Diagnosing Poor Fundraising Results

By Wayne Gurley
President & Creative Director

Have you noticed lately a decline in results from your direct mail and email appeals?

• Are average gifts dwindling?

• Is your list of active donors shrinking?

What have you done to address this problem?

• Did you adjust your letter length or tone, change format or design, or modify your mailing list?

If so, you’re not alone. A number of organizations are experiencing declining results.

The good news is you don’t have to live with it. There are things you can do to improve outcomes.

Look to the “Big Three.”

In my experience, whenever a program starts having problems, it usually involves one or more of the following elements…

• List

• Copy

• Design

I call them "The Big Three."

List

Your list contributes about 60% to the success of any given solicitations.

So if you’re asking the wrong people to give, it won’t matter how great your copy is, it won’t work very well.

Are your donors what I would call “DINO’s" – Donors in Name Only?

Examples - donors who paid money to attend an event or sent a memorial gift aren’t really donors. Their motivation to give is something other than wanting to support your mission.

For acquisition, are you mailing to people who are too young?

The single most importantcriterion for success is age. If you are trying to attract younger people to support your organization, your appeal won’t be very productive.

According to most sources, the average age of a donor in the U.S. is 65–75.

For a number of reasons, people younger than this just don’t respond very well to healthcare fundraising appeals.

Copy

Your copy or message contributes about 30% to the success of a fundraising appeal.

It’s the second most important element you have to work with.

Copy is extremely important. For hospitals, our testing shows that technology letters (relating to heart or cancer) generally work better than anything else, including patient stories.

A few more tips...

• Don’t write “institutionally.” Use "I," not "we."

• Create a dramatic and compelling messaging.

• Write in a warm, personal and conversational style.

• Don’t pat your institution on the back. Instead, tell the donor how great they are.

• Make your donor the “hero.”

Design

The design of your package is worth only about 10% of the success of your package.

So keep it simple. In this case, less is more.

Don’t design a package the way you think it should look. Design it for your older audience.

Teaser copy and/or a photo on an outside envelope usually aren’t necessary and may actually suppress response. (We have tests to back this up.)

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