Asking Online: No Time Like the Present

    The other day I was chatting with my good friend and fellow consultant Melissa Wyers, President of Breakthrough Strategies, about year-end fundraising on the web. Melissa is such a great resource! She has worked for years with an array of nationally known organizations, helping many of them to get their online fundraising program started. So, I asked her, “What kinds of things should smaller and mid-sized programs keep in mind when they are trying to raise money online this year?”

    Here’s her great list:

    Say thank you – Your first e-communication shouldn’t be an ask. Send an e-card or an e-blast that shows your gratitude to your supporters. Make sure they know that you appreciate their support.

    Make your case online first – Start by telling success stories about your organization. Don’t do it with facts and figures. Send out an e-mail with a story about one person, place, or thing. Be sure to use quotes and photos to make your case and make it personal. And, be specific with your ask. Don’t ask donors to end homelessness, hunger, pollution, etc. Instead ask them to help get one person off the street, feed a family for a week, or provide funds to get people to ride bikes to work on Mondays.

    Consider alternate gift giving – Ask donors to give a donation to your organization in lieu of a gift to someone else this holiday season. Have a gift card online that someone could send or print out to let the gift recipient know that a gift was made in their honor. This can be especially effective in the days right before Christmas when last minute givers are searching online for options.

    Ask more than once – If you don’t ask multiple times, you’re going to get lost in the fray. The single biggest week of the year is the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Your organization should be sending two or three e-mails asking for funds in that week. If that seems too much to you, consider the numbers. If your open rate is 25%, you’re only reaching a quarter of your audience. If you send an ask more than once, you’ll get more people to open it and act on it.

    Communicate one thing in each e-mail — If you need 5 things, send out a sequence of 5 separate e-mails asking for each of them. The odds are much greater that your prospects will act on the request if they receive multiple e-mails, rather than one large request for a list of things. Also, don’t include other information about your organization or links to other features on your website in an e-mail asking for support as it will pull their attention from the request.

    Keep it simple — Don’t try to be overly creative or too cute. It will distract from the ask. Better to use one really strong image that tells a great story rather than several photos, a video or flash technology. You might want a little bit of graphics for the holidays, but be careful! Add a snowflake or star, make your template red, but leave out the dancing reindeer. It distracts from the core message.

    Get to the point quickly — You need to make your ask as close to the top of the e-mail as possible. Test before you send and make sure that the reader can tell the purpose of the e-mail without scrolling down. Have three links in your e-mail: one at the very top, one in the middle of the e-mail, and one at the end. The only links you should have are to your donate page.

    Make it personal — Even the most inexpensive e-mail tools can enable you to address your reader by his or her name. If you’re able to segment your list to talk in a more personal way to volunteers or other groups of donors, even better! Have the e-mail come from a person at your organization, not your organization as a whole. Use that person’s signature. Even when using e-mail, people give to people, not organizations or computer screens.

    Use your website — Put something big and bold on your homepage that asks for year-end donations. A lot of people end up going straight to your homepage despite the links in your e-mails. This time of year, everyone is looking for something quick and easy. Point out to your donors that giving online is both of these things and completely secure.

    Finally, Melissa says, get out there. Even if you haven’t done much online fundraising before, put together a calendar of communications over the next six weeks that makes your case, tells a good story, honors the donor, and asks for support. This is the best time of year – jump right in!


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