Fundraising and the Backward Brain
The Easier Said Than Done Engineering Department recently was commissioned to diagnose the root causes behind the failure of a direct-mail fundraising appeal that we'll call Project X.
Most people given that assignment would focus on things like strategy, audience selection, offer, timing and creative presentation. But our engineers went to the real root causes of Project X's failure: the brains of the people who planned and executed it. Here's their report: The cause of the failure of Project X was a serious and repeated case of hemispheric flip in the brains of the people who did the work. (Brain function review: The right hemisphere of the brain processes information in emotional, qualitative and connective ways. The left side processes rationally, quantitatively, sequentially.)
Hemispheric flip is when the sides of the brain are incorrectly deployed: What should be rational decisions are made emotionally — and vice versa. We found eight distinct cases of hemispheric flip in Project X.
Flip No. 1: Repetition
Creators decided to raise funds for Program Z instead of Program Y, because, they said, "We always talk about Program Y." This was a right-hemisphere reason. Left-hemisphere processing would have shown that Program Y does well every time they talk about it, and repetition doesn't hurt fundraising results, but in fact helps.
This common hemispheric flip happens when fundraisers focus on how their messaging feels to them, rather than how it plays out in the marketplace. What might seem like mind-numbing repetition to insiders often is a very reasonable stream of communication to outsiders who, after all, are paying much less attention.
Flip No. 2: How to ask higher donors
When planning which donors to ask, the creators said, "Don't write to anyone who's given more than $100; they won't respond to a low-end way of asking."
This was a right-hemisphere intuition, one that seldom holds up to scrutiny. Donors who give more than $100 behave much like donors who give less than $100.
There are some behavioral differences between higher and lower donors (the most important being that higher donors tend to give less frequently), but the two groups are not all that different. In fact, most donors who give more than $100 reached that level because they were motivated by "low-end" fundraising in the first place.
Many fundraisers have dramatically slashed donation revenue by making this nonfactual assumption that donors who write bigger checks have completely different motivations.
Flip No. 3: Don't bother recent donors
A final right-hemisphere decision that creators made was to exclude all donors who had given in the last six months from getting the mailing. "They'll just be annoyed if we ask them again," the creators said.
The facts show that the time a donor is most likely to give is soon after giving. The more recently someone gave, the more likely she is to give again. This is counterintuitive, but factual. It is pure right-hemisphere speculation to think you can raise more money by "resting" donors from appeals after they give.
Flip No. 4: Reason vs. emotion
As the creators outlined and wrote the copy for Project X, they started to experience right-to-left hemispheric flips.
The first right-to-left flip was the decision to structure the entire message around five reasons people should give. All five were very good reasons to give — things like price, efficiency and efficacy.
If right-hemisphere thinking had been happening at this point, the error of this approach would have been clear. While people say (and no doubt believe) they give for purely rational reasons, they don't.
People give when their hearts are touched. They give because it feels good to give. They give because of what giving says about them — either to others or to themselves. They give because their priests, or mothers, or neighbors, or a celebrity told them to give. Donors do indeed want efficiency and efficacy — but those things don't motivate action. Fundraising based solely on rational reasons for giving simply doesn't work.
Flip No. 5: Numbers vs. stories
Another direction used to guide the copy was: "Avoid schmaltzy emotional stories. Stick to numbers and facts." This was a second misuse of left-hemisphere thinking, which undervalues stories and imagery. People are not persuaded by numbers. In fact, the more numerical the problem, the less people are inclined to get involved. When confronted with the painful fact that something like 24,000 children die from hunger every day, donors are generally unresponsive. When they see the suffering of one hungry child, they are much more likely to give.
Quantitative, left-hemisphere problems remain abstract in people's minds. Human-sized, right- hemisphere problems stir compassion.
Flip No. 6: Length of message
Left-hemisphere thoughts almost always look reasonable — because they are reasonable. That doesn't make them correct. That was the case when the creators of Project X decided, "Keep the message short and to the point." Many facts seem to back this up, starting with the fact that most of us don't personally read long letters. And when you ask donors, they almost universally say they prefer shorter messages.
It just doesn't play out that way in practice. The meandering, repetitive style of long fundraising messages is better at activating generosity than just getting to the point. There are (rare) exceptions to this, but always test it before you assume short messages will work.
Flip No. 7: Success vs. need
The final mistaken direction for the creation of Project X was this: "Our case for giving will be our great success in the past, not the depth of our need now."
This is a full-on, all-the-way, double hemispheric flip. The first flip was left to right: People inside nonprofits are motivated by successful outcomes. Understanding and repeating success is how you build effective programs. This left-hemisphere thinking should not be applied to fundraising messages: Experience shows us that donors are much more likely to give to fill needs than to continue successes.
The second flip was right to left: Talking about success feels much better than talking about need. Transferring that onto how it is going to feel to donors is a big mistake.
Contributing factor No. 8
We also found another contributor to the failure of Project X: The creators were over-reliant on PowerPoint as a communications tool. PowerPoint has a deadening effect on thinking. The modular style of communication it fosters breaks ideas down into often incoherent chunks. Sustained thinking falls apart. It alternately overcomplicates and oversimplifies the situation. The outcome is a kind of fog — it becomes hard to judge whether something should be right- or left-hemisphere driven. The very idea of correct processing is often lost in the confusion of PowerPoint. PowerPoint is a tool for creating slide shows and should not be used to write memos or position papers.
Conclusion
When creating a fundraising message, you can avoid disastrous hemispheric flips by following this general pattern: During strategy and planning, the left hemisphere should dominate. During the writing and design stage, the right hemisphere should take the lead. In the final stage (production, printing, mailing), the left hemisphere should completely take over. And go easy on the PowerPoint. FS
