The Heroes with a Heart Grant Celebrates Unsung Non-Profit Heroes

If you’re like most people, you get most of your inspiration from people who are quietly changing the world each and every day. They’re not on the front page of the newspaper, and they’re not mingling with the Gates and Buffets of the world. They’re everyday people like you and me who have shown extraordinary commitment to making this world better than when they found it.

The CTK Foundation “Heroes with a Heart” Grant Award asks YOU to nominate a “Hero with a Heart,” and give them a chance to win $5,000 – a simple thanks for the hard work that they do.

What are the details of the
“Heroes with a Heart” Grant?

Here’s an overview of awards the CTK Foundation will offer and details on how you can nominate your Hero:

• $15,000 for Three Heroes One Hero with a Heart from each of the three categories of Health and Human Social Service, Animal Rights and Environmental Protection and Arts and Literacy will be awarded $5,000 USD and a professionally produced video about their affiliated nonprofit for use in public awareness or education.
• $1,500 for One Hero The CTK Foundation will also be offering a $1,500 (USD) President’s Choice Award (the Susan Lee Winter Grant Award) for an individual working to provide creative and innovative approaches to HIV/AIDS education or prevention.
• Blogger’s Choice Award Lastly, there will be a Blogger’s Choice Award of $1,000 (USD). The CTK Foundation will choose a blogger (hopefully me) who will hand-pick one winner from any category.

Applications for all Heroes with a Heart grant awards open on Wednesday, February 1st, 2012 and close Wednesday, February 29th, 2012 at midnight. Finalists will appear on the CTK Facebook page for public voting during April and winners will be announced on May 1, 2012. This award is open to registered nonprofits or charities of all types and sizes, worldwide.

Go to www.communitytech.net/foundation to nominate your Hero with a Heart today!

For regular updates on the Heroes with a Heart Grant, check out the CTK Facebook Page.

Good luck, Heroes!

Do you have a favorite volunteer? Want to thank them, with MONEY? originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on February 1, 2012.

Fundraising Predictions 2012

The Atlas of Giving is different than Giving USA in that it gives you PREDICTIONS when your fundraising is most likely to do well. It tells you when you can expect the best results, and when you should hold back.

Really. Isn’t this exciting?

Check out the whole report on Scribd.

Here are some highlights of the Atlas of Giving report for December 2011.

1. Giving was up in 2011, and you can expect it to be up again in 2012 because

• The DOW is up
• Consumer confidence is up
• Unemployment is trending downward
• Consumer borrowing increased
• CEO confidence is up
• Winter weather was nonexistent in much of the US, so people didn’t have huge heating bills. (I swear I am not making this up)

2. The Good and the Bad: Fundraising results will go up in Alaska, but down in Illnois, New York, Pennsylvania, Florida and California.

3. April is the cruelest month:
Apparently April is going to be a slump month this 2012, so don’t try to do your appeal or an event in April. Do it in March or May instead. (Unless you’re fundraising for the arts or the environment. Then go nuts!)

4. Religious giving is now lagging behind other sectors, which is shocking, usually they do the best! So, if you’re fundraising for a religious or spiritual institution, try doing direct mail, e-appeals, etc and bust out of your business as usual thing.

5. September should be an exceptional month for fundraising, so try to plan your events and appeals for then.

Those are the main things I got from the report.

What did YOU get out of it?

Are you as excited as I am about the possibility of being able to do a broad sweep and make predictions based on what’s come before?
 

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What are you planning for? Fundraising Predictions for 2012 originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on January 19, 2012.

Image Creative Commons "Money" by Stuart Dootson)

I’m so excited to share this interview with you! I interviewed Jules Brown! He is a professional direct response copywriter specializing in the creation of highly persuasive fundraising campaigns for charities and non-profits. Over the last four years his work has raised more than US$16 million worth of funds for leading charities, NGOs and community groups worldwide.

His blog, Dear Joan, is dedicated to helping smaller nonprofits write truly donor focused appeals that get better results and raise more money for your cause.

Mazarine: How did you get involved with copywriting for direct mail fundraising?

Jules: I’ve always worked in advertising and marketing. I migrated towards direct marketing pretty early on, influenced by the likes of Drayton Bird and John Fraser-Robinson.

I spent the early part of my career as an account handler but always had a secret desire to work on the creative side. Specifically as a copywriter.

During the 90s I became very disillusioned with the commercial agency world. Eventually I left my job, sold up, went to live in France for three years. I came home determined to a). write for a living, and b). do my bit to make the world a better place.

Initially I worked as a freelance journalist, writing mainly for national Sunday newspapers. Then an opportunity in fundraising came along when I pitched for and won the role of lead freelance copywriter for an excellent not-for-profit DM agency in Dublin, Ireland. At that point, you could say, I found my calling.

Mazarine: You’ve written fundraising campaigns for nonprofits in several different countries, how does fundraising direct mail in other countries differ from the US?

Jules: By and large direct mail fundraising is no different from one country to the next.

I’ve written copy that’s run in the USA, the UK, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand the Middle East and South East Asia, and one thing shines through: no matter where you go, donors are much the same — people who care.

Of course, someone in Thailand may well give for different reasons to someone in Tennessee. But then a cat rescue supporter in Tennessee will probably be giving for different reasons to a medical research supporter who also lives in Tennessee.

The key point is that the fundamentals of good direct mail copywriting hold true no matter where you are: understand your donor, craft appeals that make your donor the hero, and connect your donor with your beneficiary.

Mazarine: Do people in some counties give more than others?

Jules: I’m fortunate enough to do most of my work in some of the most giving counties in the world. According to the World Giving Index produced by the Charities Aid Foundation, the most philanthropic nations are:

1. Australia & New Zealand (joint 1st)
3. Ireland & Canada (joint 3rd)
5. USA & Switzerland (joint 5th)

But again, I don’t think too much should be read into this kind of research. For any non-profit, large or small, the only group of people that really matters is your donor base. It’s how responsive they are to your fundraising communications that counts, nothing else.

I have found that non-profits in smaller countries enjoy better response rates and ROI figures. I don’t have any quantitative data to support the reasons for this, but I think it’s a function of market and database size.

I believe that smaller nonprofits with smaller donor bases enjoy a closer relationship with their donors. A small local charity is more relevant, more immediate, and closer to their individual supporters, than say a global organisation with hundreds of thousands of donors. And consequently, they can achieve very impressive results.

Mazarine: Do you think this can help smaller non-profits?

Jules: Yes, I believe being local, being specific, being relevant, presents smaller charities with a special advantage — if they apply the fundamentals well.

Sadly, because smaller non-profits often don’t have the money to buy top quality direct response fundraising advice — they are often not applying the fundamentals very well.

Often they try hard too hard look or seem ‘different’ to the big players, when what they should really be doing is learning from them.

My advice to the development directors of small non-profits would be to stop looking for something brand new to turn your fundraising around — look instead at the fundamentals. Are you applying the tried, tested and proven techniques that successful direct marketers and fundraisers have been talking about for decades?

If not, make a start.

There’s a wealth of information out there on the web to help you do this and do it well. Including of course, websites like Wild Woman Fundraising.

(Aw Thanks Jules!)

But my top five recommendations would be to make sure you do the following:

1. Ask well, ask strong and ask often
2. Don’t write short copy — long copy pulls better results
3. Don’t try to tell your donor about everything you do in one go — tackle one issue at a time, and repeat your winners.
4. Find a strong case study that demonstrates your work well for every appeal send out.
5. And don’t talk about yourself — talk about your beneficiaries and how your donor is the key to changing their lives.

Mazarine: Would you follow up a direct mail piece with an email and if so, why?

Jules: Absolutely. If you have an email address — definitely use it for a follow up appeal. As to why, the main reason is that your donor may well be more responsive to email than printed mail. The only way to find out is to use it. Additionally, appealing via two different channels spreads your chance of catching your donor at an opportune moment, or in the right frame of mind.

Mazarine: Do you advocate buying mailing lists or do you counsel nonprofits to grow their lists organically?

Jules: I’m not a great fan of cold lists. Experience has shown that there are other more cost effective recruitment channels than cold mail.

Part of the problem is the quality of the data you’re buying. There’s nothing worse than becoming the Nth appeal sent to a tired old list of people fed up with charitable solicitations.

That said — the golden rule applies: if you test it and it works for you, keep doing it. And keep trying to do it better.

Thank you Jules for agreeing to be interviewed for my blog, I’ve certainly learned a lot, and I hope my readers have too! If you have a question for Jules, please leave a comment below, or ask him on Twitter @dearjoannet.

REMEMBER! Follow Jules Brown at @DearJoanNet on Twitter, and visit his excellent blog, DearJoan.net. He’s a good writer!

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How You Can Get More Money Through Direct Mail: Interview with Jules Brown of “Dear Joan” originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on December 12, 2011.

What's the time orientation or sense orientation in YOUR appeal letters?

Are you getting towards the end of the year and just totally scratching your head on what you’re going to write to make people want to give to you?

Once I saw a book on the shelves in a bookstore that was called, I believe, “How NOT To Write a Novel” and I picked it up out of curiosity. It was full of horrible examples and not a single good one. I put it back quickly and ran away from the shelf. I could FEEL my writing getting bad just by reading a couple of pages.

Don’t listen to anyone who says you can learn to write better by reading bad writing. If this were true, the world would be full of incredible writers, when we know that incredible writing is actually the exception, not the rule.

So, in service to you, writing your appeal, please read an excerpt from SOFII’s file on the marvelous copywriting of Indra Sinda, for Amnesty International in 1992. (He was voted one of the top 10 copywriters of all time).

Sinda writes:

Should we give up?

The pictures on this page are upsetting.

Normally, we wouldn’t publish them. Our advertisements purposely stay away from violent or horrific pictures.

When we publicized the murders of street urchins by Brazilian and Guatemalan police, we spared you the sight of children with their tongues ripped out and eyes burned from their sockets.

When we wrote about Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians, we deliberately did not use the photographs that make our volunteers cry.

We at Amnesty have no choice but to look at these pictures. and hear the stories that go with them.

A million failures.
Were we naive to imagine we could make a difference?

In the last thirty years, things have not got better, but worse.

In 1961, we believed, didn’t we, that the world would never tolerate another genocde? Since themn we’ve had Suharto, Pol Pot, Idi Amin and Saddam Hussein.

We’ve had Emperor Bokass who stocked his fridge with human heads. For every prisoner freed, thousands are still in prison. For every person plucked from the torturers, thousands suffer agonies beyond our imaging. For every life saved, hundreds of thousands have been lost.

Between then, Suharto, Pol Pot, Idi Amin and Saddam Hussein have executed and tortured to death more than a million people. For Amnesty that’s a million failures. All we’ve done in the last thirty years is bail a few buckets from a sea of human misery.

Should we give up?

—————————————————-

Is your Mindset Negative? Certain? Extrovert?

This is just a small excerpt of his writing, but I want you to pay attention to two things.

He starts his title of the article/ad in the newspaper with “Should We Give Up?” and if we’re honest, we’ve all thought that at one time or another, but none of us reading it, anyway, actually DID give up. We still keep striving.

He writes in short paragraphs. He shows terrible pictures. And he admits failures. Most nonprofits are too afraid to admit their failures, too afraid to say, Yes, the problem DOES seem unsolvable. Yes, we have had a couple of successes but MILLIONS more people are suffering than we can deal with.

That’s powerful.

It almost makes you root for the organization because they seem like an underdog, trying to right injustices against an ever-streaming wave of tyrants.

I typed this letter up in a website called “750words” which analyzes the word choice, the mood, time orientation and other things and came out with these results to show you.

Why not try this with YOUR appeal letter?

Why not put your appeal letter to the test at 750words?

And if you’re REALLY serious about getting one hundreds checks in the mail a day for this December appeal season, then check out my CharityHowTo webinar called “Tons of Money in the Mail” where we delve into writing more persuasively and MUCH MUCH MORE.

Look! Anatomy of an Effective Annual Appeal originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on December 5, 2011.

Have you ever had a funder pull out of a sponsorship or grantmaking deal because of your association with a revolutionary movement or because of something a person at your nonprofit said about them?

Do YOU find it horrifying that an AmeriCorps VISTA might make $16,000 per year, or just minimum wage, while the CEO of Goldman Sachs makes $16,000 per HOUR?

Did you hear Goldman pulled out of a fundraiser after learning it honored Occupy Wall Street?

Apparently, the revolution will NOT be funded.

If you read Phil Cubeta’s short posts over the last week or so, you’ll see that he is picking the scab on the thing fundraisers don’t like to talk about, namely, you have to keep your head down and not seem TOO revolutionary, or you won’t get funded.

According to Phil, if you look too closely at the cause of income inequality, you find the very people who are funding you to study it. And they don’t want to hear that.

Here’s some good news. Occupy Wall Street now has almost half a million dollars in donations. They are putting it in a credit union. The credit union decided to throw a fundraising dinner, and Goldman Sachs withdrew their $5,000 sponsorship. Capital One, however, is still in. Wonder why?

Maybe Goldman Sachs thinks that Occupy Wall Street can actually WIN.

If you even mildly criticize your funders, you get denuded of funding as well, as Pamela Grow reported on the Reel Girls/Comcast debacle. She called it, “The Story of a Small Nonprofit and the Power of Social Media.” Then Reel Girls decided to show what Comcast was doing, and make up the comcast grant (which was only about $15,000) and ask their supporters to side with them. And they did, overwhelmingly. Because Reel Girls are about free speech, and they think that Comcast should recognize it. Comcast later said okay, you can have the money (probably because it turned into such a PR headache for them) but Reel Girls said no, thanks, we’re good. and this is why your gift policy and grant agreements should clearly state that funding will not stop just because your nonprofit exercises free speech.

What do you think?

How do YOU feel about having to rub shoulders with people high up in finance and industry, in the name of your cause, all the while knowing that the people you’re talking with make more in a few months than anyone at your nonprofit makes in a year?

Have you ever had an issue with wanting to criticize a funder, but being afraid to lose your funding?

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Have you ever had Grantus Interruptus? originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on October 24, 2011.

Have you ever been thrown into an appeal process and not known where to start? When you’re fundraising for a cause, you want to make sure you don’t waste any time. You’ve got ten more things to do and you need to get this mailing out, FAST.

Enter the Wild Appeals Fundraising App, based on The Wild Woman’s Guide to Fundraising book, by Mazarine Treyz. This App helps you make sure that you never forget another appeal mailing step. Works for annual report mailings too!

Fundraising Android App

How much is peace of mind worth to you? This app will ensure that you have that peace of mind. This easy to use checklist will make sure that you get your cardboard sleeves, strapping, bulk mailing permits and more all in the correct order. No more fumbling for little pieces of paper. No more scrambling because you forgot one key step!

It’s all in your phone!

This app will make you more productive, and more successful. You will have more time to raise more money, because you will be more organized. Buy the Wild Appeals! Fundraising App today!

Who is # 3 in the Android fundraising app marketplace? That would be us!

Do you make direct mail happen for your nonprofit? This App’s for you! originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on August 22, 2011.

Cause Marketing for Dummies by Joe Waters and Joanna MacDonald

I’ll be honest, before I picked up this book my interest in Cause marketing was pretty much zero. But this book got me excited, thinking about possibilities for some organizations I’m currently doing work for.

I just received this book in the mail last week, and so far, I love it! I have gotten so much out of this book. You can see me here with the cat, who promptly started licking the book when i put it down. I guess that makes two of us who like it!

But good things need to be shared.

If you leave a comment below, I will enter your name in the drawing to win this book.

Here’s why I love this book.

Clear Definitions
Joe puts the difference between Sponsorship, Cause Marketing and Philanthropy as a difference of involvement.
At one end of the spectrum, Sponsorship, nonprofits do all the work and the corporation just shows up.
With Cause marketing, nonprofits and corporations do roughly equal amounts of work.
And with Philanthropy, the corporation does all of the work, and the nonprofit shows up to collect the check.

Three kinds of decision makers
One of my favorite parts is on page 100-102, where Joe shows you the kinds of people you are going to need to deal with as you convince corporations that it’s a good idea to enter a cause marketing partnership with you. The three kinds of people he has dealt with are Thinkers, Feelers, and Deferrers.

Thinkers want a low or no risk model, something where they don’t have to put in a lot of up-front cash.

Feelers will respond to a heartfelt story, but don’t over-do it. They also want to get hope, joy and compassion by being involved with you. They don’t want fear in the story.

Deferrers will wait and see if they want to get involved with you if you have a string of successes before this one. So if you have a celebrity on board, that will be an instant green light for deferrers. Or if you’re vetted by a local elected official, that will lend your proposal some clout as well.

Joe put in this equation that I loved, for Thinkers: Value + Free – Risk = Great Opportunity

You could apply this to sales in general, not just fundraising and not just cause marketing.

A focus on implementation
When you’re implementing your first cause marketing campaign, it can be daunting, and you might think, “How are we going to succeed with this?”

Well, you can start with Pinups. These are not barely dressed ladies from the 1940s, no, these are things that you can ask a local store to hand out and hang up for you. Around Valentine’s day, St. Patrick’s Day, or another holiday, you might see these all around your local starbucks or grocery store. If you’ve ever just seen a wall plastered with these, it can be impressive, and you might look closer to see what they are benefiting.

It doesn’t cost much to print these, and you can start with your local grocery store, asking if you could do a campaign for a couple of weeks to a month to get people engaged with your cause and make them look more like heroes too.

Joe says that people will give at the cash register if the cashier doesn’t just say, “Would you like to make a donation to MDA today?” no, the cashier needs to say something like, “Would you like to make a donation so a hungry family can eat tonight?”

But what if you’re an arts nonprofit? How can you make it compelling? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this in the comments.

In short, Cause Marketing for Dummies is a really smart book, and I hope whoever gets it really enjoys it and puts these theories into practice right away for their organization.

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Book Giveaway: Cause Marketing for Dummies originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on August 15, 2011.

Recently I was leading a webinar for CharityHowTo called “Tons of Money in the Mail” and a person asked this question:

“What should we include in our direct mail? Would a sticky note or brochure dramatically increase or decrease our money raised via appeals?”

This was at the end of the webinar, and I really did not know the answer to this one. But I asked some lovely people on Twitter, and Gayle Gifford of http://www.ceffect.com responded. Here’s what we came up with.

Adding things to your mailing can either help OR hurt you. Results are MIXED, according to both Mal Warwick and Stephen Hitchcock.

With all of the different things you can add to a mailing, (post it notes, pens, bookmarks, magnets, postcards) what is the most effective thing?

Try a yellow piece of paper, about a 3 1/2 x 8 1/2 sheet. This is called a Buck slip. You might want to include this when there’s an emergency or urgency around your appeal, like all of your arts funding is being cut from the government, or something. Here’s an example buck slip from Democracy NC.

You can include other things like postcards and bookmarks, but you have to test and see if these work for YOUR donors, not just take someone’s word that they work for ALL donors. It’s a case by case thing.

Creating a call to action aside from “Send Us Money” like, “Send this postcard to your representative and ask them to continue to fund the arts” can also work.

For example, several weeks ago I received an Amnesty International appeal in the mail, and it included a card to send to someone imprisoned, and a pen too. Did I use the pen to write on the card? You bet I did! Did I actually mail the card back? No… I got distracted. But it made me remember it, and maybe the next time I’ll give, right? Well, maybe. But give people too many choices of things to do, and you’ll won’t get as many donations.

What about using special paper or envelopes?

Believe it or not, using white paper and standard envelopes works better than anything else.

(@kathyhowrigan also responded, and she said it could go either way.) What is YOUR experience?

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Reader Questions: Does adding extra stuff to your appeal mailing work? originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on August 11, 2011.

1. Make it over 20 pages, and an extremely hi-resolution pdf. Yep. the longer, the better, really.

2. No graphics on the cover, just a blue field.

3. Make the cover have boring stock art.

4. Make the cover have “unnecessary” “quotation” marks. Because that’s not indicative of the editing quality of the rest of the report, right?

5. Don’t put anyone who actually has been helped by your nonprofit on the cover. God forbid you should be personal or real.

6. Inside, make sure you have lots and lots of text. No call outs. No boxes. No pictures. Just text.

7. Make sure your graphs are as boring as possible. In fact,

8. Don’t even worry about financial transparency. I mean, it’s not like there are tons of nonprofit scandals around, right? It’s not like your nonprofit is getting audited right now, right? People trust you, right?

9. Don’t list all of your donors. Who looks for their name in an annual report, anyway?

10. Make sure there are no pictures of your team. Who wants to see the people who make it happen, anyway? Ditto for quotes from your team.

11. Whatever you do, don’t have links on your website to different parts of your annual report.

12. No humor. This is serious business here. We cannot joke about your cause, EVER.

13. When you get it printed, use someone you’ve never used before, give them absolutely no time to do the job, and don’t bother with proofs. Grainy photos, misspelled words, and run-on sentences all okay! Who has time to edit these days, right?

Follow these tips and you’ll be SURE to get an unreadable report. In fact, it might as well go straight from the printers to the pacific garbage patch!

Any other not-to-dos? I would love to hear your thoughts below! Also, if you want a free ebook I just made with some ways to do it right, sign up right here, and get it!

 

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Want to be an Annual Report JEDI? Free Ebook Download originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on June 30, 2011.

So I recently got an email from someone who thinks that their book is god’s gift to everyone, and they said, “You interviewed someone I know, so you should interview MEEEEEE!!!” And I checked out their website, and it has nothing to do with what I talk about. At all. It’s like they didn’t even read my website. And their website also was not finished. And there was really old content on there. So even if their book DID fit with my blog, I wouldn’t want to promote them, because they are messing up their image and would mess up mine.

And so, I told them politely, “Hey, not a match for my blog.”

And the dude wrote back, and said, “Well, that was fast you *insert bad word here*! Now I’ve got an idea for a blog post!”

And all I can think of is, “Really? Should I be shaking in my boots now? Will you call my blog out as the most horrible blog in the world? Will you use my name? Will you take me to the cleaners for not having the exact right kind of blog for your book?” I mean, seriously?

It’s actually pretty hilarious when I think about it. I mean, I pitch people and get shot down too, but not because I didn’t do my research. Oftentimes it’s just because I didn’t build up a relationship first. Or the timing was wrong. Or the person was no longer having a radio show. Lots of reasons.

Anyway, can we take a lesson from this?

If you’re pitching to someone, please, please, look at their blog or website first. See if there is, in fact, a reason that they would like to feature you. Maybe even comment, or follow them on twitter. At least. Show that you care about their community. Try to make your pitch relevant to their audience, even if there’s not a direct correlation to what you do and what they do.

You will see your pitches succeed far faster by building a relationship before you ask someone for something.

This actually happens to nonprofit staff a lot, when they ask for first-time grants that are WAY above what first time grant asks should be. I learned recently that this is actually insulting to them, and it makes sense to me from this perspective. Why should they give you money when they have no idea who you are? If you looked at their funding record, please call them and ask them, “Hey, what are your first time funding amounts usually like?” They want to help you. So don’t insult them. Show them you care by asking their opinion and advice first.

This also happens to people who are asking for sponsorships. You HAVE to find a point of connection between you and the person, maybe from a board member, a staff member, a volunteer, or even if you do a little research on them and find out you’re from the same state, or both have a similar hobby. Something.

Finally, IF you get rejected, PLEASE don’t take it personally. It often has nothing to do with you. I’d say, most of the time! Please don’t try to “get back” at a blogger, funder, or corporate sponsor who rejects you. You are only hurting yourself.

Do not do the eye for a tooth and tooth for an eye thing. Because you can’t chew with your eye. Or see with your tooth.
Capeesh?

An Eye for a Tooth and a Tooth for an Eye originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on June 27, 2011.