“Your donors can’t read,” isn’t a commentary on your donors’ eyesight, education or IQ. That’s today’s reality. Everyone’s scanning. Your donors don’t have time to read. Even the people who think they’re reading are really scanning. Your donors get like 100 emails a day (my inbox count was 147 yesterday and I’ve worked hard to […]
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Want to know how much difference it can make to use cause-strategies in your fundraising? How about 30 days of income in one day? True story, hot off the press: on Giving Tuesday, one of our clients raised more funds online than they received online in the entire month of November last year. Yep. In
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The donor fundraising landscape is changing. A few years ago it was enough to have decent fundraising/admin ratios and an adequate “thank you” strategy. Today’s donors want more*. And when donors want more, ministries and nonprofits had better figure out how they can offer what they can. I spotted these changes as I began to
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Photos are an imperative in fundraising. The right image makes the case. The problem is that the best images often make us uncomfortable. That’s the point. I can’t tell you the number of times clients have agreed with me on the use of vivid, concrete language to express the need and to describe their cause
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Hoots and I saw this sign recently on the wall of a coffee shop. You’ve seen signs like this. The only thing I could think of when I read it was “it’s a ‘puppy’ not ‘dog’.” It can be a powerful threat: leave your kid unsupervised and we’ll hop him up on too much caffeine
fundraising success: getting the words right Read More »
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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Your childhood may have been different, but as a kid, I was terrible at playing rock-paper-scissors! If you don’t know the game you can learn about it here. Somehow I always telegraphed my play. That and I loved “scissors” way too much. Some how, the 3rd “scissors” I threw in a row and the other
fundraising: rock, paper, scissors Read More »
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
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Good stand-up comedians have 3 key skills you need to remember to improve your next fundraising event. You wouldn’t think that a comedian could teach you about event fundraising, but they can. And I’m not talking about improving your jokes, although some of you could use some help. Hoots and I had the pleasure of
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Would you like to know the single most devastating thing you can do for your direct mail fundraising? What one thing will cause an income disaster? What’s the big killer (in a bad use of that word)? Simple: imagine your audience is you. Write for yourself. Write your direct mail the way you’d want it.
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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.
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I’ve been drawn into several conversations recently where the theme was something like: “our results are down” or “the economy is finally hurting us” or “we just have to settle for this new reality.” (The “new reality” was some measure of poor results — cultivation or acquisition or whatever.) Turns out there’s often a systemic
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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.
