It is one thing to have contempt for your donors and constituents.

It’s another to show them you have contempt for them.

The former isn’t recommended (see: every previous Agitator post); the latter is fatal.  People fear executives and board members because they can fire you.  Donors can fire executives and board members by not giving.

I was put in mind of this when I got a scheduled marketing series of emails from Facebook.  How could I tell it was a scheduled marketing series of emails?  They were all exactly three days apart, received between 6:07 and 6:23 AM.  Here were the subject lines verbatim:

• , receive a customized marketing plan for [organization name]
• , it’s not too late to schedule your call
• , our Facebook Marketing Expert Team is here to help

To be clear, Facebook knows my first name; Facebook likely knows my inseam.  But they didn’t populate my name in these subject lines.  And they didn’t have an effective solution to populate a blank if the first name was blank.

It won’t surprise you I didn’t take up the Facebook Marketing Expert Team on their offer of help.

Before you laugh at Facebook (much), we’ve seen similar sins against nonprofit supporters here at Agitator | DonorVoice Global HQ:

• Nonprofit mail pieces addressed to Kimberly Ellinger, a person whose story you can read here. Short version: doesn’t exist, never has, and has received mail across 15 years and four states.
• Emails addressed to “Dear [first name],” where [first name] literally said “[first name].” This reminds me of Disney’s rule that costumed characters can not change in front of guests – seeing Chip and Dale remove their heads to reveal the human underneath ruins the illusion.  Even if it’s an illusion that you are individually addressing emails, and your recipient knows it’s an illusion, they still don’t want to be reminded that you are faking your knowledge and caring for them.
• An email with the subheader “insert interesting subheader here”
• Another round of emails inviting me to Dallas charity walks. We moved from Dallas to the Nashville area four years ago and told all these nonprofits such.  For our European readers, it would be like inviting me to the Berlin walk were I in Paris.  This distance is about 1000 km, so I’m unlikely to do a 5K there, as I’d still be 995K away from home.  I can’t unsubscribe from the specific walk emails – just a yes/no of “do I want to receive emails from these nonprofits?”.  I do, but decreasingly so.
• An email where the top image was labeled LAPSED_DONOR_HEADER.jpg. I wasn’t a lapsed donor; I gave locally and to events, but those apparently didn’t make it into the central database.  Honestly, though, is this that much better if I were a lapsed donor?

And, finally, after downloading something from a nonprofit recently, I was directed to a URL with the parameter GIVETOGET_HARDSELL.

Look, I know the Give to Get method for acquiring constituents with content that is added value for them is sweeping the globe after our white paper, our webinar, and my book chapter on the topic.  Everyone wants to get on that Give to Get bandwagon.

But what we forgot to say in all these media, perhaps because it didn’t occur to us that anyone would do this, is DON’T PUT IT IN THE URL WHERE THE PERSON CAN SEE IT AND ASSOCIATE IT WITH THE PHRASE “HARD SELL.”  Reciprocity is far more effective when the initial gift is given without perceived expectation.

(Note: yes, there was also a page for GIVETOGET_SOFTSELL.)

These likely aren’t actually the result of contempt for donors and constituents.  But they look that way to donors.

Instead, these are likely the results of failure to have adequate systems in place to check things and/or rushing.  (Most likely, both.)

By adequate systems, we mean:

• A person who checks emails and mailpieces on a test list (not simply from the copy deck, as you will assume that mail merges will be programmed correctly). Likewise for new donation forms, telemarketing scripts, and anything that outside folks will see.  Think of it like swimming at sleepaway camp – you must use the buddy system.  Make sure that buddy looks with images on and off, as well as mobile versus desktop, for your digital needs.  Give that buddy rewards for every mistake caught.
• A backup buddy for when your buddy is out.
• A centralized database system from which all data flows, including address, naming, gifts, etc. It’s bad enough when online platforms give you donations without donor information; you need not do it to yourself.
• Systems that you test by exception. Try to break them.  Import names with punctuation and diacritical marks and blanks and places where someone has written “No First Name.”  You want to know what happens to a name written in all caps or no caps before your board members find out when they get emails from you.
• Vendors who practice strong data hygiene, including purging their lists of people who don’t exist or haven’t had an interaction with an organization in 15 years (which means they probably don’t exist).
• Listen to your donors. Yes, they will discover these things only after a mistake is made.  But having made my share and likely other people’s shares of mistakes in my life, I can state definitely that knowing mistakes fast is better than knowing slow, which is better than not knowing at all.

Other tips?  Other horror stories?

Nick