As part of our work, I review a ton of development and fundraising messaging. I see one mistake in nearly 100% of the copy, scripts and pitches I review. It’s one mistake that if you can fix it, you’ll see a nice uptick in income. Ready? Well, not so fast. I need to start by […]
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It’s a busy, noisy, crowded, distracted, self-absorbed world. You may have wondered how to get and keep your donor’s attention.* Many ministries and nonprofits seem to have problems handling short donor attention spans. Here in the US, we’re about 5 weeks from a rather important event in our world — the US elections. Election news
how to make your donors care about what you’re doing Read More »
Not in any particular order here are what I think are the 5 most important words in fundraising. 1. You. Talk to and write to the donor specifically. Make it personal for them. If it’s not personal, it’s not powerful. Help them see how they have an opportunity or a chance to do something big.
the 5 most important words in fundraising Read More »
5 signs that your fundraising might be in trouble (it was hard to do only 5): 1. You mail all your donors in every impact. Direct mail is highly efficient and can have astounding ROIs but only if you “get” the concept of targeting by giving patterns, gift sizes and seasonality. 2. You aren’t connecting
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The one missing ingredient in most fundraising messaging is the bad news. Hopefully, when you communicate with your donors (and prospective donors) you help them understand the problem your ministry solves. I’m sure you tell them how you go about dealing with the problem. Maybe you even tell them how they will be different and
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Recently, Seth Godin had one of his usual “poke in the eye” blog posts. I love how he does such a wonderful job of cutting through clutter. The Thomas bottomline out of the post is that many professionals don’t check back to see how things worked out. I have to confess that’s something that bugs
how’d it work out? Read More »
When I was the client, the strategy guys doing what I do now used to make fun of how many times I wanted to run a map in our materials. I was always looking for a reason to show a world map with our work displayed “in some kinda new cool way” (that was what
nonprofit win: maps and cupcakes Read More »
One of my favorite presentations to give is “Aunt Ruby’s Rules on Nonprofit Branding.” I won’t try to describe it in detail, but it deals with what I consider the current realities and opportunities for nonprofit leaders all in the context of how my very proper Aunt Ruby would say it. The material is the
most major donors don’t leave mad Read More »
This week’s interview with Seth Godin sparked discussion on the blog, FB page and on the backchannel. It was great fun and nearly everything we’d hoped for (it’s early yet, maybe it will turn into “everything” we’d hoped for, we’ll see). One of the comments that Seth made grabbed the attention of many of our
billions on storage units Read More »
I know you’re busy with 4th Quarter madness so I’ll do the bottomline first: if you want to improve your net income, think like a donor. For our “for profit” friends, think like your customer to improve your net income. Simple as that. Now you can go back to putting the finishing touches on your
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I learned a new word and want to share it with you. The word is: “exigent.” Maybe you already knew exigent. I couldn’t use it in a sentence without being tempted to go for a cheap laugh with: “Everyone knows that dinosaurs have been exigent forever.” While not very funny, it does allow me to
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“Love” is a funny word to connect with major donors. And most nonprofits and executive directors will say they love their major donors. The irony is that many will demonstrate through their actions over time that they love the money, not the donor. And that, you know, is a bad thing. Major donors give where
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Oneicity was born from our desire and passion to serve small- and medium-sized ministries and non-profits with affordable fundraising and marketing. We are a professional services firm that is unlike any you have ever worked with.
