Do You Really Want Intelligent Donors?
Editors’ Note: If you don’t subscribe to Tom Ahern’s blog, Luggage Is My Life, you should. Tom produces some great stuff. Today we’re reprinting his most recent fundraising post in its entirety.
How many words are typically required to describe your nonprofit’s mission to a donor?
[ ] 2
[ ] 50
[ ] 250
[ ] 600
Answer: 2
Notes and assumptions….
The shortest number of words is always the sharpest number of words.
This has nothing to do with the magical powers of the words themselves. It has exclusively to do with how fast another mind can understand — and start to visualize — our organization’s value, activities and personality.
Shorter is always better because it’s always fastest.
Sharp HealthCare runs its sprawling and award-winning nonprofit hospital system in San Diego entirely on two words: “patient satisfaction.” Every metric used at Sharp to measure performance refers back to those two words.
“Clean water.” Instantly, you can see what that charity does.
People don’t give TO a charity. They give THROUGH a charity, to fix a problem they can see, thanks to you. The faster they see what you’re made of, the better off for them … which means the better off for you.
Charities generally are guilty of monstrous overwriting.
Jerry Weissman had it exactly right in his book, Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story. He talked about the bad habits of “presentation losers” … “They mistakenly think that for the audience to understand anything, they have to be told everything. Give the audience only what they need to know.”
Explanations don’t move me.
Emotions move me … literally: emotions move me to act.
Explanations cause me to think. You might at this point put your hand up and civilly insist, “But that’s exactly what we want: intelligent, thoughtful donors!”
No, you don’t.
You want active donors. You want donors who support you regularly for a long time. Whether they are intelligent and thoughtful is utterly beside the point, and you’re a snob to think otherwise.
Amen, Tom!
Editors’ P.S. The two words we choose to describe The Agitator to our active readers are: “provoke fundraisers”.
What two words can you use to identify your organization?
Roger and Tom
3 responses to “Do You Really Want Intelligent Donors?”
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acquire & grow donors
Great post. I’ll start following Tom Ahern.
I find too many nonprofits don’t want intelligent donors, they want donors who think the nonprofit is so full of intelligent people that it deserves their money. Hence communication tends to be a display of intelligence, at the expense of real connection and engagement.
Also, clarity in your mission raises the stakes of accountability. Vagueness and verbosity are your friends when you aren’t really having an impact.
Catching up on my Agitator fix after vacation.
I agree with Mike above. I’d add that too many organizations think their communications are about them. They like to impress themselves with their clever verbal gymnastics. They pat themselves on the back. It’s all internally-focused. Needless to say, that leaves donors and potential donors on the outside – just where we don’t want them!
Thanks as always for great insights!