It’s a painful truth we don’t think about very often: If people don’t open our emails, they won’t respond to them, no matter how brilliant they are … … and most people don’t open our emails. You can change that by applying some small but important tactics to your emails. By getting more people to open, you can make all the difference to the success of your email campaigns. Here are four things to pay close attention to that will really help: Subject Line This is the largest success-or-failure factor in email fundraising. It doesn’t matter how brilliant your campaign is – if it doesn’t get open ..read more

Question from the inbox: Do you have any tips on storytelling when there is no happy ending? The disease that I fundraise for is terminal, aggressive, and traumatic. Every diagnosis is a death sentence, and the average life span from diagnosis to death is 25 months. Bottom line: at this stage, there is no hope. No known cause and no cure. Most families, loved ones and unpaid carers of our clients do not want to hear from us after the loved ones passing. We just remind them of the trauma that they have been through. Having been in fundraising for many years – this is new to me. I am sure that I ..read more

If you want to grow your digital fundraising, the size of your email list is a vital factor for consideration. If you’re starting with a small list, you’ll need to work on growth to get to that big email fundraising future. But unfortunately, many fundraisers I’ve spoken with, aren’t sure how to go about that growth. So in this blog, I’ll break down email list growth and the steps you should take to get to a bright email fundraising future. There are two levels to email list growth. Let’s look at each. 1. Maximizing email address capture from your existing community Before you spend money on a ..read more

Donor Advised Funds (DAF) in the USA and UK (called PAFs in Australia)  are a very big deal, and getting bigger. They have gone from being a sort of fringe way some donors gave, to a massive and important donation channel. None of us can afford to ignore DAFs any more. A DAF is a giving account that allows donors to make a charitable donation, get an immediate tax deduction, and then recommend grants from the fund to charities of their choice over time. Most are created as Foundations by major investment houses like Fidelity or Vanguard in the US, or Fairfax Family and Cannon-Brookes in A ..read more

You’ve probably seen the panic. Numerous sources, including Giving USA, The Nonprofit Times, and others have pointed out the steep drop in fundraising revenue between 2021 and 2022. Adjusted for inflation, revenue dropped 10.5% in the US. We’ve only seen year-to-year drops four times in the last 40 years. Some countries, like Australia, have not seen a drop (according to the NAB/JBWere study and  Benchmarking Project) but it is definitely getting tougher. And while we don’t have 2022 to 2023 numbers yet, many organizations are having a rough year this year too. Scary! But like good Hallow ..read more

Email is the backbone of nonprofit digital fundraising. Grow and engage your list consistently, and you’ll enjoy increasing returns on your email appeals … assuming your supporters open your emails. In our recent blog, Secrets for Effective Fundraising Subject Lines, we delved into the art of crafting compelling subject lines that get your emails opened. Now in this post, we’ll go beyond the subject line to explore other factors that can help get your emails opened and raise more revenue for your cause. Before we dive into those factors, a quick reminder about the measurement of email opens. E ..read more

Email is the king of digital direct response fundraising. If you consistently grow your email list and engage and solicit it well, you’ll enjoy a steady growth in digital fundraising revenue. Of course, your emails can only earn donations if people open them. That sounds simple enough, but with your subscribers receiving 120 emails per day on average (including spam), there’s a lot of competition in their inboxes. In this environment, only a few emails will get opened. And of the factors that can make an email compelling, the subject line is arguably the most important. It gets viewed in all e ..read more

It’s the busy time for almost everyone in fundraising. The make-or-break time of year where you hit budget – or not. You’ve been going full speed for several weeks, and you have a few weeks to go before you can even think about slowing down … much less taking some time off. For now, some smart steps can help you survive, and I have a few that have worked for me and for others through the years. First, let me give you a piece of really terrible advice that kind of works: Just power through. That’s not useful advice, because it’s not something you can choose to do. It’s sometimes all that an out ..read more

Your landing page is the make-or-break moment for your digital fundraising campaign. Get it wrong and you can lose a lot of money from would-be donors. The good news is that nonprofit landing pages have improved in recent years. Thanks to better digital education, platforms, and infrastructure, many more charities have workable, mobile-friendly landing pages now than 5-10 years ago. But don’t break out the champagne just yet! The charity sector cannot in 2023 claim mastery of the online landing page. We’re still losing donations to overwhelming designs, unfocussed content and poorly-structured ..read more

You’ve seen this before: The digital hot-shot fires up his pitch for whatever it is he’s selling that promises to change the game for your fundraising. He talks fast and gives a lot of details that can be hard to follow. And makes huge promises: basically, if you work with him and follow his system, you’ll spend the rest of your career on the beach, sipping cocktails while your donors pursue you, cash (or bitcoin) in hand, trying to donate as much as possible as quickly as they can! Maybe you can tell, I’ve kind of had it with digital hot-shots. Like all of us, I need to be educated about the ..read more