Fundraising is Beautiful

Your donor gets nothing in return for her donation. Nothing but your communications.

Your communications have a big job to do: To show her something she may have no way of knowing otherwise: What her gift made possible.

That's how you cross the gap from a donation being a random, one-time event to building a meaningful and mutually beneficial relationship with your donor.

Learn some practical, no-nonsense things you can do in your donor communications that will fill your donors' hearts and minds with reasons to keep on giving.

Recorded on Friday afternoon, October 23, 2015. Hurricane Patricia was barrelling toward the coast of Mexico, and we didn't yet know if it was going to be a humanitarian disaster or not. (Thankfully, it wasn't.)

Some disasters give us advance warning. Others, like earthquakes, don't. Some disasters get the attention of the whole world. Others are only noted by a local area (like unusually cold weather) or even a neighborhood (the local school burns down).

In this podcast, we look at ways you can be relevant and useful with disaster fundraising. When to do it, when not to, and how you approach a disaster so your donors are moved to help.

Here are seven common storytelling sins that make your story ineffective:

1. It's about you, not your donor.
2. It doesn't have conflict.
3. The problem is too big.
4. It's a story about success, not need.
5. It's over-written.
6. It's too hard to read.
7. It's aimed at the wrong audience.

This podcast is a preview of the presentation we'll be making at the Nonprofit Storytelling Conference, November 12-13 in Seattle. Seats are filling up fast, but there may still be room for you!

Listen to an excerpt from the new book, How to Turn Your Words into Money: The Master Fundraiser's Guide to Persuasive Writing by Jeff Brooks, reading the chapter titled "The Evil Cousin of Fundraising."

Learn about the all-too-common practice of fundcrushing -- using large numbers and overwhelming facts as the means for coaxing donors into giving. The truth is, it rarely works.

Find out what to do instead of fundcrushing that will motivate donors to give. (It's not that difficult!)

How to Turn Your Words into Money: The Master Fundraiser's Guide to Persuasive Writing, is available at:

• Amazon
• The publisher (best bet if you're ordering in bulk)

The most common and destructive error fundraisers make is aiming their messages at themselves -- creating what they believe would motivate them to give.

They should be aiming at their donors. And donors are very different from you in nearly every way.

Here's help for aiming your work in the right direction so you can raise more money for your cause.

What story does your fundraising tell? Is it Bad News -- the problem and brokenness that you want your donors to help you change? Or is it Good News -- the promise of what can happen when your donor steps up and gives.

Or maybe there's a third, more perfect, way.

We'll show you that way, the approach to fundraising that avoids the revenue killing errors of either good news or bad news fundraising.

Most of your donors don't care that your organization has been around for a nice round number of years. That's why Give to us because it's our 25th and we're awesome is a lousy way to raise funds.

But there are some things you can do to leverage your anniversary into more revenue. We discuss four cool things you can do that will turn that otherwise meaningless milestone into good things.

Many organizations believe that their uniqueness is the main reason donors will choose them for their charitable giving. That's a revenue-crushing mistake.

Successful fundraising starts where the donor is -- not in the organization's uniqueness -- and makes a clear, simple case.

"I'm looking for an organization to support that's completely unique," said no donor, ever.

Your uniqueness is important. But it can drag down your fundraising if you over-focus on it.

How often we hear someone say: I will never use that fundraising technique because everyone does it!

We see something again and again and think it's hackneyed, out-of-style, and ineffective.

Actually, it's usually the other way: Those fundraising "techniques" you see again and again are the things that work.

This special podcast for fundraising nerds only includes the cheapest way to get a powerful fundraising education.

We're taking a look at one of the most destructive forces in all of fundraising: The need we all have to make ourselves the audience for our messages: Fundraising From Yourself -- or FFY.

It's the quick and sure path to failure.

We'll show you the three signs that FFY is happening in your organization and give you the tools for avoiding this common problem that costs nonprofit organizations millions of dollars every year.