The other day, this headline caught my attention: What’s Holding Your Nonprofit Back From Raising More Money?

Not surprisingly, it turned out to be a consulting pitch from a firm called Social Velocity. Nothing wrong with that.

What that firm would do to provide a broad assessment of revenue potential is:

1. Interview stakeholders
2. Review documents
3. Assess organization
4. Analyze revenue streams
5. Review fundraising infrastructure
6. Write analysis and recommendations
7. Present assessment

Obviously no ‘secret sauce’ there!

But I still had the original question in mind.

Then I was reviewing the many responses (thank you!) to our Sue’s Donate Page Challenge post. And I was struck by what Dave Raley had to say:

“Even with digital fundraising being around for as long as it has, I am surprised at how many hardened direct marketers STILL operate on feelings and subjective opinions about what they like when it comes to donation pages (or anything in digital, for that matter). In traditional media, those same direct marketers would never trust their opinions – they would use experience and expertise to inform hypotheses and then run strict testing to validate…

Late last year we worked with a client to run A/B testing on several donation experience alternatives – the winning test panel performed 209% BETTER than the control.”

And I thought, sound strategies are fine (and I guess fun to prepare and of course needed), but the hard yards are won by persistently formulating specific hypotheses about various aspects of your fundraising programs and testing them.

That’s really hard work!

So, if you must, blame the economy, blame your dull program staff, blame whoever controls factors beyond your control, but be sure to blame yourself if you are not constantly seeking out the next tweak you can adjust … and maybe improve your results 209%!

Another Agitator reader, Anne Ibach at Oregon Public Broadcasting doubled her organization’s e-renewals by streamlining the response process.

So why do many of us not raise more money? Maybe Social Velocity can find the answer.

But my guess is laziness might have something to do with it.

Tom

P.S. BTW, of the Donate pages that were recommended by readers, I would go for Nick Allen’s choice … CARE. Doesn’t get any easier, and still with some options, explanation and validation. That said, reiterating the message above — and emphasized by several of our readers … the ‘solution’ is: a) probably a mashup; and b) definitely one you need to validate for your own organization.

Tom Ahern’s recommendation of Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) also deserves a look for its emphasis on monthly giving.