A simple tool that helps your copywriting

Hemingwayapp… in action Part One

A six word short story from Ernest Hemingway that will make you sad. 

For sale. Baby shoes. Never used.

Now, a short article about Hemingway that will make you happy.

It is not often that a truly amazing simple piece of software comes along that can really improve your fundraising dramatically.

Hemingway, flagged recently in Jeff Brooks’ Future Fundraising Now blog will change my writing – for the good.

Hemingwayapp doesn’t turn a bad copy into a good copy, but it makes good copy better.   If you write for fundraising, then you already know that you should be writing at a reading level of around grade eight (13 year olds).  Generally lower is better. 

This has nothing to do with perceived intelligence or sophistication of donors, it is purely down to making it easy for them.

Again, if you write regularly for fundraising, you should be familiar with Fleisch-Kincaid and how to use readability statistics that come built in to Microsoft Word.  (If not I would have said search Flesch Kincaid in YouTube but don’t bother – Hemingwayapp will make that action redundant).

If you have used Word’s readability statistics, you already know they are a bit of a pain, reflecting that your copy is not good enough but not telling you why.

Well, Hemingway tells you why.  If you write, use Hemingwayapp. It truly is genius.

Want to see the impact of Hemingwayapp?

I took the article above, pasted it into Hemingway (instead of getting my partner to edit it) and this is what it did for me... see if you can spot the differences.

Hemingwayapp… in action Part Two

A six word short story from Ernest Hemingway that will make you sad. 

For sale. Baby shoes. Never used.

Now, a short article about Hemingway that will make you happy.

It is rare that an amazing simple piece of software comes along that can improve your fundraising dramatically.

Hemingwayapp, flagged recently in Jeff Brooks’ Future Fundraising Now blog will change my writing – for the good.

Hemingwayapp doesn’t turn a bad copy into a good copy, but it makes good copy better.   If you write for fundraising, then you already know that you should be writing at a reading level of around grade eight (13 year olds).  Generally lower is better. 

This has nothing to do with perceived intelligence or sophistication of donors, it is down to making it easy for them.

If you write frequently for fundraising, you will be familiar with readability statistics.  These are  built in to Microsoft Word. 

If not I would have said search Flesch Kincaid in YouTube but don’t bother – Hemingwayapp will make that action redundant.

If you have used Word’s readability statistics, you already know they are a bit of a pain.  Unfortunately they inform you that your copy is not good enough but don't tell you why.

Well, Hemingwayapp tells you why.  If you write, use Hemingwayapp. It is genius.

If you write for fundraising, or blogs(!) I recommend putting everything through Hemingwayapp. 

Not all brand people are the comms devil...*

The role of a communications or branding department within a charity sometimes seems to be:

"To make fundraising as challenging and difficult as possible for the fundraisers".

Whilst all us fundraisers will have hilariously tragic tales of this occurring, it is definitely not always the case.

Probably one of the least subtle but educational bloggers, Jeff Brooks, has released a new book to accompany his excellent The Fundraiser's Guide to Irresistible Communications.

The Money-Raising Non Profit Brand includes some amazing U Turns from Jeff.  He describes meeting brand-y type comms people who have helped charities raise more money.

But Brooks' fans don't despair.  He doesn't disappoint and takes time to explain why most 'brand' strategies harm fundraising efforts.

And then he goes on to explain some key techniques for branding work that boosts income.

I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy and I have to say you should buy a copy if you are a charity bod working in brand, comms or fundraising.

* See I am the Comms Devil

His book is available on Amazon etc of course.

The future of fundraising in Australia?

A recent post by Louise Williams on the Fundraising Institute Australia LinkedIn group recently asked the oft repeated question.  What will fundraising look like in ten years?

What do you think?

My thoughts....

Looking at the data, it really depends on the size of the charity.  Nearly all donations, statistically speaking, go to a couple of hundred charities, and the top 50 of them get the majority of that.

So, looking at those guys and ignoring government and sales of services, we see that by far and away the bulk of that money comes from direct mail, face to face, bequests and major donors.

Things like affinity deals (book a hotel and 3% goes to charity), fashion parades, fundraising events, fundraising offers and auctions can be very important fundraisers for smaller charities but despite a few outliers (eg Cancer Council NSW superb events program, Movember and Inspired Adventures trips abroad across several top charities) they don't add up to a massive slice of total fundraising.  Of course, if your charity makes all of its money from such events you may feel different, but it doesn't change the fact that the bulk of income comes from individuals giving through regular gifts and direct donations, and this is dominated by the biggies.

I don't see this shifting enormously in the next ten years - though I do see one area that will almost certainly give face to face a bit of competition:

Regular givers acquired by telephone, following lead generation techniques.  This is already huge in Australia, and is growing near exponentially.  Charities run surveys, campaigns, online and offline to generate leads and then they are called for regular giving.

A group convened by Pareto Fundraising, now run by the FIA and consisting of lots of charities, is working to encourage the telecommunication companies  to help include SMS lead generation in the mix.  This is massive in UK and Spain, leading to the London Underground building in a quota system to stop all ads on the Tube being charity 'please SMS this number to donate...' ads.  Note that the point of these ads is not the donation but the number to call to get a monthly donation.

Also, sensible charities are investing much more in bequest marketing these days; although the bulk of the income from that area won't be in the next ten years, enough will come in towards the end of the next decade to make significant impact.

Back in 2004, face to face began to provide more than half of all new regular givers, whilst direct mail plodded along.  By 2014, face to face provided nearly 90%(!) of all new regular givers and direct mail was providing twice as many 'classic' donors as it was in 2010 when it's recent growth spurt began.  I see continued growth for these two, despite the competition, for at least another half decade.

'Direct digital' donations - ie acquiring donors through online ads to online forms - currently provide a smidgen of donors (except for disasters) but this will definitely change.  How much in the next decade is hard to tell.

My thoughts... Anyone else?

State of DoNation Australia

At this years FIA Conference, I was asked to deliver an overview of fundraising in Australia.  So the creative and data teams at Pareto got together and produced this video...

Let me know if it is useful!

Sean

Is face to face fundraising really worth it?

Before I start I should make two confessions:

1) I am biased - my companies analyse data, help donor retention programs, acquisition, legacies and major donors and regular giving conversions by phone, mail and online, mostly in NZ and Australia.  I don't 'do face to face'

2) I am not very good at face to face fundraising. The photo below is of me, as fundraising director at Mind (a mental health charity in the UK) giving it a go in London in the late 90s.  I was not very good.  The guy I am chatting to was French, and we couldn't get foreigners to sign up.  But we had a good chat.

Having said that, I will be as unbiased as I can, just concentrating on the data.

What data? Every year, loads of charities* get together to share information so that they can understand the market and maximise efficiency.  This is an amazing collaboration.  They do not share any data that could compromise individuals privacy, but they are able to look at millions of transactions.  We look at a decade of data - and the volumes are huge.  This is truly how people behave, not how they say they behave.

First thing first - statistically speaking, with the exception of media friendly disasters (tsunamis, floods, fires, earthquakes and other tragic events), people don't give without being asked.  They say they intend to, but they just don't.  If fundraising charities didn't ask, they would save an absolute fortune on salaries, post, creative fees, print, TV ads, phone calls... but would save even more as they blink out of existence.  The good they do wouldn't be done.

One of the greatest fundraising channels in the history of fundraising is 'face to face'.  By this I mean those dudes that knock on your door or chat to you on the street or the shopping mall and ask for a regular gift.

Face to face has achieved something that no other channel has - getting younger people to donate in strategic numbers.  By younger, I mean under 60.  Most donors are over 60 - but face to face has an average age of signups less than 40.  This is remarkable, and the volumes have been huge.

Like any high impact marketing product, face to face is not without controversy.  It is, literally, in your face. Constantly reminding you of the inequities of our society.  Also, there are occasional reports of rude or pushy canvassers - though these are rare now, given that they are pretty much summarily dismissed if they get complaints. Most canvassers passionately believe in the cause, and love the idea that they are able to make a living, fund their travel or whatever - and do good at the same time.  Some canvassers may work for several charities over a period of time, exposing them to different causes.

But it is expensive - travel, salaries, materials, databases, follow up systems, SMSs, email, videos, welcome packs, welcome videos, admin processes and systems, stamps... none of these are free.

A while back we looked at 'in house' v 'outsourced'; on the face of it, it looked like in house would be cheaper and have more passionate canvassers.  The study found that in some cases, that was true but on balance, over five years, there was little in the overall net result for the charity whether it was in house or out of house.  Given the challenges of setting up in house (different pay structures, space, getting and retaining direct sales management expertise etc) most charities actually out source.

Like any marketing, expensive doesn't mean bad - the most important thing for a company is "What is our profit margin?"  Charities don't call it that, but they need 'profit' because this funds their good work.

But does it work?

Firstly - what is 'working'?  For me, it has to make a net return in a reasonable time frame and not cause damage to the  brand of the charity.  These are relatively easy to measure.

Net return is obvious.  But damage to brand is harder - in my view, looking at a charity's impact (the work it does) and its overall income - beyond face to face, and over many years - are the best objective measures.

Also, 'working' would be influenced by how well it 'works' compared to other methodologies, such as digital, mail, phone, outdoor, TV, radio etc.

So, let's start with volume.  Of 230,000 donors acquired in 2012 by the charities in the study a whopping 90% were through face to face. And face to face provided the largest growth too.  Gulp.  In the chart below 'RG' is regular givers - ie people who sign onto an automatic debit, usually monthly.

This is so great, that if you are serious about growing regular giving, you kind of have to do face to face.

But do these donors stay with you?

Looking at 2006 to 2011 recruits of new donors we see that, after one year, more than half are still giving - about 57% of new regular donors to all the charities doing face to face, were still giving 12 months later (the 'attrition' - number of people who stop giving - is about 43%, hence retention is 57%).

Imagine if you worked in a company where you get people to give you a monthly debit in return for, well, nothing (except a good feeling), and over half were still giving a year later.

You can see as volumes increased over these years, attrition has increased the increase is in line with what you would expect from larger volumes.

Remarkably, of the people who lasted a year, only 15-17% would drop out in year two and 5-10% per year afterwards- within the realms of 'natural attrition'

But how does this attrition compare to other methods?  Well, because only a small proportion of the donors acquired in 2011 were from sources other than face to face, it is best to group them together to compare against face to face.

You may have noticed I have written face to face in red.  Now I am going to introduce non face to face donors.  When reading, the word 'non' can somehow disappear, so I am going to highlight that phrase blue.  This will help I promise.

What we see is that 79% of the non face to face donors were still giving in year two - much  more than the face to face acquired donors at 57%.  You may notice that subsequent years have little difference between face to face and non face to face.

It seems obvious - non face to face is better than face to face! Yaay!

Before you charity fundraisers drop plans for face to face and come rushing to me for help with non face to face acquisition, let's take a breath first and explore some more.

Firstly, why does face to face have worse attrition?

Any trained direct marketer will tell you that if you increase volumes of customers, you tend to decrease average positive indicators dramatically, so that will account for much of it, but there are also other factors.

I can't produce data about those signing up because they feel guilty, those who simply can't say no face to face, those who fancied the canvasser or those that got in trouble when they got home and their partner kicked their arse.

But I can produce some data which explains some of this difference.

First is volume - higher volume, worse attrition.

Second is age.  I am sorry to tell you this, but generally speaking younger people don't give,  Like I said earlier, face to face has got younger people giving in strategic numbers for the first time ever.  But when they do give, they are not as 'loyal' as older donors.

Breaking down face to face donors by age, we see about 130,000 of the 2011 recruits were under 44, and less than 50,000 over 44.  But those younger people were much more likely to stop giving.You can pretty much ignore the attrition of the 75+ donors, there are only a few hundred of them, so not statistically useful.

You can see half of the 90,000 under 34 year olds stopped giving after 12 months, but the truly remarkable thing is that a huge volume (45,000) Australian young people have entered into an ongoing relationship supporting a charity in 2012, after supporting it in 2011.  This had simply never happened until face to face was introduced around 2000.  How much better is the world going to be when these donors actually get to donor age!?

Ok, you believe me - face to face works in terms of number of sign ups.  But we need money, not just sign ups, and you probably still prefer those lower attrition non face to face donors.

The chart below shows the massive rise in income from 2003 to 2012.  For all you digital types who think digital can save the world - I think you are right, but not yet.  In fact, not for a very long time - look how much it has grown after tons of effort from the charities.  Online does work, but not on a large scale across many charities.  Yet.  (Happy to chat about some of our amazing online fundraising successes - but they are extraordinary, whereas face to face success is the norm).

Clearly, the big income driver is face to face.  And of the 70 charities in the study, not all engaged in face to face.

Another way of looking at the quality of a relationship with a donors is to look at the proportion of people who stick with their payments but actually increase their contributions.

The chart below shows that face to face donors are about as likely to upgrade over the years as any other method.  Phone is better, but if you consider that upgrading is best done on the phone, you can imagine the contact rate of people acquired by the phone is much better too; we know they are phone responsive.  If anything, it is remarkable the direct mail and face to face are so close to phone acquired donors upgrade rates.

Online upgrades look good, but it is just a big handful of donors comparatively speaking.

So face to face gets the volume, has good retention (but not as good as other regular giving acquisition methods), has good upgrade rates and provides lots of gross income.  But what about the net?

We know that the five year value of face to face donors varies by charity but averages around $760.  The average five year value of non face to face donors, mostly due to better retention, is over $900 -  a big difference.  Again, non face to face does better.

Average acquisition costs are estimated to be around $300 for face to face donors, and $350 non face to face, so non face to face seems to win again (yaay!) but the inconvenient truth is simply the volume - no matter how much money you throw at non face to face, you simply can't get volumes to compete with face to face. Yet.

Either are bloody good - that is lots of extra revenue for the charity that would otherwise not exist, and that, after all, is the goal of the fundraiser.

Of course, the accomplished marketer knows they need a balanced portfolio, and this is the correct approach.

But what of brand damage?  Seriously - Greenpeace, Heart Foundation, Amnesty, World Vision, WWF, Red Cross, UNHCR, Oxfam, Cancer Council NSW.... damaged brands? Come on, get real! Most have been doing this for many years with no negative impact on brand, donor relationships or their ability to do good.

Is face to face fundraising worth it for your charity?  Yes, but only if have good, tight automated admin, a need for money, good communication systems and a great monthly proposition.

* Click on this link to see the charities included in this study.

How to Write a Thank You Letter

How to write a thank you letter....

First question: should you even bother? The anecdotal evidence for thank you letters is huge – many donors say they like them. Lots of opinion research shows that donors are more likely to give if ‘they know what their money was spent on’. 

However, there is little data that we have access to that demonstrates that general thank you letters actually increase net life time value.  Few charities have tested sending thank you letters to half their donors versus no thank yous for others - especially since it needs to be followed through for a minimum of 18 months, but preferably longer.

Without solid data, most charities make the decision based on policy or gut instinct.  We know that gut instinct is often wrong though. For example, gut instinct (and donor feedback) contradicts the fact that generally, longer letters beat shorter and more mailings = better life time value.

We know that bequest income for many charities can raise more than direct mail donations, and a big influence on bequests is the relationship with the donor.  So maybe being nice, despite a lack of evidence, is not a bad thing.  Even though we can't prove that our lovely thank you letters helped secure some of those bequests.

On balance, despite working at a data-led organisation, and despite the evidence, I reckon writing thank you letters is a good thing to do. 

So let’s be nice to donors. 

Hang on!  Don't rush and write thank you letters yet...

What I am not convinced about is whether there should never be an ask in a thank you letter. Lots of fundraising book authors say there should be no ask - but the evidence they present is what donors say they want, and not what actually has been proven to increase life time value.

I think, in an emergency, there definitely should be another ask for example, following a fire, flood, earthquake disaster).  

But other than that I am not sure. 

Despite all these warnings... if you are going to write a thank you letter - write a good one!

So, assuming we are writing a thank you letter that just thanks and does not ask, then these are the key ingredients for such a letter. 

• The letter should be correct. Get the name and details right. For higher value donors, if there is any doubt, call and check the details.
• The letter should be personal – mailmerged, and extra personal touches where possible. Never Dear Friend. Apply the Pareto principle, more personalised for higher value donors.
• Personalised data should be:
• Amount donated (“Thank you for your donation of $50 in response…”) 
• Acknowledgement of recent gifts (“I note that have supported before this year – your ongoing commitment is really appreciated…” 
• Acknowledge other types of support (not necessarily them all, but certainly most recent). “This donation, along with you telling me that you have mentioned in your will tells me that you have a special place in your heart for .” 
• Other information, even if used before. “Thanks also for completing the survey earlier this year – I remember that you ticked that you first supported because of . I just wanted to make sure you knew that your donation will go straight to our work in that area…” 
• Anything else personal that you know for top donors. “I look forward to seeing you at the - I have just been told that you are attending.”
• The letter should actually say “Thank you for donating…”
• Unless in response to unsolicited donations, the letter should be tailored to the campaign the person responded to. “Thank you for your donation in response to my letter about Jane, who is recovering after a horrific car accident on Christmas Day”.
• The letter should be interesting (!) Update on the story that was in the campaign, have a quote from the case study or give some feedback on what others have said or done. “You will be pleased to know that, thanks to the support of you and loving and caring Australians, Jane has now made an amazing recovery. In October she walked to her local café for the first time since the accident…”
• Should be personal (as well as personalised). The above line would be improved with more personality: “Since I sent my letter to you in September, I caught up with Jane again, along with her physiotherapist, Philip, who is funded by your donations. I was brought to tears when the pair of them were telling me how, in early October, she managed to walk to her local café. She wanted me to share her thanks with you…”

Of course, writing this much will likely take you to more than one page.  Ho hum, if you are going to do it - do it properly.

And of course, nothing wrong with testing the rules above against no thank you letter against thank you letters with asks in them... For at least 18 months!

Sean

Have you a 100 year plan

Many charities choose to cut back in legacy/bequest programs because they won't see the money in a short time frame. 

I am at IFC listening to a big vision from Japan aimed at having profound impact on the future of Africa. 

"When you grow rice you need one year

When you grow trees you need ten years

When you change society you need 100 years"

Ashinaga, an orphan charity in Japan has a 100 year vision led by a 79 year old man. 

That is forward thinking. 

Yukichi Okazaki presenting at IFC got a few of us thinking about our charities futures.