Creative

At the Association of Fundraising Professionals' Fundraising Day in New York last Friday, three fundraising professionals, along with moderator Amy Tripi, president of Tripi Consulting, shared 30 ideas to enhance fundraising direct-response creative. Here are the first 10 ideas from the session "30 Ides in 60 Minutes: Your Hour of Creative Power."

One effective way to get noticed, especially in the digital age, is old-fashioned stories in the form of testimonials because they stand out. A good testimonial campaign can increase donor involvement and subsequent giving if done the right way. Here are 10 tips for success: Use headline quotes that stand out, use audio tracks with pictures, forget about scripts, remember "tune out" happens in seconds, emotions matter most, offer donors anonymity, use the pros, remember involvement takes time, offer final approval and post testimonials everywhere.

Be sure that your case statement and other fundraising campaign materials can be fine-tuned and tailored to each donor, and evolve as your campaign progresses toward its goal.

Despite what many people think, simple repetition is one of the most powerful tools in your creative arsenal. The savviest fundraisers use it all the time to ratchet up emotion — and results — from their donors.

Perhaps the single biggest waste of time and money in fundraising is the general brochure. That's because of what it usually sets out to do: It explains "what we do." It shows how superior our processes are. It brags about how long we've been around, what awards we've won and how famous our CEO/founder is.

I've noticed that many general brochures focus in on what we don't do — as if that could possibly be of any interest to donors.

A great way to connect new donors with your nonprofit is through content marketing. By sharing the knowledge of what you do, you can give people an “in” to your organization and cause. Here are seven easy and actionable tips for increasing the effectiveness of your nonprofit organization’s content-marketing efforts: Do keyword research, monitor audience response, SEO-optimize your posts, put your audience in the headline, post with regularity, always include an image and encourage social sharing.

Donors rarely read. First they glance. Then they scan. If you want them to read, you need to give them a hand.

Campaigns and actions are won by a mixture of ingredients: a creative team, an awesome strategy, an effective online presence, a strong group of supporters and a winning story. The last point is highly subjective because there are many ways and forms we can tell a story.

Besides the obvious, how else do we tell great stories? In the first installment of Mob Lab’s peer learning sessions for this year, Sarah Hipsley, Greenpeace Australia-Pacific’s graphic designer, shared how maps can be as powerful as photos and videos in telling stories.

Too often, feeling bored about telling the same fundraising story over and over is a result of our own lack of time spent considering how to turn usual to unusual. We need to challenge ourselves to try a new approach or look at a problem from a fresh angle. We may end up discarding what we come up with after exploring it a while, but simply trying to find a new approach can lead to new thinking that eventually does unleash a new approach to telling our story.

Excerpted from his new book, "The Money-Raising Nonprofit Brand: Motivating Donors to Give, Give Happily, and Keep on Giving," Jeff Brooks shares four ways to improve your fundraising ask: 1. Have credentials to show donors. 2. Let donors speak for you. 3. Be open about your fundraising and governance. 4. Ignore your lawyers.