How Much Asking is Too Much?

In other words, donors who have had less “rest” from fundraising give more than those who are well rested.

The more you ask …
If you’re avoiding asking donors who recently gave, you’re actually missing the time when they’re most likely to give. You’re waiting until their passion cools before asking them again. Worse even than that: While you’re maintaining your careful silence, someone else is talking to them. The passion and good feelings you helped spark are benefiting someone else.

Really, it’s almost freaky: The more you ask, the more you’ll get. Donors like to give. They like to hear from you. Unless you’re doing a truly terrible job of fundraising, the impacts you send are much more positive events than negative ones in most donors’ lives.

There are exceptions, of course. There are donors who complain loudly that they never get a moment’s peace from your nagging appeals for money.

But look at the numbers: The ratio of those who said “Yes” by writing a check to those who said “No” by complaining is many thousands to one. Even if you hold the specious belief that every complainer represents several others who feel exactly the same way but didn’t complain — even then, the ratio is thousands of “Yes” votes to every “No.” Which group should be influencing your thinking more?

I don’t want to give you the impression that the world of donors is like some happy village of always-enthusiastic Smurfs. Donors do get annoyed with the charities they support. Sometimes they leave in a huff. Some even spread negative word-of-mouth.

But the real problem rarely is that there was too much communication. It almost always is that there wasn’t enough relevance.

If what you say to a donor is irrelevant to her, it doesn’t matter how much or little you send. Even one touch is “too much.” Being relevant is what should be keeping you up late — not quantity of impacts.