Our fearless leader, Kevin Schulman, was on the Raise + Engage podcast with Steve MacLaughlin of Blackbaud last week.  Listening to the episode (there doesn’t seem to be an audio option on the page, but I’m assuming you can find a podcast), one thing that struck me was Kevin’s statement “There ought to be massive perceived risk with status quo, but oftentimes there isn’t.”

This is especially true where nonprofits sit today.  Last year, according to the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, the number of new donors was down 19% last year.

Those who have been in a direct marketing program long enough know what happens when you curtain acquisition in year one.  It becomes a hemorrhoid in year two, three, four… to year n.  What’s n?  A number that is greater than the years of your employ as part of that direct marketing program.

We just did that as a sector.  We did not sow and therefore we will not reap.

There is massive risk with our status quo.  And it’s going largely unperceived.  We look before we leap, but not at where we would be leaping from.

So, some ideas on how we can break free from cut-and-paste and take steps toward our new normal:

Explore new channels for acquisition. Canvassing/F2F fundraising just was the subject of an attempted Daily Mail hit job.  You can see Kevin’s takedown of it here.

One interesting post he raises is why charities must take all, or even most of, the risk in these new endeavors.  Right now, once a donor gets to month 1-3 (depending on the vendor), the risk of getting that revenue is all on the charity. One look at that incentive structure and you’d say “They have every incentive to bring in quantity of donors, rather than quality. They get paid per donor and have no stake in ongoing revenues.” And you would be right, smart person that you are.

So what if acquisition exploration could be done in partnership – in money as well as name – with an agency?  There are some (well, at least one that I know of) that will do this in DRTV.  None that I know of in the F2F space, but we may want to meet you halfway.  As Kevin says, if you are a charity open to different financing models (most, oddly, are not it would seem) that transform the ROI, reduce your very real risk and all but eliminate the click-bait drivel from the media then you can privately give voice to it here or publicly in the comment section.

Start with a blank sheet of paper.  You need to ask yourself “what would someone else do with this program?”  Or someone else will have that chance.

I mentioned in my piece on this on The Agitator that the easiest way for me to do this is to start with donors.  Reading donors’ feedback will give you new ideas for messaging, preferences, and identities that may have been locked away.

And the great thing about testing a new audience or messaging is it’s super cheap.  For $107.13, we ran a statistically significant audience test for Make-a-Wish that found that medical professionals are a distinct audience for them.  Moreover, those professionals respond to messaging that identifies them as medical professionals, to the tune of a 42% increase in click-through rate.

Explore new ways of thinking about acquisition.  When we look to acquire a mail donor, we go to outside lists and coops, asking “what person who gives can be persuaded to also give to us?”.  This gets us to our present sector-wide tragedy of the commons.

What if instead of “what person who gives can be persuaded to also give to us?”, we asked “what person who cares about us can be persuaded to give?”  This is a different type of acquisition, capturing people who can and only then working with them to give.

The experience of the Norwegian Cancer Society web redesign is instructive here.  They refocused their pages and their site from the big-ticket items like “Donate Now” and rather tried to solve their donors’ problems.  Once they had the person on the site, their issue solved, they then (and only then) worked to convert them to become a donor.

One-time donations tripled.  Recurring donors quadrupled.  All because they thought about what their audience and identities wanted first, and what they wanted them to do after that.

This conversion is possible in the States as well.  We recently ran a Facebook ad campaign for a disease charity that, after a week of optimization only, was generating 4-5% CTR and sub-$.40 per click.

The ad focused on getting screened for the disease, a programmatic part of their mission.  Not shockingly, people who got screened tended to want to learn more and partake of the organizations other content about prevention.  And, yes, some became members.

It’s not as clean as “click here to donate.”  But in the end, it may be how we bring people into our organizations who are going to stay.

So if you are ready to recognize the risks of the well-trodden path, we’d love to work with you.