Selecting Your Appeal Vendors: Where to Save, Where to Spend

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Welcome to Week 30, when fall still seems a long way off. You may not be busy with transactions and events right now, so use this time to set yourself up for success. To execute your appeals timely and avoid last-minute time crunches, engage the help you need. This means taking a clear-eyed view of who on staff, if you have that luxury, will handle elements you listed in Week 29; who from your circle of volunteers can help; what you can reasonably do, given the demands on your time and your own strengths; and, finally, where you want to hire help. I selected this image of mosaic art for this week’s article because it represents both the creativity you want in crafting your appeals, and the skilled work needed to bring your plan to life.

Time invested in carefully selecting your vendors will prevent headaches and heartaches in the future. It deserves your focus. What services can you shop for price, and where can you not afford to cut corners?

First, will you be coordinating everything? If you’re a solo staff leader running programs, operations, finance, and the Board, you may not have the bandwidth to do more than a single appeal letter every year, and you’re leaving money on the table. If you don’t have a trustworthy volunteer to partner with you, consider using a solopreneur consultant to serve as your general contractor to:

• Engage and manage contract vendors for the services you want, taking responsibility for their work product
• Work directly with you to stay on schedule and manage the flow of information

If your hands are overfull now, engage a pro for three to four months so you can be sure that your appeal will happen to plan. Working with a consultant is like adding an employee, though, so expect to have weekly discussions; to provide content for appeals; to provide data sources for mailing/emailing; and to respond timely for copy and list review. I’ve been on both sides of this relationship and it’s definitely not a “set it and forget it” situation! You’re elevating the quality of your fundraising so that you can work at your highest and best purpose in your fundraising effort – expect to be using your limited fundraising time to make connections and thank donors personally, tasks you may not have had time to do before when you were cranking out appeals on your own.

If you’re coordinating your outside help yourself, look locally for graphic designers and photographers. Ask your network for recommendations and/or inquire at your local Chamber of Commerce. If you know someone in the printing business, they’ll be familiar with a few. Solopreneurs don’t have much operating cost to pass along – you probably don’t need a big firm for your purposes. Take a close look at two or three and make sure the relationship feels like a good fit because you’ll need to communicate well in order to get what you want. Your donors want to see authentic design that honors the mission, so invest prudently here.

Where should you *not* take the lowest bid? Your lettershop, to be sure. A good shop will help you to make your appeals personal, and they will advise you about paper, reproduction, postage, and more options that can save you money. Embrace the opportunity to make your communications as warm as possible. So much can go wrong in producing appeals (I have some stories!) that you want to find a high-quality firm that stands behind their work. Get references. It doesn’t have to be local – you can work with a lettershop that’s anywhere. Build your connection with your contact person. Gauge responsiveness. Ask plenty of questions about how they ensure quality control. They’ll be handling your data, so you want to be sure it is protected when it leaves your hands. Good quality firms can handle simple design needs, so you don’t need to pay your creative graphic designer to lay out a letter, reply envelope face, or response device.

Have a great week, and I’ll see you in August for tips on managing your ask list/data source for solicitation.

Your Annual Giving Team Roster: Coordinating Volunteers, Staff, and Vendors to Execute Your Campaign​

Welcome to Week 29, a point in the year when it’s easy to feel like summer will go on indefinitely. In a normal year it can be hard to get people together for decisions, either because they are traveling or just in a summer frame of mind. This year is like being in the Upside Down (hey there, “Stranger Things” fans), or “floating in a most peculiar way” (love you, Bowie fans), not knowing what we will be able to do when fall comes. Moving forward methodically with a concrete plan is more important than ever, even if we later have to adjust or shelve some of the things we prepared to do. Let’s get started.

Pull up your work from Week 28 when you fleshed out your fall campaign plan. This week, use your One Hour to identify the help you will need to make your campaign happen. Do you have staff or volunteers who can execute the components you listed? Where will you need vendors? Be strategic – there are times when engaging professional help that comes with an upfront cost is better than relying on someone to do it for free.

Here are tasks most campaigns have on their to-do lists. Use in-house and volunteer help wherever you can, and where you can’t rely on internal resources, mark which require outside vendors, so you can begin the selection process in Week 30.

Database:

Generate a clean list with salutations, name & address, email address, and other dynamic information you want to use, such as total given last year or last gift

Merge the data source with appeal copy to use in hard copy letters and in personalized emails

Copywriting:

Generate drafts of your letter and email appeals and manage the approval process

Design:

Secure the highest quality logo you need to present your materials professionally

Photo images for use in print, email, and social media elements of your campaign: secure and organize

Letterhead, carrier and reply envelopes, buckslips, flyers, brochures, html design for email

Mail Shop:

Print (offset and/or digital) the components of each hard copy mailing

Affix addresses and postage; drop in mail

Social Media:

Select images and draft copy for social media posts that prepare your audiences to receive and respond positively to your appeals. Manage the approval process and post on schedule.

Project Management:

If you are not the point person for managing the steps of the campaign process, select one person to keep it all on schedule and report to you timely. If you’re using outside help for the whole project, your fundraising consultant is responsible to price everything for you, obtain your approval for the final price, copy, and design, and furnish you updates at the intervals you want. Because of all the moving parts I recommend weekly updates in writing plus video or telephone calls to address questions efficiently.

See you next Monday for tips on vendor selection. If you’re reading this from some place that is not having a horrendous heat-and-humidity wave, please go outside and enjoy your weather for the rest of us.

Your Detailed Solicitation Plan for Q4​

Welcome to Week 28! Use your One Hour this week to build out your solicitation plan with the details that will pave your way to successful execution.

This week’s image shows a burst of creativity in local chalk art, with a smiling pizza cartoon character sporting sunglasses. It’s time for you to get creative too, and decide on the themes for your fall appeals. If your organization is multifaceted, it’s easier to vary your content over different appeals. Show experiences of people who benefit from the different types of work you do, and see which themes produce the best responses.

If your organization is focused on doing one thing, such as a specific sport for children of certain ages, you can still seek different points of view to change up your stories; show your work through the eyes of your young program participants, as well as parents/caregivers, program staff, alumni – even coaches of competing teams. Think about your appeal themes in terms of the impact of your work.

Last week’s One Hour task was to create your calendar for solicitation with the date, unique appeal name for each communication (e.g. Letter 1, Annual Report), and decide if it will be hard copy or email, and whether the audience is everyone in your database or a segment of your list.

This week, work out the details and assign themes. Flesh out your calendar into a chart with these headers:

Drop Date

Appeal Name

Medium (hard copy letter, email message, handwritten note, brochure, postcard)

Signatory (who’s sending this message?)

Dynamic Y/N: Will the appeal use personal greetings and other individual information, such as giving history?

Audience: Will this be a targeted list, e.g. prior donors, selected prospects, alumni; or your house list, everybody with a good address?

Theme/Story: How you’re handling “these uncertain times” is important right now. Let your audience know what you are continuing to do successfully, where you have adapted, and what your impact is. Who is speaking in this appeal, and what is the story? We’ll talk about story crafting later.

Elements: Make a list of all the items in the kit (e.g. letter; outside envelope; reply slip; buckslip; response envelope; report; brochure; html email; personal email message)

Element Details: For each element you will need to clarify exactly what you want, e.g. digital letterhead, static or merged email; for paper, which letterhead, how many pages, sheet size, paper color and type; will it be offset or variable data printed; how the piece folds; size of finished pieces; outside and inside envelope sizes and types (window OSE?); if using a reply envelope, is postage prepaid via stamp or indicia; is anything cut and matched during production; is anything diecut; will it be stamped, metered, or permit paid (indicia); if stamped, first class or nonprofit rate; if metered, who sends it; how will address be affixed. These details are important so you can determine the cost of production and get outside bids if you wish.

Content Needs: What information do you need to make your case or create your piece? Family or client/patient stories, news coverage, commentary from a related agency, growth statistics? Your own program or financial information? How will you secure it? Who does it?

Creative Needs: Do you have a vector logo ready for reproduction? How about digital signatures? Will you want a writer, graphic designer, photographer, mail house, or will you do it all in-house? Consider time and capability – if you have free or in-house help, be honest: do they have the skill to successfully create what you want, when you want it?

Complete your plan by describing the appeals you want to generate, and I’ll see you here next week to plan execution. 

Creating Your Solicitation Calendar

Welcome to Week 27! Happy Fiscal New Year to those who observe. Now that your outreach partner or team is launched to maintain contact with stakeholders over the summer, we shift gears to prepare for fall fundraising. The first step is to create your solicitation calendar. Once you have dates for when you’ll ask for money, and by what means, we’ll use the rest of Q3 to set your efforts up for success. This includes coordinating your social media to boost response. Use your One Hour this week to modify this sample plan so that it fits your organization. If you have a major fundraising event between September and year-end, your calendar will look different.

The sample plan assumes that a critical mass of people in your donor community observes:

• Jewish High Holidays, September 18 – 28
• Thanksgiving and Black Friday, November 26 – 27
• Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, December 24 – 25

Most of these dates are loose, so unless otherwise noted, I recommend shooting to send the material during the week starting with the Monday listed.

9/14 – via surface mail, drop your first appeal letter to a targeted list, using dynamic information in the letter to make it as personal as you can

10/5 – send the second letter to everyone on the initial list EXCEPT those who responded

10/26 – send a third appeal via email to everyone who hasn’t yet responded.

11/16 – send a passive ask. If your year closed June 30, you should have your financials ready by now. If you generate an annual report, which can be a simple trifold brochure, send that — with an envelope. Otherwise send an update memo or program brochure with the reply device.

If you want to build up to a Giving Tuesday ask, that specific date is 12/1 this year. This can be an eblast to your full list, even to people who gave already. It’s a special occasion ask and a challenge match will help to drive giving.

12/7 – send your most personal ask via surface mail. This is when you turn on the jets for a strong finish in the holiday season.

12/28 – year-end eblast to your full list. Drop one on the 28th or 29th, then again the morning of the 31st.

Determine the dates that will work best for you and put them in your calendar this week. Next week we’ll look at themes and content, because those will drive which people and vendors you’ll need in order to execute your plan.