The Magic Moment In Fundraising
We often write about the importance of storytelling as the path into donors’ heads and hearts.
Here, courtesy of fundraiser Fraser Green, is one more exclamation mark on the point!
Says Fraser:
“The ‘magic moment,‘ as I call it, is when the audience stops being an audience – and becomes a part of the story. Total involvement. Total engagement. Every writer worth his or her salt strives for this kind of mastery of art and craft …
Your cause, your organization and your donors have a myriad of untold stories. And within each one of them is a magic moment. Find that moment. Express it in all its human drama. See what happens.”
Amen.
Tom
One response to “The Magic Moment In Fundraising”
Behavioral Science Q & A
Thanks so much for raising this. Yes, capturing donor information can be helpful for stewardship like newsletters, thank-you letters, impact updates. But how you ask matters. Forcing full data capture introduces friction that can significantly depress conversion, many donors may simply abandon the process. Beyond the friction itself, required fields also shift the emotional experience […]
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Unlike holidays that everyone already knows, Giving Tuesday is a created event. Many donors recognize the name but not the exact timing, so referencing it becomes a helpful cue. It serves as a reminder and taps into social norm activation (“everyone’s giving today”), which boosts response. However, we still want it paired with the mission, […]
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When a subject line leads with the match (“Your gift matched!”), it risks triggering market-norm thinking: the sense that giving is a financial transaction rather than an act rooted in values, identity, and care. This shift reduces intrinsic motivation and, over time, can weaken donor satisfaction and long-term engagement. It also makes the email indistinguishable […]
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There’s no evidence that QR codes suppress mid-value giving; all available research suggests they either help or have no negative effect. In fact, behavioral and usability research consistently shows the opposite: reducing friction at any point in the donation process increases completion rates and total response. And that has nothing to do with capacity and […]
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What you’re experiencing is very common. Resistance often isn’t about capability, but about motivation quality. If board members feel pushed into fundraising, that triggers controlled motivation (low quality motivation) i.e. obligation, guilt, or fear of judgment, which often results in avoidance. Instead, we need to create conditions for volitional motivation (high quality motivation) by satisfying […]
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That’s a really thoughtful question, and you’re not the first to raise it. Many of our clients have been cautious about placing the ask at the very end. To address their concern, we’ve tested both approaches, and the results are clear: when the ask comes last, even if that means it appears on the second […]
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Tom, I am so passionately in agreement with Green’s sentiment that the “magic moment” in fundraising is when the audience stops being an audience. But what Green goes on to describe is something short of total involvement and total engagement:
What he describes is great copy writing, no doubt. But even an enraptured audience…
…is still an audience.
In real fundraising magic, the donor becomes part of the story. Literally.
Think of Habitat For Humanity. The engagement doesn’t come from the donor being able to smell the sawdust as they read the mesmerizingly moving appeal for funds. It comes from Habitat stuffing a hammer into your chest and challenging you to build a home, because we each have a personal say in making sure no one goes homeless in our sphere of influence.
That’s why Habitat is one of the fastest growing and most recession-proof charities of our time.
When the donor is transformed into the actor and the nonprofit is transformed into the platform for action–when, in other words, the donor smells like sawdust and doesn’t just smell sawdust in his mind’s nose, so to speak–that’s when fundraising magic has happened.