Fundraisers who want board members and upper management singing the praises of direct-response fundraising have to convert them.

In the session “Managing Up: Helping Your Board and Senior Management Become Direct Response Evangelists” co-presenter Bryan Terpstra, of L.W. Robbins Associates, said that fundraisers must change board members’ minds by speaking their language.

Read more from the FRS Conference Roundup.

Melissa Busch, Associate Senior Editor, FundRaising Success

If an organization has made a commitment to a team approach, rather than a rigidly hierarchical one, the decision-making process can take on a far different look from one residing with one person.

The good thing about the team approach is that it can reflect decisions reflecting the contributions of many people. That can also be its downfall.

In his book Great Business Teams, Howard M. Guttman identifies certain steps that teams can take to ensure that their decisions are both as speedy and effective as possible.

The steps are:

• Identify the decisions that need to be made. The question is not who will make the decision but which key decisions the tam will be making.
• Identify decision subteams. Subteams become steering committees, based on the nature and type of decisions that must be made.
• Assign accountability. The individual who is responsible for driving closure should be process focused, able to depersonalize and able to see the big picture.
• Set objectives and timelines. Because not every subteam makes decisions but rather gathers facts, clarify how much authority it has and when it will present findings.
• Select the decision-making mode. There are three basic types: unilateral, consultative and consensus.
• Identify information sources. Learn who should be tapped for information.
• Determine the shelf life of the decision. Few decisions are forever. Set a postdecision review date.

NPT Weekly Update, NonProfit Times

Members of the Millennial generation are just as likely to open their wallets to charities as those born decades earlier, according to a report released in May by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.

The report, which analyzed generational giving trends by focusing on donors’ motivations for giving, types of causes supported and the amount donated, showed that young donors are as generous as those from older generations.

The study, funded by Campbell & Co., examined the giving habits of more than 10,000 people from five generations. Results show those born after 1981, known as the Millennial generation, are less likely to give and tend to give less when they do make a donation. However, it further revealed that this trend is associated with income, education level and religious affiliation rather than the time period during which they were born. All other factors being equal, the study showed, the average giving level of Millennials is about the same as that of other generations. Read More on FRS’s website.

Melissa Busch, associate senior editor, FundRaising Success

Look no further! We have heard from the NonProfit Times they now have a new portal that offers FREE searches to their database of over 4,400 corporate million dollar+ donations. So if your organization is looking for information on corporate giving this would seem to be the place to go.

There is a portal on their home page: www.nptimes.com or you can visit www.nptgrantsearch.com to access the database. It is regularly updated and can be searched by business name or by different recipient causes. Once retrieved, the data can be downloaded into an excel spreadsheet. Information on gift size, donation year, recipient and donor are all provided.

Search away!

Jill Murphy, Senior Manager, Member Services, Nonprofit Federation

I’m stealing again, this time from our friends at The Agitator… some interesting stuff here. (Who knew 21% of online seniors were into gaming?)

From a report prepared by Focalyst and Dynamic Logic, here’s a profile of what seniors age 62+ are doing online these days:

• Search engines: 59 percent
• Contact family and friends: 59 percent

• Gather information: 47 percent
• News/current events/weather: 43 percent
• Travel planning/reservations: 41 percent

• Health and health-related information: 38 percent
• Exchange photos with family/friends: 33 percent

• Finance/online banking: 24 percent
• Paying bills: 23 percent
• Single/multiple-player games: 21 percent
• Investment/transactions: 17 percent
• Education/training: 13 percent

Note that financial stuff hangs around one-in-four senior netizens. If they’re not doing online banking or paying bills online, they’re not likely to be making online donations either.

But still, nearly half gather information online, and more than four-in-ten follow news and current events online … important from a cause fundraising standpoint … trust me, if they have a online subscription to the NY Times, they’re donors!

Tom Belford, co-Agitator, The Agitator

While really for the for profit world, everything translates to nonprofits too. Take a look at the organics of email from MarketingProfs for some ideas on growing your e-list.

The urge to grow your email marketing list in a hurry is understandable. But Kimberly Snyder argues against taking shortcuts. Instead, she makes the case for building a healthy and viable list over time using the following four organic tactics:

Market your subscription button. Says Snyder, "Too many email marketers assume [potential email] subscribers know their site as well as they do; hence, they miss many opportunities to capture new subscribers by hiding their subscription link." Make your buttons completely obvious by placing them at the top and bottom of each page, and also at the center of your home page.

Sell the benefits of subscription. Spell out exactly what someone gets when they subscribe, and how often you’ll touch base with them.

Promote subscriptions at every opportunity. Use slogans like Be the First to Know in your catalogs, brochures (appeals), receipts (Thank yous), packaging inserts, etc., to invite email sign-ups.

Educate your front-line staff. "Your customer service team speaks to your customers (donors), potential customers (potential donors) and gift recipients on a daily basis," says Snyder. "The more informed and empowered they are to facilitate the subscription process, the quicker your file will grow."

The Po!nt: While building a list organically takes more time up front, it pays off in the long run. Says Snyder, "The opportunities to grow a healthy subscription file … of subscribers with true interests in your products, company, and messaging [are limited only] by the time you spend creating and implementing an effective [plan]."

MarketingProfs. Vol. 1, No. 31

When you sit down to view your nonprofit organization’s website, you should be able to locate the donate button in one to two seconds. One Mississippi… Two Mississippi… Time’s up! That’s it. It should be that easy.

So why aren’t more websites designed that way?

As we in the nonprofit world know, getting over the awkwardness of making "the ask" is a trial in itself. But, we also know that to fulfill our missions, good wishes and kind hearts don’t keep the lights on or the soup flowing. We need to be proactive about asking for support. We can’t hesitate to ask for gifts or involvement on our websites. We need to understand how to ask for donations.

Here are a few tips for making the all-important "ask":

• Make your donate button BIG. If you’ve been readings Tips for awhile now, this first point isn’t news, but it’s still of paramount importance. Make your button BIG, BOLD and ABOVE-THE-FOLD. Check out examples here and here.
• Connect to content. Saying "donate now" is not a compelling solicitation. (But, ah, if only it were that easy…) You need to make a tangible appeal to your potential donors. Include an image. On a webpage about your organization’s homeless shelter, make your button say something relevant: "Feed five people with a $50 donation now! Any and all support makes a difference in the lives of these families." Here’s a great example.
• Show your potential donor him/herself. Sending out an email solicitation? Include a testimonial of one of your constituents or of another donor. People want to see themselves. Hold up that mirror, and show them, "Hey! You can help Susie and others like her by supporting local research…" or, "Hey! You can make a difference just as Donnie Donor did!" Here’s great example.
• Give donors options. Think big. Online donors are as diverse as offline donors-they want to set up recurring gifts, planned giving, stock donations and otherwise. In addition to your online donation form, be sure to include surrounding text about the variety of ways to give. Be sure to include contact information!
• Ask for more than money. What’s a precious commodity that doesn’t include a dollar sign (not talking about gasoline here)? A person’s time-it can be priceless. Give all the facts and opportunities for volunteerism. Show how organized your program is and what an impact it will make on the volunteer and the project they’re doing. Check out a study that indicates that folks who volunteer first will ultimately give more donation money later.
• Just do it. Frame your appeal in such a way that it answers donors’ immediate questions: Why me, why now, what for and who says? How do you do that? Learn the tactics.

Keep this in mind: You have a variety of online channels (your website, email communications and champions on social networking channels like Facebook) to ask for donations, and you have the know-how to make your organization and a donor’s potential real. Go make it happen!

Rebecca Ruby, Marketing Specialist, Network for Good & Editor of www.Fundraising123.org

We thought these were some good ideas that Wild Apricot posted on their page a few weeks back and wanted to pass them along…

Your organization may send out a feedback request with its appeals or reports to members. And perhaps you routinely ask those who attend your special events to fill out a quick survey. But if you need data quickly, or from a broader range of respondents, why not consider an online poll or survey? Here are 8 quick tips to help you get started:

1. Identify your goals
What information do you want to get from your respondents? More importantly, what information do you really need? Keep a clear focus on the goal of the survey as you craft it.

2. Choose the right format
Should you ask respondents to tick off a checkbox, or to write out a response in their own words?

• Nonprofit consultant Paulette Vinette notes that multiple-choice surveys will produce a group of responses that are easy to tally and compare.

• Some questions simply won’t lend themselves to a series of checkbox choices, however. If you’re looking for more detail than a multiple-choice format will allow, consider asking permission to do a follow-up interview.

3. Count your questions
Time is a most precious commodity. Let respondents know what they’re getting into, before they start the survey — tell them how many questions you’ll be asking, or give an estimate of the time needed to complete your survey.

4. Pay attention to privacy
What’s readily divulged by one person may be considered private by another — sharing opinions and information can be a very personal matter. Honor that with a link to your privacy policy, and make it clear how and where and by whom the collected information will be used.

• Offer your respondents the choice of staying anonymous, and/or the option of opting out from any question. If you want to maximize the response to your survey, do avoid an "all or nothing" set-up, where respondents must answer every question in order to successfully submit their response.

5. Offer an incentive
Acknowledge the value of your respondent’s time with a small but meaningful reward. For example, TicketPrinting.com’s Raffle Survey offers a 10% discount on future orders and an entry in a prize draw. Respondents to NTEN’s Rate Your CMS survey are given a copy of the resulting report. How might you reward your own constituents for taking part in a survey?

6. Post your survey
See our list of Top 10 easy-to-use web poll and survey tools for ways to put your survey online.

7. Spread the word
Start with your membership mailing list. For a broader survey, however, you’ll want to reach out beyond your organization’s members to a wider audience. Invite those on your "interested others" mailing list to participate in the survey, as well as your members, friends, and business contacts.

• Put out the word in forums and online groups that are related to your cause. Browse through Google groups, Yahoo’s Issues and Causes directory, or the Open Directory Project as a starting point.

8. Follow through
Do post an update on your website or blog to report your findings. Share as much information as is compatible with your goals for the survey, and with the privacy policy you established for it.

• Reporting the results of a poll or survey not only meets the terms of that (possibly unwritten) contract with your respondents, it can also generate more interest in the topic of your survey (and any reports you might publish as a result), and may help to build anticipation for any future polls and surveys.

• Above all, reporting back is a way to show that your organization is accountable, responsive, and actively engaged with its members and constituents — working in partnership for the good of a cause.

Rebecca, Wild Apricot

Just in case you haven’t been paying attention to the DMA’s guidelines, our colleagues at the NPT have given you a reminder about them. And yes, they will save you time, money and above all a bad rap from that pesky non-donor or worse yet, those dastardly watchdog groups! Just follow these tips and you will be in good shape, not to mention compliance.

Keeping up-to-date mailing lists is crucial for nonprofits, both as a way to cut unnecessary costs and get the maximum effectiveness from a fundraising effort. It can also help the environment by reducing wasted mail.

The Direct Marketing Association (DMA), which offers subscription to a Mail Preference Service, has provided several simple strategies for “list hygiene” — reducing wasted mail.

They are:

• Maintain a do-not-rent list for customers who wish to keep their names private.
• Maintain a do-not-mail list for customers who do not wish to receive solicitations or who prefer electronic communication.
• Merge/purge thoroughly, by matching outside lists against each other, house lists and suppression files; using match definitions in merge/purge that minimize duplicates and using “deceased’ lists to eliminate names of deceased persons from lists..
• Maintain a more detailed suppression file.
• Clearly disclose customer options.
• Provide customer incentives to notify the company of duplicate mailings and incorrect addresses.
• Ensure accuracy of all incoming names. This includes ZIP Code correction, address standardization, National Change of Address (NCOA) and USPS Address Change Service (ACS).
• Clean the lists.
• Target and mail efficiently.
• Consider personalization techniques to best target your message.
• Test a sample of a list before mailing the entire list.

The NonProfit Times Weekly

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Will you read this article all the way through? Probably not. Here’s the punch line:

The most important pages of your web site are failing to live up to their potential.

You know that in your gut, but can’t prove it. Well, let’s try. Answer these 3 questions first.

• Which page of your web site is the most important to achieving your online goals?


• Which page is most popular with visitors?


• Are they the same page? If not, why not?

Now, open your browser and pull up one of these pages from your site. How many words are on the page? Seriously. Go ahead and count them. Now multiply that by 20%. That’s the number of words your average visitor reads, according to a recently released study(1).

If your page contains 500 words of text, your visitor will read 100 of those. Eye tracking studies(2) tell us that people view a web page in an “F” pattern, and focus on information that’s presented in headline, subheads, first 2 paragraphs and bulleted lists.” They quickly scan for information related to whatever search brought them to the page.

Next question. How many text links appear in the most heavily read copy of the page? Clicking hypertext links is the most used feature on any web site(3). Your web site and users are NOT the exception to this rule.

Last question? Where is your navigation, logo, text? A study by Neurofocus(4) says that if your logo and navigation are on the right, and your text is on the left, web site users will have a harder time processing the information on the page. Their brains aren’t wired that way. A web audit can help you identify problems like this.

Heather Fignar, Managing Partner, NPAdvisors.com