Hot Appeals or Burnt Offerings: Do's and Don'ts for Twenty-First Century Fundraising
So yours is a 501(c)(3) and theirs isn’t? Do your best donors and potential donors regard that facet as attention-getting and relevant? Probably not. Technical details don’t provide much persuasive power in this new world.
For those many newcomers to our ranks who believe the medium (especially email) is the message, this book could be their salvation, their map out of the factoid wilderness.
For the rest of us, this book will remind us not only to recognise that we’re competing (for many, an unwelcome intrusion), but also to see the many options available to us, some classic and some new, and give guidance to successfully using all of them.
It’s a new world and with it a radically difference fundraising ambience from that of the kinder, gentler 1980s and 1990s. That world was certainly competitive; but the competition didn’t include the World Wide Web and a welter of other forces some positive, others sinister competing for and weighing down on your loyal patrons.
In this world of instant world-wide communication, the local library competes with the local symphony orchestra… which competes with the local hospital, which competes with national hospitals… which in turn compete with…
There also is the greater ability to target actual donors and potential donors.
Add to this is another reality that hasn’t changed: donors have a finite amount of money — approximately the same amount as in the pre-Internet, pre-World Wide Web days — to contribute to all causes.
Two words are operative here. First is attention, because our best potential donors are the ones whose attention is most in play. They’re the ones whose e-mail boxes are the most crowded. They’re the ones most likely to be jaded by constant “We need help” messages from every competitor, whether library, orchestra, college, hospital, or major cause. And theirs is the attention most likely to be fragmented.
The second operative word is relevance. Those others out there, they aren’t as relevant as we are. They don’t offer as much personal recognition, which in turn means they don’t offer as much personal satisfaction. So we go for emotional relevance.
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