Easier Said Than Done: 6 Freakish Facts About Fundraising

Forget talking dogs and bearded ladies. Today we’re displaying some freaks and oddities from the fundraising world that will boggle your mind and make your knees weak from sheer wonder. Step right up!

Blank carrier envelopes usually outperform envelopes with teasers.
It’s sad. We work so hard to create teasers that will improve response. But a blank envelope beats one with a teaser about 75 percent of the time.

You might conclude from this that saying nothing is better than saying anything at all. That would be a mistake. What we actually learn is that most teasers don’t do their jobs. Think of it this way: A blank envelope is going to get opened by a certain percentage of people. A teaser should improve on that. Most do worse.

Does that mean we should give up on teasers entirely? Sure, if you’re the timid, low-risk type. Remember, when a teaser succeeds, it improves on baseline performance — you can get meaningful extra revenue if you nail it.

I know two ways to improve on a blank envelope:

1. Increase the mystery. A plain envelope begs to be opened, just so you can find out what’s inside. Most teasers fail because they remove that mystery, all but saying, “Enclosed: the same old appeal for money that you’ve seen a million times.” Try an oddball phrase (like “MESSAGE ENCLOSED”), a single word (like “Tuesday”) or just an image that doesn’t quite make sense (like a coffee ring or a fingerprint). Make a reader stop cold, wondering what it means.

2. Decrease the mystery. Make it completely clear what’s inside, so people want to open it. This only works if you have something in there that everyone wants, like a truly excellent offer. “Matching Funds Double Your Gift” comes to mind. And, as most donors want newsletters, “Newsletter Enclosed” is one of the best teasers around.

Longer letters perform better.
Almost every time you test a long letter against a short one, the long letter wins. Have a control you’d like to improve? Test a longer version of the letter. Works nearly every time.

You can probably hear just as clearly as I can the loud chorus of people objecting, “Nobody has time to read a long letter.” “Nobody reads anymore.” Or that old fallacy, “I’d never respond to that.” (What you think you’d do tells you almost nothing about what actual donors will do.) They’re almost surely wrong. Test it.

My theory: Most donors who end up responding to an appeal make that decision within seconds of opening it. Then they look for reasons to support their decision. A long letter gives them more of the reasons they need. It might even be that a long letter signals by its very length that those reasons exist — whether it gets read or not.

The most read part of the letter is the P.S.
Eye-tracking studies show this to be the case. When people look at a letter, they typically turn to the end and look at the signature. Then their eyes drop down to the P.S. (Note that the eyes always move downward on a printed page. If you want something to be read, never put it above a key design element, like a photo.)

After reading the P.S., some people go back to the beginning of the letter (which is the second most read part, so make it a zinger). Many others, though, put the letter aside. They now only know what the P.S. says. Nothing else.

So make sure your P.S. stands on its own and contains the essential call to action. You might find it helpful to write the P.S. first — to help crystallize your thoughts on what the whole point of the letter really is.

Religious people give more to nonreligious causes than do nonreligious people.
Faith-motivated people dominate the ranks of donors — and not just for faith-related causes. They give more everywhere, with amazing magnanimity and open-mindedness.

If I learned that an organization with an expressly anti-religious mission (like a “Fund to Promote Atheism”) had a significant number of religious donors, I’d hardly be surprised.

All faiths teach the value and importance of charitable giving. People raised in religious families typically are trained from an early age to give and see giving modeled by their elders. It’s a compelling introduction to the spiritual and material benefits of giving.

There’s really not much you need to do about this fact. Religious people just show up for you.

But it’s smart to be faith-friendly in your fundraising. If your organizational culture is highly anti-religious or agnostic, it would be best to keep such thoughts to yourselves. On the other hand, don’t try to fake being something you aren’t. It’s not necessary. And believe me, it’ll be obviously inauthentic.

The most powerful predictor that a donor will give is the recency of her previous gift.
Giving begets giving. And not giving begets not giving. If it’s been three months or less since a donor last gave to you, your chances of getting another gift now are the best they’ll ever be.

Every week after that, though, the relationship grows colder. By the time nine months have gone by without another gift, your chance of getting another gift has dropped dramatically. After a year or more, you’re in trouble: The likelihood that someone so deeply lapsed will give is only marginally better than it is for someone who’s never heard of you.

Many organizations do themselves terrible harm by going silent on donors for a set amount of time after a gift. The theory is that donors need to “rest” between gifts. (Resting, for some reason, is defined as “not hearing squat from an organization they’ve shown they care about.”)

That misses the important fact that giving feels good. Psychologists have identified that feeling as the warm glow of altruism. You’ve felt it, right? While you’re giving a donor her “rest,” she’s seeking the warm glow from another organization.

Typos improve response.
I can’t prove this — I haven’t yet found an organization willing to test this by making errors on purpose — but I believe it’s true.

I hate to say how many times I’ve seen a cringe-inducing error in a printed piece — like the word “pantry” spelled “panty” (you can imagine where that goes) — only to experience better-than-expected results. It’s happened often enough that it seems like more than a coincidence.

Typos get attention. That means close and careful reading. And someone who does that is setting herself up to give.

Errors happen. Nobody likes them. But maybe they aren’t so bad. If you’re gutsy (and crazy) enough to purposely test this notion, I’d love to hear from you! FS

Jeff Brooks is creative director at Columbia, Md.-based database marketing agency Merkle.