HOW TO CREATE A FUNDRAISING STRATEGY FOR ANY … · No longer is it nonprofit vs nonprofit, it’s...

HOW TO CREATE A FUNDRAISING STRATEGY FOR ANY NONPROFIT...for any campaign

7 VITAL HABITS YOU NEED FOR SUCCESS

By Darryn Altclass

© 2014 Darryn Altclass, The Learning Community | www.thelearningcommunity.com.au

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Fundraising is hard work

Raising funds for causes has always been hard. And unfortunately, it’s getting harder. It has always been difficult for one simple reason. Asking people to give their money to something that does not give them an immediate return is a hard sell. I understand people feel good when they contribute to something beyond themselves, but apart from that there is no immediate return to them. And because we live in a world where there is a lot competing for people’s attention and loyalty, the fund raising task is becoming more difficult. In this paper, I hope to make that task a little easier for you by outlining a strategy that can be used for any nonprofit for any campaign. If you incorporate the following approaches in your campaigns, you will definitely have more chance of success. But I am getting ahead of myself. Before I go any further I should introduce myself. My name is Darryn Altclass and I work as a Brand & Marketing strategist for The Learning Community based in Sydney, Australia. I love what I do because I’m energised by telling stories that influence how people feel and act. And that is essentially my task as a brand and marketing strategist—to help you tell your story to shape how people feel and act in relation to your brand. We work with nonprofits, businesses and training organisations to help them get smart in two key areas;

● Their Brand & Marketing Strategy: We help our clients find and tell their unique story to shape perception and behaviour.

● Their People: We help set up professional development and training strategies.

We are small by design. Each member of the team used to own a small to medium-sized agency. And while we achieved a lot of success for our clients through those businesses, it was expensive and beyond reach for many organisations. So we simplified and merged our operations and can now offer the same quality services you would expect from a larger agency at a much cheaper rate. We’re lucky to work with a team of very talented people and together we are totally committed to our clients success.


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Well that’s enough about us. Let’s move onto clearing up a widespread misconception in regards to branding and marketing.

What is Branding & Marketing? There is much confusion about these two very important activities that together form the foundation of any fundraising campaign. Let me explain. Branding is everything you do that shapes people’s perceptions. Yes it includes your visual design but it cannot be reduced to that. Everything you do as an organisation shapes how people perceive and feel about your brand. The way you answer the phone, your customer service, your invoicing, your communications, your design...everything you do is a branding activity.

Branding is everything you do, it is ongoing, and involves everyone in your organisation.

Marketing on the other hand is everything you do that shapes people’s actions. It finds it’s place in the context of your brand strategy and is totally concerned with influencing people’s behaviour to do what you’d like them to do—join, donate, buy, share, rally, and so on.

Branding and marketing work together like two blades on a pair of scissors, you need both to cut. Perception influences action.


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Now what has this got to do with fundraising? I think it has everything to do with it. Fundraising is pretty much an exercise in influencing how people feel about a cause and as a response take appropriate action. The reason why I start with this is that if you get your organisation on the same page about branding and marketing it makes fundraising a lot easier, and most importantly, a lot more strategic.

A case study: $50k in 50 days For the rest of this paper, I want to reflect on a small campaign I was involved in to raise $50 thousand dollars in 50 days. Based on this example we can explore a strategy that I believe can be used successfully for any campaign you run. Now I know that $50 thousand in 50 days is not a that big a deal, but it is a helpful case study on which to build a common strategy that can be applied to any campaign you might run in the future.

A big universal problem In the early days of my career my mentors drummed into me to always find the problem before the solution. Old habits die hard, so I want to take a few moments to consider a big universal problem that gets in the way of a lot of our fundraising efforts. Simply stated, there is too much noise and clutter. This makes it hard to get noticed. And if you can’t get noticed it’s almost impossible to raise financial support.


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Ok, we all know that. But let me go a little deeper into the problem.

The noise creates 3 deficits

1. Attention There is too much competing for people’s attention. There are way too many messages for people to take in each day, and far too many competing channels and platforms. It’s a busy world. In addition to the avalanche of marketing messages dumped on us each day, there are more causes and nonprofits competing for the same resource pool. Just look at how many nonprofits are around today that weren't here 5 years ago. There are now 700,000 nonprofits in Australia - many competing for your attention. And while it’s great news for some, it’s bad news for others as they compete for the same attention and resource pool. And all these messages flow through the same funnel—personal messages, ads, nonprofit campaigns, all compete for attention in the same space. This is especially true on social media and email.


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No longer is it nonprofit vs nonprofit, it’s nonprofit versus my mum just had a cajun beef salad, my sister just ran 10kms, I should get my business cards done by Moo, build my website through Wix and sponsor a child through World Vision. It’s companies, family, friends, and nonprofits all in the same feed. You are in competition with everyone, so you better make your message and visuals unique and compelling. You now have to work smarter (not harder) to grab people's attention in this cluttered world. Now don’t panic, it’s not as hard as you think. 2. Resources The second deficit created by all this noise is that of resources. Now I don’t need to go into too much detail on this point because we all live in the same world and know this issue well. People have limited time and money. With the increase of all the great causes to support the issue of limited resources becomes more pressing. And while our giving is increasing, it’s not growing fast enough to keep up with demand. And if you add in the rise in Crowd Funding Projects where people fund all sorts of projects, a lot of which are not really nonprofit ventures (such as musicians wanting to record a new album - which is massive), it’s getting pretty hard to convince people to donate to your cause. Add to that the rise in the cost of living and we have a resource deficit. 3. Loyalty And thirdly, the noise creates a loyalty deficit. It’s hard to build a loyal fanbase in this context. People like new things and there are a lot of new things, new causes to capture people’s imaginations. Especially Generation Y (1980-2000) and Generation Z (2000 - today). Loyalty is not being passed on from generation to generation. So what do we do?


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We must sidestep the noise Einstein suggested we cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking that was used when they were created.

See I told you he said it. This is a sign of organisational insanity...doing the same things the same way with a little more energy, but expecting significantly different results. It is fundraising insanity to attempt to fight clutter with more clutter. If we want new results we have to do things differently. Imagination becomes our greatest asset. So with that background info in mind, here is the challenge that was presented to me.

The challenge - $50k in 50 days Early one morning I received an enthusiastic email from an old colleague. Along with a few other filmmakers he was in the early stages of creating a feature length documentary. The film was about an inspiring Australian who for over 40 years had tirelessly worked as a social entrepreneur in Australia and beyond. The filmmakers believed this was an important story to document for future generations.


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This is my friend Warwick. He has big teeth. And an even bigger heart.

There was one problem though. They didn’t have the money to get the project off the ground. They needed $50,000 to get the project officially started. Not a large sum, but enough to get the project going. A week earlier they had launched a crowdfunding campaign and so far had raised a few thousand dollars from people they knew. This was a great start but at this pace it was going to be difficult to hit the target. Now this is where it gets interesting. They had no brand assets. None. No logo, no website, no social media, no database, no strategy, and no budget. They did however have a library of great imagery and old video footage. But the proposal was compelling and their enthusiasm infectious. I thought these guys have the skill and passion to make this happen. I also felt there was great value in telling this story so I jumped on board and offered my support. With the clock ticking we had to get down to business. We had 44 days to raise over $47,000. We launched two days later, leaving 42 days.


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We hit the ground running We had to move quickly so I got on the phone and called in all the favours I could and in 7 days we had all the following in place.

VISUAL IDENTITY First up we needed a visual identity - a logo and design approach that represented the story and tone of the project. Without a professionally designed logo the whole project would lack competence. We knew that this would be a major asset.

FACEBOOK Next we needed to build an audience fast. The best way I know how to do that is through social media, and I think (still) that the quickest and cheapest way to do that is on facebook. We quickly built an engaged audience on facebook through sharing interesting content. Facebook really became the hub of the whole campaign. This is where we delivered a lot of content to engage and nurture the audience. The two key call to actions (what we wanted people to do) were;

● Engage with the content by liking, commenting and sharing ● Donate through linking off to the crowdfunding page


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And people did that in droves. Note in the screenshot below that we had more people engaging than had liked the page. Likes as a form of engagement is not that valuable, so we didn’t seek likes. We were after higher levels of engagement - commenting, sharing and creating content.

It was all organic traffic. Not that I have a problem with paid facebook advertising, we just didn’t need to do it.


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ONE PAGE CAMPAIGN SITE If people google your organisation (or project) and can’t find much, or in some circumstances no website at all, you are pretty much doomed before you begin. You need a website. It doesn’t have to be complicated, just competent. All we needed was a one page campaign site in order to build credibility and to make people feel confident that this was a solid well thought out project. The two key call to actions were;

● Watch – engage with the content to build interest and excitement ● Donate – go to the crowdfunding page and donate.

We made sure google analytics was set up so we could track the traffic and learn where people were coming from, how long they spent on site and what they were clicking on. Here’s a snapshot of the top half of the website.


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BLOG We also started a blog on Tumblr for longer form content. This is where we engaged people at a deeper level. This wasn’t a major source of traffic, but as part of the campaign strategy and ecosystem it played it’s part well. EMAIL DATABASE As in all brand and marketing strategies, any seasoned marketer will tell you that the value is in the database. This is where through regular engaging emails a clever marketer will nurture and build a relationship with their audience and slowly move them closer to the point of making a purchase or donation.

There are many ways to build a database. The best approach is to offer something of highly perceived value for free in exchange for permission to communicate with that person via email. This usually takes a bit of time to do well. Unfortunately we did not have that luxury. So we cobbled together a database from all the people we knew who had experience or knowledge of the film-subject, and then invited them onto an exclusive email list for the film. People like the word ‘exclusive’. We emailed the people on our lists about once per week with interesting info and updates on the progress of the project. When appropriate we linked off to facebook, the blog, the website, and most importantly the crowdfunding donation site. We also built a database on the crowdfunding donation site. When people donate they automatically get included onto a mailing list. We used this list regularly in the same way as our other email list. As we tracked people’s journey toward the donation site, a significant percentage came from our emails. So we know that this strategy worked well.


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30 INFLUENCERS Word of mouth is still the number one source of new business. It is the most powerful way to build a brand and spread a message. With this in mind we invited people who have a large active network, and who were familiar with the film subject to endorse the film and spread the word through their network. Most of them also created a 1 minute video that we used on social media and on our blog. This was a very effective approach and enabled us to build a large audience very quickly.

Sometimes you just need to move quickly and it’s amazing what can be achieved in a short amount of time. A week before none of these assets existed. After 7 days Now we were ready to move ahead confidently. As a result of the flurry of activity in the first week we achieved this outcome.


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Fast Forward > 5 days to go Let me cut to the chase and jump over to the other end of the campaign. We had just under $8,000 left to raise in the last five days. And with crowdfunding the stakes are high, you miss the target and you miss out on everything. So we turned it up a notch and did all we could to bridge that gap. Here’s a screenshot of the crowdfunding site.

We made it... It was a nerve-wracking last few days but thankfully we made it. And not only did we make it, as you can see below we raised $13, 500 in the last five days.


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Seven vital habits for any nonprofit...for any campaign


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Habit 1. tell the right story to the right people The first way to get noticed in a cluttered marketplace is to tell the right story to the right people. So the first thing we did was answer two very important questions.

● What story are we telling? ● Who are we telling it to?

Without a clear answers to these questions we could not create compelling targeted content to engage our desired audience. This is actually the first thing I do with any of my clients - nonprofit or business The answer to these two questions shapes everything. Sometimes the answer comes quickly, sometimes it takes a while. But once you get it, it is your greatest asset. When we think about what shapes people’s perceptions and actions the most powerful influencer is story. When Ivan Illich the Austrian philosopher was asked the best method to change society - was it Reformation or Revolution?, he said; “Neither. If you want to change a society, you have to tell an alternative story.” He understood that people are profoundly shaped and influenced by story. It has always been that way. Humans are helpless story junkies! Muriel Rukeyser said, “The universe is made of stories, not atoms.” We need to learn how to story-tell. Fundraisers and marketers must become storytellers.


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The story you tell is what engages people and sets your cause apart from all the others. Don’t focus on tools like social media, focus on telling your story and building meaningful connections. The best tools in the world cannot make up for a campaign that lacks story. I’m not talking about the story of HOW your organisation began, but WHY it exists. And in particular the story of the campaign. It’s a story of promise, of value...a story about the benefit a person receives if they come in contact with your organisation or project. A story that arises primarily from your value proposition. So what is the right story? There’s never just one answer. But it must be connected to your value proposition and organisational promise.

● Determine what is going to be most compelling and interesting to your audience. ● What story is going to capture their attention and help shape the right actions?

Distill that information into a big story that can be told in small regular pieces of content. The story of this campaign was drawn from the film title - “something in every hue”.

● John was a social entrepreneur who triggered a movement of programs and people right across the world working with some of the most difficult, disenfranchised and misunderstood people in society.

● His philosophy was that no matter how bad the situation there was always something good, always a place to start - always something in every hue.

● The formal story: John Smith and his work. ● The core story: A passionate activism that engages the nooks and crannies of

society to seek to make a difference. The key is to define and tell the core story, not the formal one. And who are the right people? The right story is useless if it’s not told to the right people. It’s vital to the success of the campaign to do the research and identify to whom you will be telling your story.


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This is where you need to do a bit of work understanding your target audience - what interests them and how to motivate them. You need to know where their eyeballs are - what are they looking every day, what platforms are they on, and so on. Then with this information craft the right story to the right people on the right platforms. If I had to explain my approach in one sentence that would be it - the right story to the right people on the right platforms. For our campaign, it was important for us to be clear on who we were hoping to engage with this story, especially because we were on a fixed timeline. If we got it wrong here we would have very little time to readjust. So we asked the following questions to help us define the right audience.

1. Who were already the most interested? 2. Who are most proud of this story? 3. Who had first hand experience? 4. Who had supported in the past? 5. Who would feel important and ‘in-the-know’ for sharing?

While we could answer the first four questions by studying the organisational database and applying anecdotal evidence, the last question we used our intuition based on what we already knew. We then identified one key audience with four key segments. We consulted those people and those who knew them well, and then wrote down the elements of the story that each segment would connect with. This was important because even though we were dealing with one key audience, the segments had unique values and interests. And we knew that we had to connect with them at those points. So far we clarified the right story and the right audience, but now we needed to decide what platforms to use to deliver this story. What are the right platforms to use to tell this story? For this campaign we had limited time and resources so we had to be simple and streamlined. We chose the two platforms most likely to get the best results.

● Facebook because it has great reach and it’s where our target audience spent a lot of time. It’s easy and quick to set up, has great tools, and helpful analytics.


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● Email because its a very personal medium and has the best return above anything else. It’s a one to one medium rather than one to many.

● We also added in a simple blog for longer form content. ● And if we had time, once we gained traction online we would go offline and

initiate a PR campaign. Which we did. We sent out press releases and received a lot of exposure on radio and traditional newsprint, which we then fed back into our online campaign.

Habit 2: tell a big story through little stories Mostly people consume media in small pieces of content throughout the day. In this context we need to learn how to tell our big story through lots of small detailed stories. These stories, while different and diverse, will form a colourful mosaic that amplifies the key story. I call this the tiles and the mosaic. While the collection of stories create the larger story, each small story also needs the clarity and content to communicate the key story and engage the audience. These stories can be told in many ways, through short and long content depending on the platform and purpose. The tile could be a simple image with a caption, or video footage from the past, a longer story on a blog, an interview, a video vignette, a photo with a quote, any content that helps tell the right story. Four our campaign, we had to identify the small stories, the pieces of content that would help us tell the big story. Each small story had to create excitement and expectation and contribute to the overall Mosaic.

Habit 3: give give give, ask Typically, we don’t ask for marriage on the first date. We build and nurture a relationship. We slowly establish familiarity as the other person gets to know our story, our values, passions and so on.


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The same is true for fundraising. We need to nurture and build the relationship. We need to tell our story before we ask for the donation. So many nonprofits make this mistake. They ask before they give. We have to shape perception before we ask for action. Branding precedes marketing. A recent global survey found that people need 10.4 interactions with a brand (on numerous platforms) before they were ready to buy or donate. What’s happening in those 10.4 interactions?

● People are getting to know your brand and what offers and stands for. ● A relationship is forming. ● Your potential supporter is starting to piece together the tiles of the mosaic.

We need to give, give, give, before we ask. This means that we need to provide meaningful and interesting content to nurture our audience and help move them closer and closer to the action we hope they will take. We can’t ask for money at every point, and certainly not straight away, In our campaign we only had 50 days but we didn’t ask straight away, we nurtured the relationship with interesting content. We gave gave gave, then without apology, we asked. In order to gather the right content for our campaign, we asked ourselves a few questions.

● What content would excite people? ● What content would communicate the projects value? ● And most importantly, what content did we have access to?

We then collected the content and in a very short time we established a library of images, videos, stories, and articles that we used to give, give, give. And our audience lapped it up. They engaged, shared and spread the content with those they thought would also be interested. This is why the campaign grew so quickly.


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Habit 4. use social proof People like to talk about the things they like and love. And consequently people talking positively about a brand is one of the most influential ways to increase visibility and appeal. People also like to see what others are doing and follow.

This is known as social proof and has two main forms.

● Volume: This relates to the amount of people talking about a campaign or project, engaging with the content, and finally donating. If other potential donors see that 100 people have already donated this is a great motivator for them to also donate.

● Quality: Who is making the recommendation is just as important and influential

as the amount of people engaging. Recommendations from people known and trusted to the target audience is very influential in shaping decisions. But don’t confuse this with ‘celebrity proof’, that’s something entirely different.

This is how we used social proof.

● We found as many people who had first hand experience and we asked them to become involved and spread the word about the project. We also asked for testimonials and quotes.

● We grabbed a quote from them, made it look nice as an image, then posted it.


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● We also asked some of them to film short video endorsements. We asked about 15 people to do this, but then other people saw that and started doing their own and we ended up with more than we could use.

● We also provided easy ways for people to create content with a list of suggestions of what to tweet or post on facebook etc. It sounds a little cheesy to write suggested content, but lots of people used this resource. People are busy and well intentioned, but often don’t get around to it. They grabbed our ideas and then personalised it.

You cannot create a successful campaign without social proof.

Habit 5. create professional assets

What do you think when you find a website that is far from professional with half baked imagery and content. It doesn’t give you a whole lot of confidence does it. You certainly do not want to donate money or give them your details. And a long list of questions begin to form in your mind as you start to wonder if this organisation can deliver on its promises. Seriously this stuff matters. Professionalism inspires confidence. And confidence inspires action. It’s not an expense but an investment. This does not mean slick, but competent. Well executed, that you paid attention to detail, that there was thought and care and imagination involved when you created your visual and marketing assets. What would people find if they googled your organisation? We knew that for our project if we couldn’t get this right the campaign would lack confidence and people would wonder if we had the skills and attention and care to make a professional feature length film.


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Nowadays people skim through content. Think about your own habits. I am sure you skim as well. And if you can’t grab people’s attention straight away, you can easily lose them forever. Professional assets helps capture and hold people’s attention.

Habit 6. connect all your platforms This is where you take a step back and look at all the places (online and offline) where you wish to communicate your message. Take a piece of paper and literally map out all your platforms. Make sure they are connected. By that I mean that they not only reference and link to each other but they all play an important role in nurturing your audience and moving them closer to the action you want them to take. Make sure that every platform helps you tell your story in a unique way. Not the same content on every platform. Have a logic and a reason for every platform. Know what you want out of each platform and don’t expect anything else. Be clear on the Call to Actions - and measure! Choose a home-base and direct everything toward it. Usually your homebase is your branded environment (website or campaign site) a place where you can nurture and guide people's actions. This was our simple map. Facebook was central and connected every other platform. While all of our platforms had a connection to each other Facebook was our homebase. It was where where we drove most content and subsequently where we had most action.


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Habit 7. build an email database And finally, most importantly build an email database and use it regularly. Email is still king, without a doubt, so we needed to make the most of it for our tight time-framed campaign. In order to do that we needed a database. We opened up a spreadsheet and started adding people we thought might be interested in the project. Not necessarily people who would donate but people who might find the project interesting and valuable and hopefully spread the news and help build us an audience. We used email primarily to nurture relationships and develop people’s understanding about the project and content of the film. We wrote a few different email invites for the different audience segments, explaining the project and asking if they wanted to be on our “exclusive” email list. The emails we sent were not updates, but each one had interesting engaging content that told the story and hopefully moved them closer to taking action - donating and sharing. I cannot stress enough how important your database is. If you treat it well, keep it up to date, and use it regularly, your database will become one of your most valuable assets. Without doubt this is where you can get your greatest return. This is certainly where we got our greatest response. Social media has great reach, but email trumps it every time for return. Give me the choice between a large email database and a large social media network, and I will choose email every time. It’s personal and it works, if you know how to work it. Don’t make it look like a newsletter from Qantas. Make it feel like a letter from a friend. Emails that get the greatest response are text-based emails with 1 image. People are not annoyed by getting emails. They get annoyed when the get crap emails. So don’t send crap. Spend time on them, craft the headline to motivate people to open the email, then line by line draw them in by your story.


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In summary

● Tell the right story to the right people ● Tell a big story through small stories ● Give, give, give, then ask ● Use social proof ● Create professional assets ● Connect all your platforms ● Build an email database

Thanks for taking the time to read and consider this information. I hope it helps in all the great work that you are doing. Darryn


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HOW TO CREATE A FUNDRAISING STRATEGY FOR ANY … · No longer is it nonprofit vs nonprofit, it’s...

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