 What if I told you that there was a source of annual fund dollars out there that could cost you 18 cents to raise a dollar and raise those funds very quickly in a short period of time? And what if I told you that you probably were not currently utilizing this particular source of revenue for your institution? You would be interested, right? Let me tell you what the secret source of revenue is . . . Facebook ads. Yep, Facebook ads. Believe it or not, I recently did a test in which I ran Facebook ads for year-end fundraising and the cost to raise a dollar was as low as 18 cents. In all honesty, this test grew out of the fact that I work for a very small shop and I’m the only fundraiser. I needed to come up with a calendar year-end giving campaign for our social media. Last year I spent a lot of time crafting unique messages to be used for each day in December. This year I was just running out of time and had no real creativity left in me. So instead, I decided to craft three very targeted year-end promotional messages and boost them significantly with Facebook ads. I had a little bit of extra money in my budget that I re-purposed in order to do this. Not a ton. I'm talking less than $1,200 to experiment with. So I divided my ad dollars up between three boosted ads. The first two were to promote general giving. One was targeted to those outside of our normal constituency on Facebook (people who don’t currently like our page). The second I boosted specifically to people within our community (who currently like our page). The third leg of this campaign was a specific boost to encourage our constituents to become “sustainers” (recurring monthly donors). All three of these campaigns were successful. First, our campaign outside of our normal constituency reached over 44,000 people who may or may not have ever heard of the school before but had our affinity with the religious community that we serve. We also garnered 14 new page likes. In the general year-end giving part of the campaign, over 500 people clicked on our giving website. We got 24 gifts out of this campaign, totaling almost $5,000. The results came out to only $0.18 to raise a dollar! This was revelatory to think that we could not only do public relations and communications work, developing our constituencies on social media, but at the same time raise some serious money The monthly sustainer campaign was also quite successful. We did not spend very much on that campaign, only about $100 but we got 4 new sustainer donors. These new donors represent $65 monthly (or $780 more per year). That doesn’t even fully represent the lifetime value of those monthly donors. If you just take the first year of value from those monthly donors then it was 34 cents to raise a dollar for this micro-campaign. I would argue it is well worth it when you consider that most of these donors will roll on from year to year as ongoing monthly donors I was surprised that something like Facebook ads could actually work for fundraising. I think my bias against it is because we want these digital mediums to be a free way to reach people. We know they have power to reach people but don’t want to pay for it. And yet, we know that mail and phone are worth the investment. Why are we not willing to invest real money in the digital mediums yet? Facebook (at least) is here to stay. It’s a reliable way of reaching people and we should start thinking about Facebook (and other forms of social media) with the same mindset we use when we think about phone to mail. Namely, that you have to spend money to make money. We need to start being smart about spending part of our fundraising budget on social media. Run some tests. Look at them with an eye to return on investment. Track the same kind of statistics that we track for phone and mail fundraising, including cost to raise a dollar. If you haven't been utilizing Facebook ads in order to grow your constituency on Facebook and raise real money, I would encourage you to undertake a test. Maybe run your fiscal year-end campaign or use it around a day of giving or some other point of urgency. You can gain new donors, new Facebook fans, and real money. You can do all those things to the tune of 20 cents to raise a dollar. I would argue it is worth the investment. Can you lobby for a little extra money in your budget ($500 or $1,000 or $2,000) to experiment with this medium? If it works, put it into your plan for next fiscal year. Do you already do Facebook ads? If not, is this something you could try? Let me know how it goes. As always, comments and questions are welcome and encouraged! Cheers, Jessica PS - If you liked this post, you might also like these:
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 Building and maintaining a culture of philanthropy is hard work. It is deep work that takes years to build and moments to destroy. But having a healthy culture of philanthropy makes work more fun and makes fundraising easier. It’s worth having a periodic check-up to assess how your institution is doing. Answer these questions for your institution: Board Support
Staff Support
Alumni support (or Grateful Patient support)
Fun Factor
Communications
Stewardship and Donor Relations
Other questions to think about:
How did you feel about the assessment? Where are you doing well? Where should you improve? As always, comments and questions are welcome and encouraged! Cheers, Jessica PS - If you liked this post, you might also like these:
PPS - If you found this article helpful, please comment and let me know. Also subscribe to Real Deal Fundraising so you don't miss a post! You'll get my guide to Call Center Games for Free!   Most fundraisers travel at least some of the time. Many of us are “road warriors” who travel at least 25%-75% of the time. After almost two years of 50% travel, I have found some iPhone apps to be nearly indispensable to me for smooth and safe travel. Here's 10 of my favorites in no particular order. All of these are free to download. Google Maps I’m not really sure how I would have done this job before Google maps! I would have a stack of old MapQuest print-outs as tall as Moby Dick without it. I’m a bit of a control freak and I hate being late, so this app is great for me because I can plan what traffic is likely to be at the specific time of day I plan to be somewhere. I also like that I can select car, public transport or eve walking. Furthermore, I use this at home when planning a trip to select restaurants convenient to the donor’s home or work, find centrally located hotels, and assess how far constituents live from a metro center I’m visiting to determine whether I could make it that far to see them. Bottom line, it is a crucial tool for my work as a fundraiser. Clio Clio is a landmark and history app. It senses where you are and tells you which historic landmarks and museums are near you. It’s fun when you have some extra time to fill between meetings or when you are traveling with kids. I’ve learned a great deal about cities around the country that I wouldn’t have learned without Clio. Yelp Feeling like Mexican? How about Lebanese? Just type it into Yelp and it will tell you where the closest restaurant of that type is to you, whether it is open now and how much it is likely to cost. The ratings and reviews are good too if you can’t decide. Lyft Lyft is my new favorite app. I’m from the South and wouldn’t know how to hail a cab if my life depended on it. So, when I needed a cab, I would walk to the nearest taxi stand. Now, wherever I am, Lyft gets me to my next destination. I’m so excited that they are expanding into the South now too. Lyft usually arrives within 5 minute or less, shows me my driver’s picture and tells me the make, model, and license plate number of the vehicle. It texts me with a “bing!” to let me know when my driver arrives. I don’t have to pull out a credit card, as it is saved in the app. When the ride is over, I pull up the app to add a tip and the receipt arrives in my email inbox. And if you are traveling with a group or with children or strollers/luggage, Lyft will let you select a larger vehicle so you are sure to have space for everyone and everything. Hilton The Hilton app keeps all my reservations in one place. I can check in the day before I arrive, letting them know when I’ll be there. I usually can select my room in the app. It’s nice to have the addresses and phone numbers of the hotels at my fingertips. Airline Specific Apps United and Virgin have great airline apps. You can check in and even pay for your baggage via the app. Both of these have the ability to use a digital boarding pass on your phone. Delta and American also have apps but they aren’t quite at the level of the others I mentioned. Facetime Quick and easy and more reliable than Skype on the road. Essential for keeping in touch with my kids and my husband when I’m not home. Hoopla Digital I love audiobooks. Hoopla Digital is a service you sign up for using your local library card. With my library, I can “check-out’ 8 titles per month via the app. They have e-books and videos too, but I like to use mine for audiobooks because you get more hours of content per check-out. Being able to download a specific title is a nice feature because then you can continue to listen even in airplane mode. I listen to fiction, non-fiction, business and personal development titles. Camera Your iPhone camera is good for so much more than just pretty pictures. I like to take photos of my parking space numbers at the airport or my hotel room number, so I don’t forget. You can snap photos of posters for events that you want to remember later. I also use my camera to take pictures of flowers and other little things that my daughter would love and I send them to her (via my husband or my mom) to let her know that I’m thinking about her. Notes For the school that I work for, showing up at donor meetings with a notebook or executive pad would be wildly too formal. But often, a donor will get energize and begin throwing out names of people I should meet or follow up with. The Notes app takes the place of paper. I also use it to jot down any ideas I might have when pulling out my journal at that moment would be a pain. I’ll get a ton of ideas as I’m listening to audiobooks (via Hoopla) and I use notes to record those on the go. Are there other apps that I didn't list? What are your favorites? As always, comments and questions are welcome and encouraged! Cheers, Jessica PS - If you liked this post, you might also like these:
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Did you get at least 2 good ideas to pursue from this list? Which one was most helpful? Do you have any tips for my readers struggling to make their direct mail copy fresh? Comments and questions are, as always, welcomed and encouraged! Best of luck in your copywriting! Cheers, Jessica Cloud PS – I TOLD YOU EVERYONE READS THE PS! If you liked this post, you might also like these:
PPS - If you found this article helpful, please comment and let me know. Also subscribe to Real Deal Fundraising so you don't miss a post! You'll get my guide to Call Center Games for Free!   Tis the Season for Strategic Planning! Now is the time of year that many higher education fundraisers are doing two things:
I totally understand you are busy. Trust me. Between travel, work, and personal responsibilities, I’m stretched too. But, I think you should consider one more project: a benchmarking study. It's the missing piece of your strategic planning process. A benchmarking study is a survey of peer organizations that will give you insightful information about what your program should be doing. I assure you that this process doesn’t take long. The data you obtain will be so useful to you, I guarantee you that you will not regret investing the time. A benchmarking study can help you:
How do I get started? I have no time for this… This doesn’t have to take a long time. If you employ an intern or student worker, have them help you with the process. The first phase of identifying your peer institutions is the hardest part. Just hang with me and you'll find you can fit this in and that the long term benefits (to your institution and your own career) are worth it. Here’s the 5 phase process for doing a benchmarking study:
Phase 1: Research List your “peer institutions”. You know at least some of them. They might be your in-state rivals or other nearby institutions of similar size, age and student population. Your peer institutions are the ones that your boss always asks about in meetings: “What is XYZ College doing in this area?” Note: There is a big difference between a peer institution and an aspirant institution. An aspirant institutions is one that your institution wants to be like but isn’t. They are a significant level-up from you. They may have 50-100 years more institutional history, a much larger endowment, a larger student body or other significant indicators that make them just a bit beyond your organization. Sometimes leadership or volunteers believe a rival institution is a peer institution when it is actually a aspirant institution. When I was at Southern Miss, we were frequently compared with Mississippi State and Ole Miss, but Southern Miss is actually much more like Eastern Carolina University or the University of Memphis than either of those in-state rivals. It’s a bit dangerous to confuse an aspirant institution with a peer institution. You would be comparing apples to papayas. However, you can include them in your study because they are a great source of inspiration and ideas. Just mark them clearly in your data as aspirant and understand that they will likely have bigger budgets and bigger results. If you only can come up with a few institutions, do some internet searches to find similar organizations. You might google, “liberal arts colleges more than 100 years old” or “southern universities with endowments of less than $100 Million”. I recommend you have a list of 10-12 peer institutions and perhaps 3-5 aspirant institutions because not all the institutions will respond. Once you have a short list of potential peer and aspirant institutions, you (or your intern) should do a bit of research. You need to identity the equivalent program director at those places. For example, if your study is for annual giving, you will want to find the Director of Annual Giving at each place on your list. Record this staffer’s name, title, phone and email address in a spreadsheet. Phase 2: Create survey I recommend you ask a mixture of questions in these categories:
You can follow this process to design your survey for any area of development but here is what I’ve used before for annual giving. Annual Fund Questionnaire
Phase 3: Solicit participation Take your own survey for your institution putting in your data and make sure each question is clear and makes sense. When you do this, time yourself, so you have an accurate range of how long this will take. Construct an email to the staffers you recorded contact info for in Phase 1. Let them know that you would love for them to participate and the survey will only take XX minutes. (I would recommend that it take no longer than 15 minutes.) Then, and this is important, tell them that you will share the results of the survey with them to benefit their program as a thank you for their participation. Provide a deadline and let them know that you’ll remind them closer to the deadline. Keep your window not longer than 2 weeks out, otherwise there is no urgency to participate. Remind them 4-5 days later if they haven’t participated and again closer to the deadline. You can even through in a phone call 3 days before the deadline, especially if there is a school that you need feedback from for political reasons. Phase 4: Analysis Review your survey results, noting where your institution does well and where you fall short. What are the great ideas that stick out? What resources do other organizations have that you don’t? How might you get access to those resources? Compose your results into an executive summary sheet of 1-3 pages that can be included with your strategic plan or sent to relevant stakeholders as a stand-alone report. This report will be for your institution. You'll also need to consolidate and package up the raw survey results to send to your peer participants in Phase 5. Phase 5: Follow-Up Be professional and prompt with your follow up. Send a copy of every survey or the consolidated results to all survey participants. Do this within 2 weeks from the survey deadline. Thank them profusely and perhaps include an invitation to establish an on-going professional support relationship. Maybe you start a Facebook or LinkedIn group where you can compare data throughout the year on an ad-hoc basis. These relationships are of great value to your institution and to your own career. Conclusion This process shouldn’t be intimidating and when you are done with it, you will have some important tools in your strategic planning process. I did this exact process at The University of Southern Mississippi to prove my point that the annual fund had historically under-performed. The benchmarking study certainly showed the under-performance but it also showed similar institutions were raising so much more money, which meant there was no reason Southern Miss couldn’t do it too with strategy, consistency and investment. I’m happy to say that’s exactly what happened. I’m pleased to report the program has now exceeded the five year goals I set for it back in 2011-2012 when I did the benchmarking study. If you do this project, you’ll have some persuasive data to lobby for changes to your program. Plus, you’ll be seen as a self-starter not only in your office or institution but in the broader development community as well. It’s worth it. Have you undertaken a benchmarking study? Why or why not? What conclusions came out of your study? As always, comments and questions are welcome and encouraged! Cheers, Jessica PS - If you liked this post, you might also like these: PPS - If you found this article helpful, please comment and let me know. Also subscribe to Real Deal Fundraising so you don't miss a post! You'll get my guide to Call Center Games for Free!   Part of my mission at Real Deal Fundraising is to support young fundraising professionals so that they stay in this industry and grow their careers. To that end, I’ve been thinking about which skills I would advise a new fundraising professional to cultivate in order to have the best chance of career success. Here’s my list in no particular order
Most of these are abstract skills and really more traits that you can cultivate. All of them can be developed and maintained. Of the eight, I believe “Integrity” is the most important because it is foundational. The rest simply don’t matter without it. Second most important, in my estimation, is curiosity because it is engine behind your growth in this industry. Even if you have all of the other skills, you won’t keep up with the changes and trends without the drive to continually learn. To that end, I’ll continue to provide information and resources here on Real Deal Fundraising so the professionally curious can get the ideas they need to succeed as fundraising professionals. Did I overlook an essential fundraising skill? What would you add to this list? Comments and questions are, as always, welcomed and encouraged! Cheers, Jessica Cloud PS - If you liked this post, you might also like these:
PPS - If you found this article helpful, please comment and let me know. Also subscribe to Real Deal Fundraising so you don't miss a post! You'll get my guide to Call Center Games for Free!   Connecting with a donor or potential donor is so vital before you ask for a gift. It's like removing many of the roadblocks between you and that "YES!" response you want. People want to give to people they like. It's not much of a secret. Ultimately, as a fundraiser you are a conduit for the relationship between that donor and the institution (not with you personally) but they must enjoy speaking with you to want to continue a relationship with the institution. This is an important skill for any fundraiser to develop, from phonathon callers on up to executive directors, deans and development officers. I have been to MANY call centers where they use the same tired rapport-building questions year after year after year. We cannot let this happen. No one wants to spend their precious time telling a new person why they haven't been back to campus lately just like they did last year. Bad rapport-building has the opposite effect on the donor than that which we wish to cultivate. The first rule of building rapport is it must be DIALOG not MONOLOGUE. You must ask questions that will solicit meaningful conversation and back and forth. You (no matter if you are a student caller or the Vice President of Advancement) must not deliver a litany of great-stuff-happening-at-our-institution without stopping for breath. So, following this rule, we must construct meaningful rapport building questions. The second rule about rapport building is that these questions get stale. Every year (at least) new rapport builders should be generated and put into rotation. Here is some guiding criteria for generating these questions. Rapport building questions should:
What are some examples of strong rapport-building questions?
Does your rapport building need a refresh? Do you have some favorite rapport-building questions that I forgot to mention on my list? Comments and questions are, as always, welcomed and encouraged! Cheers, Jessica Cloud PS - If you liked this post, you might also like these:
PPS - If you found this article helpful, please comment and let me know. Also subscribe to Real Deal Fundraising so you don't miss a post! You'll get my guide to Call Center Games for Free!   One of the most important alliances at a nonprofit organization is between the fundraising staff and the marketing/communications staff. Making sure that the message about the funds needed and how those funds connect to mission is a crucial element of success. Despite the importance of cooperation, it can be frustrating for fundraisers to work with public relations officers who don't have much experience with advancement work. The communication folks may find messaging about fundraising to be crass or pushy. Consequently, they might not want to give development the appropriate amount of space in the marketing channels. Here a few tips I've used to improve the working relationship between development and marketing/communication colleagues: EDUCATION Educate them on what it takes to do your job! Let them know what your goals are and let them know how many messages and how many different channels you need to be participating in order to reach those goals. Show them statistics and analytics. Help make your goals into their goals. HELP THEM HELP YOU Make it as easy for them as possible to assist you. That means drafting a lot of your own messaging whenever possible, selecting your own images and putting all of that together into a comprehensive plan. Whether the plan is for social media or email or even your direct mail, if they assist you in managing any processes, be very clear about dates, times, and details. Having your plan together will help get them on board. SET THE TONE FOR TEAMWORK Like any important colleagues, acknowledge what it is that bring that they bring to the table that is unique. Make them understand that you're on the same team. As fundraisers, we strive to be donor-centric and therefore we are advocates for our constituents. Assure them you don't want to over-message to your constituents either. You're both playing on the same team and the goal of that team is to bring in the resources necessary for the organization to complete its important mission. BE FIRM ABOUT THE CALL TO ACTION Being a team player doesn't mean being a pushover. You understand the best way to motivate your prospects to give. Don't let your calls to action get buried in more general promotional materials. Insist upon clarity in this portion of your communication and you will see success. Similarly, be firm about deadlines. More general marketing materials aren't as time-bound as annual giving. It's called annual for a reason. You only have one year to get it done. FOCUS ON STORYTELLING Play to the strengths of your communications colleagues by asking for their assistance with storytelling. Framing a moving and emotional narrative will only make your fundraising materials stronger. This is a skill that should come very naturally to your communications allies. Tap their creativity in this area and not only will your messages improve but your colleagues will feel like an integral part of the team. I've worked at institutions where the dynamic between these two departments was less-that-optimal and it hampered fundraising productivity. I've also worked at institutions where there was a team atmosphere and mutual understand of goals. Everything is much easier when you focus on relationships first and foster learning and communication surrounding goals. How does the development team work with the communication staff at your institution? Do the two groups function as partners or as a client-service relationship? Comments and questions are, as always, welcomed and encouraged! Cheers, Jessica Cloud PS - If you liked this post, you might also like these:
PPS - If you found this article helpful, please comment and let me know. Also subscribe to Real Deal Fundraising so you don't miss a post! You'll get my guide to Call Center Games for Free!   We like choices, right? At any given coffee shop, you get to be king (or queen) of the world for a moment as you decide whether you want coffee or tea, what size, what type of roast, caffeinated or decaf, and more. Malcolm Gladwell in his TED talk on “Choice, Happiness, and Spaghetti Sauce” confirms the link between customization and happiness. We are happier when the market provides us with “horizontally segmented” choices: like dozens of varieties of spaghetti sauce: spicy, chunky, thin, with cheese, etc. Clearly, we should be providing the same buffet of options for our donors, right? Long drop down lists of designations on our website? Eight different ask amounts on our direct mail reply cards? Won’t this make our donors happy? I would argue that it will not make them happy. And on top of that it will hurt results for our mission. Here’s the difference between endless varieties of spaghetti sauce and giving: The donor sees you and your fundraising materials as ambassadors to the mission of the organization. Donors are looking to staff to inform them of the needs of the institution and its priorities. If you provide so many choices (in both ask amount options and designations) the message the donor receives (consciously or not) is that it does not matter how much I give or what I give to, therefore it does not matter THAT I give at all. Having umpteen varieties of spaghetti sauce does not communicate a subtext that spaghetti sauce is unimportant. But, by giving an overabundance of options to donors, we unfortunately communicate that our missions are not important. Let me restate this to make it clear: If you present a range of ask amounts options that too wide and varied, the donor will feel no urgency to act because he or she has no guidance as to how much the organization needs at this time. If you present a list of designations that is too long, it communicates that the organization does not have a clear set of priorities. Furthermore, if you do not do the legwork to write a customized letter with a targeted appeal for one designation with tailored ask amounts, the donor learns that you do not KNOW them and therefore you don’t value their contributions. If you’ll take any amount for any fund, why bother giving any amount for any of your funds. Here’s an example of the reply cards sent out the year before I arrived at one of the previous institutions I worked for:  Too many choices of ask amounts. Also, the choices were static not variable text ask levels (meaning all the donors got the same list of choices). The $1,000 starting ask was just high enough to scare away modest donors and low enough to insult those with high capacity. This mailing should have been a breakout success since it was a centennial mailer. As it was, the results were less than lackluster. Also, all of those designation choices make it seem like the college didn’t care where you gave just that you gave something. This is true for many colleges and universities who are focused on improving alumni participation rates. (For the record, there is nothing wrong with this as a pitch. The problem is most organizations operate on that assumption without informing donors that what you need is participation. Be clear.) However, if what you want is to guide the donor to increase their commitment to the institution, a broad swath of designations won’t work. They want to know that you know their priorities and the priorities of the institution. Match those with a clear case for giving and they will send in checks. See, if you really listen to Gladwell's TED Talk, you would see that Howard Moskowitz (the guy who "discovered" horizontal segmentation and thereby is responsible for dozens of varieties of spaghetti sauce) didn't exactly advocate for countless choices. (In other writings, Gladwell discusses analysis paralysis, a condition where too many choices makes deciding impossible.) Moskowitz saw in his research that people's preferences "clustered" around 3-4 varieties of spaghetti sauce. There is a happy medium between no choice and too many choices. It's Goldilocks. Not too many choices, not too few. I call this the principle of limited choices. Knowing this, here’s how I modified the reply cards during my first year at this institution.  Don’t you feel calmer looking at this card? As a donor, you still have choice available but you understand clearly the hierarchy of the university’s priorities and a sense of the level of gifts that the institution wants to receive. Behind the scenes in the production of these letters, there is a segmentation strategy at work which customizes the letter content and ask amounts to the donor, but what the donor feels is clarity. Upon implementing this more streamlined system, the average gift given through direct mail went from $118 to $149 and the response rates increased from 0.36% to 0.85%. (This was a large state school with lots of non-donors.) The mailings garnered over $41,000 more than the centennial mailer sent the previous year. The principle of limited choices, combined with smart segmentation is powerful stuff. Confused donors don’t write checks. Give them a well-constructed ask and a little direction and you’ll do much better. Don’t spoil your donors for choice. How many ask amounts do you offer in your solicitations? How many designations do you promote as choices? Comments and questions are, as always, welcomed and encouraged! Cheers, Jessica Cloud PS - If you liked this post, you might also like these:
PPS - If you found this article helpful, please comment and let me know. Also subscribe to Real Deal Fundraising so you don't miss a post! You'll get my guide to Call Center Games for Free!   I’m excited to offer my next webinar for annual giving professionals! The webinar will take place on Monday, March 6th, from 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM Central time. It is free for anyone to attend but would be most helpful to annual giving staff and phonathon managers. For many (including me) in higher education fundraising, we are about to enter the home stretch, the 4th quarter. April, May and June are the last 3 months you have to get results in before the fiscal year is over. You need to develop a plan now to maximize your phonathon results for this year. The game is not over yet. You can reach your goals, get the highest fulfillment rate possible and thank your loyal donors so they are ready for the fall campaign. Sign up today to attend my webinar which will give you practical tactics to include in your 4th Quarter Phonathon plan. Here’s what we will be covering. I hope you’ll be there.
What information do you need to finish out this fiscal year strong? Comments and questions are, as always, welcomed and encouraged! Cheers, Jessica Cloud Real Deal Fundraising PS - If you liked this post, you might also like these:
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Jessica Cloud, CFREI've been called the Tasmanian Devil of fundraising and I'm here to talk shop with you. Archives
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