Mr. Cameron Has Something to Tell You
William John Cameron (1879-1953) really lived the kind of life you would expect in an adventure novel or a Hollywood movie. We want to establish that to begin with, to counter any idea that he’s famous just for coming up with colorful aphorisms. The son of Manitoba pioneers, “W.J.” Cameron was one of 13 children in his family, and he is said to have once walked barefoot from Gladstone in Manitoba to Bottineau, North Dakota – a distance of approximately 100 miles – to go to work on his uncle’s farm. Later he founded a successful surgical equipment supply house in Chicago, and later still achieved fame as a big game hunter. He a chiefly remembered for exploring the Kalahari Desert in Africa and studying its people. But it’s undeniable that Mr. Cameron is also remembered for his pithy sayings. We found a couple of his zingers that are particularly pertinent to fundraisers, and we think they’ll be helpful to have in the back of your mind when things aren’t ducky, when the challenges are coming thick and fast, and a little ground truth is in order to keep you focused. First: “Money never starts an idea; it is the idea that starts the money.” We like this one because it reasserts the dominance of good, old fashioned brain work. Sure it’s hard to come up with good ideas, but that’s why you get a paycheck for doing it. Plus, it reminds us that throwing money at a problem never solved it. So it follows that having to work within a tight budget is only as limiting as you make it, because putting on your thinking cap is always free. Next: “Thanksgiving, after all, is a word of action.” What Mr. Cameron means, of course, is that Thanksgiving is more than a federal holiday – it’s a way of life. More importantly, it’s an active way of life. From our perspective as fundraisers, the concept of giving thanks animates not only the donors who choose to make gifts, but also the response of good nonprofit professionals who thank, respect, and recognize the donors in return. And it’s also the response of the folks on the receiving end of the good works enabled by the gift (the charity’s mission). You might say that our vocation is thanksgiving in action throughout the year. Tomorrow is a day dedicated to its celebration. Categories: Giving, Planned Giving Marketing, Relationships
Personalizing the Grey Flannel Suit — Part II: Seeing, Hearing, and Building Familiarity
Personalization is the key to attracting prospects, optimizing donor relationships, and maximizing the donations that result from them.
Shouting at Nobody Are You Wasting Your Best Stuff on the Peanut Gallery?
A beautiful sunny autumn day in Southeastern Pennsylvania and the local strip mall was crowded with shoppers enjoying themselves… All except one.
Personalizing the Grey Flannel Suit – Part I: Biographies Tell Who You Are
Donors don’t leave legacies to grey flannel suits. Donors want to see the face of the person wearing the suit — which is why fundraisers need well-written biographies.
Who Asks Who? Trends in Data Sourcing
From a fundraiser’s point of view, or course, a perfect world would include all prospects coming directly to the fundraiser or her organization for advice on giving. But numbers indicate fewer potential donors are seeking advice from NPOs and their personnel. They are turning instead to legal and financial professionals.
Parable: A River of Giving
A friend once relayed an interesting anecdote about simple, effective messaging that just so happens to be a perfect teaching moment for those of us in the fundraising world. It seems she was helping out an elderly couple who live down the hall of her apartment complex. The wife had a health problem that had just become acutely symptomatic. My friend was assisting by trying to find a hospital-type bed for the lady to use. Clear Communication In describing the want-ad that she ran on Craigslist, my friend said, “I didn’t really lay it on thick. I just said it was an older couple and the lady had a health condition and they needed the bed and they didn’t have a lot of money, and could anybody donate one?” Talk about effective messaging. My friend quickly discovered that she didn’t really need to “lay it on thick,” because the solicitation, as written, attracted multiple responses within a day – literally five or six people responded, and all said they wanted to donate a hospital bed. “One of the first people who called not only wanted to give the bed, they also promised that they would deliver it! That’s the one they went with,” she told me. Taken by itself, it’s a nice story. But I want to point out that my friend isn’t a professional in the field of soliciting charitable donations. Neither did she enjoy the advantages of an institutional brand or a defined prospect base. She did have: a clear mission and she described it clearly to a receptive audience through a proven Internet-based marketing vector (Craigslist). And then she got more responses in one day than she could handle. Don’t you wish your nonprofit had that problem? The moral of this story is: People care. People want to help. You can find them with effective messaging. Our challenge as fundraisers is to reach those people and communicate our mission clearly. Effective planned giving marketing comes from the heart, keeps the message simple, uses a variety of touch points and mediums, and focuses on the benefits to the donor, not to the nonprofit (It sells the sizzle, not the steak). The rest is plain sailing. Category: Planned Giving Marketing
“Entry-Level Organizations”: Wave of the Past?
Recently I read online somewhere the following: [A nonprofit] is seeking a planned giving advisor. This is a junior position for a fundraiser with 3 or so years of experience who wishes to move into planned giving. Focus is on bequests, CGAs, and marketing.
Why Donor-Centered Marketing? Because talking to yourself is not an option.
Many years ago, for my sins, I did time on the editorial staff of a major urban “alternative newsweekly.” During that time I overdosed daily on badly conceived and written press releases. They were all hardcopy and they arrived via snail mail – that was the only game in town circa 1989. Every day I would read several such releases that would evoke from me no such response as, “That’s interesting! I think I’ll write about it!” but rather “This collateral is non-information-bearing.” Then I would crumple up the paper with extreme prejudice and launch it into the circular file with my opinion of the sender similarly trashed.
Experience Proves: You Never Know
I was lying on the beach with my wife a few years back when a client buzzed through my cellphone, declaring in a sorrowful voice, “I’m going to have to apologize to all of them. In fact, I am writing the apology letter now.”
`Worse Than No Blog At All? Bad Blogs Prove “Something for Nothing” Never Happens
You’ll find it up there at the top of the list of disillusioning truths: “There ain’t no free lunch.” It’s true in fundraising, of course; but it can be obscured by the endless parade of miraculous “next big things” that tend to put our common sense out of focus. For example, the seemingly limitless marketing possibilities offered by the Internet have charmed some planned giving fundraisers into the mistaken belief that this new miracle vector will do their job for them. Make no mistake: With planned giving on the Internet as with anything else, lack of effort and commitment translate directly into lack of results,
