Category Archives: Fundraising

Start with your features, but move right to benefits

[Dalya’s Note: This is an excerpt from my award-winning book Writing to Make a Difference: 25 Powerful Techniques to Boost Your Community Impact.]

Consider the features of your work: the components or characteristics of the actual services or products your organization offers. The details of your features often include answers to questions your most interested readers might ask. Examples might be technical specifications or information on exactly how you carry out your programs.

Benefits, on the other hand, are the tangible and intangible outcomes you are striving for: the great results and powerful impact that your stakeholders will get from working with you.

Example

An organization runs a homeless shelter for families. It offers warm beds, restrooms, and other facilities. It also hires child care workers and counselors, uses volunteers, operates a soup kitchen, and offers services to help residents find more permanent housing or jobs.

Those are all features of the organization’s work.

The benefits are the positive effects that those things have on the shelter residents and the community at-large. Here we are talking about the difference the organization makes in addressing the problems associated with homelessness, both short- and long-term.

Some of those benefits may be:

Increased stability and nutrition in the lives of the homeless families
Increased employment among homeless parents
Fewer families living in cars or on the streets
Less desperation, which often leads to crime, drug abuse, and other social ills
The sense of being a community that cares for all of its citizens

Here are three related questions that can help you identify the benefits of your work:

1) Ask yourself: What does your service or product mean for your reader and/or community—personally, professionally, financially, physically, logistically, spiritually, and/or emotionally?

Example

The Health Trust, which oversaw and partially supported the School Health Clinics of Santa Clara County, worked with me several years ago to document their benefits to the community. That language then served them for years in all kinds of successful documents. This is some of the text, focusing on economic benefits:

The School Health Clinics play a critical role in support of the educational process. They prepare children and families to be informed health care consumers and encourage self-responsible behaviors. The Clinics represent wise investments, as they lead to a healthy community and a healthy future workforce.

Each clinic visit will save the community from $160 to $2,000 in physician or emergency room costs.

School-based health care gives working parents a health care choice that allows them to access health care for their children, thus reducing costly disruption, distraction, and absence from their workplace.

Companies have better informed employees who are likely to make wise health care and lifestyle choices for themselves and their families. And healthy employees with fewer health risks give employers a negotiating advantage with health insurers. Thus, corporate financing of school-based health care can be part of a company’s community development and philanthropic strategy to benefit many constituencies.

(Website: Health Trust)

2) Ask yourself: What will happen as a result of the particular features you offer? And how does that satisfy the needs and desires of your readers?

Example

An organization that provides massage therapy to cancer survivors might say:

Your compassionate investment of $100 will buy a new clinic massage table (feature), enabling our volunteer therapists to provide 50 additional revitalizing, healing massages per week to cancer survivors like Jose (client benefit). You will be helping your friends and neighbors enjoy happier, healthier, more productive, and (as suggested by recent medical studies) longer lives (social benefit).

3) Ask yourself: For each feature you offer, ask “So what?” How does that lead to something better for my reader and/or the community?

Example

Our company exterminates termites and other pests from your home or office with natural orange peel oil.

Feature	Benefit
Proven effective within 24 hours	It will decisively solve your termite problem quickly.
Nontoxic and natural	It is better for your health with no side effects for adults or children.
Fume-free	You can use your home right afterward, with no waiting.
Plant-based	It is not dependent on petroleum.
Guaranteed to keep your home or office pest-free for at least 12 months	Saves you the expense and hassle of re-exterminating.
Consistent with overall green lifestyle	You will do your part for the planet.

The Question They’re All Asking

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[Dalya’s Note: This is an excerpt from my award-winning book Writing to Make a Difference: 25 Powerful Techniques to Boost Your Community Impact.]

Do you know the big question on the mind of every reader of your organization’s material? It’s this: “What’s in it for me?”

As far as your readers are concerned, it’s all about the benefits you can offer them. You want to emphasize how your organization’s product or service improves the lives of your constituents and their communities.

We tend to focus on all of the wonderful features of the services and products we offer. But if you try to see things from your readers’ perspective, you will notice that they are most interested in buying or supporting benefits that address their specific needs and values.

For this reason, writing about benefits that matter to your readers is absolutely crucial in any kind of marketing or fundraising piece. I am talking about everything from a personal letter requesting financial support, to a general flyer about a service you offer, to a special report about your industry, to a website article.

Don’t just concentrate on what specific things your organization does or makes, or how. Those are the various features of your work. While those are interesting and necessary to discuss, I suggest you emphasize what difference your organization makes—how your services benefit the users, your supporters, and/or the community at-large.

Ask Yourself: How will your service or product improve the lives of your readers and their community, in the short and the long term?

Did you notice how I said both your readers and their community? That is because we work in the public interest sector and not the conventional business world. Our stakeholders want to find ways to benefit both themselves and the world around them. So we might want to edit their big question to now read: “What’s in it for me and us?”

Simply put, your job is to refine your text (your “copy”) so that it makes your readers feel good about the benefits you are offering. You want them to feel so good that they are willing to take a chance on you with their time, money, energy, or other resources.

Your writing has to persuade them that your product or service will help them achieve their goals, benefiting them and their community.

Personally speaking

This “feel-good” imperative reminds me of the old toothpaste commercials that implied that you would find love and romance if only you brushed with their minty fresh taste. Or of today’s cell phone ads suggesting that their products will win you lots of new friends and dates. While this is a blatant use of persuasive power, we can use that power in the public interest too.

You can, over time, compile especially effective phrases, paragraphs, and statements to recycle in your materials. But, of course, you will have to tweak everything to make sure it uses language that speaks most persuasively to your specific intended audience.

Webinar on 5/22: Can Your Board Tell Your Story? (FREE)

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Nonprofit board members often don’t want to ask for funds, but when it comes to raising friends for your organization, most of them are eager. But, do they know how to tell your story? Here are some things board members can do:

Develop their own 30-second elevator speech about your organization
Present “just the facts, ma’am” fact sheet to a local business person
Speak with passion about your organization to potential donors

Takeaways:

Understand the various constituents of your organization
Develop appropriate messages for each constituency
Develop a comfort level in presenting your story

Join us Wednesday, May 22, 2013 from 12-1pm PST! Sign up HERE. This webinar is co-presented with Linda Lysakowski, in conjunction with NonprofitWebinars (offering free training on a wide range of topics every week).

16 Tips for Crafting a Powerful Postcard Campaign – Part 1

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[Dalya’s Note] This guest blog post originally appeared on Michael Rosen’s blog on April 19, 2013. Michael J. Rosen, CFRE is President, ML Innovations (http://mlinnovations.com), and Publisher, Michael Rosen Says… (http://MichaelRosenSays.wordpress.com).

As you might imagine, I regularly receive direct mail appeals from many charities. Most of them are truly “junk mail.” After a quick glance, I quickly deposit the junk appeals into the recycling bin where they will do much more good than their intended purpose.

Occasionally, I’ll receive a mailing that captures my attention, for the right reasons. Even more rarely, I’ll find something in my mailbox that is worthy of sharing with you. Earlier this month, I found just such a piece.

The postcard mailing from the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia arrived shortly before the Passover and tied into the holiday. This post contains an image of the front and back of the postcard so you can see it for yourself. Federation did a great job with the piece. So, let me take a few moments to share some tips we all can learn from it:

1. Get rid of the envelope. One of the greatest challenges with direct mail is getting people to open the envelope. They won’t get your message unless they do. If you can get your message across in a way that does not require a full mailing package, you can overcome this challenge by simply doing away with the envelope altogether. Federation’s postcard mailing has done exactly that.

2. Employ a pattern interrupt. Another challenge with direct mail involves figuring out ways to engage the recipient so they spend more than two seconds with the piece before tossing it into the trash. When most folks go through their mail, they quickly look for the fun stuff and bills. People quickly weed-out what appears to be junk.

So, how did Federation disrupt the typical mail-sorting pattern? They did it with two very different photos on the front of an odd-sized postcard. While speedily going through my mail, I noticed an old-fashioned, sepia-tone photo of an older couple on the postcard. Beside it, there was a contemporary color picture of a cute, young child eating matzo. The postcard got me to ask, “Huh, what’s this about?”

In other words, Federation caught my attention by being unusual and by presenting contrasting photographs. They knocked me out of my normal mail-sorting pattern.

3. Make it easy to read. By printing black type on a white background, Federation provides strong contrast that makes reading easier. While reverse type was used – something I normally do not approve of — it was used sparingly and with a larger serif font ensuring easy readability.

4. Keep the message brief but impactful. In about 50 words, I learned that Mr. and Mrs. Schweig had passed away long ago. However, I also learned they had contributed to Federation. Most compellingly, I discovered that their generous support would feed 1,500 community members in need during Passover.

The generosity of the Schweigs impressed me. The depth of the community need surprised me. The organization really had my attention.

5. Engage the reader. I was already engaged with the postcard when the photos caught my attention and I read the pithy message on the front of the card. However, the card engaged me further with a simple question: “What will your legacy be?” By asking the reader a question, you can get them to stop and think.

6. Provide more details. On the address-side of the postcard, the reader is told that Mr. and Mrs. Schweig made their gift through a bequest. Providing additional details and telling people where they can get even more information will satisfy all readers and their individual levels of curiosity.

7. Demonstrate impact. Donors want to make a difference. Whether they give to the annual fund or make a planned gift commitment, people want to know that their support will have a positive impact. They want to know that their donations will be used efficiently to help the organization fulfill its mission.

This postcard shows how the support of past donors is being put to good use. The implied messages are: We wisely use the support from past donors to help the community. We can help you to have a positive, high-impact as well.

8. Show appreciation. By recognizing two deceased donors, Federation sends the message that the organization remembers donors even after they are no longer physically with us. By thanking Mr. and Mrs. Schweig for their impactful support, Federation is letting all donors know their support is valued.

For those considering leaving a legacy gift, these are meaningful messages. While some people may not necessarily want to secure a measure of immortality, all donors will be happy to know that they can continue to have a positive impact on the lives of others after they themselves are gone.

(See Part II of this article HERE.)