Social media buttons get your website visitors sharing your content on their own social media profiles, which can help your organization reach people that you couldn’t otherwise — your supporters’ friends, family, and professional colleagues. Plus, social sharing can have a ripple effect, meaning that when Person A shares your web content, Person B and C might also share it, helping you connect with Person D and, eventually, Person Z!

Putting social media buttons on your blog posts, web pages, and donation form can empower your supporters to share these resources when they’re top of mind. With one easy click, they’re on their way to creating a post about your nonprofit for their followers to see.

Which social media platforms should you provide buttons for? The answer is twofold. First, shoot for popular social media platforms. According to Pew Research Center, as of 2021, some of the most popular platforms for American adults include Facebook and Instagram, with Twitter also in the running. The second thing to consider is what platforms your organization is active on. For example, pushing for your supporters to share your content on Instagram can be helpful, but doesn’t make much sense if your organization doesn’t have an Instagram account.

Whatever buttons you decide to include on your web pages, make sure they are prominently displayed. You can even design them to match the branding of your website so that they blend nicely with your site.

3. Add social media live feeds to your homepage

If your nonprofit CMS offers a social media module, you can easily add social media live feeds to your website’s homepage. Live feeds automatically update when you post on social media to display your new content. Similar to choosing which social platforms to add social sharing buttons for, make sure you’re choosing your most active accounts to showcase in a live feed.

A social media live feed is a great tool for showing that your organization is active on both your website and your social media profiles. By demonstrating that your organization is regularly updating its content and interacting with supporters on various platforms, your organization will appear more organized, accessible, and trustworthy. For example, if a supporter is interested in volunteering with your organization on Giving Tuesday and sees a recently-updated social media live feed that signals an active online presence, they’ll know that your “Volunteer Information” page is likely accurate and up-to-date, too.

To encourage the flow of traffic between your website and social media profiles, put a “Follow Us” button near your live feeds. This will help your website visitors to take their exploration of your cause a step further and get regular updates on your organization’s work in their social media feeds.

4. Use social media as a fundraising tool

Both your website and social media profiles can help you pull in online donations for your cause. And when you combine your efforts using both of these tools, you can boost the support your organization is receiving. To do so, you’ll need to encourage both your social media followers and website visitors to use the online giving tools hosted on your website.

Here are a few ideas for getting started:

Set up a Facebook fundraiser that leads supporters to your online donation page. Facebook is an excellent platform for online crowdfunding. Because Facebook handles payment processing fees, 100% of the money raised goes directly to your organization. For the Facebook fundraiser, your supporters will use Facebook Pay, but make sure to include a link to your donation page on your fundraising page to encourage additional contributions after the campaign ends.Add social media buttons to your donation page. According to Morweb’s guide to donation page design, you should pay special attention to the buttons on your donation page. This not only includes your “Submit Donation” button, but any social media buttons as well. After a donor has submitted their donation, they may feel inspired to encourage others to do the same. Give them that power by including social sharing buttons.Share information about how to increase impact on your social media profiles. Donors love to find easy ways to make more of a difference in the causes they care about. Often, the only thing holding them back from doing so is a lack of information. You can bridge this information gap by posting about ways that donors can easily give more. For example, if you partner with a matching gifts software vendor to embed a matching gifts database on your donation page, you might write a blog post about matching gifts and share it with your donors so they can take advantage of their employers’ corporate philanthropy efforts. Similarly, you could share information about your monthly giving or planned giving programs.

Social media gives you the opportunity to promote your organization’s fundraising campaigns and tools to your community of current supporters, but don’t forget that it also enables you to connect with new supporters. Encourage your supporters to share your fundraisers with their own personal networks to increase your reach.

The Gist

Integrating your nonprofit website with social media is an excellent way to improve your organization’s marketing efforts. Though it may take some time and strategizing to get right, creating a flow of traffic between these different platforms can help you grow your community of support and, ultimately, help you do more good.

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You don’t need to be in crisis!

Last week, I heard board members make a classic blunder. They were worried that they couldn’t fundraise any more. Why? Because they weren’t in a crisis. They had good reserves and the finances were very well managed. So they couldn’t see why anyone would donate to the cause.

Do you know what they started talking about? Adding a new offering or program! Something to keep them “relevant.” Something outside of the mission, but only expanding the mission a little bit. Can you say, “Mission creep?”

They were the only people they were losing relevance with.

This nonprofit is wonderful. It has a compelling mission. It does amazing work, helping people who themselves are in crisis. 

It is more relevant now than ever. In fact, they’d just got done talking about how they’d need to prepare for greater demand as the people they serve got older.

But somehow, the board members missed that. They were losing purpose because they didn’t feel in crisis anymore.

And, unfortunately, they assumed that donors wouldn’t see the purpose either.

Don’t let this happen to you!

Amazingly, the board was completely missing that they were even more compelling for donations now. They don’t need a “new program” to excite donors. They just need to tell stories of impact.

In fact, just last month a recipient of this nonprofit’s work had reached out to me. He was thrilled with how helpful they’d been to him at a crucial turning point in his life. His enthusiasm and gratitude were palpable.

And he’d received the help ten years ago!

It’s about impact, not crisis

Are you getting bored with your cause? If you are, start talking with people who’ve been helped by the work. Or walk in the lands you’ve conserved. Talk to people finding out their history because of your preservation.

Don’t get addicted to crisis. A crisis addiction can feel great. But a stable nonprofit that is always able to help others is far more compelling.

Choose to grow to stability. And shift your asks from the nonprofit’s crisis. Instead, tell the stories of the impact people are making through your nonprofit.

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Why high-achievers find fundraising hard

As a leadership coach, I work with a lot of high-achievers. People who’ve experienced success enough times to be promoted to the head of a team, a department, or even the head the organization.

One of the oddest things about leadership is in the Western model is that, you lose positional supervision just as your decisions are having far more consequences. Earlier in our career, we have managers and bosses to oversee our work. But in Western organizational leadership models, more leadership authority tends to be accompanied with more isolation.

This is why many leaders in nonprofits find it hard to ask for money.

The mask of having it together

As we move up the leadership ladder, we become acutely aware of how much we don’t know. But our promotions seemed to come from what we do know.

So we put on a mask. Maybe not a total mask. But we do start to reveal only parts of ourselves. And we tend to hide our ignorance. (“Ignorance” isn’t a moral failing. It’s simply “not knowing” something. But for high-achievers, not knowing feels very much like a moral failing.)

Fundraising exposes our ignorance.

Fundraising is asking for help

Fundraising flies in the face of self-reliance. Fundraising forces us to look to others, inviting the community to help support the mission.

And asking for help is incredibly difficult for high-performers.

Which is why fundraising is so hard for high-performers.

Nobody is born a fundraiser

To date, science has not identified a “fundraising” gene. No one is born a fundraiser. As a leader of a nonprofit, you can’t get out of your fundraising obligations by hiring a fundraiser. Fundraising staff can bring expertise, structure, and effectiveness to fundraising.

But as a leader, you’ll need to learn to ask.

The good news is fundraising is a learned practice. Since learning something involves “not knowing,” it’s ok to say you don’t know all there is.

Try a beginner’s mind

One skill that might help is to approach fundraising with a beginner’s mind. Rather than dismissing good fundraising outright, approach it with curiosity. Here are two examples:

Fundraising Letters

Many leaders want a “professional” or “business like” fundraising letter. Lots of text. Lots of talk about the excellence of the nonprofit. And no P.S.

Most leaders want a fundraising letter that would earn them an “A” grade in highschool English.

Fundraising experts know that doesn’t work. Fundraising research (and broader direct mail research) shows it’s far more effective to have a more human, chatty, informal voice with multiple repetitions of just one call to action.

Instead of rejecting the casual tone out of hand because you don’t like it, adopt a beginner’s mind. Ask why that may work. And even try testing it. (You’ll be happily amazed at the difference!)

Major Gift Asks

Since high-performing leaders think they’re in leadership because they know the answers, they tend to mess up major gift solicitations. They tend to go in for a long “shpeal,” a formal proposal, or trying to “perfect” their “pitch.”

But effective major gift asks aren’t about the pitch. Effective major gift asks are about the questions. And shutting up long enough too listen. That takes both stopping talking and stopping planning what you’ll say next.

Basically, effective major gift solicitations are an active process of admitting ignorance about the donor. And sincerely wanting to learn more about them.

So instead of worrying that you won’t look professional enough, adopt a beginner’s mind. Realize that the ask isn’t about you. It’s about connecting the right donors with the mission you serve.

Strategic Ignorance and High-Performance Equals even Higher Results

As a high-performing leader, fundraising will push your buttons. At least at first. It will be uncomfortable asking for help; listening to donors rather than giving a pitch; and using communication tools you’re not used to.

But don’t worry. These will become more and more comfortable. Especially as you see donors engaged in your nonprofit’s work and the fundraising revenue come in.

Another place to practice your beginner’s mind is in the style of your fundraising ask. Many people think verbal extroverts are the best fundraisers. But that is not true. All types can fundraise. For more on that, here is a link to a guide on setting up appointments based on your DISC assessment personality type: https://fundraisingcoach.com/2019/04/23/setting-up-fundraising-appointments-based-on-disc-hardwiring/.

And back in 2004, I wrote on how both extroverts and introverts can effectively fundraise: https://fundraisingcoach.com/2004/04/27/personal-style-extrovertintrovert/. As well as how 4 different styles might approach fundraising: https://fundraisingcoach.com/2004/06/08/personal-style-4-styles/.

Commit to getting comfortable with fundraising. The cause you serve and the staff you serve with need you to. I bet you’ll even start enjoying it a bit!

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How much time should a nonprofit CEO spend on fundraising?

Every Monday, I send out a fundraising email for nonprofit Executive Directors and CEOs. Last week, I dealt with a question I get alot: how much of a nonprofit CEO's time should be given to fundraising?. Here's what I told them.

Fundraising is all about Leadership

As the CEO or executive director, the nonprofit follows your lead. This is especially true in your attitude to fundraising. If you see it as a hassle or as something "dirty," your staff will amplify your attitude throughout your organization. Donors will even pick up on this this disdain, or at least this discomfort, and wonder if their intuition is telling them to not donate to you.

A part of leadership is knowing how to make sure your team has the resources to do what they're tasked with doing. If your model is dependent on donated funds, as a leader, you need to get over your discomfort. More than that, you should be involving all your direct reports in some aspect of fundraising. Fundraising can't be successful if the nonprofit isn't effective. The nonprofit can't be effective if your direct reports aren't doing their jobs well. So their work really does impact fundraising.

And an easy way to show them that you take fundraising seriously is if they see that fundraising is important enough for you to give it time every week.

How do you know how much time is right?

Here are a few ideas to help you figure out what’s right for you:

Look at your typical time given to fundraising last year and add an hour. Figure out how long it takes to call 10 people – looking up their number, dialing, leaving a message or speaking with them, recording a note in your donor database. Then block that time.

I find it takes me an average of 6 – 10 minutes. So 10 calls taking 10 minutes each would be just about 2 hours. Schedule that time on your calendar.

Call all donors who give above your average gift until these calls are taking 50% of your day.

This idea comes from my friend Jay Love. Based on the research, nonprofits do a lousy job at keeping donors year after year. Your thank you call will help increase donor retention which both reduces the cost of communicating to them so they'll give again this year. And most research over the last few decades indicates that the thank you call will help increase the donor's future gifts. So your time given to thank you calls will be reducing costs and increasing revenue.

Jay says that a nonprofit CEO should be calling every single donor over the nonprofit’s average gift amount. Every single donor. CEOs should be personally making those calls until it’s taking up 50% of the CEO's time. Not 50% of their "fundraising time" – 50% of their entire time.

Are you committed enough to make those calls? Time spent thanking donors is the best investment you can make. Finding new donors is practically pointless if you’re not keeping the donors you already have.

How to coordinate with your fundraising staff

If you have fundraising staff, treat them like experts. Fundraising is its own field with its own research and benchmarks. Much of what makes for effective fundraising is not what you'd think would work.

Ask fundraising staff who they'd love for you to connect with

Let's face it, if you haven't been great with fundraising up to this point, they probably won't give you the highest donors. Accept that. And get good at building relationships with the people they give you. Learn what you need to learn to be an asset with donors of all giving amounts.

Don't blame the fundraising staff for not filling your calendar

You are the leader. Set the example. Learn enough about your donor database to see if people you're interested in getting to know are already in there. If they aren't, go ahead and reach out. If they are, coordinate your interactions with your fundraising team. That way if they're working on a bigger gift, you'll know before you call.

If you don't feel this confidence in your fundraising staff - confidence enough to trust that they know their profession as much as a cardiologist knows her profession - confidence to believe them over the assertions of the loudest board member - then you have a staffing issue you need to address.

Leaders need to lead

You are the leader of a nonprofit. For good or bad, nonprofits rely on donated revenue. So figure out how important fundraising is to your nonprofit. If you are worried about how you’ll pay the bills, then I suggest you make sure most of your time is given to fundraising: researching donors, engaging and qualifying prospects, asking donors, and thanking. Even if you're a really small nonprofit.

You can’t farm this out entirely. You need to learn how fundraising works. Learn what donors actually respond to. Learn how to communicate with respect to your staff and the people you help while being compelling to donors. Learn how to lift up those your serve while clearly asking others to donate.

As a leader, you need to lead.

A nonprofit CEO who won’t learn fundraising is like a shop owner who keeps organizing the shelves but won’t learn sales.

You’ll go out of business.

So, commit to blocking specific times on your calendar for fundraising. Learn the basics of your donor database. And start making calls. People love talking to the CEO. So go ahead and make their day.

If you’re like most CEOs, you started last year with good intentions. But those got drowned out by the competing demands on your time. So find an accountability partner or a coach to help you keep accountable. And to help you optimize what time you do have for fundraising.

The world needs what your nonprofit provides. Learn how to be a nonprofit that stays in business.

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Just ask!

I've been doing LOTS of trainings in the last few months. And getting a lot of the same types of questions.

They generally sound like:

"How do I know when a right time to ask so-and-so?"
"How do I know if that asking amount is too much?"
"This is what happened during the ask. I haven't heard back in weeks. Do you think I offended her?"

Perhaps you have asked some of these yourself.

They're good questions. And they're motivated by a desire to do right.

But they all have a common denominator: only the donor knows the answer.

So ASK!

"Ask Without Fear" isn't just about money
The only way you'll really know the answers to these questions is to ask the other person.

For the timing question, I would not ask if it's the right time. I'd just ask for the appointment.For the amount question in face-to-face asks (in-person or on Zoom), I always encourage people to consider asking politely higher than they'd expected. (There are ways to do this without being a jerk. And please, don't be a jerk.)For the "did I offend her" question, ask. Practice the wording that makes the most sense to you. Test out different phrases until you find a couple that work.People will tell you if you ask them

Thinking and praying and strategizing are important. But you can't read donors' minds any more than you can read your best friend's mind. The good news is, these questions can be answered - and these relationships strengthened - by directly, politely asking.

Who do you need to ask this week?

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The 2 things to avoid in year end fundraising

With 4 weeks left in the calendar year, staying focused is more important than ever.

Rather than feeling like you're living out a well planned fundraising year, these last four weeks can often feel like you're missing out on everything. That you're falling short everywhere.

The 2 Things To Avoid In Year End Fundraising

It would seem that the last four weeks of the year provide a clarity for fundraising. Instead, many nonprofits err on one of two extremes: trying to do all the things or giving up and waiting until the new year.

Getting distracted by all the things

In these last few weeks of the year, it's easy to get distracted by all the things happening around you. There's Giving Tuesday. There are holiday parties. And there are executive directors, staff, and even board members who have never been aware of fundraising but are now thinking they're the experts. At this time of they year, it's common to hear them clamoring for gimmicky online fundraising pushes and email only solicitation drives and t-shirt sales and showey billboards.

Waiting until next year

The other extreme is to get distracted by the thoughts in your head. Thoughts like "donors are too busy this time of the year" or "it's not a good time to ask right now" or the killer "we should just wait until next year." It's enough for you to throw your hands up and stop all asking, isn't it?

Stay Focused

It would be hard to not get distracted. But it's vital. Your mission needs funding. Your staff deserves to get paid. And your donors are giving to nonprofits right now.

But they won't give to yours if they're not asked.

For the financial health of your nonprofit, this is the time your expertise as a fundraiser needs to shine. This is where you show your discipline. These last few weeks are where:

You make sure to do one more well written fundraising letter. Yes a printed letter in an envelope sent through the mail.You look at your major donor solicitation plans and make sure you're up to date and following through on each of them.And you study your lists of people who gave last December but not yet this year, and last year but not yet this year, and two years ago but not yet this year. And you reach out to those who haven't given.

Go ahead and do #GIvingTuesday if you want, but if your nonprofit doesn't have a history of #GivingTuesday being a big fundraising day, don't bet your entire fundraising goal on that day. Make sure to have the fundamentals in place first: direct mail, specific asks, clear, compelling, equitable solicitation language.

A Word to Nonprofit Leaders Who Don't Study Fundraising

Nonprofit leaders, unless you regularly study the field of fundraising and fundraising systems that work for your nonprofit, this is your time to trust the expertise of your fundraisers. Selling t-shirts and doing gimmicky fundraising shticks are less likely to benefit you then investing in one more well-written direct mail letter and in you personally making lots of major gift asks.

You may be more focused on fundraising now because it's in the air. But as a leader, you should've been asking about year end fundraising plans in July or August. (Put that on your calendar for next year.)

If you're not sure that your fundraising team is doing their study, then make plans to fix that.

If your organization is dependent on fundraising for some portion of its budget, it's crucial that you get to know as much about that as you know about your other revenue streams. It's important that you know as much about solid fundraising strategy as you know about the programs your nonprofit offers. You may not like fundraising, but by choosing a leadership position, you chose to do things you don't always enjoy. So learn fundraising.

A Word to Fundraising Professionals

If you're not studying on how to be a better fundraiser, this time of the year will be particularly stressful. You accepted a position that is responsible, at least in part, for whether the rest of the team gets paid and whether your nonprofit has the funds to continue doing its good work.

So just like any professional needs continuing education, you do to. Commit to it. And try to get it from a variety of sources so you can figure out the good from the bad, the what works for you and your nonprofit's values from what is out of sync with them. Groups to look at are many: AADO, AFP, NPSC, CCF, BA, ISP, VGT, CCT, RC, and our own NPA. (How is that for acronym soup?)

And commit to continuing education so you can have confidence in push back against enthusiastically delivered bad advice. And commit to continuing education so you have a network of people you trust to go to with questions. You may be the only fundraising person on your staff, but you don't have to be alone.

But in these last few weeks of the year, focus on the fundamentals. If you're not clear on what your fundamentals are, try: direct mail and major gift solicitations.

People are incredibly generous. And people are thinking about giving right now in ways that they aren't at other times of the year. So focus.

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