When your fundraising appeal is already good, what else can you do to increase response?

Our Ask An Expert series features real questions answered by Claire Axelrad, J.D., CFRE, also known as Charity Clairity. Today’s question comes from a nonprofit employee who wants advice on improving their year-end appeal:  

Dear Charity Clairity,

My boss is totally on my case to make our end-of-year appeal our best ever. I am tearing out my hair, because I’ve no idea what to do to make it better. I already follow all the rules I’ve learned from reading fundraising books and attending webinars. I feel I’m pretty on top of best practices. Do you have any special tips, based on real-life experience, that might help us tip the scales?

— Flummoxed Fundraiser

Dear Flummoxed Fundraiser,

I congratulate you on your openness to considering tactics you may not have previously contemplated. It’s important to be able to think both inside and outside the box. So, allow me to suggest a few outside things – based on my experience working in this field for four decades – that really pack a punch.

These winning tactics I’m recommending are not the letter itself. It’s possible your letter is already perfect. In fact, by fiddling with it you may just make it worse!

Let’s look at four magic tricks you can do.

I say these tactics are magic because I’ve never seen them fail. And… the bonus is they’re relatively simple to do!

NOTE: Want to be sure, after the fact, these strategies were, indeed, the magic that really lifted your response rate and/or average donation? If you have a statistically significant sampling (enough people in your test to be confident the results couldn’t have occurred by chance), you can, and should, do a randomized A/B test. This way, every campaign can be a learning opportunity – which makes you look smart!

1. Change the outer envelope.

This takes almost no work at all.

And it’s a critical step too many organizations overlook. Think about it. Your letter is no good if the would-be reader never sees it! Boring envelopes get tossed before they’re opened (as do emails with boring subject lines, by the way). So, try one of these magic tricks to make all the hard work you put into crafting the appeal’s content doesn’t go to waste:

• Plain envelope.  No logo. Not even your name. Just a return address (and a place where a volunteer who is adding personal notes can hand write their own name).  The mystery is hard for folks to resist. Use for renewals and warm prospects for whom you’re mailing first class. Note: the post office won’t allow this unless you’re using a first-class stamp, so it’s for renewal and warm prospecting letters more than for direct mail acquisition.

• Colored envelope. This is something to test. I’ve had great success with brightly colored envelopes that don’t even match the design of the enclosed appeal.  They simply stand out in the mail box and do their job of getting opened.

• Oversized envelope. This is another trick to get folks to take notice. An oversized envelope stands out in the mail. Of course, it requires extra postage and this can backfire, making folks think you’re using money for the wrong purposes. It works best for event invitations rather than annual appeals.

• Envelope teaser. Direct mail fundraising guru Mal Warwick describes a range of needs that can be accomplished with a teaser, ranging from describing what’s inside to asking a question to starting a story. He also says “Often the best teaser is no teaser at all. Fundraising letters are almost always crafted to mimic personal letters, so teasers may well cheapen or undermine the effect the writer wants to achieve.” Use some judgment. And ask folks outside your office if the teaser would turn them on or off. Begin your own collection at home, noting which teasers get you to open the envelopes and which you’d be inclined to toss.

• Subject line teaser. The subject line of an email is much like the outer envelope for direct mail. It’s the window into your message – inviting you to open it, or not. Make it intriguing, urgent, exciting, compelling, emotional, shocking or funny. The more useful and specific it is the better. Read more on some great year-end email subject lines. And these days you can easily engage AI to help you craft these (there’s the free version of ChatGPT, or just use your browser to search — you’ll find plenty of free products)!

2. Add a personal, hand-written note.

This takes some coordination, but it’s well worth the effort.

I’m talking about a note written directly on the appeal letter itself, or a little sticky note you affix to the top (visible when the recipient opens the appeal). You likely won’t have the bandwidth to write notes on every appeal, but you can definitely do so where it’s likely to give you the biggest bang for your buck.  There are two places where I’d suggest you focus:

• Donors who’ve made above-average gifts to you in the past. First, figure out what the average gift was to your organization. Second, run a report of everyone who gave more than this amount. Might you be able to add notes to these folks’ appeals? You can have a volunteer or staff person do this. Just something simple like: “Thanks for your support. It means a lot!” “You make all the difference!” “Your generosity means the world to those who rely on our support.” What’s important is you begin with you and you put it in handwriting, so the donor feels special. Because you took the time to single them out.

• Donors who have connections to your board and committee members, other donors and volunteers. People give to people, not organizations. So, if someone the recipient knows adds a personal note, they’ll automatically pay more attention. It’s a form of social proof, one of the key principles of influence espoused by Robert Cialdini. If someone else thinks your organization is worth supporting, then the recipient is likely to agree. For them, the note acts as a decision-making shortcut.

3. Segment your mailing list using donor identity importance.

This makes your appeal more personal.

Sure, you can segment by donor/non-donor or small/mid-level/major. Or even by personas (e.g., “Suzy Soccer Mom,” “Wanda Widow,” “Busby Businessman,” etc.) you apply somewhat arbitrarily. Of course, any segmentation is better than nothing, because it’s difficult to write an appeal that seems personal (at least from the donor’s perspective) if you write to a huge, amorphous mass. The more you can show your donors you know about them, the better.

However, the real magic trick in segmentation is to segment by donor identity importance. For example, I may fall into the general “Suzy Soccer Mom” category by virtue of having a kid who plays soccer. But that may be just a teensy part of my identity. The tip of my iceberg. One teeny tree in my forest. Something I do, not someone I am. Maybe I identify with the “mom” part, but perhaps I connect more with being a “working,” or “gardening,” or “creative” or “activist” mom.

Get some tips on brainstorming donor identities here, and on mailing list segmentation here.

4. Send a thank you letter or email before your appeal.

This strategy incorporates more of Cialdini’s psychology of influence and persuasion. When you do something nice for others, they’re inclined to reciprocate. Plus, a thank you before an ask puts people in a satisfied, generous frame of mind. They’re essentially pre-suaded to respond positively to your appeal. In fact, the Centre for Sustainable Philanthropy researched this, and found in an A/B test that a group of Planned Parenthood donors who received the extra thank you touch outperformed a similar group who did not – resulting in a 67% increase in giving! The numbers renewing didn’t change much at all, but the average gift soared.

Try out these four outside the box magic tricks to get unflummoxed!  And just in case you’d like to double-check whether you’re engaging in all “the rules” (as you put it), I cover all the critical elements to consider in my Anatomy of a Fundraising Appeal Letter.

Good luck,

— Charity Clairity (Please use a pseudonym if you prefer to be anonymous when you submit your own question, like “Flummonxed Fundraiser” did.)

How does your organization navigate stock donations? Let us know in the comments.