Sanky Blog

Whether last year ended better than expected or as badly as you feared, the question in 2009 is – what next? What can your organization do to ride out the storm? How can you accomplish even more – most likely with fewer resources at your disposal?

Many nonprofits are focusing – more than ever – on leveraging value from their current constituents. Savvy fundraisers know that re-tooling their monthly giving programs is one way to keep costs low while achieving exponential upgrades.

While monthly sustainer programs have long been a part of our “fundraising toolkit” the expense of monthly reminder mailings, and the costly follow-up process required for success, has limited the value of monthly programs for many nonprofits – at least until recently. But the advent of automatic online transaction tools has dramatically changed the landscape.

These days, getting started is the easy part – deceptively so in fact. Most online donation processors now offer the capacity for recurring gifts. If you don’t already have the capability, it’s likely that you can easily add that component to your current online donation processing module. But having the basic functionality is a very different thing than building a program and promoting it – effectively – in multiple mediums.

The first step is to create a special “landing page” that explains, in simple language, how the program works and what the advantages are. Be sure to make it very clear how one can opt out at any time. (Very few of your donors will!) Then develop prominent – and enticing – links and pathways throughout your website to the monthly giving signup page. Frequently mention monthly-giving opportunities in your email appeals and e-newsletters. At least once a year, consider a special targeted email campaign that specifically promotes the program and invites your donors and prospects to join.

Everywhere and anywhere, point out the advantages of giving this way – how small gifts quickly add up …the ease and security of donating this way …and of course the benefits the regular income stream provide to your organization and its critical programs.

Monthly giving programs also are a vivid example of potential synchronicity between your online and offline marketing efforts. You can bolster your success online by promoting the program in your printed newsletters, developing inserts for your direct mail packages, and even testing targeted direct mail that sends offline donors online to sign up to be monthly sustainers. Last but not least, your acknowledgements and welcome packages – offline as well as online – will most likely prove to be a wonderful point of opportunity for promotion.

A handful of very large charities have proven that TV campaigns and large scale telemarketing efforts are highly effective ways to build monthly sustainer programs. But if you don’t have those resources, don’t worry. Even with a tight budget, you can find many other creative ways to promote your own sustainer program – from handing out flyers at your events … to having staff or volunteers call or email monthly donors and prospects when they are about to lapse.

The biggest mistake you can make? To get discouraged in the early months of promoting the program, as the results first arrive in a slow trickle. So many charities do, and give up much too quickly. But so many others have stuck with it and seen the magic in the math … when two become four … eight morphs into sixteen … then dozens transform into hundreds. For these organizations, persistence pays off with significant upgrades and high value donors, who renew at rates of 90+% for virtually no cost.

What more can we ask for in times like these?

By Harry Lynch, CEO of Sanky Communications

By Judy Maneval, President of Sanky Communications

As you’re preparing to print your direct mail fundraising letter, are you thinking only about the copy or about the format and look of the piece too? Many mailers don’t take into account the audience when they are setting up letters.

For most organizations, the donors are on the older side. Be sure they can actually read your great copy by using large type (never smaller than 12.5 point when using Times New Roman).

In addition, most older folks grew up at a time when letters had a very standard look – and that’s what they find comfortable. That means using serif type, indenting at the start of a paragraph, and following traditional English usage.

If you can afford to test these old rules for your organization, great. But if you can’t – play it safe.

P.S. And don’t forget to make it easy to read by using short paragraphs!

By Harry Lynch
Published on AFP site on July 21st, 2008

It’s been a while since a nonprofit executive asked me that question, but it still makes me smile. And groan a little too.

The myths and confusion engulfing email only seem to proliferate with each passing year. So here we are in 2008. A cool $10 billion or so is now being raised annually online. But what is the truth about email?

Is it the best way to reach a mass audience of potential online donors? Or is the highly publicized plunge in open rates just the latest sign of overuse and dwindling effectiveness? Are social networking and other new tools overtaking it as the top online fundraising medium? Or is email really the best way to engage donors – especially the younger ones – yearned for by so many nonprofit executives?

The bottom line is that email has emerged as a mature, predictable, and cost-effective fundraising medium – raising exponentially more money online (with far fewer resources) than social networking, search engine marketing, or any other vehicle than the all-important website itself.

But even in 2008, confusion about the medium and best practices still reign – and limit the success of far too many non-profits. So what are some of the most common myths? How can they be countered?

Myth #1: Declining open rates are a sign of “email fatigue.”

The truth is that “open-rates” just aren’t that meaningful anymore. Most recipient email programs now employ “image blockers” that skew open rates and give false negative readings. And aggregate statistics often cited in surveys are skewed because so many nonprofits now “append” email addresses from their land lists – and these are opened at lower rates, dramatically suppressing the overall average.

Emailers who segment their lists and tracks results according to donors, prospects, and append groups not only find that donor and prospect open rates are holding up, but they can better tailor their strategies and messages to improve overall results.

Myth #2: You can never send too much email.

With email just so darn cheap, the tendency for many nonprofits is just to blast away. What’s the harm, after all? The “harm” is that the recipient audiences will start to tune out your messages; click-through rates will fall rapidly, and opt-outs surge.

Online fundraisers can excel by taking the time to craft a thoughtful email segmentation plan and schedule. Friends who sign up to be “online advocates” might not mind getting one or two or even three “action alert” emails every week. But donors who ask for a monthly enewsletter will be turned off if their inbox starts to get cluttered with e-missives every other day. One final word: Opt-outs are easy – just the click of a button – and forever! It’s not like having your direct mail solicitation thrown away … so you can send another one the next month. When it comes to email, an opt-out is forever – there are no second chances!

Myth #3: Ask and ye shall receive.

The golden rule for offline fundraising is terribly tarnished advice when it comes to email. Online donors and prospects want information and a relationship before they’re even asked for money – let alone would consider giving. If you ask too soon, or too often, your list will stop opening your emails – or opt-out altogether.

Some marketing experts recommend a firm 80/20 rule – four informational emails for every one that is “ask” focused. While some experts suggest that a simple link to your donation page in non-fundraising e-newsletters and alerts doesn’t have any negative impact , others recommend avoiding any hint of fundraising until the email cycle reaches an appropriate point for the ask. Everyone agrees: asking for money too soon and/or too often on the Internet has serious, immediate, and irreversible consequences.

Myth #4: There’s no such thing as email acquisition.

True … but false too. Unlike traditional direct mail, where thousands of lists are available for rental at any given moment, few legitimate email lists available for rental seem to hold much promise for fundraising … and the ones we’ve tested yield negligible results.

That said, email acquisition is a vital – but too often overlooked – part of any online program. It involves a very distinct two-step process that first includes building your organization’s own email prospect list. Assuming you can offer a compelling e-newsletter, action alert, or other valuable information, you can methodically use your website … append technology … and even search engine marketing to promote email opt-ins – and then very carefully cultivate these new friends to give.

Myth #5: Timing is everything.

Many fundraisers now know that the obsession with precisely timing the day and even hour to send email solicitations is a bit overdone. The “best” moment to send an email tends to be a moving target depending on a whole host of factors and variables.

Rather than obsess about the advantages of, say, Tuesday morning vs. Thursday afternoon email deliveries, online marketers can more productively expend energy ensuring they are ready to leverage the tremendous opportunities that emerge because of the speed and precision of the medium. We all know that email offers one of the most effective ways to capture donations after a natural disaster or media event – but this is only possible when the systems and people are in place who can respond when there is such an opportunity. And many charities are learning that email is a way to get a “year end giving reminder” into the hands of your donors on, say, exactly the morning of December 30.

Myth #6: Email is the best way to reach a young audience.

These days you’re more likely to reach grandma than grandson via email. Study after study confirms that email is increasingly a medium of choice for people over 50 … and even over 65!

If you’re looking to motivate and tap the enthusiasm of our youngest citizens – say those under 25 – a text message or MySpace page will likely serve you better. If you’re looking for a donation from the audience with most of the money and inclination to give, traditional direct mail and email – if not a complicated combination of the two – are the way to go.

Reports of the death of email, as a useful fundraising tool, have been greatly exaggerated. But the sooner we recognize that email is truly a unique medium with its own set of rules and best practices, the sooner we can all put its power to better use – and raise more money for the causes we cherish.

By Judy Maneval

In the last few years, we have seen a remarkable – in some cases a huge – increase in the volume of contributions that arrive as “white mail” – or gifts that cannot be attributed to specific appeals. For some organizations, this increase has not affected giving coded to individual appeals. For others, there appears to be a decline in coded gifts as the white mail line has increased.

A number of possible explanations for this interesting phenomenon occur to us, including one suggestion that donors think they will not be re-solicited if they use their own envelope.

We believe that the most likely explanation, however, is the increasing donor traffic between off-line mailings and online reading. Some are direct mail donors receiving appeals and then going online for more information. We speculate that they don’t retain the mailing pieces, but simply respond in their own envelopes. And, at the same time, there are people not on our donor or prospect lists who are finding our organizations online. Then those who are not comfortable giving credit card information online are sending checks in plain envelopes.

Let us know if you are seeing this same trend and if you can suggest other reasons.