HAVE YOUR DONORS DISAPPEARED AND TAKEN THEIR CHECKBOOK WITH THEM?
Post #48
February 13, 2024
It’s a rare nonprofit that hasn’t seen…
…25% fewer donors
…25% fewer dollars
…25% increase in cost of postal mail
If that’s not bad enough, there are 20,000,000 fewer donors donating to nonprofits today than in the year 2000.
Why?
Where did the 20,000,000 donors go?
And why are fewer donors donating?
Why is your nonprofit’s income off 25%?
Of course, there are numerous reasons—including:
1. Lack of professionalism among people in postal and digital fundraising.
2. Lack of entrepreneurial leadership in most nonprofits.
3. Lack of trust in most all American institutions, including nonprofits and politicians.
4. An explosion of competition for our time and attention.
a. Hundreds of TV channels
b. Social Media (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube)
c. Blogs and podcasts
d. Millions of websites
e. Etc., etc.
As Bob Dylan sang, “The times they are a-changin’.”
If you and your organization continue to think, act, and operate as you did 10-20 years ago, you’ll find your professional life will be a steep uphill climb with a storm in your face.
You’re facing one of three options.
· You decide to change.
· Your competitors force you to change.
· You don’t change and you become irrelevant and eventually disappear.
The last few weeks I’ve written about the big four in postal fundraising. These are the things you need to get right to have a DIRECT MAIL GRAND SLAM HOME RUN:
1. LIST
2. BRAND
3. PROJECT
4. INVOLVEMENT TECHNIQUES
In today’s blog post, and for the next few weeks, I’ll share some additional suggestions that will improve your results.
Hopefully you’re already incorporating some, maybe even most, in your mailings/marketing.
I suggest if you don’t have these ideas in the form of a list, you should.
One of the reasons commercial airline travel is so safe is because all commercial airline pilots have numerous checklists they are required to use before the plane takes off, while climbing, while cruising, while preparing to land, when landing, and after they’ve landed.
Here are additional things on my 20% checklist:
5. TAGLINE – few people in marketing know what a proper tagline is and even fewer have one for their organization/business. If anyone else can accurately use your TAGLINE, tear it up and keep writing until you find one that applies only to you for your audience. You want to become Seth Godin’s Purple Cow—unique, one-of-a-kind, no one like you.
6. TESTIMONIALS – because there’s so little trust of organizations/institutions these days, unless you have a major world-class BRAND (and very few nonprofits do), you need to make sure potential donors feel that what you say can be trusted.
Having strong testimonials, especially from people who themselves are truly trustworthy, is important. Also, the letter signer, as well as including a pub note from a trusted person will improve results.
Next week I’ll give you some more items on my 20% list.
Your feedback is helpful, appreciated, and needed. Please email me at rviguerie@americantarget.com with any thoughts or comments you may have.
This free post is brought to you by American Target Advertising™ (ATA) and American Mailing List Corporation™—“ConservativeListsRUs.” ATA was the world’s first conservative direct marketing agency and still is the largest with over 85 team members (increasing to 135 by 2024) that will mail over 300,000,000 postal letters in the 2023-2024 election cycle for 40+ clients who will receive over 7,000,000 donations from over 2,500,000 unique donors. |
Much of the information in GoRightGoBig.com is from Richard A. Viguerie’s new book, GO BIG – The Marketing “Secrets” of Richard A. Viguerie. Copies for yourself or as a gift can be ordered at GoBigConservatives.com or GoRightGoBig.com, or at your favorite online bookstore. If you wish to buy copies to be given free to high school or college students to encourage them to seek a career in conservative politics/marketing, go to GoBigConservatives.com. To subscribe FREE to GO RIGHT - GO BIG blog, click here. |
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