Creative

Thanking donors is the one thing most nonprofits do not spend enough time thinking about. After you’ve sent out your appeal is too late to start thinking about what your thank-you letter or e-mail will say. Or who will sign it. Or whether someone who donates online will also receive an actual letter. Or thank-you call. Or who will make the call. Everything must be well-thought-out in advance. You must be ready to go, with different templates and strategies for different target audiences, well before you’ve asked for your first donation.

Of course nonprofits and charities don’t need a special day to acknowledge the essential role your donors and supporters play in helping you meet your mission — right? After all, your donors receive confirmation e-mails and thank-you letters when they make a contribution — don’t they? Well according to the many blog posts and articles I’ve read, many organizations aren’t sending thank-you letters to all donors.

Nonprofits have great stories to tell, but how can you stand out in a crowded field of generic content marketing? By tapping in to that wellspring of stories each one of your supporters and beneficiaries have. But it’s easier said than done. You have to be well-organized about how you generate and use content directly from your beneficiaries and supporters.

You’ve got to ease them into it with a supporting structure and purpose.

In his book "Building Donor Loyalty," Adrian Sargeant writes, “If nonprofits are to succeed, they need to develop fundraising practices that reflect the genuine needs of donors, inspire commitment to the cause and build loyalty over time." Building loyalty begins with effective donor communications practices. Here are 12 tips for improving your donor communications …

The technique for using concrete numbers effectively is not very concrete. It requires judgment, empathy, euphony, context and experience.

What I’m about to tell you in this post, my most dearly held fundraising gems, will probably not be new to you at all. So why mention the obvious? Because some things cannot be overemphasized, especially when it comes to fundraising while the clock begins to count down to the year’s end. Double if you’re the committed cause advocate who can’t yet quit the full-time job while nurturing a nonprofit that’s just started. Read on …

If you want to engage today’s faster-than-a-cheetah-runs readers with content longer than a 140-character tweet, here’s what you need to do: create “skimmable” content. Why make it skimmable? Because it’s easy and painless for your fast-paced readers to digest. After you’ve picked a great title to grab attention, here are some ways to keep your readers reading!

1. Keep it (relatively) short.
2. Leave plenty of white space between paragraphs.
3. Break the rules — start a sentence with "and," "but" or "or."
4. Change up the lengths!
5. Highlight key phrases.
6. Mix it up with bulleted or numbered lists.

Here’s a radical thought. You shouldn’t be asking or thanking donors at all. Forget about asking. Think instead about offering — offering the opportunity to people to do something amazing for others. And forget about thanking. Think instead about congratulating people for the difference they are making, what they have achieved. Don’t be grateful; be humble. Your job as a charity is to help people do their good in the world. Not the other way around.

The sad fact is that the direct-mail highway is littered with packages that failed to live up to their initial test results.

Whether you love, hate or have never seen "Breaking Bad," there’s a lot to learn from its emotionally intense, can’t-stop-watching storytelling. Pay special attention to these to-dos for your nonprofit storytelling: Remain flexible, i.e., stay relevant. Show and tell. Distribution is everything.  Here’s how to break out of bad nonprofit stories …