Nonprofit

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Major donors should receive direct mail pieces

Snip20160516_13We have all worked for organisations where members of the major gifts team did not wish for “their donors” to be contacted via the organisation’s direct mail.

This is insanity. Here’s why:

  • With an average portfolio of about 150 people, it is unlikely, although not impossible, the major gifts staff person takes the time to have personal contact with the each person in his or her portfolio.
  • The only means the donor may hear from the charitable organisation is through direct mail.
  • The donor likely learns a good amount of information about the nonprofit organisation through the appeals.
  • The donors or prospects in the pool have not made this opt out request. Instead, the organisation staff person has made the choice for the donor.
  • Due to the lack of communication, it is likely the donor will feel “forgotten” or lose touch with the charity. If the charity is not in contact with them via direct mail, you can be sure another charity where they give a major gift is reaching out through the letterbox.
  • Opting to not send direct mail to people in one’s portfolio suggests the major gifts officer is not a team player and, in fact, suggests he or she considers direct marketing to be “dirty” or “junk mail”.
  • The donors and prospects in a major gifts officer’s portfolio are not their donors. These donors and prospects belong to the organisation.

I am not suggesting everyone in a major gifts portfolio should receive direct mail pieces. In fact, there will be donors or prospects who opt themselves out from receiving certain pieces of mail. We must abide by such requests. Your database will be able to handle opt outs and communications preferences in a sophisticated manner.

Staff creating blanket rules for donors is not smart. Instead, take the time to create a high dollar package. Work in concert with the direct marketing person on your fundraising team to customise the experience for the donor and be part of the appeal effort rather than work against.

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Data cleansing before tax appeals drop

Snip20160508_43Earlier this week, I wrote a blog post suggesting tax appeals are a bit tardy this year. This may or may not be right. It is simply my opinion as a donor to more than 200 Australian charities.

Assuming some charitable organisations are behind with their tax appeal, perhaps the reason is data hygiene. One of the single most important steps prior to the tax appeal drop is the need to complete data cleansing.

Some nonprofit organisations take the important step to cleanse their data, while others do not. Data cleansing includes, but is not limited to, high level activities such as:

  • National Change of Address (NCOA).
  • De-duplication of constituent records.
  • Data enrichment, including:
    • Deceasing of records
    • Do not mail flag.
    • Do not call flag.
  • Other important mass data management practices.

As suggested in prior FundraisingForce blog posts, dirty data gets you nowhere…except broke. Proper data cleaning prior to dropping the all-important tax and Christmas appeals is not optional. Do you put this in the “too hard” basket? Hire an expert like FundraisingForce who will guide you through the process, management of suppliers, and develop a process for you to follow for years to come.

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Tax Appeals – late this year?

Snip20160508_42It strikes me that I’ve not yet received a tax appeal from any charity.

The end of financial year is just a little over 7 weeks away and not a single tax appeal has hit my letterbox or email in box. I have heard from a number of direct marketing specialist suppliers only a few charities have physically dropped their tax appeal and 90% of the charities they serve will either drop their appeals in the coming week or two.

Is your non-profit organisation behind in your tax appeal tasks? Or, is this donor alone with feelings things appear to be a bit slower this year? Dropping your appeal in the next week or two will still allow for follow up waves to occur. Making it any later will dramatically lessen this capability. Last year, I received tax appear up to and include the week of the end of the financial year.

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Lessons for nonprofit organisations to consider

Snip20160423_52Many Australians shopped for new health insurance before 1 April when rates for most of us increased. When I received a notification from my insurer of my rate increase, I immediately called iSelect to seek a less expensive plan. I had bought my existing plan via iSelect and decided to start with this consolidator to find an alternative plan. The call was a success.

iSelect informed me of a less expensive plan, plus a plan with more coverage. It was a 20-minute call, which saved me ~$40 a month and brought me greater benefits.

About three weeks later I received a call from my outgoing insurer asking me why I was “leaving” their plan. When I explained it was due to cost, the caller said “why didn’t you give us a chance to find you a cheaper plan and alternative benefits?” I suggested customer retention was the job of the insurer, not the customer. I also suggested if there were alternate plans, which were cheaper and more beneficial, the insurer should send those alternatives out to the customer rather than simply send a rate increase letter. The caller suggested I had good points and ideas.

The call from this insurer suggests to me missed opportunities all around. Additionally, the call offers some lessons to be learned by the non-profit sector and retention of donors. The following are obvious lessons to me:

  1. Rather than give donors (in my case customers) a reason to “shop around” or go to another charity, work hard to retain the donor.
  2. Offer donors a menu of choices rather than restrict them to one option.
  3. The donor (customer) is likely to not call you to seek alternative ways to stick with you.
  4. Show donor appreciation before it is too late. Retaining a donor is less costly than acquiring a new donor.

Recognising donor and brand loyalty is critical. Once the donor is gone, it is often very difficult to gain the donor back.

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Make an ask in every communication piece

Snip20160416_30It’s fundraising 101. If you do not ask, you do not receive.

Late last week, I received a newsletter from a Sydney-based hospital. I shouted when I opened it because the hospital foundation failed to make an ask for a donation in the piece. In fact, there was no response device, no letter, and simply a newsletter with a self-addressed response envelope.

Why didn’t this hospital take the time to ask me (and the others who received the newsletter) for a donation? Further, why would the charity include a self-addressed envelope if they were not going to take the time to include a response device to drive donations to your charity?

If it is worth producing the communications piece, it is worth taking the time to ask people for a donation.

Consider the following:

  • Wrapping a letter around the newsletter offers you a chance to recognise the donor’s past support and to draw their attention to key articles in the newsletter.
  • Including a response device, pre-populated with the donor’s details, will short cut the guessing game and drive contributions to your nonprofit organisation.
    • It will not cost any more postage to mail a response device with a newsletter and a return envelope.
  • Sending a self-addressed envelope, without a response device, will likely yield far less returns than a charity would receive if a response device was included in the package.

Don’t believe the statements in this blog post? If your organisation currently sends newsletters with no letter and no response device, create a three part test.

  • Pack one
    • Newsletter and reply envelope
  • Pack two
    • Letter, newsletter, reply slip, reply envelope
  • Pack three
    • Newsletter, reply slip, reply envelope

See for yourself which of the three packs wins. You might be pleased you took the time to make an ask for a donation.

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How do nonprofits show appreciation for volunteers?

Snip20160403_27Have you ever volunteered for an organisation and you were treated like you had received 50 years hard labour? Or, have you volunteered for an organisation which seems to express appreciation to you repeatedly?

The fact is charitable organisations can’t thank volunteers enough. Some do it really well and others quite poorly or not at all.

The fact is volunteers are offering a gift of high value – their time. A volunteer’s time is worth the same or more than a major gift. Nonprofit organisations should create a volunteer appreciation matrix, which identifies the appreciation touchpoints in the same way an organisation would have a stewardship matrix for high-level donors.

Organisations should, at a minimum:

  • Send a birthday card to you on your special day.
  • Send Christmas or other year-end cards.
  • Send thank you letters or other acknowledgements after each volunteer job is completed.
  • Send volunteer surveys to ask about and measure your volunteer experience.
  • Hold volunteer recognition events to recongise volunteers of superior service honouring volunteers of the year and others.
  • List volunteers and thank them in annual reports.

Do you have examples where a charity has gone above and beyond to recognise your volunteer service? How about the opposite – where an organisation has not given you the time of day in return for your service? Let me hear from you.

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Charity reminders for anniversary gifts in memory

A friend of mine passed away a year ago tomorrow. His family and friends have been dreading this one-year milestone. I can only imagine what his parents and sister are facing.

Not everyone remembers the exact date a relative, friend, colleague, or neighbour passed away. At the time of death, people send cards, flowers, gifts to charities in memory of, and perform other gestures to emphasise their condolences.

But, a year on and people typically forget.

AnnivI received a helpful Email this week and it triggered an idea of a possible technique we may wish to adopt in the nonprofit sector. The Email was from a florist I used to send flowers to the parents of my friend a year ago. It reminded me I sent the flowers, the date I sent the flowers, and what arrangement I sent. The Email served as a prompt to send them again.

The Email caused me to wonder why charitable organisations do not use this methodology to prompt supporters to give on the anniversary of the death of loved ones, friends and colleagues. Such a reminder would trigger follow up or further gifts on the anniversary of the death.

Does your nonprofit organisation send any sort of reminder on the anniversary of a tribute gift? If so, tell us the steps you take and about the success of the program.

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Non-profit mystery shopping – a must do

Snip20160402_25Mystery shopping is really not something your charitable organisation can ignore or decide to not action. Non-profit organisations must mystery shop.

Mystery shopping defined

Mystery shopping (or secret shopping) is the act by a nonprofit organisation to measure quality of service, compliance with a procedure, practice, or regulation, and/or to gather specific information about products and services. The secret shoppers’ identify and purpose are generally not known by the nonprofit organisation being evaluated – certainly not to the line staff under evaluation.

Mystery shoppers perform specific tasks such as making a donation, registering for community event fundraising, enquiring about leaving a bequest, asking questions, registering complaints, or behaving in a certain way. The shopper then provides detailed reports or feedback about their experiences to nonprofit management.

Examples of areas shopped

FundraisingForce have conducted mystery shopping studies for numerous nonprofit organisations across Asia-Pacific. These studies have helped organisations look at areas such as:

  • Bequests
  • Community fundraising
  • Donations
  • Face to face solicitation
  • Lottery
  • Supporter services
  • Telephone enquiries

Your organisation has two choices to action mystery shopping – you may choose a do it yourself approach or hire a consultant like FundraisingForce to secret shop your charitable organisation. Choosing to do it yourself will mean you need to identify the shopping areas to be studied and hire independent shoppers who will shop the scenarios identified. Hiring an independent firm further masks the identify of shoppers and also takes the work off of your shoulders.

Secret shoppers help you to praise and reinforce good behaviours. They also help you identify issues or gaps and to action plans to resolve the problems. Mystery shopping ought to be a routine evaluation tool used in your overall fundraising program and across your nonprofit organisation. Seeking more information on mystery shopping? Contact us for more details and to start mystery shopping.

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Does the left hand know what the right is doing?

Concept of sending e-mails from your computer

I received two Emails within 21 minutes of one another. Sound unusual? Probably not. However…

…the two emails were from the same charity.

One Email was announcing current events of the organisation. The second was a request for me to become a member.

Even more interesting is the fact I have not heard from this organisation since July 2015. Now I have heard from them twice in one day, twice in one hour, and twice..asking me to come to an event AND to join/renew as a member.

When I received the two Emails, I believed the Emails were duplicate until I read them a bit closer. Once I realised these were not duplicate Emails, I asked whether the left hand knows what the right hand is doing? Perhaps, worse, maybe the two Emails were generated by the same party or department? No one knows. At the end of the day, is this best practice?

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Stop blaming the CRM

Snip20160315_1Your customer relationship management (CRM) system is often the victim – unfairly blamed because of other poor practices across the charitable organisation. “Salesforce is a mess” or “that data is wrong in The Raiser’s Edge”. CRM searches often cause an organisation to realise a need to improve internal processes and, sometimes, prove the database is not the issue at all – it is the fault of bad data entry, little or no oversight, and, often times, lack of standardisation across the nonprofit organisation.

When a charity acquires a new CRM, it is an opportune time to “fix” your poor data practices. At this stage, your organisation ought to:

  • Cleanse the data prior to a data conversion.
    • Clean up poorly maintained pick lists/drop down tables.
      • Get rid of duplicate table entries.
      • Ensure proper meaning for communications preferences and opt out coding.
    • Cleanse duplicate records.
    • Create split record for spouses.
      • Complete linkages for the spouses.
    • Establish data policies and procedures.
    • Create roles within the organisation specifically to oversee the data and your CRM.
    • Perform address standardisation and address hygiene to capture new addresses for constituents your organisation may have lost.
    • Acquire deceased and other opt out codes for your data set.

When I discuss moving from one CRM to another, I offer the analogy of moving house from one city to another. Most would never pack everything owned and move things as is – only to open the door of the new home and have it look exactly as your old home in the old city. Instead, most would purge items no longer wanted, organise belongings before they are packed, and acquire new items when you move into the new home. Moving a database is the same process. Purge your organisation of unwanted items, organise the data in a systematic manner, and acquire new, meaningful data elements for the new “home”.

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