Fall Appeal Redux: Second verse, same as the first

The calendar we are following together has us two weeks past your first appeal letter dropping. Responses are likely tailing off, which means it is time to put your second appeal into production so it can drop three weeks after the first.

As someone who has always written a lot for work, I found executing annual appeals to be a humbling experience. I’d put so much into creating the first letter, topic, signatory, word choice, graphic design, reply device, Johnson Box, lift note, and whatnot, that I assumed people who didn’t respond to it had read it, given it sound consideration, and found it didn’t inspire them to give.

Ha.

Here’s a big tip that will save you money, time, and brainwork: repeat your first appeal the second time around. You don’t need a second concept and different execution to have a second bite at the apple. Just fire up the same material and send it to the people who have not responded yet, because they didn’t read it.

More important than a new approach is to get more of your material into people’s hands while they may have a dim memory of your appeal coming a couple of weeks back. There is no reason for you to burn up scarce resources creating a whole other appeal yet.

Here’s an alternative timesaver: if you have a letter from a past appeal that pulled decently, and which still represents your work appropriately, pull that out of your file, refresh dates, and repurpose it. As you draw closer to year-end you are likely to have an organizational update you can spotlight in your appeal, but for these two that fall close together, conserve your creative resources.

If you are fortunate enough to have administrative support, a staff member or volunteer can update your mailing list so it’s ready to merge with the second letter and mail next week. Make a copy of your data source for Letter 1, remove the people who gave, update addresses that came back to you, handle anyone who wants to be removed from the roster, and you are ready to go.

Here’s an old-school production hack that tells you something about donors’ response to your second appeal. Well, it tells you about the people who still send checks, at least.

Anyway.

When you send letters with a reply envelope, before you stuff the mailing, take the reply envelopes you are about to use and grab a highlighter or marker. The easiest time to do this is while the envelopes are still in their box — we called this “tipping” the envelopes but I can’t find any evidence that it’s a standard term. It means drawing a line on the stack of envelopes so every one has a small touch of colored ink. That way, for those who send back checks, you can tell if they saved your first appeal and were reminded by the second, or if they didn’t engage until they opened the second appeal (because they may well have missed the first).

Have a great week ahead, and I’ll see you here next Monday to talk about strategic, non-asking communications that remind your supporters to make their gifts. The Harvest Moon is coming our way Thursday, which means October will have a Blue Moon — a second full moon in the month. Buckle up, because it will happen on Halloween — which is a Saturday night — AND it comes with an extra hour because Daylight Saving Time ends in the wee hours on November 1.

Identify and Connect With Your Loyal Donors

It’s Week 38, and after the first appeal in your fall series dropped last week, you are receiving two streams of information: bad addresses/bouncebacks and a smattering of gifts sent right away in response to your request. In my experience, the first appeal, evaluated out of context, will not seem to be the most productive, and you may even think about eliminating it.

Keep it, for two reasons. Here’s why.

The first ask letter is valuable as a reminder, even if people wait for future requests to respond. Track your response rates to your appeal series as a whole — asking several times will increase your retention rate year over year, even if most of the gifts come to you in December. I had the opportunity to help an organization with retention around 40% — asking only in December because that’s when they received the greatest response — to grow to 65% year-over-year retention by sending a series of appeals and non-solicitation communications.

Secondly, that sprinkle of immediate responses holds value well beyond the dollars they deliver in the moment. I learned this lesson at my first fundraising job, Beaver College (now Arcadia University). The photo is from a morning walk last month, showing of one of the gorgeous buildings on that campus.

The people who respond right away are telling you: you don’t have to ask twice, I love the mission and I’m happy to give. Now, you might be frustrated because these early responders tend to be low-dollar givers who resist efforts to increase the size and frequency of their gifts; they may push back if you try to get them to give a second time in 12 months. The donor who only wants to be asked once a year will call you up and tell you off if you ask twice. Find a way to accommodate their wishes because:

This early-giving, loyal group contains potential planned gift donors. They are giving you important signs: they are putting their carefully-budgeted dollars toward the mission that inspires them. They may not desire greater engagement, so gently offer an invitation to visit your site, meet someone who has benefited from your work recently, or a conversation with someone delivering front-line services, but if the donor declines, let it go. They may be happy enough just as things are. This is not the type of donor that will do well being pushed; instead, use your One Hour this week to make a couple of calls and dash off a couple of brief, warm notes to the donors who responded right away.

Check to make sure that you are offering easily-digested information on planned giving in a way that gets in front of these folks but doesn’t make them feel like they are being targeted. Does your website have a “Ways of Giving” page? It is easy to offer simple planned gift options. Do you send an e-newsletter or a President’s Message by email every month or quarter? Throw a link in there that takes readers to your planned giving page with teaser copy like, “To learn more about making a gift that costs you nothing today, click here.”

Visit me here next week to learn about elements of a simple planned giving program that can open the door to your donors making their ultimate gift.

It’s Really Happening: Your First Fall Appeal Drops this Week!​

Welcome to Week 37, when the first request for gifts drops, kicking off your series of asks, thank-yous, and continued stewardship through year-end. You may need your One Hour this week for oversight, to make sure that the process happens the way that it should, or you might be handling some physical aspects of the solicitation.

If you are assembling mailing components, and perhaps affixing postage, this is the perfect time to ask for help from anyone who isn’t a fit for participating in solicitations. That could mean client or parent Board members, advisors who work for another charitable organization, or that longtime volunteer leader who just doesn’t ask. Coming together to assemble and mail solicitations is a tremendous help – after all, hand-matching dynamic components adds a level of complexity, and expense, to the job your mail house does.

Lucky enough to have production covered by volunteers and/or a vendor? Use your One Hour to address some note cards to anticipated renewing donors, starting with your Board members and donors with close relationships who will appreciate your personal touch. Keep the envelopes in an order that makes sense to you (my brain demands alphabetical by last name) and you’ll have a running start to get a warm thank-you note into the mail the day after the gift comes.

Making the Most of the Holiday/Back-to-School Week

Nasturtiums and pepper.

Week 36 is a short one for most people – but if you’re running a charitable organization, you’re probably checking your emails and maybe handling some behind-the-scenes housekeeping. The weather where I am is spectacular, so I truly hope you’re outside right now, doing as I say and not as I do.

With your first appeal in production, you have a window of time to give your database a quick checkup. Especially because this is a short week, and many households are going back to school tomorrow, this is not a time to try to connect with people because they have their hands full. And the truly fortunate are on vacation *this* week. So, here we are – both at our desks. How can you make the most of this week?

Use your time to clean up gift records.

First, check your menus/picklists for Campaigns, Funds, and Appeals – do any need to be deactivated because they are no longer current?

Output a list of gifts that should have identical coding. Are all your active coding terminologies and conventions consistent? Check for missing codes, too. Use global change functions to normalize your data.

Round up and review open pledges. Do you have chronically open workplace giving pledges that are never fulfilled because the transactions don’t tie out? That’s a specific situation, and if you’d like to explore solutions, please message me and we can dig into the granular details of options that will keep your pledge data much cleaner.

If you excluded a donor from the Fall Appeal solicitation roster because of an open pledge, but you’re not sure if you’ll be able to collect it, consider writing it off and starting fresh. There are two people you want to consult first: the person who solicited the promise to give, and the person who handles your organization’s finance function. If you fill both of those roles, I encourage you to handle this as sensitively and individually as you can.

Pro tip: The best person to bring in payment is the one who secured the pledge in the first place. The more that person is a peer of the pledging person, the better, and the less of a trail, the better. That means face to face communication is the first choice, then a telephone call. Avoid leaving voice mail messages that refer to an unpaid pledge, and resist the temptation to have an admin-level person dispatch a pledge invoice. Especially now, I encourage you to inquire gently and ask if everything’s OK, because it might not be. Try to work out payment in installments before writing off a promise to give.

Make the most of your short week, Godspeed if you are sending anyone back to school, and I’ll see you next week to talk about simple gift acceptance policies related to pledges.