What can a few billionaires teach you about fundraising?
Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have put together a group of 40 billionaires who have promised to give away at least half their wealth to philanthropic causes. That’s pretty good news. But unless your charity is in line for one of the resulting gifts, you…
How many times do you have to ask for help?
Many years ago I worked with a charity that used to recruit new supporters through display and insert advertising. At one point they stopped advertising for about six months. When they started again, nothing worked! Banker ads in banker publications were generating a tiny number…
The third great rule of copywriting
In On The Art of Writing Copy, Herschell Gordon Lewis shares his four great laws of copywriting. You can read them all here. But if you employ creatives to develop your fundraising materials, you really need to pay attention to number three. That's the one…
Free motivational posters for charity techies
You don't see too many motivational posters around charity offices these days. That's a shame. Particularly for the techies who find themselves working in the gloom of basements and cupboards. Luckily for them, LOLnptech.org is on hand to offer a little relief from the daily stresses…
The strategic importance of valuing your donors
Strategy is a complicated beast at the best of times. Try developing one for a charity and you really start to understand the meaning of the phrase ‘a little tricky’. Most organisational strategies tend to concentrate on how the charity is going to tackle the…
Does your tagline have any clout?
Whatever you call it, your tagline, slogan or strapline can make a significant contribution to your communication strategy. It can help a donor identify both what you do and what benefits they’ll gain from supporting you. If you think your charity has a great tagline,…
Create great appeals using T.R.U.T.H
There’s a handy mnemonic that’s taught to trainee journalists to help them identify a good story. Journalists, just like fundraisers, can’t just write about what interests them, they have to focus on what will interest their readers. As a result, the mnemonic works for us…
How to reduce face to face attrition by up to half
One of the problems of using face-to-face techniques to recruit donors has been the high cancellation rates. It’s not unusual to see more than 50% of all supporters recruited in this way cancel their regular gift in the first year. The fundraising industry has always…
How to supercharge your charity newsletter
When it comes to charity communications, I’ve long thought magazines and newsletters are a waste of time. In comparison to appeals, they don’t bring in much money and research into evaluating their impact points to the same inevitable conclusion – donors say that they quite…
How to make Twitter more effective for your charity
At the end of last month I posted a piece on how charities seemed stuck on broadcast mode when it came to Twitter. Click through and you'll see I tweeted that I was thinking of giving to a few charities but didn't get much response…
The Essentials
‘Tis Halloween. Keep to the light and beware the Four Fundraisers of the Apocalypse!
Why do people give? The Donor Participation Project with Louis Diez.
A guide to fundraising on the back of a postcard
What does the latest research tell us about the state of fundraising?
How do donors manage their philanthropic budgets?